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Minireview: White Night, by Jim Butcher

Another installment of “Harry has a bad day (or three)”. White Night is the ninth book in the Dresden Files series, and it continues to uphold the “high-quality entertainment” label. I swear, they must dust some crack cocaine on the paper during the printing process, nothing else explains the sheer addictiveness of these things.

This time round, it’s a spate of murders (made to look like suicides), apparently targeting the Chicago supernatural community’s low end of the power scale. After one more low-power mage gets killed, Murphy pulls Harry into the mess – this time unofficially, since officially the cases are clear-cut suicides. Initially puzzled by the whole thing, Harry slowly uncovers clues. Unfortunately, all the clues seem to point towards his vampiric White Court brother, Thomas…

Well, of course things aren’t that simple. The stakes mount, and the end is explosive (to say the least). The power level is generally high here; Harry is now a Warden and is starting to be in the heavyweight leagues of the supernatural community. This of course reflects in the enemies he attracts. We find out some new things about Mouse the Temple Dog, and Molly is starting to grow up and test her limits (not always with the greatest of success).

What can I say… another good book in the Dresden Files series. Sure, it’s pure entertainment, but it’s well-written and keeps up the pace nicely. Now and then, “just entertainment” is just the thing you need.

Gaming weekend

Busy weekend.

On Saturday I ran a release tournament for the new Heirs to the Blood set. Went well; we had 19 players and these release tournament things are always fun. I had personally avoided reading spoilers much at all so for me the cards were largely new surprises, but even for people who had bought some the previous week (when it went on sale) it was probably the first chance to actually play with them.

The win went to Tuomas Vuokko, playing with Salubri Antitribu. Tuomas has been in torpor for almost a year now due to suffering a bunch of pretty horrific real-life events… but he decided to join this at the last minute and proceeded to win the whole thing. As an amusing side, all the players with game wins were playing Kiasyd/Lasombra, Tuomas was the only one able to get a game win with something else. Impressive.

Sunday I ran another segment of my ongoing Exalted game. I had done quite a bit of prep, due to having no real certainty of how the players would react to the things I threw at them… so even though I suspected they’d go for Plan A, I also had to have Plans B,C and D available in some form. Mostly things went as I had suspected (though there were a few surprises). The gang is now in the Northern Wyld Borderlands, planning an assault on a massive Pale Hunter fortification, all because a young Lunar managed to land on their lap.

I was pretty happy with the thing, especially since a major part of it had been written from scratch.

Playtest Review: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, 3rd edition

The Warhammer fantasy game world has always been a very popular one, and some of the old campaigns for it (Enemy Within, especially) have a near-legendary status. The second edition of the game, published (mostly) by the Black Library imprint, was very popular and the whole game line consists of a lot of books. It’s always been a fun setting, as far as I know, but it has always also had a very “retro” game mechanic that hasn’t changed much over the years. It’s been serviceable by most accounts, but nothing all that fantastic.

So, when Fantasy Flight Games got the Warhammer license and announced that they are working on a new edition, the Internet rumor mill started buzzing again. The buzz intensified when some details became clear: it would (gasp!) use a dice pool system, would (gasp!) include some mechanics in card form, etc etc. Many of the initial fears were along the lines: “it’s a board game, not a roleplaying game!”. These complaints intensified when it became clear that the release was a gigantic boxed set, to the tune of a $100 retail price.

So now Warhammer Fantasy 3rd Edition is here. What is it? How does it play? I’ll try to answer some of that, but I do have one disclaimer: I’ve never played either 1st or 2nd edition of the game. I’m halfway familiar with some of the material, but really… I’m a relative newbie to the Warhammer world. I’ll inspect the game on its own merits, not “compared to 2nd edition sourcebook N”.

I’ll start with “what is it?”. First off, it’s a real roleplaying game. It’s in no form or fashion a board game. It uses some mechanics from board games (and card games) to keep track of things, but the game itself is a pure tabletop rpg. The box contains all you need for a GM + 3 players; only one person in the play group actually needs to buy this, assuming a group of 4 people.

The box is big, and contains 4 books (total a bit under 300 pages) and piles upon piles of different counters, cards, sheets and… stuff. It’s all a bit overwhelming at first, but there is a method to the madness. Fun fact: the page count of the books alone is actually higher than the 2nd edition corebook – and you get a ton of stuff in addition to the books. One book contains the core rules, one is a GM sourcebook, one is detail for playing priests, and the last one is about playing mages. All in all, the books are nicely laid out, and most things are clear enough. However, some of the rules are spread out among multiple books, making some rule details a bit hard to figure out. It’s by no means the worst I’ve seem (compared to Burning Wheel this is a cakewalk), but still… the books could have been a bit better organized, in an ideal world. I do have to give kudos to the GM section; it’s excellent, and contains lots of “indie” stuff like “say yes”, emphasis on a three-act structure, and lots of nice general advice.

In general, this game has taken a lot of cues from “indie” games. I can see bits and pieces of Burning Wheel, Spirit of the Century and other games in here. The design is quite unconventional, and in most places extremely innovative. It’s not without its problems (I’ll get to those later), but in general: this is the most innovative roleplaying design to come from a major publisher for a long time. Not everyone will like it, but I do think that most people who are interested in rpgs should take a look at it. There are lots of cool ideas in here.

To give an exact description of the mechanics would take more space than I want to spend here, so I’ll give a “nutshell” summary.

You still have a traditional “character” sheet, but it’s enhanced with numerous cards. First off, you get a large-format card detailing your current profession. This contains main info about the career. You also get a smaller career card, with the career special ability. This is a bit kludgy imho, that stuff should have been on the main career card… I think they just ran out of space on the main card, here. Anyway, in addition to those you get a bunch of abilities which you attach to your career card into dedicated “slots”. Some of these may be swapped in and out during play. Last off, you get a bunch of Action cards, which represent your normal actions.

Traditionally, this is stuff that would have been represented by written lines on a character sheet. Here they are pre-printed cards. The advantage is that it vastly reduces the need for book lookup during play, since the cards contain much of the mechanics. This is good. It also allows for visual representations of when the action (or whatever) can be used again, via “recharge tokens” placed on the cards.

Then there is the dice pool, which is very cool. It consists of a bunch of custom dice, with symbols on them. The dice have different numbers of faces… some are d6, some d8, etc. You collect a “pool” of them, based on various factors: you base attribute for a skill gives you blue dice, skill training adds yellow “expert” dice, your “stance” (see below) modifies some of your blue dice to green/red, the difficulty of the action adds purple “challenge” dice, and lastly you may get white “fortune” dice and black “misfortune” dice. Once you have your pool you roll it, and the result gives you a “multidimensional” result: in addition to saying whether you succeed or fail, it also provides good or bad side effects which are not tied to success. So you might succeed, but get a bad side-effect. Or vice versa.

All that may sound complicated, but it’s actually quite quick to learn and works really nicely. Good job there, FFG.

There are lots of details I could mention, but I’ll only note two specific innovative extra things here.

First, the party sheet. This is the first rpg that I’ve run into which details the group of player characters as a separate entity (in addition to the PCs). So after the players create their characters, they need to decide what kind of party they are. Are they Intrepid Explorers? Or a Gang of Thugs? Or Brash Young Fools? In addition to providing some mechanical effects, the party sheet also serves to remind the players of that important thing: “why are we together in the first place?”. It’s a nice idea.

Secondly, stances. Each character gets a “stance meter”, which depends on his/her career and other things. This consists of a neutral middle point, and a number of “conservative” and “reckless” spaces on either side. In “encounter mode” (the mode you use to resolve most things), characters decide their current stance on that meter. That setting has an effect on how all their actions resolve; doing stuff “recklessly” nets potentially higher benefits, but also runs higher risks. It’s a very nice mechanic, and a clear evolution from many “indie” game ideas.

Ok. Up to now I’ve talked about how the game looks and reads. Based on just those, my impression was very favorable: the production values were excellent (as usual for FFG productions), the mechanics contained a ton of innovative bits, and the thing was still a traditional rpg at the core.

I did have a few issues:

• The price is high. Sure, you get a lot for your $100, and the box contains enough for a GM + 3 players – the equivalent set in D&D 4th edition would actually cost you more. Still, it’s a lot of money. I personally think it’s worth the price, though (and you can get it for a lot less than that $100 via Amazon, for example).

• As noted, the organization of the rulebooks could be a bit clearer. In addition, there are mistakes and omissions here and there, you need the FAQ document to figure some things out. It’s not horrible, just in the “could be better” department. Also, there is no index.. but FFG actually provides an online ”living index” instead, which is a nice idea and might prove better than a normal index in the long run.

• After reading the thing, I was a bit concerned about the amount of table space this thing would probably take, and the amount of fiddly bits (cards, counters, etc) you had to keep track of.

• There are only a limited number of races, careers, etc available here. I don’t find this to be much of a problem, the design here makes it easy to expand things as the game develops. It does feature less initial choice in those matters than earlier editions; to me that’s no big deal, but it of course affects the price-vs-value proposition for some people.

Luckily enough, my housemates were all home the next weekend after I got this, so I recruited them as victims for a quick playtest. One had never played any sort of roleplaying game before, one had run some 2nd edition Warhammer, and one some 1st edition… so a nice mix of people there. I decided to run the “Eye for an Eye” demo scenario included with the box.

Character creation went fairly smoothly, though at that point there was quite a bit of “pass me the book” going on… some printouts of relevant tables etc might have helped. The players settled on a priest of Shallaya, an Agent and a Mercenary – forming a gang of Brash Young Fools. After a brief into, off they went into the wilderness.

Things started off with a combat encounter, which ended up taking the bulk of the session. It almost ended with a Total Party Kill also; I should have had the Beastmen break morale earlier than they did, but since I wasn’t familiar with the system I didn’t realize the problems fast enough. The PC group had only one really functional combat character, and against a horde of beastmen.. well, while the Mercenary could hold his own for quite a while, it was a losing battle. In the end, one of the characters would have died if we went by the rules, but I decided to fudge it and “just” leave him critically wounded.

All in all, the combat mechanics seemed ok. Needs a bit of practice to get it to run smoothly, and that one fight went on a bit too long due to the PCs being a bit underpowered – but in general, the system seemed to work nicely. Players reported that having the combat powers right in from of them on cards helped a lot, both with book-keeping and with figuring out capabilities in general.

After that we got to the “investigation” section at a hunting lodge. Things proceeded pretty nicely, though things were a bit hampered by only one of the characters being in mobile shape… and here I ran into the first real rule problem: the rules give no help for deciding how fast a priest can heal someone outside of combat. I decided that the others could get back to decent health pretty fast to keep things moving, but… the rules failed here.

After some stalking around, I decided to call the game session a day – character creation and that one combat had taken a lot of time, and it was getting late. We may continue that scenario later, but for now that’s where we are: halfway in the demo scenario.

So, my opinion of the game after some (quick) playtesting?

• The basic mechanics worked pretty much as well as I had hoped. The dice pool thing rocks.

• I’m still undecided on when and if to use the “Rally Phase” mechanic.

• The “progress tracker” is a nice general mechanics, but the books give way too little actual examples of how to use it. As it, it has promise but needs more game support in order to be really useful.

• Despite my own hopes, the game doesn’t really have a “social combat” mechanic. It has something in that direction, but it’s pretty rough and simplified. Of course, due to the expandable card-based design, this might change in the future. I’m sure something cool could be built on top of the Progress Tracker.

• Yes, it takes a lot of table space, but nothing impossible. The abstract combat movement mechanics means you don’t need a grid or miniatures, so things balance out. Might be a problem with a larger play group and a small table, though – you need decent table space for this thing.

• In the future, I hope they provide NPC/monster stats as cards, also. Here I had to keep a book open for that stuff, which was a bit cumbersome.

• At the moment, the rules have a big gaping hole (or at the least, a massive source of confusion). I’ve talked about this a lot of rpg.net and FFG’s own forums, but for now there is no official answer, you must do some houseruling in order to play this game. The problem is this: the game has Encounter Mode, and Story Mode. Action cards make sense in Encounter Mode, but stop making sense outside it. Nowhere in the rules does it say exactly when to use which mode, and how to handle Actions outside Encounter mode. As priest healing “spells” are Actions too, it results in stuff like zero information on how fast divine healing (outside combat) is. Is it instant (one interpretation of the rules)? Does it take days (another interpretation)? Nobody knows, and there is no official answer yet. Though…

…ok. I won’t go into length on this, but in a nutshell here is my current interpretation: you play most of the game in Encounter Mode. You only use Story Mode for “scene switch” narrations, etc. The important thing is this: the amount of time a “turn” takes in Encounter Mode is highly flexible. During combat it might be some seconds or tens of seconds. Outside of that, it may be minutes, hours or even days. Depends on the context. With this framework, you can sort of make the game work outside “combat-time” mode also, though you must fudge things a bit (allow multiple actions during “turn” even though the rules don’t strictly allow that, etc). The problem is that this interpretation depends completely on GM fiat, and also results in some corner-case problems – but it results in less problems than other interpretations to date. To my mind, at least.

So… be prepared for some house-ruling. At the moment, this is a somewhat weird game… it goes from “exact rules with exact results” to “no rules whatsoever, total GM fiat” with no warning whatsoever. While the nice and visual layout of the game might make it good for newbie GMs, the fact that the rules contain some holes at the moment make it less than ideal for that. It’s nothing that a good GM (even a newbie) can’t deal with, but… you have been warned.

In sum: this is a very good new incarnation of Warhammer Fantasy, with lots of (honestly) innovative bits and lots of promise. It’s a bit unpolished at the moment in places, but I have hopes that FFG and/or the player community can slowly fill in the missing bits. Despite the small problems, I’ll highly recommend this one. It’s a breath of fresh air to an old world, in many respects.

Minireview: Night Stalkers (Hunter: the Vigil)

Night Stalkers is the second expansion book to White Wolf’s “Hunter: the Vigil”, and it deals with vampires – or more exactly, vampires as antagonists for vampire hunters. If you want to play vampires, you’ll want the full Vampire: the Requiem game. Just judging by this book it’s a bit unclear whether “Night Stalkers” refers to vampires or the the people who hunt them, but judging by the other books in the line (Witch Finders, Spirit Slayers) it’s clear that the reference is to the hunters themselves.

What I’ve read of Hunter so far has been very good, and this book does not disappoint either. While here the “targets” are much more clearly “hostiles” than in the mage book (Witch Finders), there is still some room given to scenarios where the hunters might cooperate with a blood-sucker (at least for a while) before they go all Buffy on them. This is presented as a very risky option, of course, and so it should be – these are not Twilight-style glow-in-the-dark angsty animal-eating teenagers. These are monsters, usually in the classic sense of the word. It’s not that they’ll just kill you if you threaten them; they’ll also often have the capability (and lack of human morals) to also kill your family and other loved ones, while (potentially) leaving you alive with a ruined life. With ages-old power networks at their disposal, they can make sure that you’re suddenly out of a job, branded a pedophile, homeless, and/or lots of other fun stuff. It’s like fighting entrenched organized crime (and often, in the WoD, there is heavy overlap anyway)… the leaders won’t fight you directly. They’ll just send endless disposable minions after you and everyone you care about, while using their contacts to make your life hell. That’s the real danger of hunting vampires, and the book goes to great lengths to make sure that you use a vampire antagonist in a smart way. Only very young or foolish vampires will look for a head-on fight with a gang of hunters.

The book organization mimics Witch Finders. First we have a ton of historical vampire myths, with different sorts of vampires. While you can use the Vampire: the Requiem model for what a vampire is like, you don’t have to. Having your vampires be something quite unexpected will be a fun and nasty curveball for your players. Lots of suggestions and ideas are presented here; some of them creepy, some a bit silly, and some just weird.

Next up is a overview of how the various Compacts and Conspiracies regard and hunt vampires. Nothing too surprising here, though some of the detail is fun. Then we get some new Compacts and a new Conspiracy; the Compacts aren’t anything all that special, really (one is clandestine political group, one is a college sorority of sorts, and one a street gang)… but the Conspiracy is very cool. It’s the “Cainite Heresy”, and it consists of fanatical vampire hunters who hunt vampires using supernatural methods which they learn from… someone. Or something. It’s quite creepy, and has lots of story possibilities.

The last sections of the book contain some new Tactics, a bunch of “Dread Powers” for Vampires to use if you don’t want to use or don’t have Vampire: the Requiem, and a storyteller section with tips and ideas for running vampires as antagonists in a chronicle.

It’s a very solid book. Sure, the Compacts are a bit mundane, but they’re not bad by any means. The Cainite Heresy rocks, and the rest of the book is crammed full of useful ideas. Like with the other Hunter books I’ve read, the writing style here is relaxed and fun to read.

Minireview: Second Edition Life On Terra Nova (Heavy Gear)

The Second Edition Life On Terra Nova book is one of the “must get” books for the line. Not because it’s absolutely necessary, but because it’s just so damn useful. It’s not totally necessary because it’s “just” a compilation and a tweaked recap of both Terra Novan history and current politics; all or at least most of this info already exists in the previous books. However, there are lots of those books, and many small details (especially ones about the main metaplot) have been tweaked along the way. This book provides an excellent summary of the game world, and really… you could probably get started running a game with just this and the core rules book.

The book follows a fairly traditional format. The beginning condenses the game world history, from the early days of space flight to the current fractures interstellar war situation. Then it goes on to describe Terra Nova, one nation at a time. Naturally enough the info is a lot more condensed than that in the dedicated “region books”, but that’s the point: this is gazeteer and a summary. The end of the book contains some general notes on culture etc, some game master notes, some NPC, and usual stuff like that.

This is one of the core books of the game line. Sure, there’s a 3rd edition one which I haven’t read yet, but word has is that it’s mostly a (somewhat buggy) cut+paste of this book.

Another one bites the dust

Well, the best record store in Helsinki, Tunnelin Levy, is closing its doors after being a fixture for music fans for 40 years. In other words, pretty much as long as I have been alive.

It’s not surprising as such – digital music and other forms of media are steadily eating away at “regular” CD sales, and it’s hard for a small store to compete. Tunnelin Levy has tried, for years… they’ve always had pretty reasonable prices, an excellent selection which also contained a ton of eclectic stuff, and usually very knowledgable staff. You could go there and ask about some pretty obscure bands, and even if they didn’t stock them the guy behind the counter usually would know what you were talking about.

…but all that doesn’t help when the bottom line is continually in the red.

I can see that trend in my own music shopping. Even though Tunnelin Levy has pretty much always been my “go to” place for CDs, during recent years I haven’t bought all that many physical CDs. I get most of my music via eMusic nowadays, and the CDs that I do buy end up getting ripped to high-quality AAC immediately. I don’t listen to CDs, as such, at all. Physical “containers” for music, be they CDs or records, are slowly on their way out. The future for music is digital – it’s hard to fight against that, even if you wanted to.

But damn, it’s sad to see Tunnelin Levy go. It was a great little music store, and I’ve bought a ton of music from them over the years – including some stuff you would never find in a “normal” chain music store: the Camper Van Beethoven “Cigarettes and Carrot Juice” box set, lots of non-standard alternate editions of CDs, stuff like that.

“Thank you for the music”, as ABBA would say.