Mutant Chronicles 3rd Edition

Now for a bit of Science Fiction or Science Fantasy or, probably best classed as, Science Horror Fantasy ;-)

Ok, instead of trying to explain it all, here is a decent review that explains what you get, mostly
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product_reviews_info.php?&reviews_id=130385&products_id=151831

It is another Kickstarter I backed and there is a huge, and I mean huge, amount of material coming down the pipeline for Mutant Chronicles. That means, that although I really like the game, I am not looking to play it in the short term.

I have read a review from a fan of the original (1st & 2nd Ed) rules, but I think the reviewer was looking back with rose coloured glasses. To me it is a more complete game than any of the original editions, with a innovative game system, the Momentum System.

Have a look at it if you are interested but I have to put it on the back burner while I await the extra material. Not that I really have to, I just prefer to ;-)

Clockwork Dominion

Time for a little steampunk ......

The Magisterium taught us that we live within the Great Clockmaker’s orderly creation, an intricate world which shows the glory of the Divine in its perfect symmetry. Science has taught us to understand this creation and harness its power through steel and steam, creating the majesty of civilization, a clockwork of our own. The alchemists taught us that the very fabric of creation could be broken down and reformed in ways limited only by our imaginations. Explorers have mapped the globe, and spiritualists have mapped the realms beyond it. Yet, however bright the light of human accomplishment can shine, the shadow it casts still hides what most refuse to see: this Clockwork, so diligently created by God and man, was constructed from chaos … and the chaos wants it back.

Clockwork: Dominion uses an intuitive card-based mechanic, a non-linear initiative system that allows combatants to act at any moment, and a robust social conflict system to push intrigue to the heart of your story. Players take the role of exceptional individuals within the British Empire of 1896 as it strives to maintain tradition in the face of scientific advancement, powerful mystical practices, and the threat of the Pontus—the primordial chaos which is slowly reclaiming creation. 


Clockwork Dominion is yet another Kickstarter I backed, under the name Clockwork Empire, and is definitely one of the better ones. Some fine short fiction scattered about the rule book is very evocative of setting and helps set the scene.

The rules book comes in at hefty 330 pages pages:
Welcome to Clockwork 18 pages
Clockwork Society (background material) 26 pages
Cosmology (more background) 18 pages
Rules & Systems 40 pages
Character Creation 76 pages
Accouterments & Technology 36 pages
Transcendent Powers 40 pages
The remainder is GM stuff

As you can see Character Creation takes up the biggest chuck of pages and is quite intricate but pretty straight forward with lots of choices and consequences. It creates quite complete and individual characters, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Now, pretty obviously, you are not going to sit down and create a character in 10 minutes, and it would be better for it to be a group effort, but it is a very interesting system.

You can pick from four races each with its unique abilities and bonuses:
1. Pure Human 98+% of the population
or the "corrupted" races
2. Beastmen - Humans that have animal body parts grafted on to them.
3. Changelings - Fey blooded
4. Nephilim - Descendants of the Grigori, a choir of guardian angels.
Each of the three corrupted races has many options within them.

CHARACTER CREATION IN TEN STEPS
1 Choose a Bloodline: Is your character a pure mortal, or does she descend from a corrupted
ancestry? Choose a bloodline, record its bonuses, blessings, and curses.

2 Choose a Pursuit: How does your character choose to act against the Pontus, and how does that affect her core nature, motivations, and personality? Choose one pursuit, record its bonuses.

3 Choose a Background: What trade, lifestyle, or situation of birth influenced your character
the most? Choose a background, record its bonuses.

4 Assign Aptitudes: What are your character’s core competencies? Assign 5 ranks to aptitudes.

5 Assign Skills: What skills has your character learned? Assign 12 ranks of skills.

6 Choose Assets and Liabilities: Does your character have any special social advantages or disadvantages, fiscal resources or debts, or other benefits or complications? Choose a number of assets determined by your chosen background. Any character may choose up to two liabilities, gaining an additional asset for each one taken.

7 Choose Affinities: What are the things, people, or ideologies that drive your character to do what she does? Place three ranks into at least two different Affinities.

8 Choose Reputations: For what behaviors, adventures, or events is your character known? Place three ranks in at least two Reputations.

9 Choose Starting Accoutrements: What special gear and accoutrements does your character own?

10 Finishing Touches: Calculate common derived traits and get her ready for play.

The Game Rules
The overall mechanic for everything from task resolution to Social conflict is pretty straight forward, add all applicable modifiers, subtract the difficulty and draw a card, if you get a value of +1 or better you succeed, otherwise you fail (with some exceptions). There are varying levels of success and failure, but that's it in a nut shell. Most other elements of the game are fairly basic, each character has a class, aptitudes, skills, etc.. However there are a few parts that are fairly unique, for example reputation, affinities and dispositions, which all have mechanical effects on Social conflicts. 

Players may spend Purpose to take narrative control at various times.


Here is a youtube video that explains the basic mechanics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMbzu13xp8Y

There is till more extras heading down the road from the Kickstarter......

In conclusion if you are interested in a Steampunk Gothic Horror setting I would strongly recommend looking at Clockwork Dominion, it rattles, rolls and hisses :)

Better Angels by Greg Stolze

Better Angels is a very interesting game with a strong roleplaying element. Well thought out, great premise, and should be a blast to play.


That is the eye candy but the game is so much more, characters are ordinary people processed by a Demon (the demon being created by the player on your left). This Demon grants you awesome, evil, superpowers - half of which you pick and half by the player on your left. Your job is to keep your Demon "happy" by going occasionally all EEEEVIL! (Comic Book Style) while not going actually evil. In return you can you get to use the Demon's powers.

Go too far into evil and your Demon will physically drag you down to Hell, which has really earned its bad rep. Be good or mostly good and you can try to exorcise your Demon, losing all your Superpowers, going back to your boring ordinary live and probably being arrested for all the crimes you committed. So your job is to walk the fine line between being to good or going all evil. To help you along the way the player on your left is whispering in your ear that EEEVIL has its advantages.

Better Angels is power by O.R.E. (One Roll Engine), a very good d10 dice pool system.

It does not end there. A full campaign, well fullish campaign of ten adventures has now been released to go with a game. Everything you could ever want to get started ;-)

Dream Arc actively support the game with a large number of online tips & tricks as well as downloads, for example

http://arcdream.com/home/2013/06/better-angels-tips-playing-better-demons/
http://arcdream.com/home/2013/05/instant-adventures-for-better-angels/
http://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/tremble-before-my-awesome-wait-let-me-try-that-again-a-quickn-dirty-review-of-better-angels.5584/

Metamorphosis Alpha 5th Edition - Signal Fire Games

This new edition of Metamorphosis Alpha was funded by Kickstarter and, although there is nothing that new as regards setting, it features a completely new game system, System 26 by Jamie Chambers.

As you may or may not know MA is set on the Starship Warden, a massive Ark style spaceship, built to be indestructible (Titanic anyone ?) until it ran into an unforeseen circumstance. As characters you play, primitive, survivors of the cataclysm that has engulfed the good ship Warden.

System 26 uses a d6 dice pool system, where you can usually, except in extraordinary conditions, roll no more than 5 dice. Successes are gained by rolling 3+ on easy difficulty, 4+ on normal difficulty and 5+ on hard difficulty. You only need one success to achieve a marginal result and more successes result in greater success at the task. A very simple, and I think, great system.

As a character you have the choice of being Pure Breed Human, Mutated Human, Mutated Animal or Mutated Plant. Each has some basic Basics, all Mutant characters start with mutations (more good mutations if you wish to take a bad mutation). All characters also have 19 Traits (Skills) all initially valued at 2d6. You can raise 1 Trait to Amazing (+3d), 2 to Good (+2d), 2 to Competent (+1d), 2 to Hopeless (-2d) and 3 to Weak (-1d). You can also pick Qualities which are specialized skills that can add (Talent) or subtract (Liability) dice from a Trait roll.

Like SotDL you can pick your Traits (+ and -) and Mutations or roll randomly if you are a follower of Chaos theory ;-)

All mutations have a dice value and you get to pick or roll for. You can start with 6d worth of beneficial mutations and you have the option of taking up to 4d defects to gain an equal number of extra beneficial mutations. Extra mutations (+and -) are also picked up as you go along.

There is lots of pretty nifty tech hanging around as long as you can work out how to use it ;-)

Last words of Slobbo the Barbarian "Oh, this funny box like thing has started making this ticking sound when I pulled out this bit, that's nice ......." 

On my shortlist (which is a pretty long list) of future games to try................

http://geekdad.com/2015/07/new-metamorphosis-alpha/

Shadow of the Demon Lord

Shadow of the Demon Lord by Robert J Schwaib http://schwalbentertainment.com/

This game was a Kickstarter project I backed and I am very please I did so :)

Unusually for a Kickstarter the main rulebook came out on time and is very nicely presented. As is suggested by the title SotDL is a fantasy horror setting, but as with many things about this game, the amount of horror can be dialed up, down and sideways according to the group's preferences.

The rules are a mixture of Dragon Age, D&D (in all its editions) simplified, with many unique elements added in. As it stands, the basic rules use a d20 to resolve challenges and combats, If I was to run or play this game I would ditch the d20 and replace it with 3d6, which I much prefer and would require only the barest minimum change to the system. For example, on occasion, scoring 20+ on the d20 roll plus modifiers gives you an enhanced result, and scoring 0- can have a detrimental effect. Changing this to 18+ and 2- when using 3d6 is such a simple solution. That being said, SotDL does not really have "Critical" or "Botch" results in most cases only in a few in special circumstances.

Dice rolls are modified by the controlling attribute and by boons and banes. Boons are positive modifiers and Banes are negative modifiers. Boons add 1d6 to a roll and Banes Subtract 1d6 from a roll but also cancel each other out, so, for example, if a roll has 3 boons and 2 banes you end up with 1 boon added to your base roll. Also if you have 3 boons on a roll, you would roll an extra 3d6 but only add the highest rolled to your base roll.

Character creation is very nicely done. There are six Ancestries (races) to choose from; Human (of course), Changeling, Clockwork, Dwarf, Goblin and Orc. Each Ancestory has its basic attributes, which you can make limited modifications to. Each character also has some basic story elements which you can pick from, or roll for or devise your own or mix and match as you like. These elements comprise Background, Personality, Religion, Age, Build and Appearance. Some Ancestries also have extra background details. Added to this each character has at least two professions which you can pick or roll for to give your character a idea of what he is good at.

All in all it provides a very comprehensive "background" for a starting character, without the usual angst that can be found in other systems.

All characters start at Level 0, after your first adventure the group advances to level 1. At level 1 you get to pick a Novice path (Magician, Priest, Rogue or Warrior) very similar to how Dragon Age works. Each path gives you basic attribute bumps etc.. which you have choices to make. At level 2 you advance in your Novice Path.

At level 3 you pick an Expert Path, there are 16 in total. Each Novice Path has 4 Expert Paths but you don't have to choose a path related to your Novice Path, you can choose any Expert Path you like!

At Level 4 you get Benefits from your Ancestory.

At Level 5 you have the choice of taking a Master Path (64 choices) or taking another Expert Path.

At Level 6 you improve your Expert Path

At Level 7 you improve your Master Path

At Level 8 you improve your Novice Path

At Level 9 you improve your Expert Path

At level 10 you improve your Master Path

There are a few variations on this but, basically, this is how your character advances by levels. And as you can see, there are plenty of options you can take along the way. This should suit players who like to plan their characters advancement to the last detail and those who take what comes, when it comes.

Further on advancing levels, unlike most RPGs, these are no experience points awarded and no individual levels in fact. Your group has a level and the groups level increases when it passes a major milestone. This means if your character dies, or maybe you just want to change it, your new character starts the Groups level.

For those that like magic, there are lots and lots of spells and traditions to choose from. What first looked like, to me, the typical D&D memorizing spell table limit, turned out to be a much neater arrangement. Depending on your Power (a Stat) the table tells you how many times you can cast each spells you know, between rests. For example, your Power is 2, means you cast each level 0 you know a maximum of 3 times, each level 1 spell 2 time and each level 3 spell once, before you have to rest. Also after resting all you have to do is meditate for 1 minute to refresh all your spells.

Well that is about it from me, if you have any questions just ask :)

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/16/16505.phtml
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/16/16513.phtml

Once and Future Games

Being my first post I will tell you what I plan to Blog about. 

The Swan Street Recalcitrant will concern itself with new Role Playing Games, new Boardgames and, maybe, new Wargames, I purchase, purloin, back on Kickstarter and generally get my hands on ;-)

I will mostly, at least initially, be concentrating on new games that look like fun to play, with interesting backgrounds, with basically simple mechanics, which I may inflict on my gaming groups at a possible future date.

Initially I will post a link to this blog among my players, ex-players and friends. If you are interested I will be happy to see your interest or comments, if not then you can just ignore it.

Anyway, enough of this flim flam let's get on to the first game I want to talk about ....