mini-reviews

[reverancepavane]

Opening Salvo [RPG] is the set of quickstart rules for Dragon Brigade, the new Cortex Plus game from Margaret Weiss Productions. If you want a copy it's currently free from DriveThruRPG. This is a simple explanation of the rules, some pregenerated characters, and an adventure with all the bits laid out for you to get the feel of the game. It's a fantasy universe that seems very late 18th Century (lets call it pre-Napoleonic, although that may just be the Temeraire series speaking to me), with dragons and griffons and the like. There is also magic, which seems fairly indistinguishable from technology in that it allows the user to construct sigils that perform certain specific tasks (as well as being used to construct things like flying ships with cannon). Anyway it was interesting to see what direction they want to take the Cortex Plus system (such as is used in Leverage and Smallville). Personally I find what they tried to do with Cortex Plus to be interesting, but a touch too abstract for my tastes (although the use of "rich dice" techniques makes it less so, but this may require the purchase of multiple colours of polyhedra dice to keep track of which dice means what), so that players end up playing the game system rather than the game. In essence it becomes a game of dice resource manipulation. This isn't a bad thing as there are many good games based on it, such as Dogs in the Vineyard. But I prefer a system where dice rolls are simple and don't need to be manipulated by the expenditure of plot points, and then analysed in detail to determine the specific effects. Also, it suits a caper (which has a defined beginning and end), more than it does an adventure, unless you want to have a hoard of Assets and Complications following characters around eternally... [I also admit that the fact that it's actually easier for a more highly skilled character to foul up incredibly badly than it is for an unskilled character to do so, due to the fact that the rolls are assymetrical - it doesn't matter that there is only an extra 1 in 216 chance of 3d6 creating a d10 Complication (which is "Scary") if there is no chance a 1d6 character can get get the same result.] Strike Legion [RPG] postulates the players are Legionaires, the elite soldiers of the small, but technological sophisticated, Republic, who are battling the forces of the massive all-consuming Empire and it's wicked Empress (in an effect to prevent aforementioned Republic becoming forcibly incorporated into the Empire). They naturally have a lot better toys (guns, spaceships, powered armour) to play with than the Imperial lackeys, not to mention being augmented to superhuman levels of strength and reflexes by the Legionaire Process they all undergo. Small units in their highly-stealthed Strike Cruisers perform their mission, and then return unseen to their hidden bases whilst the Empire flails wildly in an attempt to catch them. Sort of a cross between Warhammer 40K (without all the Chaos and Orcs), and a 1950's sci fi serial. Naturally this native edge should appeal to most players of my acquaintance that would be interested in this sort of thing. Although come to think of it, most of them would probably prefer working for the Empress. Oh well. Anyway, it's a dice pool game that clocks in at 274 pages of closely-written text, detailing abilities, equipment, and spaceships of this SF universe, including not only the Empire and the Republic, but also the major alien races as well, all for less than A$3 from DriveThruRPG. Despite appearances this post has not been sponsored by DriveThruRPG. I'll fix this impression by doing a mini-review of Do next time. Allthough I may go back to full sized reviews now that I'm feeling somewhat better.