But let’s not dwell on that and have a look at the playtest rules. The ZIP file you get includes a couple of PDFs that include an adventure, five pregenerated characters, rules for the players and some DM guidelines. It’s definitely enough material to run a few playtest sessions, especially since you get some information on how the character develop during the first three level.

The rules themselves have surprised me a lot – and in a good way. You may remember my stance on D&D 4th Edition. I still think it’s a good game, but just not something I enjoy playing. For me it feels more like a miniature skirmish game. Again, I am not trying to bash 4E here, it’s just how it feels to me.

The editions of D&D that I played the most were D&D 3E and 3.5. But when playing I definitely preferred the early levels, because things were still pretty fast, easy and fun. With every new level, new feats, new abilities etc. the game slowed down (especially in combat). I eventually reached the point where I just couldn’t stand it anymore.

Only recently I discovered the OD&D retro-clones and got to like them. And in a way, the D&D Next playtest rules remind me a lot of these retro-clones. At the core it almost feels like a slightly tweaked OD&D with some interesting additions. In addition to race and class characters now can have a background and a theme. The background grants your character a couple of skills and a background feature that usually has no solid mechanics behind it, but it’s something more of a fluff effect. The theme further describes your character and grants you a feat. And from what I’ve seen the times of feats that just grant you a minor bonus are gone. The feats in the playtest rules give the characters new abilities that can give them a significant advantage in certain situations.

One new mechanic that I like a lot is Advantage/Disadvantage. Whenever your character has an edge he has Advantage, which means you’re allowed to roll two d20 instead of one and pick the highest result. In the case of a Disadvantage you pick the lowest result. This mechanic is used extensively throughout the game. This almost completely removes the need for modifiers throughout the game. Nice.

What I am not too fond of is the return of Vancian magic. But we don’t know if there will be variant magic rules in the final product. Spellcasters will at least be able to use a number of minor spells at will. Your wizard will never run out of magic missiles again.

Saves are also different. Instead of three saves (Fortitude, Reflex and Will) we now have six: one per attribute. I am not sure if this is actually better or worse than what we had before, but I guess I will find out when I actually play the game.

All in all I am positively surprised by how the new edition has turned out. It feels much more old-school than I ever would have expected. A lot of 4E player seem to dislike the changes though. That is not much of a surprise because D&D Next seems to be a rollback into a pre-4E era. But we don’t know how the game will develop until release and there might be ways to make it more like 4E again, if the DM wishes. Even the current playtest rules show some examples of D&D Next’s modularity.

One question remains: Why should someone who is already playing an older edition of D&D or Pathfinder pick up D&D Next? I think it’s way to early to answer that question, but it will be one of the factors that decide whether D&D Next will be a success or a failure.

Update: While I am actually quite happy with the rules themselves, I am not happy with the way WotC handles things. The whole registration process for the playtest is a mess. The fact that people who actually signed the agreement can’t use Skype, email, Google Hangout etc. to run games even though this is not mention in the agreement itself is silly. Also if you want to run it at home, you can only do so if everyone involved has registered online. I actually wanted to run D&D Next for my regular group but I am not sure if I can make them all sign up. Not everyone is comfortable with that. Again, Paizo’s handling of their playtests is way better. WotC’s main problem seems to be that the lawyers run the show, not the design team.

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1. Help playtest the High Score RPG
2. Warrior, Rogue & Mage: Playtest
3. Updated playtest version of NOIR

Alas since then I haven’t heard anything about that again. Recently more and more people have asked me about a German version of WR&M and so I finally caved in. I am going to do the translation myself. The advantage of doing the translation myself is that I don’t have to slavishly stick to the English version. That makes writing a German version much easier without changing the actual rules.

What I will do is probably include some errata and put the content of “The Art Of Combat” into the core rulebook. I’ll also change the font I used in the layout because it had some issues.

So what does that mean for the English version? Depending on how things work out I may release an errata or even an updated version of the original game. Depending on how much work I am willing to put into it, I might even release a newly laid out version.

If you have found any errors in the WR&M core rulebook or in The Art of Combat, please post those errors in the forums. Thanks!

Related posts:

1. Warrior, Rogue & Mage en Español
2. Warrior, Rogue & Mage Revised Edition finally available at DriveThruRPG
3. Warrior, Rogue & Mage: Playtest

Registering should be pretty easy, especially since you can login with your Google account. If you have any questions regarding the forums feel free to post your question in the comments below or use the Site Discussion category in the forums.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEBgR_vRilE

A few days ago, he posted a photo of the first finished miniature (see below) and it’s looking great! For a contribution of just $15 one of the miniatures will be yours in addition to a printed copy of Stuart’s RPG. For mere $5 you can support the project and still get a printed copy of Weird West.

To learn more about the project check out the official IndieGoGo project page!

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1. Weird West Roleplaying Game
2. From Weird West to Barbarians of the Future
3. “You are all travelling in a Stagecoach…” Weird West pre-gens

Ok, let’s start by the most successful German pen & paper roleplaying game: Das Schwarze Auge. It’s first edition has been released in 1984 and was written by Ulrich Kiesow. I think it’s safe to say that DSA is in Germany what D&D is to Americans. The vast majority of German players have played DSA and in many cases it’s the only RPG they ever played.

DSA is currently available in it’s Fourth Edition which is supposedly much more flexible in terms of character creation. But from what I’ve heard the rules are also much more complex. But far more complex than the rules is the official setting of DSA: Aventurien (aka Arkania).

Over the years countless supplements have been released that provide the GM with a ridiculous amount of details. As someone put it on Google+ recently: You can actually look up the name of the pets of every innkeeper in Aventurien if you wish to do so. This might be a exaggeration, but it’s really a slight one.

This could actually be a good thing, but in reality it makes it very hard for new gamers get into the game. From what I’ve gathered a majority of DSA fans actually cherishes that level of detail and changing anything to fit your campaign is frowned upon. Most published DSA adventures also made railroading into an art form. Players are not meant to influence the story too much and obviously the majority of DSA fans is happy with that.

Again I have to admit I am no DSA player myself and some of the things I wrote may come from my skewed perspective. I’ve talked to a lot of people that actually played DSA (sometimes for many years) and I am just repeating what they said. Perhaps someone with a deeper knowledge of the game can help to clear up some misconceptions in the comments below.

The second most well-known German RPG is Midgard. Even if the name suggests it, it doesn’t have anything to do with Norse mythology or Wolfgang Baur’s upcoming campaign setting for Pathfinder and AGE. Midgard actually predates DSA by 3 years, which actually surprised me. I always thought DSA was the first major German RPG. But that shows how much I know.

My love affair with Midgard was a very short one. A friend of mine loves the system and kept telling me about his Midgard gaming group. So one day I caved in an ordered the three core rulebooks. A few days later I got three very nice-looking hardcover books. Alas my joy ended when I started reading the rules. Midgard – even in it’s 4th edition – feels like a very old game. And it is pretty complex. What makes things even worse is that the designers love to use abbreviations before explaining them.

Some time later I made the mistake of buying the Perry Rhodan roleplaying game based on the Midgard rules. If you are interested to learn how this worked out, check out this post. Let’s just say that Midgard is not my cup of tea.

A game that I actually like a lot is Dungeonslayers. Yes, the name sounds a bit weird, especially since you don’t slay any dungeons in that game. Dungeonslayers was created by Christian Kennig only a few years ago and is available for free in PDF format in various languages. I stumbled upon it in 2009 (check my playtest report from back then) and immediately fell in love with it. It has an old school charm even though it’s a modern game and even though the name implies a focus on hack and slay it’s a fully-fledged roleplaying game that allows everything from dungeon romps to a campaign focused on mystery or intrigue.

The current 4th edition was the first one to be released in print and was a smash hit. The first printing was sold out in no time. The second printing was actually released as a boxed set that includes the softcover rulebook and additional materials like an introduction for new players.

While I doubt that even Dungeonslayers can topple DSA from it’s throne as Germany’s most successful RPG, I think it has good chances to make second place if it hasn’t reached that position already.

Of course these three games are only the tip of the iceberg. In recent years the German RPG scene has been quite active. But for some reason it’s still not as vibrant as the English-speaking RPG community. But from what I’ve seen in the past years this might be about to change.

Related posts:

1. [German RPGs] “Das Schwarze Auge” 1st Edition in English
2. [German RPGs] 1w6 – Ein Würfel System
3. Minigames in roleplaying games

By the way, the adorable owls are Verena’s creation. Check out Co-Op Gamers here!

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• Savage Worlds Fantasy Companion [Pinnacle Entertainment]
• Realms of Cthulhu [Reality Blurs]
• Karma Roleplaying System Core [Bards and Sages]
• FantasyCraft [Crafty Games]
• Fat Dragon’s Dragonshire Deluxe [Fat Dragon Games]
• Paths of Power (Pathfinder System) [4 Winds Fantasy]
• Spycraft: Real American H.E.R.O.es [Crafty Games]
• Fellowship of the White Star Campaign Book [Thenodrin Presents]
• Ninja Burger RPG (2nd Edition) [aetherial FORGE]
• Heavy Gear Blitz! Locked & Loaded [Dream Pod 9]
• Hero’s Handbook: Dragonborn [Goodman Games]
• Splicers RPG [Palladium Books]
• Noir Knights (Savage Worlds) [Savage Mojo]

This month’s list contains a lot of great game products. My favorites are definitely Realms of Cthulhu by my good friend Sean Preston (who is also having a sale at his company’s shop right now) and FantasyCraft by Crafty Games. If you haven’t checked out these games, you definitely should give them a look.

Related posts:

1. 20% discount on DriveThruRPG/RPGNow
2. Get 20% off of selected titles at DriveThruRPG
3. 20% discount @ DriveThruRPG

But a lot of people were excited about the news. So I checked the rules out and was surprised to read a game system that is about 20 years old but feels like something released only recently. The rules system, which is now available as the Wanton Role-Playing (WaRP) System, reminded me a lot of other indie systems I have read recently.

If you haven’t done so, you should check it out at once. Yes, it’s that good!

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1. Review: The One Ring – Adventures over the Edge of the Wild
2. Chill Quickstart Rules
3. Some House rules for WR&M

Jason Carminsky has created a fantasy RPG inspired by the history and mythology of the great Mesoamerican civilizations. The game is actually done and will be about 300 pages long. But one vital component is still missing: artwork. The goal of the Kickstarter projectis to raise enough money for artwork for New Fire. Luckily the goal of $3000 has been reached already and now the stretch goal is set at $6000 which are needed to commission color artwork.

I asked Jason if he was interested in answering a couple of questions for us and he was more than happy to do so.

Stargazer: Thanks again for taking your time time answer a few questions for us, Jason. Before we focus on New Fire can you tell us a bit about yourself? How did you get introduced to roleplaying games and what was the first game you have played?

Jason: The first RPG I ever played was Dragonstrike, an old stripped down version of Dungeons & Dragons designed for kids, skeptics, and the mathematically challenged. My best friend’s father ran it for a group of us kids back in the roaring ’90s. I can still remember the adventure: our party was supposed to escort an armored wagon carrying the evil sorcerer Teraptus through what was apparently a very rough part of town, seeing as how there were goblins and wolves prowling the streets and attacking us every other moment. Our goal was to bring Teraptus to the prison on the other side of the board within a certain amount of time, or else a red dragon would show up and kill us all.

We only vaguely knew what we were doing, however, so as soon as the first group of goblins attacked, one of the other players cast a web spell, which got everywhere and glued us all to the street. While we were struggling to get loose, the goblins killed the driver and crashed the wagon into a building. Teraptus got out and we spent the rest of the session trying to avoid him.

It wasn’t really until college that I started playing “seriously.” I fell in with a group that played DnD 3rd Edition in the dorms, and something about it just really resonated with me. It reminded me of playing as a kid, taking toys and sticks and whatnot and narrating my own stories, and I just couldn’t get enough of it. I’ve been playing continuously ever since.

Stargazer: Usually fantasy games are focused on settings inspired by medieval Europe or Asia. How did you come up with the idea of a setting based on Mesoamerican myths and history?

Jason: Honestly, I was just plain sick of fantasy Europe! I had been playing Europe-inspired fantasy for 6 or 7 years, and I was sick of swords and axes and wizards and clerics and undead and dragons. I was sick of thinly-veiled Judeo-Christian morality. I was sick of mounted vs unmounted combat mechanics, and of trying to come up with ways to represent leather, chainmail, and platemail armor. These things felt really stale to me, and I couldn’t find anything new to do or say with them.

However, around this time I began playing the Legend of the Five Rings RPG, which to this day is still my favorite RPG. I was very impressed by the interaction between history, myth, and fantasy in that game. It was inspired and well-researched, yet also highly original and personal. I was also amazed by its focus. Rather than haphazardly mixing a whole bunch of unrelated cultures and mythologies, L5R delved deeply into a relatively narrow group of cultures and considered them on their own terms, both mechanically and thematically.

That was really interesting to me. Every other game I had played had been designed such that Europe was the “norm.” Lots of games have included samurai classes and ‘foreign’ martial arts, and ‘exotic lands to the east.’ But these things are almost always compared to a European standard, and defined by how they differ from it.

L5R had its own self-defined normality. The setting and mechanics were designed around a completely different worldview, where concepts like samurai, bushido, and seppuku were not ‘weird’ or ‘exotic,’ but rather were accepted parts of the world, with a well-defined place in society and internally consistent meaning. The concepts were new to me, and that is why I found them so fascinating. But what was truly compelling was that they were not presented as being “new.” They were presented as normal. This challenged me, the Player, to adapt to the new normality, rather than simply catering to my existing biases and prejudices.

To make a long story short (too late!), I began to realize just how much we were all missing out on by focusing so exclusively on Europe-inspired fantasy. We were literally cutting ourselves off from not just a lot, but the vast majority of stories and storytelling traditions on Earth! That is the tricky thing about prejudice: it is so often completely unconscious. I wasn’t deliberately shutting out these other possibilities–they simply hadn’t ever occurred to me.

So one day, I decided to make a fantasy game inspired by Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. I was browsing through images on Google, and came across some panels of the Aztec codices. I thought they were beautiful, and I was curious about what they meant. There’s really not much more to it than that. I was in a receptive frame of mind, I wanted to learn something new, to change and adapt, and I wanted to express it in game form. It was almost like boarding a plane to a random destination. In choosing Mesoamerica, I am tremendously happy with where I ended up!

Stargazer: How much research went into the creation of the setting? I understand that the setting is basically fantasy, but could it be used to learn more about ancient Mesoamerican cultures or at least get more people interested in them?

I have done a lot of research. I started about 2½ to 3 years ago, and am still learning new things to this day. I have read, watched, and listened to everything I could find about Mesoamerica. I have attended lectures by Professors and people of indigenous Mesoamerican descent, read stories and poetry, listened to music, worked in an archaeology lab, practiced flint knapping, and learned how to use an atlatl. I have tried my absolute best to educate myself, and to let the things I learned guide my imagination and inspire my ideas.

BUT

That does not make me any kind of authority on Mesoamerica, nor does it make New Fire a reliable source of real world information. I have done more research than many game designers end up doing on their games, but at most I have 2-3 years of study under my belt–not even enough for a Bachelor’s Degree.

Would you trust a person who has lived in your country for 3 years to speak with authority about your country? Probably not. How about somebody who has only researched your country for 3 years? Or how about somebody who has only researched the continent your country happens to be located on?

The only thing I truly know is that I have a lot more to learn.

I am extremely interested in Mesoamerica. I have found a lot of inspiration and wisdom researching it for New Fire, and I can honestly say that it has touched me and will influence the course of my life. But Mesoamerica has not been touched by me. I am not part of it. I was not born there and I have not lived there. I am an outsider, and you should not take anything you read in the New Fire book as fact.

New Fire is my interpretation of the information I have collected over these three years. It is a game about what I found, not a complete listing of what is there. I tried my best to do a good job, and I definitely hope my work inspires people to learn about and appreciate Mesoamerica. But New Fire is a fantasy game, not a teaching tool! It may awaken your interest, but it will not give you facts.

Stargazer: Can you give us an overview of the rules the game is using?

Jason: New Fire uses a unique set of rules I developed called the Sunstone system. Unlike many rulesets, there are almost no mandated rolls with Sunstone -  so long as everybody is happy with how things are going, play progresses organically through roleplay and simple narration. You only need dice when there is a difference of opinion about where the story should go, when you have two or more people who want to narrate different outcomes to a situation. This is called a Challenge.

The basic idea is that, when someone’s narrative is challenged, they roll a pool of dice against a Target Number (TN). The results of these rolls are added together and compared to the TN The fewer dice it takes you to equal or exceed the TN, the greater your narrative control. If you hit the TN on a single die, you get complete narrative control – you can narrate anything you want, so long as everyone else in the group agrees that your narration is plausible and interesting (I refer to this as the ‘is it cool?’ test).

If it takes you 2 dice to hit the TN, you get narrative control but the challenger gets to specify a Condition that you must incorporate into your narration – for example, if you are attacking an enemy and the challenger sets the Condition ‘you cannot kill him,’ you must narrate a plausible outcome that does not result in the enemy being killed. Otherwise, it’s up to you – the enemy might be injured, or scared away, or even convinced to join your side, so long as he is not killed and so long as everybody agrees that it is plausible and interesting.

If it takes you 3 dice to hit the TN, the challenger gets to narrate, but you may specify a Condition. And if you cannot hit the TN even on 3 dice, the challenger gets complete narrative control.

Regardless of narrative control, however, you may not narrate the death of someone else’s character, nor can they narrate the death of your character. Only you can decide how and when your character dies.

The dice system works slightly differently in different situations (multiple challengers vs single challengers, for instance), and there are several other mechanics as well–Themes, Omens, Profession-specific Powers, Magic, etc – but this narrative dice mechanic is the foundation of New Fire’s rules, and probably covers 70% or more of the game.

Stargazer: On the Kickstarter page I read that in New Fire avoiding death is not the character’s ultimately goal, but dying in a meaningful and glorious way is. How exactly is this working in the game? What happens when one player’s character achieved their goal, but the other character’s haven’t?

Jason: One of the big ideas in New Fire is that the game world is sustained by death. In order for new life to grow, old life must die. This is where the practice of human sacrifice comes from – in order to keep the Sun rising, the rain falling, and the winds blowing, humans must die and release their life energy to the gods. If people stop offering these sacrifices, the cycles of nature will stop and the world will end.

This idea is reflected mechanically by something called the Bleeding Sun. At the beginning of a New Fire game Cycle, the Gamemaster will roll up a number of points of Day Energy. This total is kept secret from the players, but each session a number of these points will drain away. The Players may capture these points by fulfilling certain character goals and use them to improve their characters, but regardless, the Day Energy bleeds away each session. Eventually, there will be none left.

At this point, the Players must either sacrifice an NPC, or one of them must narrate the death of their character in order to restore the pool of Day Energy. Once this happens, the Game Cycle ends, and a new one begins. The Player whose character died creates a new character, and as a reward gets to choose the first Omen of the next Game Cycle (Omens are story guides for the Gamemaster — another mechanic that I probably don’t have time to get into here!).

Essentially, the story is driven by character deaths, which is kind of the opposite of most rpgs, where character deaths often completely end the story! Characters do not come to the world to stay — they are merely passing through. The important part is what they do while they are there, and how they choose to leave. And because only the Player can narrate the death of his or her character, it encourages/requires them to consider what their character’s life (and by extension their own life) really means.

In many ways, the story IS the world. Each group will tell its own stories and interpret the written world in its own way, much like multiple families living in the same house–though it is the same building, each family’s home and home life will be very different, filled with different experiences, different furniture, and different triumphs and tragedies. The story/world in New Fire is created by the group and kept alive by their efforts. They all contribute to it, and they all work to sustain it.

And when the Players are no longer interested in sacrificing their characters to keep the story going, it, and the world, end.

Stargazer: What do you plan for the future of New Fire? Do you have already a couple of supplements, adventures etc. planned?

Jason: I am pretty focused on this first release at the moment, and it is keeping me plenty busy! But assuming it goes well, I definitely have many more ideas for New Fire. One idea that has been getting a lot of attention so far is a supplement called Journey of the Dead, which will contain rules for games that take place not in the main New Fire world, but in the Underworld.

When a person dies in New Fire, they embark on a long, difficult journey through the dark and frightening Land of the Fleshless beneath the Earth. This journey is full of dramatic struggle and complex symbolism — in many ways the dead are experiencing the reverse of birth, traveling back into the Earth-womb and becoming un-made. Normal New Fire focuses on the land of the living, but Journey of the Dead would contain rules for how to follow the characters beyond that.

I haven’t yet decided whether Journey of the Dead will take place entirely in the Underworld, or if it will include rules for “split parties,” where some characters are living and some are dead, but I think there are a lot of interesting possibilities with this, and am excited to get to work on it!

I discuss a few other ideas on the New Fire Kickstarter page, and encourage people to check them out and let me know what they think! But I don’t want to get too ahead of myself before this first book is released, so why don’t we leave it at that for now!

Stargazer: Thanks again for giving us this interesting insight into your upcoming game New Fire!

If you want to learn more about New Fire, feel free to post your questions below. I’m sure Jason would be more than happy to answer them for you. And if you want to get more details on the Kickstarter project check out the project site here.

Please note that the artwork illustrating this post has been created for the New Fire RPG and was used with Jason’s permission.

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In order to help to pay for medical expenses he created a small supplement for d20 or OSR games that give you rules for opiates use an abuse and several dreamscapes to throw at your players.

The PDF for “Blood of Morpheus” is just $3 and every purchase helps him pay the bills. If you’re more generous you can also donate a few buck using ChipIn. Thanks.

For more details check out the official “Blood of Morpheus” site!

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The deal is the following: You buy ANY print book from the Reality Blurs shop and you can get a physical copy of Runepunk for just $5 more. If that isn’t a great deal I don’t know what is. And remember it’s for a good cause!

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The RPC is not a convention exclusive for pen & paper RPGs but also for other facets of the hobby including LARP and computer games. Although I am an avid computer gamer I was not really interested in what that part of the convention. And in addition to that I felt that the section of the fair hall was way too loud anyway.

It was my impression that the number of attending pen & paper roleplaying game publishers and vendors was a bit higher than at SPIEL in Essen. Alas aside from from a few exceptions (Q-Workshop, Chessex and Profantasy Software) I  didn’t notice any major non-German exhibitors, so even though RPC is supposedly the largest gaming convention in Europe, it feels terribly local.

There were also a couple of workshops you could attend at RPC, but alas the rooms set aside for that purpose are in the fair halls themselves and even with microphone and loudspeakers it was sometimes hard to understand what people were saying. The organizers of the convention obviously don’t think this is an important part of a convention that size.

Several exhibitors offered the opportunity to try their games and we took the chance to play Dust Tactics. That is Marcus and Thomas played while I watched and munched my cheese and cucumber sandwiches. I was terribly tempted to pick up a copy of that game, but alas I didn’t have enough money with me and I don’t know enough people who would play it with me anyway.

From what I’ve written so far you might have gotten the impression I didn’t enjoy myself. But that’s definitely not true. I had some great conversations with a couple of people from the German RPG scene including Patric Götz (Uhrwerk Verlag), Robert Hamberger (the author of the new RPG Contact), Rouven Weinbach (who is an old friend now writing for 13Mann) and others. At the end of the day I actually almost lost my voice and even today my throat feels as if I have gargled with razors. Yikes!

I picked up two games at RPC this year: Contact, a UFO conspiracy RPG with a lot of tactical combat options that was obviously inspired by the XCOM computer games series, and Aborea a RPG actually meant for beginners that comes in a nice cardboard box including the biggest and most good-looking map I’ve seen included in an RPG for a long time.

Both games are in German language, but at least in the case of Contact the English version is already done and the author is currently looking for a publisher. As soon as I have read both games I’ll post short reviews here on the blog.

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In a way, I can understand that. Usually roleplaying game players just need a set of the most common polyhedral dice and they can play almost everything. It’s like a basic tool you can use all your life. But then there are these games that need you to buy these fancy dice, or even worse, only one set came with the game itself and you have to share these dice with your GM and the other players! Yuck! Nobody touches my dice!

Roleplaying games that use fancy dice exclusively or even utilize cards for task resolution are usually hard to sell to the average gamer. Or is this just a common misconception? That’s why I am asking my readers today: do you like fancy dice or do you hate them? And why?

I am curious because I have pondered using fancy dice for my own game designs from time to time. I totally love Fudge dice and recently I picked up a set of dice with six-sided dice numbered from 0 to 5 as seen in the image above. Rolling 4 of those and adding the results together generates a number between 0 and 20 in a nice bell curve. My friend Andrew called them z5 (analogous to d6). The results are basically the same as if you rolled 4d6 and subtracted 4, but rolling 4z5 is just easier and nicer.

So, what do you think about fancy dice? Yay or nay? Please post your comments below.

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What I like a lot about Cubicle 7’s DWAITAS boxed sets is that they always contain a lot of stuff. And this is especially true for the Aliens and Creatures box.

I totally love the Creature Cards which make about 50% of the box’s weight. Each Creature Card has a photo of the creature on its front and the game statistics on the back. This way the GM can easily show the players’ what they are facing and this can be very handy especially with new players who are not that familiar with the show.

The box contains almost every creature and alien encountered by the 9th and 10th incarnation of the Doctor and all of them are described in detail in the rulebook. It’s nice that they managed to include that many creatures in the box, but in several cases I fear that the actual usability is quite limited. But since we are dealing with Doctor Who and time travel, everything is possible. There’s a special emphasis on the Daleks and the Cybermen, but this is hardly surprising, because they can be considered as the Doctor’s most (in)famous enemies.

The rulebook also contains some rules that should help any GM to create their own creatures. Although rules is probably the wrong terms, they are more tips and loose guidelines than hard rules. This chapter of the book also contains rules on how to create alien player characters. The included race packages are Hath, Catkind, Human Dalek, Judoon, Forest of Cheem, Malmooth, Ood, Tritovore, Plasmavore, Sontaran and Werewolf. Using the guidelines described in the book the GM can easily come up with alien races of his own design.

The appendix of the rulebook contains the “New Worlds Generator” which consists of a couple tables that allow the GM to randomly generate new worlds for their campaign. The generator is of course not as detailed as the one from Traveller or GURPS Space but should be more than sufficient for a Doctor Who game. Last but not least three example worlds including appropriate adventure hooks are given at the end of the rulebook.

The adventure book contains two new ready-to-play adventures and a couple of new adventure hooks. Together with the adventures from the “core” boxed set you should easily have enough adventures to entertain your players for quite some while.

In my opinion the Aliens and Creatures boxed set is a “must-have” for everyone who already owns the core boxed set, because a) you can never have enough monsters and b) especially the included Creature Cards are extremely useful.

Aside from the boxed set, which is available directly from the Cubicle 7 store as box+PDF bundle for $39.99, you can get the PDF-only version from DriveThruRPG for $24.99. This review was based on the boxed set which has been kindly provided by the publisher.

Related posts:

1. What about Creepy Creatures? A review!
2. Review: Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space
3. What happened to the Doctor Who RPG?

Many of you probably don’t know me. So first off, I guess some introductions are in order. My name is Vince Kingston, and I’ve been hanging on the fringes here at Stargazer’s for a while now. Michael and I have been chatting quite a lot over the last little while, and I decided I wanted to try my hand at these so called guest posts.

I’m a gamer of some number of years (I’ll just say it’s been since elementary school, and leave it at that). I’m a husband to a wonderful Danish lady, and live in Denmark with her. I’m a father to a wonderful little (or not so little) soon to be 12 year old who lives back in Canada. I am Canadian (though I hope none of you will hold that against me).

I’m an author with his first published work finally out in the world. I work as an accountant by day for a European company, dealing with the accounting for five branches.

And I was bullied as a child.

When I first approached Michael about doing a post here, I was originally going to do a piece about my perceptions about the differences between gaming here in Denmark and back home in Canada (I may still do that, but that’s not what this post is going to be about). Instead, as I worked through the drafts of my novella, and now the draft of my novel, I got to thinking some about how I grew up, and how that has in turn influenced my writing.

I know I’m not alone in having survived bullying (I’ve seen reports now that state something like 1 in 4 teens are bullied in school). Hell, if you’re reading this post, chances are pretty good that you yourself were a victim of bullying at some point in your life.

As I was working through my novel the other day, I got to thinking just how much the two main characters are like me. In the novella, I explicitly stated that the main character (Brandon) was the victim of bullying in school. Now unlike Brandon though, I never gained the ability to do cool things just by thinking about it.

Instead, most of my junior high years (so between the ages of 12 and 16) were spent with a combination of being beaten up on the football pitch, apples crushed into my hair, white out correcting fluid all over my clothes. This was a tough period in my life, and ended up influencing how I would deal with things all the way into my adult life. I have very little self-confidence, and constantly second guess myself. I think that if it weren’t for the love and support of my parents, I’d not have made it through at all.

What I’ve noticed has been that everything in my creative outlets, whether it’s my writing, or my RPG campaigns, have been influenced by all this bad stuff which has happened to me over the years. My protagonists are almost always underdogs in some fashion. The antagonists they face are frequently some kind of ‘bully’. I never realized it until I started the various written projects I have on the go.

Even now as I work through the second novella, and near the end of the novel, I can see these influences quite clearly. The novel should prove to be very interesting I think, as it delves quite clearly into those feelings of helplessness and fear that those who are bullied experience.

Overall I have found the writing has been a very therapeutic experience, and has allowed me to get out all my fears and frustrations. I also hope that my writing can give hope to those kids out there that are going through what I went through.

So followers of the great Stargazer – how has your past influenced how you approach your games/creative projects?

Related posts:

1. Writing Influences
2. Kickstarter: Age Past
3. Video Review: Fantasy Craft

It was during one episode of the classic Star Trek series when I had an idea. Why not use the premise of the series but get rid of basically everything else. One thing that always kept me from running a Star Trek game was the canon which always felt like a corset instead of inspiration. While I love the premise of a starship and its crew travelling through space, responding to emergencies, dealing with first contact situations and sometimes even fighting enemies, I don’t really want to have to cope with all the “baggage” that comes with it.

Of course I can tell my players that I will ignore some of the canon and stay clear of any metaplot, but then why bother use the Star Trek universe at all? I also like to have a bit more science in my science fiction than Star Trek has. I also prefer my games a bit more grim and gritty. Even though I like to watch Star Trek, I still cringe whenever crew extras are thrown through the bridge set because there are no seat belts.

So what I am currently planning is to get back at writing a SF campaign setting that takes the Star Trek premise BUT is not set into the Star Trek universe. Another SF setting I find highly inspirational is the Mass Effect universe. While I found it a bit hard to run non-military campaigns in that universe, I still love a lot about it.

When it comes to what system to use I am still torn between Stars without Number and MiniSix. SWN would probably provide me with more material to rely on, but also makes some assumptions about the setting. MiniSix is more rules-light than SWN and probably needs me to put some more work into setting-specific stuff.

If I come up with anything concrete (which is not guaranteed) I’ll post it here on the blog. But at the moment I am basically throwing some ideas around and hope for some feedback by my readers.

Related posts:

1. Roleplaying in the world of Star Trek
2. Star Trek Trailer
3. Mass Effect and Ashen Stars – Could this work?

For the customer it’s easy to browse and search for products, buying and downloading products works flawlessly and you can rate and review every product you bought. For the publisher uploading their products, setting up product descriptions and cover images and running promotions is easy as pie. In addition to that you get extensive statistics on how often your products have been sold.

There is of course free stuff on RPGNow, too, but it’s first and foremost a shop that wants to sell products and make money. But wouldn’t it be great if there were a site that offers at least some of the features that RPGNow does, but for free RPGs?

Imagine a site, where creators of free RPGs can sign up and upload their free PDFs, enter product descriptions and add a cover image. Having some kind of way to track the number of downloads would be handy, but not that important.

The “customers” of the site can download any free RPG/supplement for free and without the need of being registered at the site, but being registered might have some benefits like being able to post reviews and rate the stuff you downloaded.

This site could be THE place where people go first when they look for free roleplaying games and it could help support many indie game designers out there, who like to give away their games for free.
What do you think about my idea? Is this a project worth pursuing?

Related posts:

1. Free Stuff Friday: John Kim’s FREE RPGs ON THE WEB
2. Some free games I found at RPGNow
3. RPGNow/DriveThruRPG discounts for July

If you’ve been waiting for this supplement all this time, I have good news: Chris just started a Kickstarter project to raise funds for a full color version of MECHA Combiners!

Check out the video below for details or check out the project page!

If you enjoyed Chris’ Mecha RPG you should definitely check out the Kickstarter and give it some support! And before I forget it, he also recently released a Mecha supplement for FREE: It’s called Mekayana and it combines Mecha action with Bollywood dance numbers. Yeah, it sounds unbelievable, but it’s true! I have to admit, it might be a bit too weird for my tastes, but I’ll definitely give it a look.

Related posts:

1. Review: MECHA
2. Help Rogue Games fund Containment!
3. Part-Time Gods

Curiously not many tabletop RPGs feature player-created items. One of these few games is D&D. Especially when the Eberron campaign setting came out I hoped someone would run an Eberron campaign for me so that I could play an Artificer. Artificers are a special kind of magic users that instead of throwing fancy spells around, they create wands, scrolls, rings, etc. or put enchantments on items. Usually characters had to pay item creation with experience points and was not that popular because of that, but the Artificer actually got a certain pool of points every level that he could use to create items without having to pay from his experience points directly. I thought this could be a fun character class and I definitely wanted to play one.

I also faintly remember that my first Earthdawn character I ever played was a Weaponsmith. And when I am not mistaken, every discipline (Earthdawn’s classes) had various crafting abilities from creating runes to forging armor. For some reason I can’t remember anymore I played this character only for a few sessions before switching to a Scout, but I still think that a travelling craftsman could be an interesting alternative to the usual adventurers.

My game Warrior, Rogue & Mage actually features crafting skills as well, like Alchemy, that allows the creation of potions, but I never actually wrote down rules on how this is supposed to work. Yesterday while creating Iron Daggers in Skyrim to improve my Smithing skill, I pondered why player-crafted items usually don’t play a big role at the tabletop. Even in the computer games it feels a lot like work, but still we do it to get exactly the items we need. Or creating and selling player-created items is a good way to pay the bills. But I can’t remember the last time one of my players wanted to forge his own sword.

I think one reason why crafting items is not common at the game table is that it’s not what adventurers usually worry about. In most cases – especially in fantasy games – the game is about killing monsters and taking their stuff, not standing for hours in the smithy. In a lot of campaign settings magical shops are quite common and you get magical swords at every street corner. So why bother creating your own sword, when you can easily buy one? And what killed the idea for me in the D&D games I participated in was the fact that I had to pay magic item creation with experience points.

But I still like the idea of allowing players to craft their own equipment if they wish to do so. And perhaps there are already a few games out there that support this kind of gameplay. I ‘m actually almost certain that I own a couple of these games but I never actually paid too much attention on this aspect before.

What are your thoughts on that topic? Player-created items in your tabletop RPG? Yay or nay? Please share your comments below!

Related posts:

1. Another take on magic items
2. Guest post: Five Intelligent Magic Items for the Connoisseur
3. What was, what is and what will be

One of the reasons why I haven’t posted that often recently is that I have a lot of stress-related issues like sleep disturbances, panic attacks and depressive episodes. Since then I have had an appointment with my GP. She signed me off work for the next two weeks and I am now on a mild antidepressant that should help me sleep and get rid off the panic attacks.

I am still not totally symptom free and my attempts to get an appointment with a psychotherapists have been futile so far. But I’ve started to deal with my health issues and I am pretty sure things will improve from now on.

I want to thank all of you for your continued support. And don’t worry, I won’t shut down this blog anytime soon. In fact I’ve written another RPG-related post that will go live tomorrow!

Related posts:

1. Reading Recommendation: Satanic Panic by Allen Varney
2. Preparing for Gen Con: Almost There!
3. DISQUS

The nominated sites have been put into one of five groups for voting and today (and only today)  you may pick your personal favorite from the group we’re in. So if you enjoyed our site for the last three years it would be great if you could give us your vote and please share this news with your friends over your favorite social network.

After the General Voting the judging panel will evaluate the semi-finalists and determine the overall winner.

The team of Stargazer’s World wishes all participating sites the best of luck. May the best one win!

P.S.: Due to the difference in timezones it may be that the voting site is not up when this post goes live. So if you want to vote and the above link doesn’t work yet, please check back later.

Related posts:

1. I voted in the ENnies!
2. I Voted!
3. I am throwing my hat into the ring!

If you are interested in a more tactical combat in WR&M and any other Wyrm System game, check out Christopher’s blog post on the subject. He is currently planning to do some playtesting. If you like the idea, why not head to his site and leave some feedback?

Related posts:

1. [German RPGs] 1w6 – Ein Würfel System
2. First Look: The SKETCH System
3. Home-made GM screens @ System matters

The PDF version of the new Explorer’s Edition is already available from Studio2Publishing right now (I hope they put it up on RPGNow, too) and the print edition and a print + PDF bundle are available for preorder. The PDF or print edition set you back $9.99 and the bundle is $14.99. I would have preferred if the PDF was free if you buy the print edition, but the bundle price is still great.

So, if you haven’t picked up Savage Worlds yet, make sure you get the new Explorer’s Edition. I am pretty sure it will be the best edition of Savage Worlds to date.

Related posts:

1. Savage (Worlds) Excitement!
2. New Savage Worlds Test Drive… and more!
3. Review: Legends of Steel – Savage Worlds Edition

The players also shared their character concepts. I had told them, as an incentive, that I would be giving them some extra experience points for pictures and character backgrounds. Not everybody was set on their concept, so not everybody had a picture or a backstory. I also shared with them some more detailed descriptions of the NPCs inside the MARS Project facility.

So I’ve decided to share some more of the preparations and the backgrounds my players created. We are ready to start playing, next session we are jumping in into the action.

Before I get on with the post, one last thing… I have a great set of players and I really want to thank them for their contributions to this and every game I play. This time around it’s Pierre, Luis, Fernan, Carlos, José and our visiting player Enith. Watch out for the undead!

The members of the MARS Project (NPCs List)

1. Doctor Martin Hueller, MARS Project Mission Leader, head of the sociological research team. Renowned psychiatrist and researcher. His sociological experiments have been controversial but he remains an authority in his field. Openly opposed to the recruitment of Roberto Rodríguez, aka DJ Master Justice, ad a member of the team. Arrogant and aloof, has a preference for classical music and dislikes modern music, particularly gangster rap and hip hop. MARS Project Classification – THINKER
2. Frida Adalheir, head of the genetics and biological research team. The German born Harvard Professor possesses a PhD in Genetics and is an authority in botanical research and genetic manipulation. Speaks loudly and is seldom still, treats almost everyone like a student or lab assistant. She has had some arguments with Dr. Zimmerman about the ethics of genetic manipulation. MARS Project Classification – THINKER
3. Amala Chaudhari, head of the Project MARS documentation initiative, an attempt to record the experience of living inside the facility. Best-selling writer and Pulitzer winning journalist, born in India, she became a naturalized American Citizen in her twenties. Warm and friendly, she smiles a lot and talks to everyone, listening to them intently, often asking to record the conversations. She has stated in no uncertain terms that she believes Ludwing Brom’s project to film a documentary inside the facility is a limited endeavor as images can never capture the true complexity of the human condition. MARS Project Classification – THINKER
4. Banjit Marshall, head of the chemistry and earth sciences team. Often called the Renaissance-Man of the 21^st Century, with a PhD in Chemist and another in Philosopher and extensive studies in many other fields, a Mensa certified genius. Of mixed British and African Heritage he was adopted by a British couple who raised him. Has taken a Sabbatical from Oxford to participate in the project. When involved in a project he can lose himself in what he is doing and becomes unaware of his surroundings. As an avowed pacifist he often engages Natalia Romanech about her former military service, in his philosophical musings he has often been hurtful or dismissive of her, even if he doesn’t realize it. MARS Project Classification – THINKER
5. Anthony George Willard, head of MARS Project systems and maintenance team, thus supervisor of the work shifts. Engineer and Architecture wunderkind, as a young man he impacted British architecture as no one had done at such a young age. His success made him famous and rich and he became infamous for his drinking, partying and womanizing. Having lost most of his fortune and living under the shadow of his former glories, this recovering alcoholic resents the skill and prowess of Doers Jack and Joseph Brooks; he often assigns them extra work in their shifts. MARS Project Classification – THINKER
6. Ishmael “Billy” Farrakhan, formerly William Washington, foreman of the Doer team, in charge of agriculture and animal husbandry. He grew up in the inner city but after a stint in the Marines he brought some land and became a successful dairy farmer. He converted to Islam after his sons died in an accident. MARS Project Classification – DOER
7. Felix Matasantos, in charge of electrical repairs and IT support. Mexican born, he entered the US illegally, but after becoming a citizen was a vocal advocate for immigrants’ rights. He lost his business during the technology crash and out of necessity joined the project in an attempt to rebuild his business. Despite his intelligence and business savvy he often plays the role of ignorant laborer around authority figures, allowing him to often remain unnoticed. MARS Project Classification – DOER
8. Holly Thomas, in charge of supplies and food preparation. Culinary school drop-out, she became a line cook in various restaurants in the south, even serving as a sous-chef but never managing to hold a position long enough to make a name for herself. The only team member that was not recruited, she had to compete for the position with many others. Before the mission was underway there were rumors that she achieved the position not solely by cooking. She is an expert cook and her skills have dispelled any question about her qualification. She is friendly, warm, laughs a lot, but can be somewhat nosy.  MARS Project Classification – DOER

OUTSIDE the MARS Project

1. Jonathan Bixby, Technical Services Director and supervisor of the support and transmission crew living on site, but separate from the participants of the MARS Project. He is a former television producer and studio executive. Selected because of his experience in handling large crews involved in large reality television projects and his ability to keep to the budget. He is loud, friendly and larger than live, but focused when necessary. An acquaintance of Ludwig Brom, he had several clashes with Dr. Hueller before the project got underway.

The members of the MARS Project (PC list)

• Ludwig Brom (José) – Producer inside the facility tasked with creating a documentary of the experience as part of the MARS Project documentation initiative. MARS Project Classification – THINKER
• Natalia Romanech (Enith) –National Guard reservist, investigator and wife to Ludwig. MARS Project Classification – DOER
• Joseph Brooks (Fernan) – Firefighter. MARS Project Classification DOER
• Norman Zimmerman (Lao) – Surgeon and Nobel Peace Prize winner. MARS Project Classification THINKER
• Jack (Pierre) – He can fix almost anything he touches. MARS Project Classification DOER
• Roberto Rodríguez aka DJ Master Justice (Carlos) – Former baseball player and gangster rap singer. MARS Project Classification DOER

For this last character my friend Carlos surprised me with a terrific written character introduction. I’m sharing it here with you after getting his approval to do so. This next part was written by Carlos Matos, good friend and player…

DJ Master Justice Interview

Master Justice: MJ

Reporter- Lisa Draper: R

R: Hi! And welcome to “Red Hot”. We have a great show. Tonight’s guest is the controversial, sometimes misunderstood, but always “Hot” DJ Master Justice. Welcome to the program.
MJ: Lovely to finally meet you. Let me tell you that you are more beautiful in person than what I expected.
R: Oh! Thank you. Ahem! There is a rumor that you are about to embark on a new project, but let’s start how you end up been a rap artist. You started in sports, specifically in Baseball. Is that right?
MJ: That’s right, baby! I started playing since I was a boy. My father was a fan of baseball and he used to take me to the Tiger’s games.
R: So you are from Detroit?
MJ: Hell Yeah! Born and raised in south Detroit.
R: Someone told me that your father named you after a baseball player.
MJ: Yes! After the great Roberto Clemente, I wanna give a holla to the Boricuas in tha house. Whoop whoop!
R: So it is true that your real name is Roberto Rodriguez and that you are from a Latin descent?
MJ: Yes. My father was Puerto Rican and my mother from Detroit.
R: You grew in Detroit, but you didn’t study there.
MJ: No, I went to the U.
R: You went to the University of Miami on a full scholarship, where you broke four of their records.
MJ: Five, and I still hold them.
R: You had some problems there. Tell me what happened?
MJ: They were making money selling my jersey, using my image and number in commercials for Nike and Gatorade, while I was eating Chef Boyardee. So I decided to go Pro.
R: You were a Boston Red Sox for three years.
MJ: That’s right; I was part of the 2004 championship team. Here look, this is the championship ring.
R: Why didn’t you keep playing? Was it because you were up in jail for having a problem with the law?
MJ: NO, the next year we won, I had an ALC tear that took me out of the game for a whole year.
R: That’s when you had your incident in the discotheque club?
MJ: I was having some fun with friends when this guy started insulting me telling me that I was robbing the team organization for the millions they were paying me without playing.
R: Accordingly you shot him?
MJ: Hey! I was declared innocent.
R: How did you end up with drug problems?
MJ: I was with the wrong group of people at the wrong time.
R: You were out of jail within the year for good conduct. Why didn’t you continue to play in the Major Leagues?
MJ: They said I was a bad influence, so there were only a couple of teams interested in me, but they wanted to send me to the Minors. Ha! Me to the Minors! So I told them to…beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!
R: Subsequently, you came out of jail with new tattoos and a new attitude. How was it that you started in music?
MJ: MY cell mate was D. Trigga. He saw me writing some lyrics, said that I had talent, and when I came out, I had a record deal waiting for me.
R: Consequently, you two became partners.
MJ: Yes.
R: Therefore you became the owner when he was shot to death coming out of a concert.
MJ: What are you trying to say? He was my brother from another mother.
R: Changing the subject, the MARS Project, what’s that?
MJ: Well it stands for Miniature Arcology Research Simulacrum. Some of the companies involved in this are of course Tombstone records, MTV, Coors and VID. Yo! People you better check it out, it starts this month on NBC every Tuesday night at 8pm.
R: You heard him. This is the show for tonight; see you next week in “Red Hot” Goodnight.

I really enjoyed that, thanks for Carlos for that. If you are interested I can share some of the other player backgrounds and keep you updated about how this experiment with Savage Worlds is going. If anybody is interested, just let me know if you are interested in the comments. Thanks for readying.

Related posts:

1. MARS Project, a zombiepocalypse game
2. The Kobolds launched a new patronage project: Dark Roads and Golden Hells
3. Wolfgang Baur, Chris Pramas, and Michael Furlanetto to work on new patronage project

I am very pleased that there are still developers willing to develop such an old-school game. And from the looks of it, it’s marvelously executed. I can’t wait to actually play it!

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3. Lazy Friday Video Post: “How To Play Dungeons and Dragons”