Deathbat's 2023 Year in Video Games

It's always a good year when I manage to finish some decent games, and even better if some of them were even new for this year! Without adieu, here is less of a "Death Bat's awards for 2023" list and more of a "These are the games I found most encapsulating of my time" list.

I'm going to be straight up, though: I haven't touched Baldur's Gate 3 yet. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which is I am afraid I'll pick it up and discover it is not as exciting to me as the many, many reviewers and friends around me who have played the game suggest it might be; I'm also a bit gunshy of Larian Studios based on their prior titles, which I found interesting but not enough to dive deep in to; I've always preferred my fantasy gaming at the tabletop, and it takes a lot for me to motivate to play a CRPG. 

On the plus side, this means not playing BG3 has allowed me to enjoy Starfield (somewhat) without judging it against its better competitor. Instead I have been able to enjoy Starfield on its merits and flaws as a Bethesda game. 

Anyway, the list!

Best Shooter from the Past I belatedly enjoyed in 2023: Outriders

I spent an inordinate amount of time in Outriders, a game from 2020 which took me a while to motivate myself to play. There is a point in Outriders where the story suddenly gets more interesting, and it is a shame that getting to that point was hidden behind some fairly rigid cover-based shooting experience right out of the Xbox 360 era. When the game finally opened up a bit and revealed some more depth to the plotline I got more in to it; the Outriders universe is about humanity's war-torn survivors coming to a grim world that does not want them there, and then they descend into thirty years of war, creating one of the grimmest crapsack worlds in gaming history. This is an example of a game world I do not want to visit, and it takes some effort to truly enjoy it as a gamer, too. But I did....and I ended up really enjoying it as a result.

The game's plot is fairly linear, but I was really in the mood for linearity earlier in the year and I stuck with this one for weeks as I uncovered the grim and incredibly unpleasant universe of this game. I can't say I'd suggest it for the multiplayer (which I am sure is dead) but as a single player linear campaign goes this one ends up paying off fairly well. The expansion campaign was also worthy of a playthrough, and despite some reviewers online I found it sufficiently robust and interesting. The endgame content is decent enough too.

Runner up goes to Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3 Remakes, both of which I finished this year. Great remakes! I have not, as is tradition, touched Resident Evil 4 Remake yet, though my son finished it the same day it released. Gotta save that for a future year!

Best CRPG that is Full of Problems: Starfield

Starfield is not actually bad, it's just an old design approach on an old engine that was renovated mainly for shiny graphics and totally overlooked the possibility of some B studio competition coming along and eating their lunch. Starfield has been fun so far, and I am likely to be playing it in spurts for the next several weeks or even months (I can't binge play games anymore, just not able to do it), and its totally fine. When I am done I will finally get Baldur's Gate 3 so I can marvel at how much better that game is, but thankfully I can enjoy this one now without comparison.

If you're wondering, though, I have found this game runs well enough on the Asus ROG Ally, and its been a fine experience on my desktop. The complaints about the menus, while slightly exaggerated for effect, are not wrong; it can be hard to find things sometimes. There are weird mechanics in odd places. Why is my guy running out of oxygen in New Atlantis? It's weird. Why are some planets not worth visiting? Why put empty filler in that has no redeeming value to it? Bad design choices. But....nestled within is a classic Bethesda experience, for better and worse.

Runner up goes to Solasta: Crown of the Magister, which I finally started playing, as I figured it would also be another game I'd find less enjoyment in if I don't play it before Baldur's Gate 3. I love how faithful Solasta is to the D&D 5E system, and its a solid turn-based experience. 

Also, honorable mention to Final Fantasy XVI for trying really hard to be interesting. Now why can't I properly get into FF games anymore? I have only completed FF VII and VIII back in the old PS1 days. 

Best Actually Good FPS: Turbo Overkill

Not quite a retro boomer shooter and not quite a modern glamour shooter, Turbo Overkill presents you with a cyborg character who has a chainsaw leg and sliding maneuver to rip enemies apart as well as one of the finest and most overall useful arsenals of weaponry you could ask for in a fast paced FPS like this. By the end of the game you can end up all chainsaws as you chew your way through a plot worthy of the nineties, and all I can say is that I have enjoyed this game a lot more than other recent AAA shooters.

Runner up goes to Trepang2 which is am amazing and wild ride, and some people feel it is comparable to the original FEAR Games, which I can see (at least the feel, not the supernatural stuff). Trepang2 is a real pleasure to play. I would have ranked it as the top shooter of 2023 for sure if I hadn't also discovered Turbo Overkill.

Best Adventure or Horror Title: Dead Space

Obviously Dead Space! The Dead Space reboot is the right kind of remake, and the prospect of new and more Dead Space in the future is a good thing. I also quite enjoyed Callisto Protocol, but playing that and then Dead Space sort of hit home how there's a special kind of magic going on with the original that is hard to beat. Still, both are worthy of a playthrough or two.

Runner up is Alan Wake Remastered and Alan Wake 2. A real trip, but make sure you play Alan Wake Remastered first if you haven't. I actually hadn't played Alan Wake before, so needed to tackle that game first. Also, if you have never played Control before that's in the same Remedy Universe, and its really interesting to play these games in their related context. Avoid only if you dislike precocious authors whose written works seem to recalibrate reality!

Best Indie/Small Team Game: Earth's Shadow

I sank more time in to Earth's Shadow than many other titles with bigger teams and greater budgets. Earth's Shadow is an exploratory procedural roguelite that plays like a budget edition of Returnal. Just like Returnal I can't get past the first boss (what I assume is the first boss, anyway....dude in the temple), but I have to say I have really enjoyed my hours with this game. Check it out on Steam if the concept of a Returnal-like roguelike sounds fun to you.

Runner up is Dungeons of Sundaria, a crazy entry into the "small team with big concepts" roguelikes with procedural design. Make a heroic dungeon delver, join a team or go solo into eight different dungeons. I just got this and while I was initially thinking, "No way this has staying power for me," before I knew it I was compulsively leveling my elven fighter and seeing how deep into the haunted graveyard I could go. The strikes against it are that the gameplay is interesting enough that I wish it was a real game with a storyline and not a roguelite. It reminds me of Hunted: The Demon's Forge and Kingdoms of Amalur, except without much of a plot beyond "go in dungeon, murder the stuff you meet." The skeleton of a better game lurks within Dungeons of Sundaria, but as a mindless dungeon hack'n'slash it's pretty good.

Some new games did not get played yet so I just can't speak on titles such as Atlas Fallen, Lords of the Fallen, Diablo IV and of course Baldur's Gate 3. Any one of these games could have soaked up way too much time for me, so I have held off on them for that reason. I'm also saving conversation on "games as a service" entries for next time, when we talk about the year's duds.

Okay, that's enough for this year's interesting titles. Next up, maybe we'll chat about the duds! I have a few I think are worth mentioning...

The 2023 Death Bat Year in Gaming and Looking to 2024

 What a weird year it has been for me. I spent a lot of this year overworked and with less free time for fun than I would like, but on the plus side I got a bit better at managing what free time I did have. My son, who is now 12, monopolizes a fair amount of that, but he's also very into D&D now and plays in a school group as well as my Wednesday night group....which doesn't play D&D as often anymore, but hey, we're starting a new campaign this week, so there ya' go.

This year kicked off with Wizards of the Coast annihilating trust in their shepherding of Dungeons & Dragons through the OGL, resulting in numerous spin-off games appearing under a creative commons or new license (ORC) through Paizo, including the revamped Pathfinder 2E v2, and the imminent Tales of the Valiant from Kobold Press. It's a boost for existing products like level Up! A5E RPG, though honestly Morrus and his ENWorld crew are not really the sort to dramatically capitalize on the negative hype aimed at WotC, and they continue to do their own thing. 

I spent a lot of time this year deep diving into the alternative and indie RPG market that I dub "zinerpgs" because most of these seem to have spun out of the zine scene where small publishers and authors (usually one and the same) along with their art-generating college buddies create elaborate, minimalist, starkly artistic and utterly weird entries into the market. I stalled out a bit on that project of reviewing all I had found but need to get back to it. Maybe 2024 will be a slower year for me....sheeya right!

This year I did manage the following:

First and best, I got the Wednesday group back to live nightly gaming again. This has been a welcome relief, as I tend to associate facetime on web events with work; it is not fun for me. My Saturday game remains on Roll20 out of necessity, but even then I am thinking about making Roll20 a bi-weekly deal and interposing a live event every other week.

As a player I got actual action in this year. I played in a campaign of Pathfinder 2E run by a friend; found that being a player in this edition is more frustrating and unfun (imo) than being a GM. Another friend in Seattle has managed to run a lot of Victorian Gaslight Call of Cthulhu for much of this year until unfortunate circumstances led to that group collapsing (temporarily; three of us wish to resume it in January). He has also run a fun bi=weekly D&D 5E game I have played in for the better part of the year using the Kobold Press Southlands campaign.

I have run live games this year of BRP in a near-future hard SF/Cyberpunk setting, Pathfinder for Savage Worlds, D&D 5E at very high levels (levels 15-20), a couple D&D mini-campaigns on Roll20, an aborted Pathfinder game (what I like to call "the one that made me gun-shy over Pathfinder"), Vaesen (a game I'd describe better as Dark Fantasy and less horror), Call of Cthulhu (both modern day and Cthulhu Dark ages, using the 6th Edition of the Dark Ages rules), Mork Borg (which was a blast but I have not been sure what to do with it next; it is most decidedly a beer & pretzels dark metal RPG), and at the start of the year we had a 1st edition Gamma World holiday campaign wrap up. Fun stuff! I may have blogged less this year, but at least I kept the gaming up. There might have been a game or two I forgot about....OSE maybe? I think I ran that all last year, though.

Of those games I ran, I came away a bit cool on Vaesen (fun but hard for me to get in to, which is damning if you're the GM), happy that Mork Borg was so fun (but also realizing it is best used sparingly), excited for the Call of Cthulhu games, but also realizing I need to give it a rest a bit so my idea engine can recharge, and for BRP I am now intrigued at the idea of exploring how many oddball genres I can get out of it. I really enjoyed the Savage Worlds Fantasy and Pathfinder adaptations, but I am not 100% sure my group did as when I suggested returning to it they all seemed "m'eh" so I think the joyful simplicity of Savage Worlds may not be as endearing to them as it is to me. As for Pathfinder.....man, I want to, but I've had some issues and bad experiences with running it now and that is proving tough for me to get over. D&D remains viable and my energy to play it is recharged, thankfully, but I plan to ditch it entirely for Tales of the Valiant unless whatever WotC pumps out for new editions next year knocks my socks off. My suspicion is it will be a product aimed to steer me toward their online platform, and that will be a no deal situation. Meanwhile, Kobold Press is more or less continuously making smart and fun books and their grip on Shard Tabletop is where I'll put my online money. I am confident the Kobolds won't forget their analog wood-grain table crowd.

My biggest issue this year has been wrestling with GM burnout. Playing more helped a bit, but I have never been very good as a player (I know too much how the cheese is made, so it can be tough to feel invested unless the GM is shockingly good at running things). I got pretty tired of D&D for a bit, but I feel more interested now, especially as I did get a chance to explore other games there, and that, if anything, helped hammer home that the grass is not greener on the other side, and what really makes things fun is what I put in to it more than what system I am using. Getting to play D&D 5E for once was a godsend, and my friend Mike runs a mean, tight game in the Southlands, loads of fun.

For 2024, I hope to run a good long fun D&D 5E game in my Pergerron setting. I think the Roll20 Saturday group would like to do part 2 to an older Pathfinder campaign in Oman'Hakat, and I may be up for that. I have strong plans for a Traveller campaign, maybe before we do D&D or Pathfinder on Saturday, especially now that it seems they finally have some real character sheet support. The 2022-2024 revisions of Traveller have been great books, not really necessary but welcome nonetheless, and I may even use them to continue the campaign concepts I started in the BRP campaign earlier this year. 

Beyond that, I have some hopes of experimenting with Dragonbane, which I almost ran but never quite got to this year, as well as Mutant Year Zero. I'm hopeful that Friday Knight Games finally coughs up the gigantic Kickstarted boxed set of Mothership 1E this year so I can resume running that. Steve Jackson Games is making a big monster book for The Fantasy Trip, too, and I am thinking about what sort of logistics it would take to give TFT a spin. And, of course, Mork Borg and its evil cousins Death in Space, Vast Grimm, Pirate Borg and Cy_Borg call for my attention the next time I have a week with nothing better going on. 

I'll try to do more blogging, too! I have found lots of RPG bloggers on Substack, may forge a new blog over there as well to see how it goes, but I am reluctant to abandon this one as I have so many years behind it now. We'll see, who knows.

WotC Layoffs = Good News for Paizo and Kobold Press?

 The stories circulating about the large scale layoffs at Wizards of the Coast have gotten interesting. I initially thought this was just the usual Xmas layoffs WotC has been more or less known to go through thanks to their corporate Hasbro owners for the last couple decades, but in reading some stuff (here, for example, and here) it seems like these layoffs are larger and more profound...messier, and more destructive, if you will...right when WotC's D&D team needs stability the most. 

The net result, of course, is it could mean problems for all the product lineup for D&D's 50th anniversary, or at the very least a lessening of vision. At a time when we are all hoping for a decent new iteration of the rules and new prospects for gaming, it's a troubling sign when whole swathes of the creative drivers are suddenly let loose, with no clear objective to this action other than achieving some bottom line short term savings in sight. I am also surprised they are trying to ditch their movie deal with Entertainment One, as I was vaguely under the impression that they had done well enough to merit future installments of at least the D&D movie line. Can't say for sure on Transformers and other films, though; toy line movies, baring Barbie, have not done well for years now. 

As far as the gaming side goes, this does mean potential good news for the current two largest competitors (as I see it) for D&D's cultural cachet: Kobold Press with Tales of the Valiant, which intends to do for D&D 5E what Pathfinder 1E did for D&D 3.5; and of course Paizo's Pathfinder 2E (v2) which is poising itself to be the alternative to the popular system, filling a role as the friendly but more sophisticated alternative. Either way it is good to know that WotC's implosion attempt on the OGL at the beginning of the year liberated both Kobold Press and Paizo, as well as countless other smaller publishers, to move away from a potentially revocable license and into a more sustainable role as providers of a decent fantasy RPG experience.

I am considering running more Pathfinder 2E, with the new core books now in hand. The revisions are minor, but the rewrite and reorganization is greatly appreciated. The support Pathfinder offers for a more rigorous and tactical game with consequences is something I crave, though I need to work carefully to generate an experience that isn't too punishing to the players. 

Pathfinder though serves as my interim system until Tales of the Valiant takes root. Their lineup of books is proving to be extremely crafty, a well curated D&D-like experience with a 5E compatible ruleset that will let me use whatever I want. If they integrate TotV into the Shard Tabletop experience --and they surely will!--then it will make the system a shoe-in for future online gaming. Check it out if you haven't yet, its a really fine VTT for 5E style play. 

Either way, we shall see how it all goes. Next year will, for better or worse, be yet another year where the top three fantasy offerings are all essentially D&D variants....but luckily we are getting more fun stuff that tries to break or deviate a bit from the D&D mold, such as Dragonbane, Mork Borg and Runecairn. More on all those when I finally find more time to write!

River of heaven, Pathfinder 2E, Basic Roleplaying and Other Stuff

 No sooner do I find myself thinking I have free time once more than my schedule goes belly up, and before I know it December has arrived. Fear not, the blog is not dead (nor the blogger!), just once more neglected due to the perambulations of time. 

In the last few weeks I've had a few noteworthy items to discuss. Each topic deserves more blog time, but in brief...

Pathfinder 2E version 2 has arrived! I spent some amount of the Thanksgiving weekend diving in to the new Player Core and GM Core books, which together are the first two books of the four book core set. I can say the following on a read through: there are some changes, but it is mostly explanatory/cosmetic. This new iteration of the system is more retrocomptable than, say, D&D 3.5 was with 3.0, perhaps even more so than AD&D  2E was with AD&D 1E. I feel comfortable in using existing PF books with these new ones. What the books do exceedingly well is twofold: they purge whatever Paizo felt was too "OGL" or IP-specific from their game, and they (most importantly of all) do some significant reorganization and a certain amount of rewriting to clean up how they present their rules....this is a much easier presentation of the PF2E system than the first books were, hands down. There are other little tweaks and changes, and some (while noteworthy) still aren't significant in terms of compatibility. Overall.....about what we should have expected.

I Snagged a copy of River of Heaven, Refreshed. Still reading it, but this is by far the best attempt at a D100 powered science fiction system. It's based on OpenQuest, which of course exists as a nice fantasy alternate to Mythras and BRP/Runequest. I will write more on this soon, hopefully.

While securing and reading those books, I have been running an ongoing Basic Roleplaying campaign in a scifi/cyberpunk future using the newest edition of BRP. It's gone well! The newest edition of the book is overall not too terribly different from the older BGB (Big Gold Book), but its slight refinements, corrections and revisions have made for a generally improved experience. I have plans for several more genre variants powered by BRP in the works as a result.

Beyond that....it's been a rough month! Hopefully I'll be returning to some more normal form in my periodic blogging. I have thought a bit about moving to a new, more popular platform such as Substack, may well look in to that. Indeed, I really need to see if substack has an RPG wing over there, because most of what I see at substack appears to mostly be wannabe journalists and topical writers. Maybe substack isn't meant for this kind for more casual fare? Will have to investigate.   

A Correction! And on Getting Old.

 A few days back I complained about Onebookshelf ending an agreement with me. I was wrong! So wrong that when I went to re-read the email notice I realized, after thinking about it, that the notice was from Warehouse 23, the online venue for Steve Jackson Games. That honestly makes a lot more sense....I only recall I had anything at their site when I get an occasional notice that they have owed me $7 for the last two years. Their site is not optimized for finding content, and it is easy to never notice anything on their store outside of the most recent products, and SJ Games products in particular. With their recent move to a new sight design this only got worse, so yeah, this totally makes sense.

So...for those looking for my stuff on Drivethrurpg, looks like I am just getting old and easily confused, that stuff will continue to be there. I have gone ahead and deleted that post, to replace it with this one admitting my brain sometimes misses important details these days. Sigh....!

Having fun with Basic Roleplaying

The revised edition of Basic Roleplaying is a lovely book, it changes just enough to make it more useful and efficient, while still being the system I've been enjoying for going on 43 years now. I didn't have much to say in this post, but amidst a year of GM burnout, a developed fascination for minimalist zine games, and a lot of work interrupting play, it's been nice to get my hands on the new BRP hardcover and start experimenting with what I can do with it. In every way this book feels just a bit more like what I need to generate some interesting scenarios and campaigns. I'll post some soon, once I've sorted out what I won't use, or end up using (to avoid spoilers for my players). I will say that I have a near-future hard SF campaign ready, as well as that long-awaited ancient Egypt campaign in the works, and some developing ideas on a new Strange Apocalypse style supers campaign.

That's it! Just a short comment to let everyone know I exist and will be back on track for posting soon, things are returning to normal for me again. 

Troika! in Softcover

 Having recently reviewed this I thought it worth mentioning that Troika! has a revised 3rd edition now out in softcover here. Although I have some misgivings about it's initiative system and curious was of expressing the implied setting, Troika! is nonetheless a fascinating game I plan to run sooner or later, so am grabbing this latest edition along with Acid Death Fantasy in print so I can put that plan in to action. Check it out!

This is a busy work month for me! Lots of travel. I will be in a better spot for catching up on my blogging by the end of the month, hopefully, as a I still have many Indie/Zine RPGs to review, including....

Pirate Borg

CY_Borg

Cairn

Liminal

and more!!!!

Mutant: Mechatron is Back in Print!

 Not only is Mutant: Mechatron back in print at a normal price at Free League Publishing, but a new book in the Mutant: Year Zero series is announced as well titled Mutant; Year Zero - Ad Astra. Mutants in space! 

It is possible that you are in the same camp I am and know why this is a moment for celebration, but if not, then know this tale: Several years ago in the before-times of the pandemic Mutant: Year Zero arrived on the scene with much surprise, and I was fortunate enough to grab it with all the cool bells and whistles back when Modiphius was distributing. Over time Modiphius and Free League parted ways (though recently that has changed again), and Free League books became tough to find, especially if you didn't back the Kickstarter. In short order I missed all three sequels (Genlab Alpha, Elysium and Mechatron). Last year one of the reasons I resumed collecting and then deep-diving into Free League books was due to a happy accident when my wife and I uncovered a trove of a gaming shop in Florida that had more gaming tomes than I had seen in years. Years! Among the many books I snagged there were all the books I was missing for the Mutant Year Zero lineup except one: Mechatron. Heck I even got the card deck....just not the book. 

It turned out it had a really limited print run for the Kickstarter and had never been reprinted. Mechatron was going for $400+ on Ebay auctions for the only three copies available anywhere (and I bet those sellers are wishing they had lowered the price just a bit now). I secured the PDF easily enough, but using the PDF is just not practical for me, I'm an old Gen X gamer, and my embrace of electronic books does not comport well with gaming tomes, it's just a problem with our generational model...we need that book in our hands to make the magic happen, plain and simple. 

So with this new announcement Free League has at last course corrected and is steering the Mutant Year Zero brand back on track. Celebration time! I have ordered my copy, time to wait patiently for it to arrive. 

The Indie/Zine RPG Review Part XVIII: Electric Bastionland

Electric Bastionland - Deeper into the Odd

$19 in PDF on itch.io 

$60 in print+PDF on Exalted Funeral

I actually found Electric Bastionland before I snagged Into the Odd. Chronologically this is a sequel to the latter, with Electric Bastionland taking place roughly a century or so after Into the Odd, moving the technomantic steampunk era of Bastion to the electric age. Despite the book's large size, it's probably only maybe twice the word count of its prequel; the game is heavy on illustrative art, a black-and-white minimalist design that is at once evocative and well-done, without being too abstract. The tonal consistency of the tome is welcome.  

The System: It's the same core mechanical design as Into the Odd, which is a system that appears now in quite a few other games. This system is defined over six pages which includes to pages of examples. For a refresher, you roll three stats (strength, dexterity and charisma in this case) on 3D6, then hit protection (HP) on a D6, some cash and equipment in hand, and then a failed career (about which more in a moment). When you roll to succeed (a save), its roll low with modifiers. When you fight, you go right to rolling damage and applying against hit protection. When that is gone, it goes to stats and bad things are immediately likely to happen if you fail a save. Very basic system, the same one in many other zine rpgs (Into the Odd, Liminal Horror, Old Skull Publishing's trilogy of RPGs, etc.)

The main variation in the character generation is rolling a failed career. This is similar to a profession or background as in other variations on the system, but your choice is based on looking at a chart and comparing your highest stat to your lowest stat....so yeah, players who want to choose what they play are out of luck here without spending a nontrivial time rolling up new stats to get just what they want. (Yeah, I have a player like that lol). In addition to your low and high stats determining failed career, your D6 in cash and your HP roll determine other details.

The failed careers are just that: something your PC is or did and of course wasn't so good at for various reasons. Each entry provides a visual reference and four distinct items to jot down on your character sheet, one for special equipment, your debt source, and then two variable details based on your starting cash and hit points. It's very important to note that most of the book is failed careers: 220 pages, to be exact! In a sense, much as with Troika! before, Electric Bastionland informs you of a lot of its flavor through this inexact process. Unlike Troika!, EB provides an additional 95 pages of guidance and setting material for the GM (called the conductor here)....so it's not all purely in descriptions. Also, unlike the other game, EB's careers have a greater level of consistency for the setting; in other words, there is most definitely a setting here, and it has its own internal logic to follow.

Some examples of EB characters for you to consider, noting that these are 100% random, and names are from the suggested choices by career:

#1 Pearl; Starting Stats: STR 10 DEX 13 CHA 11 HP 4 Cash 2 - Rural Tax Collector. Has a taxman's pistol. What did the tax office provide you with? An ornate baton. What do you hate most about Bastion? Bureaucracy - you have a portable shredder.

#2 Bushka; STR 10 DEX 9 CHA 8 HP 3 Cash 2 - Professional Gambler, who owns a slug gun and a pack of gum. What's Your Game? - one-car bluff, take a pocket full of tiny mirrors that stick to any surface. What did you win? - Anti-Matter Key, when placed in a keyhole it utterly annihilates the door and itself.

#3 Risper; STR 14 DEX 14 CHA 6 HP 4 Cash 6 - Urbalist (you're both into herbs and urban stuff, I think), a saber and three doses of hallucinogenic herbs. What do the walls tell you when you're herbed up? You can put some fragments of the wall into your ear to know a trivial fact about a being (if any) that calls this place home. What do the floors tell you when you're herbed up? You spit on the floor to learn the name of the person who thinks they are in charge.

So yeah....that's a modest sample of what characters can look like in EB. One item I left out is the debt. Each group starts 10K in debt to some group of individual. Each career has a source of this debt, but the determining factor as to who that debt belongs to is based on who the youngest player at the table is. 

There are a lot of interesting failed careers, and seeing any of them will be down to the fickle nature of the dice. The careers strongly suggest that Electric Bastionland is very much a cyberpunk game, just with less cyber (sometimes) and more of that electric part. It's what a steampunk world might one day look like with the onward march of science. Plus...as we shall discuss below, this is the direct sequel to Into the Odd, which means there's a lot more going on in this strange world to inform it, too.

The Setting: Bastion is the future of the same city from Into the Odd, now much advanced and with at least a century (or more) since its predecessor. Where Into the Odd evoked a quaint sense of victorianism and rugged exploration of an unknown world and the underground, the Bastion of EB is a dystopian, sprawling nightmare and the book conveys this by primarily giving tools and instructions on how to design your own city. It covers Bastion, the world outside called the Deep Country, the world below (underground) and then the mystery of the Living Stars. 

Before getting to the setting I should mention that the conductor's section provides a complete set of rules to build a scenario, including a macguffin for the PCs to pursue and a range of  ideas on setting up encounters, events, threats and choices for the group to make. It's only a few pages but its some incredibly brilliant stuff, worth reading for anyone who would like to see an elegant process outlined for a GM to use for any system, not just this one.

Similar to the Conductor section, each region overview provides a range of charts, ideas and concept points to use in building your own take on Bastion, the Deep Country and the Underground. Notably absent from this book is something from Into the Odd, which includes a bewildering array of artifacts you can find; here it is mainly a discussion on setting the treasure for your group with a chart of six examples.

The Inhabitants of Bastionland comprise entries on the people of Bastion, things called Mockeries (animated stuff given life by the technomancy of the city), Machines, which manage the underground and may or may not be the instigators behind the ever changing city, then the Aliens, which appear to visit with enough frequency not to be seen as extremely unusual, even though they are. Finally there are the Monstrosities, creatures made not born and ultimately too destructive or threatening not to have to resort to lethal force to exterminate. The rules for each group here is primarily providing guidance on making your own unique types of each group, rather than giving you a concrete stat block.  

The last 40 or so pages of the book are the Oddendum, which contain optional rules, a lot of discussion by the designer Chris Mcdowall on how he runs games and feels they should be run, and a number of sections on example content for specific campaign ideas. This is really interesting reading because Chris has some interesting takes on game design and running games. His one page on Big Impact is especially interesting reading, as it argues that allowing PCs to make a save against a risky effect simply diminishes the impact of the effect. I can't argue with this logic; I just ran my Saturday night D&D game and yeah, it's easy to see monsters once known for being tough opponents cave like a house of cards in the 5th edition system due to the fact that saves are mainly an efficient way for PCs to (usually) sidestep consequence. In a nutshell, the Big Impact argument as framed here is that saves get in the way of the interesting stuff, and the interesting stuff is where consequences and decisions come from. So don't have a "save to resist becoming a fish-man" effect...just have the PC turn in to a fish-man. The logic extends to other player-driven actions, as well: its about impact and consequence. I can see some counterpoints to it, but I can deeply empathize with the core conceit, which is that sometimes bad things really should happen, because the results make the game more interesting.

The Supplements: I don't know of any supplements for it, but EB is part of a subgenre of games powered by the same system, so the cross-compatibility exists. It is by far the most robust of the games within this niche, so consider that. You won't run EB right away, for example; it's going to require a bit of time to sit down and assimilate all this info and design a scenario.  There is also a blog out there (located here) which you may be able to scour for more ideas and content.

Who is this for? Electric Bastionland is an interesting experiment and pushes the indie/zine rpg format into a more mainstream product, at least on the surface. Underneath it is loaded with interesting ideas and useful tools which, even if they don't directly translate to the game or genre you want to use them for, will still inspire you toward thinking about new ways to approach setting and scenario design. I think this game could prove to be fun to play for a lengthy campaign or three with the right group, and a GM who could craft the sometimes specific and other times vague elements of Electric Bastionland into a more concrete setting of their own. It definitely provides plenty of basis for inspiration, and I suspect that playing in the campaign of the author is probably an amazing experience. So yeah....get this if you want to see something that manages to be neat looking, artsy, functional and innovative all at the same time, even if you only use it as a springboard for inspiration in your own preferred setting or ruleset.   

The Indie/Zine RPG Review Part XVII: Troika! RPG

Troika! RPG (Melsonian Arts Council)

$30 at Exalted Funeral

I've gotten behind in September. Time to catch up!

What it is: Troika! is a reimagining of the Advanced Fighting Fantasy game system (the one made for tabletop multiplayer gaming, rather than the solo game books). It's not only a restatement of that game system's mechanics, but a completely new envisioning of the game world, now represented as a bizarre space-fantasy with what are arguably no limits in terms of its scope of imagination. In reality, there are some limits....unless you are deeply into the "yes, and" level of improv which is so heavily catered to by many of these indie zine rpgs. Troika! is also fueled by an exotic art style that evokes turn-of-the-century (19th century) art conventions in books such as Alice in Wonderland or Wizard of Oz, eschewing any more conventional style of gaming for this fairly unique, surrealist style. 

The System: Troika! is at its core AFF and anyone who knows AFF will feel at least somewhat comfortable here. What's interesting about Troika! discussion online is people complaining about the roll under system and other basic elements of the game such as initial random stat generation, which are completely logical elements on an OSR style game system that is not D&D derived, but still very much a traditional style of play....the many critics (including those who "like the system, but...") try to find equitable workarounds for non random stats or roll under vs. contested roll-high mechanics. I am not sure why this is an issue for so many, other than that the Troika! edition of these rules is essentially a very traditional old-school approach wrapped in the sheepskin of an artsy improv RPG aimed at high-concept, imaginative tale-telling as opposed to the original purpose of AFF, which is gritty solo dungeon delves without too much book-keeping.

What Troika! does strangely is initiative. Without looking back in my copies of AFF I am reasonably sure that the token system of Troika! is not what AFF did. In Troika! you determine initiative by assigning colored tokens (beads, poker chips, cards, dice, whatever) by foes and allies and throw them in a pot. You pull from this pot until you get the "turn ends" token and start over. It's in concept sort of neat, but in reality it's a horrendous pain in the butt, and can lead to odd situations where long pulls from the pot are of tokens only for certain (usually GM) enemies and such. For a game based on one of the original ultralite RPGs, its needlessly cumbersome and potentially weird in an unfun way. I noticed someone released an alternative initiative system based on cards for Troika! on Drivethrurpg, so I suspect I am not the only one who dislikes the initiative system (okay, a large Reddit forum is also dedicated to working around it, too).

Ninety percent of Troika! is not rules or mechanics at all, though: it's character types, which you can roll randomly for on a D66 to determine your Background. The backgrounds are evocative and interesting reading for the players, but ultimately necessary for the GM because almost all of the implied setting is embedded in these background descriptions; there is no other GM guidance on the world beyond what is inferred here and in the meager sample scenario. Later books such as Acid Death Fantasy take a similar approach and also ditch the core book setting entirely (sort of), meaning that if you are the sort of GM who likes a section that helps you out, Troika! is maybe not the ideal game for you. 

In any case, backgrounds give you an evocative description that alludes to a weird world, some possessions, skills, and a special trait. Some examples of base backgrounds include some very interesting and at times extremely abstract descriptors, best exemplified by quoting from the text. For example:

Cacogen: You are Those-Filthy-Born, spawned in the hump-backed sky lit only by great black anti-suns and false light. Your mother was sailing on the golden barges or caught in some more abstract fate when she passed you, far from the protective malaise of the million Spheres. You were receptive to the power and the glory at a generative time and it shows in your teratoid form.

And: 

Demon Stalker: You stake your reputation upon your ability to hunt and kill demonic creatures and those who break bread with them. Goat men in the wilds or the Angel cults of the slums, all need to be driven back off the edge of the map and onto the shores of chaos.

Also: 

The Fellowship of Knidos: Mathmologists honour the clean and unambiguous truths of mathematics and coordinate them with their observations of the multiverse. All things can be measured and predicted with the application of the correct mathmological ratios, those methods applied to penetrate the ethereal surface and glimpse the fundamental numbers below.

And in case it isn't obvious enough that Troika! backgrounds are expansive, here is one more:

Zoanthrop: At some point in your past you decided you didn’t need it anymore: you found a Zoanthropologist and paid them well to remove your troublesome forebrain and elevate you to the pure and unburdened beast you are today

Those are all backgrounds for the same world/multiverse of the spheres. There are 36 such backgrounds, ranging from the familiar to the completely ephemeral. Sometimes literally! The backgrounds are generally  simultaneously neat and also filled with questions for which few or no answers are forthcoming. So when I say that Troika! is designed around the Imrpov playstyle, this is what I mean! No two games are going to be quite alike, and your enjoyment of the game will be inversely proportionate to the level of contribution you and your players are willing to engage with on the fly.

The Setting: Troika! has an implied setting when you read the backgrounds and sample module. It's a multidimensional world of Ptolemaic nature (perhaps), crystal spheres or something similar, working in a realm which seems to be a city lying adjacent to or amidst many different aligned worlds. Magic is a thing, but steampunk, technomancy and other dalliances may also exist. Physics as the real world knows it may not exist, or maybe it does and no one interprets it right. There are a lot of things to worry about, and in general if its existed in a fantastic tale somewhere, it probably exists in Troika! At least--that's what I got out of it. The sample module is especially vexing to me as it implies a great city, as is alluded to, an takes place in a fabulous hotel filled with weird encounters. It has, to its credit, a dreamlike quality, but maybe not always the good kind of dream; sometimes it feels like the bad dreams induced by food poisoning, too. Who knows! The bestiary is similarly vexing and oddly stated, as are the backgrounds, filled with suggestions of a world envisioned like a dadaist painting, filled with interpretive shapes that could mean everything or nothing. A page or two stating that Troika! is a realm of dream might have been all I needed for this to make more sense to me, but then it might have been a bit more plebian than its hidden goal of randomized exoticism. 

Despite that sense, I think it's an admirable effort in creativity. It's just....so much disorganization in the conceptual space is a burden for many when you're trying to conceive of a coherent plot or setting for an RPG, and from what I have read this ends up true for many, who find it suited at best for short term one-shot game sessions as a result; the inherent incoherence makes it hard to expand beyond surface level experimentation. If you like verisimilitude in your gaming, know that Troika! is in defiant opposition to your will.

Support Material: Troika! has some decent support. I don't have any of it in print, but did grab some in PDF. There are some sourcebooks from Melsonian Arts Council which are (without having dived too deeply) just as eerie and abstract as the core game. I like Acid Death Fantasy, which is a Troka! powered post-apocalyptic setting that provides a more concise initial world overview before diving into myriad backgrounds and creature...enough to hang the mental coat on, if you will. 

Who is this For? Well, right off the bat I doubt any traditional Advanced Fighting Fantasy fan will find Troika! to be to their liking, if the main goal is an old-school and well-defined fantasy gaming experience. Troika! will appeal if you want to embrace OSR rules and a highly unstructured but evocative improv play environment. Troika! does not borrow (yet, that I have found) from the extremely focused and utility-driven style of module design seen in OSE, Mothership or other systems so the module content I have seen is a bit oddly traditional, but its still fairly brief in approach so shouldn't pose much issue. I concede that a lot of this book, despite in principle being of a design bent I should really like, left me mildly discomfited, again as if I had awoken from a disturbing dream brought on by food poisoning. It does not, needless to say, motivate me to run it. But...Acid Death Fantasy is really cool, and I think I could be tempted to give that a swing. Just need to house rule out the nightmarish initiative system!