Timewaster's Guide Archive
Games => Role-Playing Games => Topic started by: Entsuropi on July 02, 2003, 03:45:32 PM
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My my, is fell upset over that one :P
What would your version of the games timesetting have been fell? My first instinct would have been to use warhammers rules, due to their very bloody and high death rate tendencies. Low chance of survival seems pretty important in a post apocalypic game.
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Wow, a Palladium game Fell isn't defending. I'm... er... speechles.
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Sounds like a lame concept anyway...
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the concept is pretty cool, especialy if you like Rifts. But I agree with Fell. Why buy a game that's just Rifts but trying not to be. I'd take the concept and use the new version of beyond the supernatual when it comes out. That would be much better.
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First of all, let me apologize for the virulence of my review. I try to be as fair as possible, but I honestly think that Chaos Earth is one of the most slip-shod, poorly-designed RPGs I've ever seen. Please don't take my white hot fury as an excuse to write similar reviews on a regular basis, however :)
I agree with Spriggan, really. Take Beyond the Supernatural (or any horror game, really) and play it that way. Drop the gung-ho military stuff and keep it simple. A game where you play as yourself (or a similar everyman) trying to survive the apocalypse would be fascinating; set it in your home town, grab a local map from the travel bureau, and start blowing stuff up with a big red marker. The characters have to find food and water, track down their friends and family, try to find out what's happening in other parts of the country, fight off looters, etc. I still like the supernatural, Rifts-y elements, but they'd be so much more effective if you weren't trained to combat them--what better way to emphasize the sudden appearance of demons in the modern world than to face them as inexperienced schlubs?
The key feature, I suppose, is that this setting should go in one of two directions: 1) a slow spiral toward decay, with lots of despair and horror, or 2) a situation that turns average nobodies into heroes. Palladium's version of the game didn't do either one.
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Actually, i just noticed - we do not have a review of Rifts on the site. Whats up with that? Reviews of products without the actual corebook being reviewed?
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whine whine whine
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Actually, it would be nice if we had at least one review -- possibly two, one from someone who liked it, and one from someone who didn't -- for every game system we can get our hands on.
Just from memory, we don't have any reviews for these core systems:
Paranoia
WEG d6
WEG heroic d6
Palladium
WFRPG
AD&D 1E
AD&D 2E
D&D
Car Wars (not an RPG, but we need to revive the old table top classic's popularity
Fulminata
Godlike
Pendragon
White Wolf
And that's just off the top of my head. Admittedly, some of those are quite old or outo f print, but I included them because I think we should shoot for comprehensive. Between Jeffe and I we could probably spit out reviews for every title on that list what do you think?
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we've got several palladium core rules reviewed. between me and Fell we've got all the core rules, I think. Ones we haven't reviewed yet are:
Rifts
ninja and superspies (mine is the first editon not the revised)
beyond the supernatural (we're waiting for the Augest release of the new version for this)
Nitebane (intresting game, but a little to dark for me)
mechanoids (I don't think this is a core, but Palladium says it is)
systems failure (this is the one I don't think me or Fell has).
And the old recon.
out of those that I beleave are cores that we should prioratise would be rifts and nitebane.
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White wolf - i could do reviews for. I have half a Werewolf review i abandoned (couldn't think of how to finish it) sitting on my HD. Vampire i could whip one up i suppose... Mage no (never actually finished the core book). I could do a Demon review, but i would just re-iterate Kids one. Warhamer and Nobilis i need to finsih before i review.
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You've reviewed several books. I haven't looked them all up, but to my knowledge, the most that's really been said about the rules is "If you like Palladium, you'll like this"
I'm talking about reviewing the rules themselves, not the book, not the presentation, not the organization. The rule system. IE, what's good to play. What are the strengths of the rule system? Where does it fall short? How easily understood is it? Is it for newbies or veterans?
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I've been working on doing the core Palladium books (going through Nightbane right now), but I hadn't realized we don't have a Rifts review anywhere. I'll have to do something about that.
As for reviewing core systems, I suppose we could do that...but it's not a priority for me. I personally wouldn't be interested in reading them. Maybe an article (or short series of articles) that compares the major systems. I don't know--what do the rest of you think? If there's enough interest we can look into it.
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a comparison article might be nice, but I agree why bother reviewing "just" the core rules when we review the core rule books. That stuff should be included for the most part in those other reviews.
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Mostly the point is to make the site a more generally useful place, and not just for the current core readers (think: expanding reader base). "What game should I play?" "What does this PLAY like?" "Hey, let's find out at TWG!" Just a thought. A comparison of systems would be useful that way, without having to slog through bits about setting that I'm just goign to ignore and organization with I can get around.
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A year or so ago 42 and me thought that would be a good idea. We even started to devise a chart plan that would list and compair all the core rules as well as giveing the adverage rateing of suplements for that system. Never did, not sure if it's worth the time writting a PHP code to update the chart and such.
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I think it would. Once we have features like that and enough reviews than people will refer to us like RPG .net
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To beat RPG.net all we need is to keep the forums at their current flame-free levels and ensure we do not randomly submit any old crap that pretends to be a review.
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and have a decent see all review section. I hate that about RPG.net
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and have reviews about core rule books mechanics.
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Hmm. Well, if you guys want to do it then be my guests. I'd like to have one or two people work together on them, just to keep a coherent frame of reference--my first thought, of course, is Saint and Jeffe, but do you guys know all the different systems well enough?
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and be objective enough. If it's going to be a fair comparison there should be any fanboydom involved. So if TWERPS or HERO comes out the best I'm calling shenanigans!
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Well I know, WEG Star Wars, AD&D, D20, Hackmaster, Storyteller, Traveller, Gurps and Hero, Oh and I played Palladium (Robotech) for 10 years. I know others but those are the biggies.
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What if Twerps and Hero really are the best rules mechanics in terms of the criteria?
Seriously though Im sure Eric and I could be objective. But to do so we need benchmarks.
What exactly are we judging, Complexity, Clarity, Comprehensiveness, Math Skills, Speed of play and Accessability?
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We have to judge them for purpose as well--remember our old "Nobilis vs. Feng Shui" argument. If a system is designed for a particular style of play, we should be sure to point that out rather prominently. So if Storyteller works really well for interaction and really poorly for combat (as Entropy said in the Werewolf review) we can bring that out.
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Ok, so it's time to talk criteria (because between the two of us we're not going to have a hard time knowing the systmes, we already know and have played frequently most systems).
We're not necessarily looking at our "favorites" I think. We're looking at what works for what. we're looking at ease of use, how quick the rules are to learn, and how well the simulate. Perhaps a scale for much of them. Complexity, learning curve, and simulation. For this I don't think a numberic scale will work, because some people don't want direct simulation, they'd rather have abstraction. We want an objective evaluation of what the system is like, so players will know what to expect. Not evaluations of how much we like it, because that will be based on our personal prejudices and preferences.
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humm that would be intresting if HERO and TWERPS were the best games, but you're the only person that I've ever meet that likes them. Everyone else I know that playes them has not cared for the systems.
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If you do comparisons, compare systems that are similar. I say this because comparing ST and D20 is a dodgy comparison; one is a very fast and abstract non-combat system with a combat system tacked on. The other is a pretty hard and solid combat system with a non-combat system tacked on. So i guess i am saying it would be better to have comparisons between say, Hero & D20 in one article and Twerps & ST in another.
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I don't think I'm interested in comparisons. At least, not direct ones. I'm looking at what the systems do and are good for. so you can take the style you like to play and find a system for it.