Category: Gaming

I picked up Engel, the new D20 game from White Wolf, over the weekend. Wait, that’s not true. It’s actually from Feder und Schwert, a German gaming company, and White Wolf’s Sword and Sorcery Studios is publishing it over here. Also, it’s not a D20 game per se: it doesn’t have the D20 logo, so strictly speaking it’s just an OGL game that happens to use the D20 mechanics. But they’re not allowed to say so. In Germany, it was apparently published with the D20 logo and also had a set of Tarot-based mechanics, which we don’t get here. Have I mentioned lately that WotC’s licensing scheme is somewhat complex?

Anyhow, it’s a pretty cool setting. It’s 2654, plagues and disasters have traumatized the Earth’s biosphere, and the Lord of the Flies dreams horrible insects into life. Only the Angelic Church — led by an undying Pope — stands between the wreckage of Europe and the demonic hordes. But five orders of angels have been sent to assist humanity in this hour of need.

Technology is outlawed, but still pursued by the secular leaders of Europe. Feudalism has returned. The Church is the most powerful institution in Europe, but by no means the only center of power. Feder und Schwert have avoided the trap of one-dimensional settings; it’s not just the Church against the baddies, and there are those who are not aligned with the Church but are also not evil.

I like the images of a drowned world in a dying age. In some ways, it’s very Dying Earth. The world is clearly near an end, battered and bruised by centuries of pain, and everyone finds their own way to avoid thinking about it. Some resort to decadence, some resort to the Church, and some find peace in surrender.

The translation is top notch; some Euro game translations (Agone comes to mind) have great ideas weighed down by turgid English, but Engel flows very well. The prose strongly conveys the feeling of the world. The excellent maps probably helped a lot there; the endpapers are a map of flooded Europe, and they really drive home the sense of a world less than once it was.

There is a strong metaplot, some of which is not revealed in the main book. I think it would be pretty easy to ignore it completely, though, so I didn’t find it objectionable. Feder und Schwert is one of those companies that wants to tell a story with their RPGs, though: they’ve published Engel graphic novels and CDs. It might well get in the way of the game at a later date; be warned.

I think using the D20 mechanics was a good choice. Most of the book is background, which doesn’t hurt because the D20 rules are simple to explain and mechanically solid. I would have liked to have seen the Tarot-based system, but I’m sure I’ll find a recap of ‘em on the Web eventually. There’s very little divergence from the basic D20 model here. Engel uses the same classes as does D&D, plus five more classes for the angels themselves. Angelic powers are treated as skills (a really nice touch), but you fuel them with your own hit points (another nice touch which makes good sense in the setting).

On the down side, there are very few sample monsters. This is a pretty serious lack; sure, you could adapt any D&D monster pretty easily, but I kind of want a good set of adversaries in a stand alone game. Since campaigns will likely center around angels, we need to know what they’re combatting. In general, in fact, there’s a lack of information about the Lord of the Flies. He’s around, he’s doing bad things, but what exactly? Well, that’s murky.

There is, by the by, a big secret at the heart of the setting. I’m going to cut that off into the extended entry, for the sake of anyone who might want to play the game. I do think that if you’re intending to be a player (rather than a GM), you don’t want to know this, and I am generally pretty casual about such things.

Overall, it’s a buy with the caveat that the backstory of the world is not complete. I think the promised book on the Lord of the Flies will complete the backstory sufficiently, and I’m willing to wait for it on that basis, but I could be wrong.

The latest entry in Key 20’s 12 Games of Christmas series is Bloggomancy, a school of magic for Unknown Armies. Yeah, it’s what it sounds like. Both amusing and fairly playable, albeit a little slanted towards LiveJournal. Easy enough to fix that, though.

Mind you, it says you can get a major charge for writing a new weblog/journal client. That probably ought to be revised; I’m not a programmer, and I could crank one of those out per day if I wanted. Easy fix: you only get the major charge if more than 500 people use it regularly. That also fits the theme of the other major charge gathering methods.

In a fit of something or other, I picked up Hero Designer the other day. My longest running Hero character is Emoticon. Here he is by way of Hero Designer. For comparison, here’s the old version. The latter is from Fourth Edition, and Hero Designer is a Fifth Edition product, which explains the differences in pointage. Hero Designer is, all in all, pretty slick. A bit slow because it’s written in Java, but that makes it cross-platform, which means it runs on linux now and I can use it on my Mac when Apple releases Java 1.4. Neat.

I don’t really read the RPGnet forums, cause they are big and bulky and populated by flamers. (Not unlike the blogosphere.) Fortunately, people occasionally point me at the good threads. Here’s one entitled Campaigns I Have Never Run (but want to), which is now up to 11 pages of weird little campaign ideas. I could just use this, and never have to come up with an original campaign idea for the rest of my life. That’s not saying much, mind you, given the rate at which I GM.

I’m still waiting for the ideal pulp game. I’m sure Robin Laws or someone will write it eventually. In the meantime, here’s a cool d20 pulp page.

I spent some time roleplaying with my nephew Sparky the last time he visited and again this weekend. He’s 12; it was an interesting experience.

I gave octaNe a try, on the principle that the mechanics wouldn’t be too complicated and it’d be good for him to get his feet wet with some storytelling techniques. However, I think I was wrong — he was pretty clearly looking for more structure while we were playing, although he certainly had fun. I’d been hoping that his experience with spy flicks (we were doing a James Bondian scenario) would be enough but it wasn’t really. Also, 12 year olds are not good at saying “Hm, I could do anything I want but I will restrict myself for the sake of the story.” Next time I’ll try D20 Modern or Feng Shui.

However, this weekend, he was running all over the house with sheets of paper with dungeons drawn on ‘em. When I sat down and played with him, it turned out he’d taken this little supersimple pen and paper wargame we play in my family and turned it into a dungeon crawl, with a single “PC” and a bunch of monsters and some very very basic move and attack rules. He was very keen on the idea that people should make up their own characters (“What does your guy look like?”) and he was meticulous about handing out treasure for various victories.

Kinda cool.

They build giant letters on mountaintops. Innocuous activity, but fraught with potential.

I’m very sad to hear that Hogshead Publishing is going out of business. It’s not that they’re bankrupt or any such; apparently it’s just not fun any more, and I can certainly understand that. Still a shame.

Hogshead and its founder James Wallis have provided high quality gaming for the last decade. They started out as the holders of the Warhammer Fantasy RPG license. WFRPG has been an important alternative to D&D in the fantasy RPG genre in both mechanics and style. I believe the prestige class system in D&D 3E owes a lot to Warhammer’s career system, and the Warhammer world beats 7th Sea all hollow as far as alternate Europes go.

Hogshead also published the tremendously influential New Style line, which deliberately broke expectations of what an RPG was. I wouldn’t count all the New Style games as successes, but the line was bookmarked by Baron Munchausen and De Profundis and those two alone would make the New Style line important to the industry.

As if that wasn’t enough, Hogshead recently rescued Noblis from the abyss, republishing it in a beautiful coffee-table edition which raises the bar for RPG layout and design. Simply lovely stuff. (Fortunately, Guardians of Order will be picking up the Nobilis line with the full cooperation of the author.)

Hogshead, you’ll be missed.

“So,” he said, “What’s ‘discovery science,’ anyhow?”

“UFOs,” she replied. “Cattle mutilations. That sort of thing. More coffee?”

It pays to talk to waitresses.

The d20 Modern System Reference Document is live and online as of — now. That’s concurrent with the official release date. Nice speedy work on WotC’s part.