Author: mpduxbury

What’s My Line Again?: Difficulties with Taglines in The Gaean Reach

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I pretty much knew what to expect when I picked up The Gaean Reach.  Unfamiliar as I was with Jack Vance’s work, I was extremely familiar with the Gumshoe system, having played in two Trail of Cthulhu campaigns and run games for Mutant City Blues and Night’s Black Agents.  I was looking forward to watching that rhythm of clue-finding and interpretation play out in a spacebound setting, and was neither surprised nor disappointed when The Gaean Reach’s contents were essentially the same-old Gumshoe with Vancian sci-fi thrown in for flavour.

But there is one feature of The Gaean Reach’s mechanics that distinguish it from all other Gumshoe products (except for The Dying Earth, which I haven’t played), and that is the tagline system. Continue reading →

Mini-Review: Fate Core

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When I first heard about Fate Core, I wasn’t interested. I’d played Spirit of the Century, I’d played Diaspora – why buy the same system again with all the setting content removed? How foolish that sentiment seems now. Consistency and clarity became the design goals of the new Fate edition, and combined with not-insubstantial tweaks made to gameplay both central and peripheral, they have transformed something promising into the best RPG release of the last four years. Continue reading →

Mini-Review: Rogue Trader

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When making an RPG adaptation of a miniatures wargame, nuance and crunch in combat is expected. You have to do the source material justice, and since “In the 41st Millennium there is Only War”, a 40K RPG is always going to put the violence centre stage. But there’s a difference between presenting tactical options and needlessly complicating things, and crunchy should not mean clunky. The sheer number of difficulty modifiers in Rogue Trader is impossible to remember, necessitating reference material at every gaming session. Combine that with incredibly long lists of skills, talents and wargear, and the “strategy” of Rogue Trader’s combat is more about knowing all the rules and remembering which apply than it is about skillful manipulation of your environment. Continue reading →

“The Egg Must SING!”: Save Game Actual Play Report

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So here’s something new – an actual play report of a game I ran last weekend.  Whilst I run a lot of Fate Core games, this session was also my first time trying out one of the Patreon settings that Evil Hat have been putting out for the system.  The one I chose was “Save Game“, and I downloaded the PDF for two reasons.  Firstly, because I was already familiar with Rob Wieland’s brand of Fate from “Camelot Trigger”, a spacebound mecha game of Arthurian legend from the Worlds In Shadow setting expansion, which I consider to be one of the most mechanically accomplished hacks for Fate Core that Evil Hat have released to date.  Secondly, I knew that Save Game’s fun set up of 8-bit heroes battling doomsday virus epidemics and jumping puzzles would be extremely relevant to the interests of many of my friends.  With a strong enough elevator pitch to enable one-shot play with minimal exposition, it was exactly what I needed to end the December drought of roleplaying campaigns triggered by my players’ seasonal responsibilities. Continue reading →

Mini-Review: Diaspora

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Two years ago, this might have gotten a rave review – a novel take on the emergent Fate engine, with diverse sub-systems to support many sessions of play. But now we live in the era of Fate Core, probably the most exciting RPG release of the last four years, which introduced so much clarity and consistency into the system as to make Fate-that-was feel woefully obsolete. Diaspora is not bad, but it’s not Fate Core, which lest we forget is available for free. Why indulge in the clunky eccentricities of Diaspora’s social conflict system, for example, when it’s managed so effortlessly by Fate Core? Continue reading →

Alignment: New Series Pitch for Drama System

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Recently I had my first work accepted by an RPG publisher.

Pelgrane Press, the creators of Hillfolk (along with Trail of Cthulhu, Night’s Black Agents and many other games), have been regularly producing new Series Pitches for Drama System since the successful release of the game last year.  My latest contribution, Alignment, is now also available to download for free from the Drama System Resources page. Continue reading →