#playtested and have a good grasp on the rules

[weaselishmcdiesel]

GRIPS YOU. I would love to play test if you wanted

NOTED!

[songoftrillium]

so I've been considering running a W5 game for some friends of mine who have been having a blast with our V5 campaign. We'd have to use a *severely long* list of houserules and lore to make it anything other than a massive trash fire of...well, everything that W5 is now. Unfortunately it's likely to be W5 instead of W20 due to the players bouncing off the x20 rules HARD. Any suggestions as to what gaping holes I should focus on first, rules-and-lore-wise?

I apologize for this essay of a response. In terms of the major mechanics holes to focus on, a friend of mine, Kaidan, was a game playtester that ran a number of games at Gencon, and has done the emotional labor of reading through the entire W5 corebook and identifying ways to make the game playable. For house rules, I'd start there.

The rest of this post is LONG, so buckle up and get a drink before reading on under the cut.

Regarding Gaia's Howl, which isn't addressed in the book, I'd look to the Mind's Eye Theater: Werewolf: the Apocalypse, the last corebook in OWoD that furthers the world metaplot. I believe the mark that was missed in a big way in w5 was that the Age of Apocalypse in that book more or less encompasses exactly what they were trying to achieve in terms of the worldwide destruction of caerns, the death of many old canon NPCs, and the Last Words of Gaia, which was a prophecy laid out by King Albrecht in his final moments of life while destroying the Storm Eater:

“Hope is not sundered; wake me, and a new age of harmony shall begin.”

Nuff said there. You shouldn't really need this corebook to play, but if you can find any information on the Age of Apocalypse online, I recommend using that as your kickoff point to explain how we got here.

Now, on to lore.

As the Storyteller, there are few ways around it; you'll have to read some old materials to construct your own chronicle. A little-known piece of information is that no one edition of Legacy Werewolf was ever meant to supersede the other. All the editions contain uniquely valuable information and were meant to build upon each other, requiring a holistic approach to the old materials: take what matters and use it.

I don't blame your players for balking at the old materials. The first editor that volunteered to help with my big project had never picked up a WoD book in xis life, and when he signed up I asked xim to read enough of the W20 corebook to grasp how to make a character. After struggling with the material for a week, they returned and said, "I'll be honest. That's almost a hundred pages. I'm not reading all that." And I don't blame them. And I don't know if you noticed, but W20 also includes no tools for Storytellers to construct game chronicles. Indeed, no 20th-anniversary edition book across all the splats really does. Since the writing team at PDX didn't use any book other than x20 to construct W5, that only further deepened the reality that Storytellers have been completely forgotten. All Meat, no Potatoes. For all the good content W20 includes, a broad number of items would be decidedly unfair to force players to wade through if you wanted to, and there's also so much of it. If you have yet to notice, the old books have laughably useless indexes, so researching and knowing which books to research to create a good game is incredibly complicated. So, you're right that your players shouldn't have to read any of the old stuff, and you shouldn't necessarily have to run a legacy game to provide a game of meaning.

Now, on to the stuff, you, the Storyteller, need to put together a bombastic chronicle. I have a bibliography of books across multiple editions that really get to the heart of the deepest lore and covers the full width and breadth of what the game has to offer. You don't need to read all these books, but having them gives you all the reference material to have a top-down overview of lore you can pull into your game world that you see fit.

Werewolf: the Apocalypse Storytellers Handbook (1994)This edition was published during a time when White Wolf was still establishing what the World of Darkness represented. It was drafted during 1st edition and came out shortly after the 2nd edition core rulebook came out, making it a hybrid that shares stats between both editions, including renown conversion guidelines between 1st and 2nd editions. You’ll find three essays and a section from it reprinted in this very book, but even those are just a fraction of the value this book offers Storytellers. Beyond what I carry over here, this book includes expanded Garou culture, setting, and enemies, dedicated sections on kinfolk and kami,  and a dedicated chapter on making talismans (fetishes). It even includes a dedicated section for 1st edition to 2nd edition renown conversion and a chapter dedicated to building a custom chronicle suited to your tabletop! Definite must-have and must-read.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse Storytellers Vault Style Guide (2018)Beyond a collection of well-written tales, this book includes a chapter devoted entirely to metaplot. In that way, this section serves as a roadmap towards getting a good feel on which books across which edition may best serve you. It breaks down three different approaches to Metaplot (Passive, Reactive, and Proactive), the pathos driving each edition, and following those threads, one can more easily find which books and editions are best suited to each purpose and tailor their own Storytelling library to best suit their style accordingly.

A World of Rage (2000)

This book is indispensable for learning about the world at large where the game is set. It covers every region published and really cuts out the fat in terms of delivering setting information and systems just about anywhere you’d like to set your game.

Players Guide to Garou (2003)This one’s a home run for any table. Expanded tribe societies and unique gifts? Check. Merits and flaws and expanded fetishes? Check. MOOT MECHANICS? That’s right, check. Moots are the lifeblood of Garou society, and there are structures for this! If you ever wondered what the typical phases of a moot look like, what roles different auspices play, and what your pack of players may be doing during any given time, it’s all laid out here in plain words. Even the Ragabash has (arguably the best) role to play during these events.

Guardians of the Caerns (2000)Ever wondered what exactly werewolves do all day? Wonder no longer. Guardians of the Caerns is the sourcebook of septs and caerns, detailing the sacred places and the Garou communities that guard them. It contains information on sept offices, tribal septs, caern logistics, defensive tactics--even an in-depth look at those who must grow up strictly as Garou, the crinos-born. This is the book for anyone who wants to understand what they're fighting for. 

Book of the Wyrm (1st Edition, 1993)While acknowledging the latest edition of this book, this gives a lot more specific insight into the ins-and-outs of the Urge Wyrms and Maejlin Incarna, who have taken a faceless investment in this chronicle. Understanding the ubiquity of their influence helps to understand not just these entities themselves but also their hierarchies, as they are mirrored across each of the many heads of the Wyrm.

Book of the Wyld (2001)It includes information on the naming of spirits, stats on the Nameless, information on caern abscession, and the not-so-subtle recommendation to write a chronicle surrounding the final days of an ancient caern. It offers insights into this not-understood aspect of the Triat, including many that aren’t in print in the 20th Anniversary Edition. Some enemies come from the woods, after all.

Rage Across the Heavens (1999)

Meet the Gaian Pantheon, all the celestial incarnae to be found across the Tellurian may be found across this book, including unique powers associated with them. This also includes a chronicle encompassing the emergence of the red star Anthelios, believed to be a portent of the end times.

Hearthbound (2023)

That's right, ya girl wrote a cross-edition book this year, and I highly recommend it! This is a good answer for players looking for a drop-in solution to confront the systemic issues in the lore directly in-game. The problematic features of the Garou nation were always meant to be confronted by the tabletop, and this sourcebook offers a turnkey approach to doing just that. It details many of those issues up-front and lays bare many of the not-so-pleasant aspects of the Garou Nation in plain English, including several story seeds on how to work this new tribe into any chronicle.

Lastly, on language and tabletop terminology. It's best to treat U****a and W*****o as tribes separate from the Galestalkers and Ghost Council. They are different enough that you can't easily move the names over and call them such. That said, they are named after things considered extremely inappropriate to use in a tabletop setting, so I recommend presenting them using two Conlang terms I constructed for my games. For U****a I recommend Hapil, and to rename their patron to The River Serpent. For W*****o, I recommend Kalaril, and to rename their patron to Old Windtooth.

Lastly, if you'd like to know how to scare the piss out of your players' characters, I wrote an essay on how to do just that. Good luck!

[the-scattered-kingdoms]

INTRODUCTORY POST:

I don’t expect this blog to get much attention, but tumblr is a quick and simple format that I know I can use to archive this campaign. To begin, hello. If you’re following me thanks so much. I only hope what you see here is interesting and inspires you to make your own materials for D&D 5e. If you have a good grasp on the rules, I recommend giving homebrew a try, even if it’s just a fun item or a busted feat. 5e is very good for custom content, and when it comes to our imaginations, the sky’s the limit.

So, about this campaign. I was driving with my wife and a friend when my friend mentioned how cool it would be if we were all bugs. I agreed and added “oh that would be a funny D&D setting—what if you were a party of bugs?” and we all got a good laugh, and I have basically not stopped thinking about it for two months.

I did things the classic way: I started with a map, decided who lived where, what happened recently to establish The Way Things Are, and what kind of bugs will be the ones to change things up. Then, I leaned into the hyper fixation, creating a potent blend of custom races, somewhat game-breaking items, and definitely game-breaking feats. I gathered 4 of my favorite people together to answer the question “What can I do to make it look like you’re going crazy up there like a little bug?” The players were limited to North American insects, and chose a Beetle, a Mantis, a Bee, and a Cricket. Details on classes and backgrounds will arrive after Session 0.

And that’s how we got Minisculia! It’s a smattering of bug city-states and kingdoms, located entirely within the backyard of an abandoned house, somewhere in American suburbia. 10 years ago (basically like 500 years ago in Bug Years) the Golden Alliance of the Hive defeated the foul Apocritan Wasps in a devastating conflict called the Last War. Now, as a result of the Treaty of Convergence, the two powers keep to their territories and common folk enjoy a tenuous peace. But not all is well. Reports of Red Ant raids in Black Ant territory terrify the peasantry, and have the guards clamoring for action. The Good Queen Bezeera has decreed any adventurers who solve the problem shall earn their weight in Pollen (our stand-in for gold), as well as lands and noble titles. Investigating the crisis will be the party’s unifying goal.

To keep the game itself simple, I ruled that for classes, backgrounds, spells, and equipment we’ll be using the 2014 Player’s Handbook and nothing else. I’d describe the plot as a delicate mixture of a Bug’s Life and Game of Thrones—several factions are vying for power, and most of them are loose collectives of different cultures or military arms of small kingdoms. All of them are bugs, however, and all of them cling to what little power they’ve scratched out for themselves in a big, dangerous world. Will the party join in that unending political game, or will they bring change to the Scattered Kingdoms once more? Time will tell!

Also I’ll be posting bad art and usable 5e content here. Playtest it, tweak it, criticize it for being too strong, ignore it, do whatever you like. But I’ve made too much NOT to share, you know? Like I said up top, I hope you at least find what I post here interesting. I’m excited to play D&D with my friends more than anything.

Talk to you soon!

Spamdini

[tameka05]

Platformer Postmortem

This is the Postmortem for my first prototype, a platformer game called 'Blade Quest'

The Design Process:

Both the lecture content and the textbook: 'Game Design Workshop' by Tracy Fullerton helped inspire the design process for my first game. In particular chapters 3 and 4 of the textbook helped me when creating my game, as these chapters talk about the formal and dramatic elements that make up a game. This helped me go into the game making process with a clear vision of what I wanted to achieve. I wanted my game to be interacted with a 'single player versus game' structure (talked about in chapter 3), where the gameplay is only focused on the player versing the videogames obstacles and enemies. The rules of the game where simple: hit the enemies to kill them, but if they hit you, you lose. While all these concepts are very simple, having a good grasp on them before I started making my game helped streamline the process.

In order to make the game fun and appealing to players, Dramatic elements (talked about in Chapter 4 of the textbook), and a concept called 'Moment-to-moment gameplay' discussed in my lectures where things I wanted to implement. Dramatic elements include a wide variety of topics, but all are focused on engaging and investing the player. The main element discussed from the textbook that I focused on including was the element of 'premise', which is basically the story or world you want your player to feel apart of. Instead of my game being just squares or placeholder assets attacking each other, I wanted to include a capable looking player charcters and some dangerous enemies to attack. Adding animations to the player and enemies made the game feel more fluid, and made the game much more enjoyable to play, even if nothing technical was added. Seeing your character move, or attack; or enemies dying after they are hit by an attack made the game more engaging and interesting for a player to interact with. I also wanted moment-to-moment gameplay in my prototype, where there is always something 'fun' in each moment of gameplay for the player. I specifically focused on interating this into my combat, by allowing the player to combo attacks, 'hitstun' enemies, and recquiring careful timing to avoid getting hit by enemies while striking them yourself. This made the combat feel fun to engage with as a player.

Takeaways and things to learn and improve upon

If I were to redevelop my prototype, there are a few things I would change about my design process. Firstly, I would of put more time into devoloping more gameplay elements of my game, instead of hyper-focusing on a couple. By the time I had finished implementing the combat system of my game, I did not have enough time to add other important features, such as player health, win and lose conditions, goals for the player to achieve, etc. While I am super pleased with the combat system in my game and all of its nuances, the fact that I wasnt able to include all of these extra systems in my prototype meant that these weren't able to be tested, and so I can't get feedback on them. Protoyping and playtesting game features is a key part of the playcentric design process outlined in chapter 1 of the textbook.

If had a chance to change the actual design of my prototype, I would have added more lof the core gameplay feautures, to try and have a more complete prototype, even if it is less refined. Another part of the prototype that I was not happy with was the level design. I wanted to create an expansive world that players could explore and adventure through, with platforming elements and world obstacles throughout. However, in the prototype the level is only a flat platform, with enemies preplaced throughout. There is no platforming obstacles, or anything for the player to journey through or towards. This hurt the moment-to-moment gameplay of my game, as doing anything other than combat was very boring and tedious. So if I were to spend more time on this project I would improve the level design and add more core features to the game

Conclusion

For this being my first game, I am very pleased with the final result. Even though it is missing features and game elements, I am very proud of the combat system I implemented. I look forward to working on more games in the future!

References

Fullerton, T. (2018). Game design workshop : A playcentric approach to creating innovative games, fourth edition. CRC Press LLC. from: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/qut/reader.action?docID=5477698

[yuffi369]

Feathers of Fate

Ok so now that I've had a chance to sit at my laptop for ease of typing, I would like to offer some feedback to the system!

Keep in mind this feedback is pre-playtesting, as I only just discovered it this morning and haven't had a chance to playtest it with friends. This is going off my prior experience with TTRPG's both as a player and as a DM/GM/Storyteller.

This post is gonna be under a cut cuz it might get lengthy, but if you would like to read up on the system as it is before reading this post, here is a link to the google doc of v1 of the rules, and the dev blog is @funnybirdgame if you would like to follow them to get updates!!

so firstly,

What I really, REALLY like

so obviously I really like the concept. Otherwise I wouldn't even be doing this post tbh. I saw the post, was intrigued, and then had an epiphany.

Nostalgiaaaaa

ok so to get this point out of the way to lay my biases out on the table, the concept IMMEDIATELY reminds me of Guardians of Ga'Hoole, a book series I read as a kid that has 15+ books (it's still going as far as I'm aware which, alright, get it girl). For those unaware of the book series, it's basically Warrior Cats but with owls. For those unaware of that series, can i join you under the rock you live under? it looks cozy the concept of Guardians of Ga'Hoole is that owls have their own society and the Guardians of Ga'Hoole is this knight order of legend that lives in the far-off distance and supposedly is sworn to protect all of Owlkind from great evil. It's a whole thing really, I'm not gonna get into it too much.

Obviously, there's more than just owls in this game, it's all birds. But I bring this up to sort of lead into some of the additions I want to bring to the table, as well as just. Explain my very excited tone of this post. So obviously I may be a bit biased in wanting to see the success of this system and giving it feedback.

The Simplicity

I actually REALLY love how simplified the system is. It definitely isn't a 1-pager, for sure, but the skills are simple and well-explained in only one sentence, and the items and what they're used for are also very self-explanatory. While there is an appeal in making things crunchy and a bit complex (I'm a d&d 5e addict at heart, I love the system a lot both because it's my first and it in my opinion walks a very good line between easy to grasp and complex enough to provide a good challenge), there is just as much appeal in making something you can very easily grasp session 1.

Fate Points

I actually really like the fate points system here. It's simple, it doesn't let players hoard a bunch throughout a game, and it allows players who eat absolute shit at a particular roll to feel at least a bit better cuz, hey, at least I get some fate points out of the 1 I rolled. No notes here but I WILL mention the Fate Points later.

The LOOOOOOOORRRREEE

So I am REALLY intrigued by the implicated lore already. A good system will allow a Storyteller, who is effectively writing an interactive novel for their friends, to go absolutely nuts telling a story. There are so many questions that could be answered here. What caused the humans to go extinct? When did they go extinct? What other animals have intelligence, if any? Why do birds have human-like intelligence now?

A post-apocalypse setting has a TON of opportunity for environmental storytelling which is I think my favorite way of telling a story in games. Describing structures that, to a human it would be obvious what it is, but to a bird, who has no clue of the original intent of the structure when it was complete, let alone in ruins, you could have so much fun painting a picture of the environment.

Now for what I don't like so much

I did say I had some feedback. This includes positive and negative. This is version 1 of the rules, and I've never actually written my own system before, but I have played and DM'd a lot (not just 5e) and so I can tell by reading when things need to be tweaked. This isn't going to be super harsh or anything, it's gonna have the same tone as the rest of this post, pretty casual.

The Dice & Stat System

So, to get my biggest criticism out of the way. The stats system in this scares me. Using a different die for every stat, while cool in theory, really knocks some things off of balance and isn't conducive to a couple things that make a TTRPG good for long-term, multi-session play.

So, one of the issues you're going to run into using this is character progression. You're going to run into a point where a player builds their character, and they're going to want to improve stats that they kinda suck at. Character growth! We love to see it! Not just in terms of how the character is played at a social and narrative level, but people love seeing numbers go up. There's no real way to effectively progress in a stat you suck pellets at, like if you put a d4 in perception and you realize you're getting your party into trouble by blindly walking into traps. (Not speaking from experience or anything...)

Another pitfall this system has is that, alongside individual character progression being stifled, it will lead to party composition being stale. Don't get me wrong, having characters in a party that are better-suited for certain tasks is GOOD. Let the rogue be the one who picks locks because that's their thing, let the bard be the one to talk to the politicians, et cetera. However. With no real way for a character to progress in a stat, the party never really changes up this dynamic. Why would you EVER use a stat you put a d4 in if your friend has a d20? You'll just let them do their thing. You won't even bother trying. Even if the Storyteller accounts for this and balances the check accordingly, there's no accounting for the huge gap there. It isn't bad for a party to be composed of different birds who are better at different things, per se, but it does make for gameplay that will get stale. Checks will get stale, too, because if you have someone who uses an item in their best skill to roll 2d20, well, the check is more than likely guaranteed to succeed if they roll a 40.

So to combat this problem I recommend using a different way to go about dice, known as;

DICE POOLS

If you've never played a system with dice pools before, it's somewhat intuitive. Instead of having a target number to roll and add up to or above, instead, your stat will determine the amount of dice you roll. Certain numbers on the die will mean either success or failure (typically the lower half of the die is a failure, the upper half is a success). You count the number of successes you roll, and you have to reach a target number of successes to do the thing you want to do. To give an example;

Soren wants to use Agility to dodge out of the way of an attack as a reaction in-combat. Soren's Agility stat has a 2 next to it, meaning he rolls 2 dice in this check. He also has the Air Fins item, allowing him to gain an extra die to roll when he rolls to dodge mid-air, meaning he gets to roll 3 dice total. He rolls his dice, and the numbers he rolls are 3, 4, and 6. Since 1-3 is a failure and 4-6 is a success, he tells the Storyteller he got 2 successes. The Storyteller tells him that he passed the check, and dodges out of the way of the attack.

Dice pool systems are used in games in the World of Darkness system, which is mainly where I'm pulling my inspiration for this example. They use d10's and I can't remember which numbers mean success or failures because I use the fancy dice with the symbols on the success sides and blanks on the failure sides. I recommend using d6's because while, yes, we are playing as birds and I'm almost positive anyone interested in this system is a dice hoarder (crows. d'you get it), d6's are the easiest dice to get ahold of in a pinch. Very easy to make a cube out of paper! Not so much a dodecahedron.

You can also still have critical success and critical failures, which can add some dynamic features to dice tests. Example;

Soren wants to recall some information about a structure. He has a 3 in Cunning, so he rolls 3 dice, and he has an Informational Tome that gives him 1 additional dice, meaning he rolls 4 dice in total. He rolls a 4, a 5, and two 6's. Soren knows that a 6 is a critical success, so he lets the Storyteller know that he got 4 successes, and that 2 of them are crits. The Storyteller can then choose to give extra information that Soren otherwise may not have gotten had he not succeeded so well, such as a guess at the purpose of the structure based on Soren's previous knowledge.

You can also use critical success as a tiebreaker, such as when two players roll the same number of successes on a check for combat initiative; the person with the most crits in their roll can go first.

A dice pool system like this allows for people to improve their skills over time, using experience gained by leveling up to purchase extra die to roll during tests. This still allows for certain characters to be better at something than others, but also opens up the floor to characters to get better at a skill to be on-par with their team. It also curbs the problem of being able to roll a ridiculous amount of points above the target number.

I do recommend that with the dice pool system you have a maximum number of points you can put into one stat. I recommend 5 as it's a nice even number, as with a standard item that only gives a +1 buff to a stat in a certain situation you can roll 6 dice total. Not including Fate Points.

Speaking of fate points! This allows for fate points to be more balanced. If you've been hoarding Fate Points during a session where you've rolled a lot of 1's, you don't get to roll, say, 5d20's and absolutely obliterate the bbeg of the session. Instead it's just more d6's. It does still allow for a player to roll, say, 10 dice, but like, at that point, that's exciting for the whole table and we love that energy (or at least I do personally, as someone who's rolled 15 dice for an attack check on a VtM character), and who's to say how many successes that will give them?

One more thing I will add, this allows you to not be beholden to only 7 stats. You can add some, you can remove some. I personally recommend adding a stat like Knowledge, to recall things in books and to do medicine checks, and leave Cunning for social smarts like lying and using tools.

Ok that's enough about dice, how about other stuff?

Birds

aka "I wanna play a chicken"

In the car this morning I had the brilliant realization that birds aren't just restricted to ones that fly. I'm sure upon first glance this system might call to mind owls, ravens, and crows. Maybe a few of you thought of some songbirds.

I thought of chickens.

Regardless of the kind of bird you want to play, there's no real benefit to your choice. Sure, you can play a chicken, but why would you want to when there's no real benefit and you can't fly with the rest of your party? There should be some incentive to take certain birds over others.

This also allows you to sprinkle in some bird facts, which, I'm not a bird expert myself, but I've heard people who are into birds REALLY LOVE sharing bird facts.

For example, a crow might have a +1 in Cunning, and a special ability to use improvised tools better, but their drawback is that they are easily distracted by shiny things and have a debuff to Determination when there's distractions around.

An owl might have a +1 in Knowledge, and a special ability to have an extra die when hunting because they're birds of prey, but they have a debuff to Perception during the day time.

Et cetera, et cetera.

I know that D&D 5e did away with racial buffs and debuffs a while ago, but I really like the idea that choosing what bird you want to play has some effect on gameplay. You can still play a bird counter to what they would 'stereotypically' be good at, mind you, but this just gives some extra features and fun things to do as that bird.

In conclusion!

I really wanna play this. Maybe over this weekend I'll convince people to play it with me. I do want to playtest the rules as-is, because while I do have a lot of knowledge in my belt already, I do want to at least see the system run hands-on so that I can at least determine if my current feedback has merit and if there's anything else I can add.

I am also more than happy to write up a formal version of all the stuff I talked about here in my own Google Doc to share.

[boardgameparadisesblog]

How do you make a board game engaging?

In the realm of board games, engagement is the magic ingredient that transforms a good game into an unforgettable experience. Whether you're a seasoned game designer or a casual player looking to enhance your game nights, understanding how to make board games engaging is key. Let's dive into the strategies that can turn a tabletop session into an immersive adventure.

Compelling Theme and Storytelling: Infuse your board game with a captivating theme and narrative. Whether it's a fantastical world, a historical setting, or a mystery to unravel, a strong theme can draw players into the game's universe, making each move feel like a chapter in an epic story.

Intuitive Game Mechanics: Strive for simplicity in game mechanics without sacrificing depth. An easy-to-understand rule set ensures that players can quickly grasp the basics, allowing them to focus on strategy and interaction rather than spending too much time deciphering complex rules.

Player Agency and Decision-Making: Build in meaningful choices that impact the game's progression. Players love having agency, so design your game to allow for various strategies and decision points. This not only enhances engagement but also encourages replayability.

Interactive Elements: Foster player interaction through cooperative gameplay or competitive elements. Games that encourage negotiation, alliance-building, or strategic alliances often create memorable moments and increase engagement by making every player's move relevant to others.

Surprise and Variety: Incorporate surprise elements, such as hidden information, unexpected events, or dynamic game boards. Variety keeps players on their toes and adds an element of unpredictability, preventing the game from becoming too predictable.

Quality Components: Invest in high-quality game components. From intricately designed game pieces to beautifully illustrated cards, the physical components of a board game contribute significantly to its overall appeal. A visually stunning game enhances the tactile pleasure of playing.

Clear Progression and Achievements: Implement a clear sense of progression and achievement. Whether through leveling up characters, unlocking new abilities, or reaching specific milestones, a sense of accomplishment motivates players to stay engaged throughout the game.

Thematic Music and Ambiance: Elevate the gaming experience with thematic music or ambient sounds. Audio elements can create a more immersive atmosphere, enhancing the emotional connection players feel with the game.

Incorporate Player Feedback: Consider player feedback during the design and playtesting phases. Players' insights can uncover areas for improvement and help you fine-tune the game to better suit the preferences of your audience.

Post-Game Reflection: Encourage post-game reflection and discussion. A well-designed game invites players to reflect on their strategies, share memorable moments, and discuss what they enjoyed, fostering a sense of community around the game.

Creating an engaging board game involves a delicate blend of art and science. By focusing on immersive storytelling, intuitive mechanics, and player-centric design, you can craft an experience that not only captures attention but keeps players eagerly coming back to the tabletop for more. So, roll the dice, draw your cards, and embark on the journey of making your board game a truly engaging adventure.

[capygarden]

Sims in Bloom Legacy Challenge for TS3 (◕ᴗ◕✿)

Hello! I really liked playing this legacy challenge in TS4 but found it wasn’t converted to TS3, so I decided to do it myself hehe. Granted I didn’t look that thoroughly (...hehe...) so I do apologise if this has already been converted before! It’s not an exact copy, of course - there are things TS3 doesn’t have that TS4 has and vice versa, but I tried my best to stay true to the original TS4 rules, with a little bit of my own flair sprinkled in hehe. I am play testing this right now, so if there are any problems with this please let me know!

NOTE: As I’m still playtesting this, the rules are subject to change. Obviously if it’s too late to max a skill/complete a rule I added afterwards, you’re not obligated to do it! Sometimes the ideas don’t come to you until way later, and unfortunately I only have one brain cell :’)

Original TS4 rules can be found here. All credits go to @a-sims-garden for the original, I just converted it! ✿

GENERAL RULES

Complete the assigned aspiration and skills for each generation - career is optional if you have completed the aspiration and vice versa, You can complete both if you’re up to it!

There are two colours associated with every generation. These may be used for genetics (berry/banilla), or just clothes and house decor if that isn’t your kinda thing!

This was part of the rules of the original challenge but honestly I’m gonna ignore it, but if you want the extra challenge, here you go: Start each generation with a small house/apartment and 1000 simoleons. If you want to make the challenge harder, you can start each generation on an empty lot with 0 simoleons (rags to riches style!)

Play on any lifespan you wish, but short is not recommended. (I personally play on normal, long if I’m feeling edgy)

For some gens, there are only three to four traits assigned; the rest will be up to you!

I would love to see gameplay of this in TS3! If you want, @ me or use #s3ib or #Sims3InBloom (hehehehe) (◕ ɔ ◕✿)

Gen 1: Daisy (white, yellow)

Gardening has always been your passion. Owning a large, healthy garden is all you’ve ever wanted in life, even if your nails constantly have soil under them and you have so many broken pots you’ve lost count. However, as with many things, gardening also requires a pretty good grasp on the technical, science-y side of things! You find both to be rewarding - best of both worlds, right? You sit and wonder what your family will grow to do, and hope that they will flourish just as beautifully as your garden has. This is the start of your family legacy!

Aspiration: The Perfect Garden

Traits: Eco-Friendly, Clumsy, Loves the Outdoors, Green Thumb, Loner

Career: Gardening

Skills: Gardening, Science (for a PlantSim)

Try not to buy ingredients from the fridge/grocery store often - grow your own produce, go fishing, etc. 

Grow a PlantSim baby

Grow 5 perfect plants

Marry a Sim who shares the ‘Loves the Outdoors’ Trait

Gen 2: Buttercup (yellow, green)

From a young age you’ve always loved animals of all kinds, but you’ve always had a special connection with cats. You spent your childhood playing in your parents’ garden, bonding with stray cats that would wander onto the lot. As a teen you were gifted a laptop for your birthday and you spent most of your time attached to it, always playing video games. As an adult, your love for both video games and cats persisted. While you want to raise a child with love and care like you were, ‘romance’ and ‘marriage’ aren’t things you’re really interested in.

Aspiration: The Cat Herder

Traits: Cat Person, Unflirty, Computer Whiz, Genius

Career: Medicine (pretend you’re a vet)

Skills: Logic, Handiness

Be part of the Nerd social group. Reach the highest level if you can.

Always own at least 3-4 cats - adopting strays is highly recommended!

Never get into a relationship or marry (you can attempt to date for fun but they never work out)

Adopt at least 1 child

Gen 3: Lavender (lilac, dark purple)

You were adopted by your loving parent into a small family, and so you’ve never been much of a people person. Keeping to yourself in your room you discovered your love of inventing, and of course playing your beloved violin. You spend a lot of time on your inventions because every single one has to be perfect!

Aspiration: Monster Maker

Traits: Loner, Perfectionist, Eccentric, Virtuoso

Career: Inventor

Skills: Inventing, Violin (or any instrument you have)

Be part of the Ballet Club as a child and Music Club as a teen, where you pick up violin

Be BFFs with a pet as a child and/or teen

Only have one best friend as a child/teen, and eventually fall in love and marry them

Have a very cluttered house filled with your little inventions - and when you have kids, make all their toys!

Have very high relationships with your entire family and maintain them

 Gen 4: Rose (red, black)

Growing up surrounded by clutter made you crave a brand new scenery, so when you aged up you moved to the big city of Bridgeport to get away from your old home. You crave connection with others, unlike your fairly introverted parent, and so seek to forge many relationships through the wonderful medium of social media!

Aspiration: Super Popular

Traits: Schmoozer, Artistic, Athletic

Career: Blogger (+ any of your choosing bc my dumb ass only just realised this isn’t an actual ts3 career)

Skills: Charisma, Social Networking

Move to Bridgeport (or any city with apartments) and live in an apartment or penthouse for the entirety of your adulthood

Master the social networking skill

Meet your future spouse using the SimFinder app

Have at least 5 best friends (preferably met through online dating/SimFinder)

Gen 5: Forget-me-not (light blue, yellow)

There’s just something satisfying about knowing all eyes are on you. You were born to be in the spotlight; from a young age, you showed great talent in the performing arts! You dream of becoming famous, attending celebrity parties, and owning a large spotless house! But, of course, fame comes at a great cost - if it means you’ll be famous, you’ll even sacrifice the relationship you have with your children...

Aspiration: Superstar Actor

Traits: Commitment Issues, Natural Born Performer, Neat, Perfectionist

Career: Film (Actor Branch)

Skills: Charisma, any music skill 

Be part of the Music Club as a teen

Marry a Shy Sim

When you become a 3-star celebrity, throw a party at least once a week

When you become a 4-star celebrity, divorce your current partner and marry a co-worker

Become a 5-star celebrity

Have a poor relationship with your child/children

 Gen 6: Sakura/cherry blossom (pink, brown)

Witnessing your parents’ troubled marriage, knowing your world could be turned upside down any day…you vowed to never let your children suffer through the same childhood you did, and marry someone you genuinely loved. You spent a lot of time with your pet dog as a child, a distraction from the troubles at home and the constant hovering presence of the paparazzi. You dreamed of a quiet life without fame and fortune, growing old with the one you love.

Aspiration: Surrounded by Family

Traits: Dog Person, Hopeless Romantic, Neurotic, Nurturing

Career: Culinary

Skills: Cooking, Painting

Marry your first love

Always own a dog - have high relationships with all dogs you own

Go on a date at least once a week

Paint a painting for every room of your house

Have a mix of biological and adopted children (your decision to consider adopted children as heir or not!)

Gen 7: Tulip (orange, red)

You’re a wine connoisseur - you love all things nectar, and can tell good wine from bad with just a look. How, at your young age? Uhh… next question! Good nectar begins with good grapes. So you move out into the countryside to live in the middle of nowhere, determined to start a nectar collection all nectar enthusiasts would die for.

Aspiration: Bottomless Nectar Cellar

Traits: Vegetarian, Good, Snob

Career: None

Skills: Nectar Making, Handiness

Join the Scouts as a child

Move to a “rural” town - up to you which one, not really sure if any TS3 EPs comes with a rural town like Henford-on-Bagley lol (I believe Riverview is kind of a rural-ish town?)

Do not get a job

Earn money by selling nectar, and maybe some of your produce!

 Gen 8: Lily (white, green)

As a child you had an overactive imagination and were obsessed with the supernatural. However, even as an adult, this fascination with the arcane hasn’t waned. Determined to prove that your efforts to investigate supernaturals won’t be fruitless, you move to notoriously spooky Moonlight Falls in search of concrete answers.

Aspiration: Mystic Healer

Traits: Bookworm, Insane, Genius, Supernatural Fan

Career: None - sell your elixirs!

Skills: Logic, Alchemy

Be turned into a witch as soon as you move to Moonlight Falls

Earn money by selling your elixirs at the consignment store - you can have part time jobs but they never really work out

Live in Moonlight Falls your whole adult life

Have at least 1 friend of each supernatural species

Marry a werewolf, who helps you find ingredients for alchemy ;)

 Gen 9: Pansy (purple, yellow)

You were surrounded by trees for your entire childhood, and so you’ve always craved a change of scenery. You’ve never seen the ocean, until you spontaneously decide to move to the far off land of Isla Paradiso! Relaxing on the sand, immersed in island culture, partying till the sun comes up - what could be better? 

Aspiration: Grand Explorer

Traits: Lazy, Loves to Swim, Virtuoso, Party Animal

Career: Self-Employed Diver - but don’t work that often!

Skills: Guitar, Diving

Live on a houseboat

Fall in love with a merperson, but wait until you’re an elder to marry them

Host a party (pool party in summer, juice kegger...whatever floats your boat! pun intended) at least once a week

Earn some extra cash by playing for tips

 Gen 10: Hydrangea (dark blue, pink)

While your parent was content with spending all day relaxing on the beach, you’ve always had larger ambitions. The quaint island life is not for you, so as soon as you can you apply for university to build a reputable career for yourself. However, you’ve always found joy in things other people may think are childish, which may distract you from your career from time to time. You dream of living in a large house filled with love and family.

Aspiration: Mansion Baron

Traits: Ambitious, Family Oriented, Childish, Workaholic

Career: Any

Skills: Writing, Charisma 

Graduate University and earn the necessary degree for your career

Marry a sim who also has the Childish trait

Have at least 4 children

Help your children with homework as much as possible (or all the time!) 

[OPTIONAL] Gen 11: Death flower (dark red, white)

You’ve always known you were different from everyone else. Your siblings were always nice to you and had ambitions to do good in the world, but you were born with no such morals. You hear legends of powerful vampires, with inhuman strength and living for multiple lifetimes. You want that power, and will stop at nothing to get it.

Aspiration: Emperor of Evil

Traits: Evil, Kleptomaniac, Snob, Brooding

Career: Criminal

Skills: Mixology

Narrowly escape death twice. Have a loved one (the only one you love and who understands you #emo) revive you using a magic lamp!

After you die the first time, search high and low for a death flower. This can be obtained through various means...

Get turned into a vampire after your second time dying - fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!

Always drink from sims, never plasma

Turn at least 5 sims into vampires

That’s all folks! Let me know how you go~ ✿

Last Edit: 18 November 2022 (changed gen 6 LTW)

[tgcnews]

Scott R Smith Inducted Into TGC Hall of Fame

Scott R Smith has been inducted into The Game Crafter Hall of Fame because his game, Dungeon Drop, won the Game Parts Only Challenge. Congratulations! Their designer interview is below.

Tell us about yourself and how long you've been designing games.

Like many other designers, technically I’ve been designing games since I was a kid. I designed a “mercenary shop” to hire pet monsters for Hero Quest and a Monopoly extension (yes, an extension) that included a hospital for accidents that occurred when two pieces landed on the same space. One summer, my cousins, brother and I completed a fully original space combat game in which each player controlled a fleet of fighters that leveled up with home-baked clay tokens. It was epic. At some point I “grew up” and started turning my energy into creative writing (which I still do), but over the last five years I rediscovered my love of game design. I began teaching a board game design class at my high school, formed a weekly game night with friends, and started churning out my own rough prototypes. This year, I decided to commit more seriously after admiring the work that was happening at The Game Crafter.

Please tell us about Dungeon Drop

Technically, it’s a dungeon crawl, but it takes a uniquely spatial approach to the genre. Players start by selecting characters and dumping a randomized bunch of colored cubes to the tabletop representing a variety of loot and monsters. The game hinges on the “pillar” cubes that players connect to form possible rooms in the dungeon. The idea is simple: find an awesome room and collect what’s inside. I recommend it to anyone who likes a good puzzle.

Where did the idea for this game come from?

For this one, there’s no question the idea came from the contest. I’m a story/theme driven person (I actually have my MA in English), and if I was going to make a game with no printed components, I wanted to be able to infuse the pieces with as much theme as possible. Once I began to imagine a physical dungeon taking shape on the tabletop, I was able to dive into the design.

What makes this game special/unique?

Dungeon Drop’s hook is its visual puzzle. Once players grasp the few rules, they’re able to pour over the possible patterns the pillar cubes present. The best moments come when a player discovers a way to grab a specific slice of loot their opponents missed.

Did you create a design journal for your game? If so, did you publish it somewhere we can link to?

I don’t have a design journal online, though it’s something I’d love to do at some point. I do all my brainstorming on a large graph paper notebook (below is a fragment of some early notes on Dungeon Drop). So much of the design of a game needs to be done on the computer, but I really do enjoy the ease and fluidity of sketching first. Any time I reach a roadblock with a design, I go back to my notebook. It’s home base.

Did you already have the idea for Dungeon Drop in your head before the Game Pieces Only Contest was announced?

When I read the description for the Game Pieces Only Challenge, my reaction was Oh, too bad. Have to wait for the next one. No art? No theme? Just pieces on a table? Not for me. Full abstraction isn’t something I’m usually drawn to, but then again maybe that’s why it was a good contest for me and a good lesson about stretching myself beyond my comfort zone.

What made you decide to enter your game into the contest?

Dungeon Drop was born for the contest. There was no way I was going to miss the deadline!

Would you have been motivated to work on the game as much as you did without the contest?

I can’t thank TGC enough for provided the platform both to self-publish and to create this genuine community of game creators (two incredibly important motivational resources). My first test run was the recent 18 card Hook Box Challenge. I dove into that contest late and learned a lot from the attempt—but one of the big take-aways was discovering the 18 card Facebook group (thanks to Odd Hackwelder for establishing and administrating). That’s something I never would have thought to look for without the contest—I love the micro-communities you come across in the board game world.

Has winning inspired you to enter more contests or design more games?

Of course! Contests are dicey things—the chances of winning are always slim with so many talented people entering and such a wide variety of creative designs. In this one, I really admired the playful energy of Brian LaPorte’s “Ghost,” the unique theming of Aron Emerson’s “Macaw” and the elegance of Gerlach Games’ “Antahpa,” just to name a few. However, the opportunity for real feedback and support from the outside world is worth the risk.

Could you describe any influence The Game Crafter has had on your success as a game designer?

Jumping into the 18 card challenge first helped hit the “design small” concept home for me. Thinking in a compact, limited way first, asking myself just how few elements I need to transmit my core gameplay experience, is enormously helpful. I’d also add that I’m seeing just how important the art of rule design can be. I try to remember that my game is only as good as the version my players understand from the rulebook—the goal is to create a set of rules that is both clear and as fun to read as possible.

What’s next for you?

The only thing more exciting than winning the contest is thinking about what’s next. I’m happy to say that I just signed a contract with Jason Miceli and Darrin Horbal about a future for Dungeon Drop v2.0 with Phase Shift Games. We’re already throwing around some great ideas for new twists on the concept, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to be working with them. In the meantime, I’m playtesting a possible entry in the Solo Game Design Challenge.

Any last words of encouragement or advice to all of the designers reading this?

The deeper I get into game design, the more clearly I see the balance between designing for “me” (meaning designing the kinds of games I would want to play myself) and designing for an audience. Get caught too far in “design for me” mode, and I get lost with an unapproachable product. Get caught too far in designing for an audience, and I lose my creative drive to produce something new. Managing this balance is key and it helps if you have a trustworthy playtesting group that does not involve your own family. My wife is wonderful, creative, critical thinker, but there are real limits to my expectations for her to give me feedback (no game is worth a marriage!). My small game night group at home and larger playtest group in Boston (Game Maker’s Guild) are invaluable resources. Like many designers, I’m an introvert, but finding other people to share the experience with is, after all, what board gaming is all about.

[alexandre-szybiak]

Puzezl - Level Design Process - part 2

Back to part 1

New mechanic

Introducing ladders which adds a layer of verticality to the gameplay, the tall shape of the level reflects that idea.

Practice

Here you can practice ladders and vertical gameplay.

New mechanic mixed with core mechanic

Now that it is well established, the ladder mechanic is mixed with the core idea of the game, which adds a new rule: ladders can be broken, becoming ghost ladders that can’t be climbed. I kept things very simple because the idea can be tricky to grasp. However, I made sure that:

You have to break the ladder, so you see the effect

You have to fall through it, so you experience yourself the fact that it’s now a ghost ladder

All of this increases the odds that you understand the mechanic.

Practice

Here you get to practice the new ladder mechanic.

Combining building blocks

Possibilities in level design starts to open here since I now have enough small building blocks to combine and create interesting situations. Usually, playtesters after applying the learned method of fixing ladders took a bit of time before realizing they have to move the whole level around the smallest piece on the left, creating a small “ha-ha” moment.

New building block & scenery

Introducing bridges and the fact that they have a “ghost” state like ladders. I thought it was a good time to use dramatic scenery as a reward, since bridges are good at that. Crossing a bridge usually means taking a big step in an adventure and gives a feeling of progression.

More practice

Bridge mechanic reinforcement

Twist

Another twist, after a puzzle with a lot of piece, this one only has two. The layout of the level force you to complete the puzzle and the doors open. But you can’t go through fixed bridges, preventing you from reaching the door. You have to take a step back and break the puzzle apart again. It’s a very simple level to solve but introduces the idea that sometimes you need to use mechanics in opposite ways.

Wow moment

Here I wanted to give the player a greater challenge but also a wow moment, so I set up this huge piece group that feels like a tool or key to activate the ladders. While experimenting, I found it was quite entertaining to use so I put it here to reward the player for learning many new mechanics. 

Continue to part 3

[miketownsends]

all of your blogging about DnD has got me interested, but I've been wondering, how hard is it to get into it? I know the game's been around for decades and there's loads of material to catch up on so like, what would be a good starting point?

ah, i’m glad i could pique your interest!

first off: yeah, the game has been around for decades, but it’s not a situation where you need to understand the older stuff to play. honestly, i jumped in with 5th edition about a year and a half ago, not knowing a damn thing about the game - hell, i picked a race and class and my friends basically built my character for me bc i had no idea what i was doing, lol.

for a starting point, i’d definitely say 5th edition. it’s very streamlined and user-friendly, but there’s still enough customization to be interesting. (it’s also the most recent so it tends to be what most people are playing these days, though of course some people are still playing older editions too.) the hard part, generally, is getting a group of people together, but you can look online, or get together a group of IRL friends. the other, potentially harder part is finding someone to be the dungeon master, or DM; they’re the ones that shape the story, and generally they have to have a pretty good grasp of the rules, though i’ve known people who have started off DMing with no prior DnD experience and been fine (and i DM and am constantly having to check the rules, or learning things i wasn’t aware of, or whatever).

to play, the only thing you really NEED is a Player’s Handbook so that you can make your character (well, and some dice i guess, but i mean there are apps for that). (but i’m a dice hoarder and i think dice are really cool so i advocate for physical dice if at all possible.) a DM will also need a Monster Manual and the Dungeon Master’s Guide. the books are a little pricey, but i won’t lie to you - you can pretty easily find PDFs of the books with a quick Google search. (i think it’s worth having physical copies of the books bc i hate flipping through PDFs, but if you wanted to get started but don’t have the money to shell out for the books right away, Google’s got your back. there’s also lots of supplemental stuff, and some stuff they’re playtesting, but i think just starting with the basics is probably plenty.)

i also really recommend even just watching an episode or two of Critical Role (or any other DnD stream that may be out there, but that’s the one i’m familiar with, lol). i’d been playing DnD for about a year before i started watching, and it helped me really GET how to play - not so much on the technical end (though there was some of that too), but more on the “you can do whatever you want” end.

ANYWAY i have no idea if i answered your question but i hope i got some of it???? if you have more questions feel free to hit me up, bc i think DnD is great and i think everyone should play it~

[jacethebeltsculptor]

Magic the Voltron-ing

So, this is one mostly dedicated to @pidge-midge, because I hadn’t even thought of Voltron/MTG headcanons. A couple notes- 1, this applies only to Legendary Defender, and not the old Voltron. Second- I love this crossover so goddamn much you guys oh my god.  SHIRO FAVOURITE COLOURS:White/Green/Black FAVOURITE DECK:Abzan Midrange, any format it works in MISC:Shiro is a pretty plain Magic player. He’s courteous, kind, and offers any advice he can to other players. He likes Abzan because it offers him a range of tools to handle any threat, and a flexible game plan. He likes having options. Among the Paladins, he’s the resident best guy to playtest with, and he’s always got a way to help you improve. He’s also crazy good at manipulating opponents in Commander- nobody at the table wants to attack him, because he’s only going for the biggest threat at the table. Then he gets scary, and wins. KEITH FAVOURITE COLOURS:Red/White FAVOURITE DECK:Pauper R/W Metalcraft MISC:Keith is the resident aggro player among the Paladins. If you sit down across from him, you know he’s coming at you fast. He doesn’t really like Control or Midrange, or Combo, because they’re usually way. way more complicated than they need to be. It’s not that he doesn’t know how to play them- rather, it’s just way harder to optimize them. Plus, he likes the proactive element of always being on the front foot. He’s a bit intimidating to play against, thanks to his generally intense focus on the game, and one of the more competitive players on the team. He’s a mainstay of the top 4 at FNM, and as a result, the rest of the team tends to playtest against him to see if they can beat aggro. Keith’s favourite games are the ones that come down to the wire- where minute differences in sequencing and skill, rather than the luck of the draw, decide the outcome. As a result, Keith really, really likes Pauper. It’s a format where the cards are simple but powerful, and it takes deep knowledge of your deck to come out victorious. LANCE FAVOURITE COLOURS:Black/White/Red FAVOURITE DECK:Tariel, Reckoner of Souls EDH MISC:Dragons are awesome. Angels are super awesome. Demons are super mega hella awesome. Lance just likes playing with cool and cool sounding cards- from removal spells with badass names to cards with some of the most intensely cool abilities, Lance loves them all. He’s really competitive, and he’ll try super hard to win, but all of his decks are based around the coolest card in his possession. Right now, he’s in love with Indomitable Creativity, and has been trying to break it since it was spoiled. He wants to win, but to do so by playing the coolest deck imaginable. 2.00$ mythics are a staple of Lance’s decks, and while they don’t *normally* work, it’s a thing of beauty when they do. He’s preview season buddies with Hunk- the two will gush together about how the new card spoiled is “the most broken thing ever” or “how could they print something this good?”. Lance has a personal distaste for Blue mages though- countermagic is almost always his Achilles heel, and he still doesn’t really know how to play around it. He beat Keith one time- literally one time- and won’t shut up about it.   PIDGE FAVOURITE COLOURS:Blue/White/Black FAVOURITE DECK:A dozen flavours of Gifts Ungiven  MISC:Pidge, while not the most competitive of the group, is probably the best at the game. She’s won every “what will win the pro tour” bet four years running, and the only person still betting against her at this point is Lance. Her grasp of technical play is absolutely stunning, and she’s always thinking of new angles to hit the format. She loves Gifts Ungiven decks because they’re built under fundamentally different rules than the rest of Magic, and offer consistency and a control/combo gameplan to tweak to her liking. In Commander, she’s known as the one that durdles until she just plain wins, and her Sydri deck is feared around the galaxy. Pidge, like Keith, usually hits the top of the stands, but she’s just as happy to lose an intriguing game. She’s also got a deeper understanding of the rules than just about anybody, and had planned to become a Judge at some point. Also, Magic was pretty popular in her family- she and Matt would play for *hours* with his collection. She has a very fond memory of them building deck after deck with his cards, playing one game with them, and tearing them apart to do something new. Their parents made them clean up the mess, but it took hours.  HUNK FAVOURITE COLOURS:White/Red/Green FAVOURITE DECK:Mayael of the Anima Zoo EDH MISC:Hunk is the biggest timmy out there. He loves ramp decks and big creatures, and makes stompy sound effects whenever he attacks. He’s not really concerned with winning, only having an awesome time. He mourns when his creatures die, and combs through spoiler season for new “friends”. He’s named every single creature in his Mayael deck, and has a page in his binder dedicated to the cards he’s retired from it. He doesn’t play much 60 card, save for a couple of casual decks, but he’s always organizing Commander events. He loves coming up with crazy formats, too! One of his game nights involved using the training deck to create holograms of spells and creatures, while in another, a rule was made that you had to charades your way through all of your game actions. That said, Hunk is like, everyone at the LGS’s best friend, and often invites people over for a night of Commander and food. Most of his sleeves have a crumb or two in them, so he replaces them often to keep them from getting grody.  ALLURA FAVOURITE COLOURS:Blue/White FAVOURITE DECK:Blue/White Dragons, featuring the Ojutai clan MISC:Allura learned to play from Hunk, and she *loves* the story. He showed her a bunch of Ojutai dragons, and she thought they were gorgeous. She doesn’t really get the rules perfectly, which is fine, since she mainly plays with Hunk, and a lot of the cultural background we have to help us understand, she doesn’t have. Still, she loves the game, and she listens to Hunk tell her about the plot and the Gatewatch with absolute glee. Her favourite cards all have really striking artwork, and Watercourser from Origins is a personal favourite. Allura might be super-casual, but she’s learning quickly, and Hunk wants to help her build a Commander deck soon. Plus, she’s always happy to have a bonding experience for Team Voltron.  CORAN FAVOURITE COLOURS:Red/White FAVOURITE DECK:Boros Battalion/Soldier Tribal MISC:Like Allura, Coran learned from Hunk. He’s built a Boros soldier deck from Hunk’s RTR block draft chaff for his military pride- he calls it a victory for the Battalion when he wins. Coran has had to be talked out of holding a memorial service when somebody blocked his Captain of the Watch. Coran will literally never concede, ever, and he’s known for his impressive bravado when flunging- that is to say, attacking with everything because you lose anyway. He and Allura also play together, sometimes, and their enthusiasm and passion for the game is always a nice reminder for the rest of the team by they play.  BONUS ROUND  ZARKON:This guy only plays the exact same list that won the last Pro Tour. His only Commander deck is Yidris Ad Nauseam, and it’s all foil. He has a Powered, all-foil cube, the best Modern decks, and a trade binder so stuffed with money that it has its own page on MTGGoldfish. He’s the worst guy to play with- he’s rude, gets pissy when he loses- a problem made even worse by the fact that he ALMOST NEVER LOSES- and responds to most new spoilers with “It isn’t good enough for Constructed”. He wins almost every event he joins, and usually does so undefeated. He probably plays Lantern Control on MTGO, too. Fuck this guy. 

[mnniska]

Rock Paper Feelings v1.4

It’s been two months since Rock Paper Feelings 1.3, and version 1.4 is now finished. This iteration (called The Clarity update internally) has a ton of tweaks and we are very interested in seeing what you think of it. In this post, I will go over the problems we noticed in version 1.3, and how we have attempted to solve them.

Before I start - please note that we are looking for playtesters! If you are interested, follow this link to sign up as a playtester https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScEkERC3weqPQ4waHB-GAM_sIeaIIdvfOjBKunO8FGYDhUUqg/viewform?usp=sf_link

Problem 1 - Unclear rules

In version 1.3 it was hard for players to give constructive feedback on our gameplay - as the rules were hard to even grasp in the first place. Players would give feedback on our faltering communication of the game’s rules rather than the game itself.

Solution 1 - better tutorial

For version 1.4, we have attempted to fix this by improving and polishing the introduction of the game. Based on playtesting, we narrowed down a number of misconceptions about the rules of the game, then we changed and added feedback to the tutorial to address them.

Solution 2 - Streamlined rules

However, a game with convoluted and confusing rules will be hard to play no matter how much your tutorial rocks. Some of our systems were hard to grasp and were quite convoluted - so we streamlined them to make them inherently more intuitive.

An example is the level up system. Previously - to level up one had to

a) have fought X amount of battles

b) have intense enough emotions

c) Each level up is tied to a gameplay-driven condition. This starts the character development. For example, to level up in cautiousness, a bird must lose a fight while watching a friend win a fight.

We felt as though B and C were fine and were closely tied to our emotional system. The first condition, however, had nothing to do with emotions and added another condition to an already complex system. It did serve a purpose however - to ensure players would not level up their birds too often, thus breaking the game balance.

To amend this, birds are now reset emotionally when levelling up. A bird will lose their intense emotions which allowed them to level up and must climb again on the emotional scale. Thus feelings in themselves acts as XP in this new system. We’ll have to wait and see if emotions can act as XP, or if our various emotion-intensifying mechanics breaks the progression curve for birds.

Solution 3 - More feedback

A ton of more feedback has also been added to more clearly communicate what is going on. For example, birds will now sit down when resting and the fight button now has tooltips letting the player know why a fight cannot be started. Lots of smaller things like that.

Problem 2 - players are not planning ahead!

Rock Paper Feelings is not deep if one only focuses on winning the current battle. Unlike many other RPG’s, players can only choose the placement of their birds. There are no battle commands and no movement points. The depth comes when one is trying to manipulate their birds towards a specific emotion while still surviving the current adventure.  A player can fight the current battle and only focus on winning - but if they do they’ll have to face the consequences in the future battles, where they will be properly destroyed. This offers a new layer of strategic depth (in theory!).

Players were not planning ahead in version 1.3, and for good reason! We gave very little information on what the next battles were - players could only see what the next adventure’s main emotion were through the map, which is seperated from gameplay. Another issue was that there was no distinction between levels which allowed the players to prepare for future battles, and levels designed to test  if players had fulfilled the emotional goal.

Solution 1 - prep here, test here

To solve this, we have added this distinction and now call levels either trial or prep levels. Trial levels are longer, more emotionally homogeneous, and enemies have higher levels. To enter a trial level with the wrong emotions will almost certainly grant a loss, forcing one to retreat and adjust their team’s emotions.

Solution 2 - more information!

The minimap in the battle scene will now also show the next trial level - giving players a clearer goal of what the next major challenge will be. We have also added the minimap to the emotional report as well - so that players are constantly reminded of what their goal is.

Problem 3 - The UI is hard to read!

Most of Rock Paper Feelings is spent looking at the game’s UI. Working on the previously mentioned solutions, it was natural to also update the UI continuously so that it could host them. Almost all UI elements have been updated to be more readable and better looking. I feel as though we’ve still got ways to go with the UI (particularly in the battle and map screen) but this is a step forward.

I am writing a second post explaining the design process behind the new UI - but that’s another blogpost! 

Old UI at the top, new UI at the bottom 

Time for testing!

That is Rock Paper Feelings 1.4! Now, a period of testing begins. I will try the game on friends and non-friends to see if our fixes have solved any of the game’s problems or if further iteration is needed. (It usually is!)

Would you like to playtest Rock Paper Feelings?

Follow this link to sign up as a playtester and download version 1.4!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScEkERC3weqPQ4waHB-GAM_sIeaIIdvfOjBKunO8FGYDhUUqg/viewform?usp=sf_link

That’s all! BYE

[cardboardedison]

The Process: Dark Moon: Shadow Corporation by Evan Derrick

In The Process, board game designers walk us through the process of creating their game from start to finish, and how following their path can help others along theirs.

In this installment, Evan Derrick describes how he created the Shadow Corporation expansion to Dark Moon.

Process

I made a happy discovery when I began designing Dark Moon: Shadow Corporation: Expansions are so much easier to design. The core system was set in stone and had been proven to be successful, so I simply needed to iterate on top of it. I immediately discovered why designers like Alan Moon and Donald X. Vaccarino put out a seemingly endless stream of expansions for their popular designs. When the development time is as much as 80% less than creating a new game from scratch, it’s not hard to see the appeal of creating five expansions in the time it takes to design one new game.

I had two central design goals when I designed Dark Moon. The first was to create a similar experience to its spiritual big brother, Battlestar Galactica, but in a third of the playtime, and the second was to ratchet up the paranoia and mistrust between players as quickly and intensely as possible. When I sat down to design DM:SC, I didn’t just want to preserve those two goals, I wanted to improve upon them. To that end, DM:SC both shortens the playtime without sacrificing any of the gameplay as well as amplifies the mistrust that players experience. If you experienced a lot of finger-pointing during games of Dark Moon, be prepared to point twice as many fingers when you add in DM:SC.

The Takeaway: Expansions are simpler to design since you’ve already done the hard work of building the foundation.

Theory

I’ll let you in on a little secret: I hate that Infected players can publicly “reveal” themselves in Dark Moon. In my designer heart of hearts I never wanted to give players that option. The fun of the game comes from the paranoia and mistrust which, let’s be honest, pretty much evaporates when all of the Infected players have publicly revealed. “If you’re Infected and you played poorly and the other players quarantined you and took you out of the game, too bad! Play better next time!” That was never going to work, however. If a new player (especially one that wasn’t great at lying) was dealt an Infected card, it wouldn’t be much fun for them if they were chucked into quarantine 10 minutes into the game simply because they didn’t have a convincing poker face.

Unfortunately, this means that some Infected players jump the gun and reveal themselves early when they really shouldn’t. Those shiny Infected actions are just too tempting! And the players don’t realize I included those in the game as a release valve, not as a viable strategy (and why should they?).

So for DM:SC I wanted to correct that behavior, which led to the evacuation ship.

Thematically, the evil corporation Naguchi-Masaki has heard about the pathogen spreading across their mining colony and they want a sample of it for their weapons division. They have “helpfully” sent an evacuation ship to Titan hoping that an Infected miner will get on board. The ship, however, has a limited number of seats, so only a few players can actually get on.

Mechanically, players can vote one another on and off the ship, and once it’s full they can vote for the ship to take off. As soon as the evacuation ship takes off, the game immediately ends and players check the status cards of everyone who was on the ship. If everyone on the ship is Uninfected, the Uninfected team wins, but if a single Infected player managed to sneak onto the ship then the Infected team wins. This means that Infected players cannot reveal themselves early, since it would be simple for the Uninfected team to use their voting power to load themselves onto the ship and take off.

The evacuation ship is easily the proudest I’ve ever been of a design mechanism. It accomplished all of my design goals in one fell swoop:

Shorter playtime: Since the game ends as soon as the ship takes off, sessions can be even shorter now without sacrificing any of the fun. Ending the game early and watching each player that was on the ship slowly flip over their status card is an amazing climax to the game.

More paranoia: If you thought it was easy to point fingers in Dark Moon before, wait until people start voting one another onto the evacuation ship! It easily adds paranoia on top of paranoia.

De-incentivize early Infected reveals: Infected players are incentivized to stay hidden as long as possible now. Publicly revealing themselves isn’t a path to victory now, but to defeat, as the Uninfected team will just hop on the ship and take off.

The Takeaway: Highlight what worked best with the original game and make sure the expansion doesn’t do away with the game’s strengths. Instead, make sure the expansion amplifies the original game’s strengths.

Theory Part 2

When I started designing DM:SC, the evacuation ship wasn’t necessarily the centerpiece of the expansion (which it is now). I threw in the kitchen sink of things I had discarded for the original game but had always wanted.

The first was a brand new team called the Company Man. If you receive the Company Man Status card, you’re playing to win all by yourself (it was inspired by the Tanner role from One Night Ultimate Werewolf). Unlike the other teams, surviving isn’t part of your win condition. Instead, your goal is to collect a sample of the pathogen and send it back to the company, no matter what the cost.

The second were blackmail cards (which eventually became Threat cards in the final version), a mechanism that had been floating around since the very first version of Dark Moon. Every player is dealt one of these cards at the beginning of the game, each card has specific instructions that that player must follow, and each instruction is for the player to do something incredibly suspicious. Thematically, the company is blackmailing the players to do something horrible (throw other players in quarantine, recklessly throw in all their dice on a skill check, etc.). Mechanically, this forces Uninfected players to act even more suspicious (the consequences for NOT performing the action on your card are much, much worse) and gives the Infected players an opportunity to act.

The main problem with both of these mechanisms is that they’re fairly complex. They require all of the players at the table to have a really strong grasp of the game and how it works and can be disastrous for new players. Misreading your Threat card or failing to understand the Company Man’s victory conditions can throw a wrench into the entire machine. Both add some fascinating tension to the game but they also ask a lot of the players.

Even for an expansion it felt like too much. The evacuation ship, the Company Man, and the Threat cards ratcheted up the learning curve significantly, even for experienced Dark Moon players. I was loathe to get rid of anything, however. Which is when Stephen Buonocore, the president of Stronghold Games and publisher of Dark Moon, made a simple yet brilliant suggestion: “Why don’t we just make them optional modules?”

Boom. That solved everything. The core of DM:SC is the evacuation ship and is included in every game, but the Company Man and Threat cards are now optional modules that you can add to the game if you want to. This allows players to get a good grasp of the expansion and its new rules at their own pace. Fearless groups can throw everything together for their first game, while most will introduce the modules slowly.

The Takeaway: Take particularly complex mechanisms and label them “modules,” thereby encouraging players to introduce them slowly rather than all at once.

Playtesting

The playtesting process for this expansion was so much easier than playtesting a new design. Whereas Dark Moon took 2-3 years of consistent development and playtesting, DM:SC was done in only a few months. Rather than make sure an entire game works from start to finish, you’re simply testing to make sure that the expansion doesn’t radically break the original design. Additionally, you have a built-in audience that is fairly eager to try out all of the new stuff you’ve created, making it that much simpler to gather playtesters.

From an emotional standpoint, playtesting a new design can be a fairly grueling process. You have high hopes that this version is the one that’s really going to work, only to watch it crash and burn in the ashes of your shattered dreams. But with an expansion you figure out what works and what doesn’t fairly quickly. You have the context of the original game to work within and that makes the design process substantially easier.

The Takeaway: Playtesting an expansion is much easier to do, given that you have a built-in audience as well as a successful design.

About

Evan Derrick is the designer of Dark Moon, Dark Moon: Shadow Corporation, and the upcoming Detective: City of Angels. He is the Creative Director for Van Ryder Games and oversees the art direction for all of their titles. He also has no free time, although he recognizes that’s really his own fault. You can email him at evan@vanrydergames.com or find him on Twitter at @evanderrick.

Cardboard Edison is supported by our patrons on Patreon.

ADVISERS: 421 Creations, Peter C. Hayward, Aaron Vanderbeek

SENIOR INVENTORS: Steven Cole, John du Bois, Chris and Kathy Keane (The Drs. Keane), Joshua J. Mills, Marcel Perro, Behrooz Shahriari, Shoot Again Games

JUNIOR INVENTORS: Ryan Abrams, Joshua Buergel, Luis Lara, Aidan Short, Jay Treat

ASSOCIATES: Robert Booth, Stephen B Davies, Scot Duvall, Doug Levandowski, Aaron Lim, Nathan Miller, Anthony Ortega, Mike Sette, Kasper Esven Skovgaard, Isaias Vallejo, Matt Wolfe

APPRENTICES: Darren Broad, Kiva Fecteau, Scott Gottreu, Nicole Kline, Scott Martel Jr., James Meyers, The Nerd Nighters, Neil Roberts, Marcus Ross, Sean Rumble, VickieGames

[gamedesigner-teamspirit-blog]

Playtest Notes

NC: No Comment

(Nicholas M.)

Alejandro

Clarity - 5: Very precise mapping.

Flow - 5: When you first play, it’s a bit confusing; but, after a couple of turns, it’s easy to play it.

My Note: I think this is typical of many strategy games.

Balance - 5: Strategy is a (greek style word).

My Note: Couldn’t read the greek style word.

Duration - 5: The longevity doesn’t matter when its fun.

Integration - 5: Easy to grasp and learn the rules.

Fun - 5: League of legend/Risk clone tension and decision making.

Weaknesses: NC

Strengths: NC

Change: NC

Overall Notes: Not much to comment on, he thinks the game is good.

(Zabkiel)

Leonardo Orta

Clarity - 3: “Could be less complicated but easy to pick-up”

My Note: The game itself was inherently easy to pick-up which was good so

Flow - 3: “A little much going on”

My Note: Understandably a problem with the abilities and keeping track of stats, we changed the way the game plays by making it a resource based game.

Nicholas M.’s Note: Mechanics were still rough at this point in development. The players’ originally needed to keep track of several multi-turn counters that were removed.

Balance - 3: “Could use some work with systems”

My Note: No explanation on what systems to change but, we again did change many of the mechanics of the games including the ability turns and points gained by both teams.

Duration - 2: “If systems were bit shorter, the game would be perfect.”

My Note: No clarification on “systems”, but changes have been made which have changed the pace and strategy within the game.

Integration - 4: NC

Fun - 4: NC

Weaknesses: Length

My Note: The length of the game depends on the grasp the player has on the game. Like any strategy game, challenge will add more time to think of upcoming moves and plays.

Strengths: The decision making

My Note: Yeah the game is more of a strategy game than anything else.

Change: “Cut some mechanics down”

My Note: We have made a good bit of changes

Overall Notes:

[swipestream]

Esper Genesis Review

Esper Genesis is an ambitious project that is attempting to utilize the 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons based OGL to create a space opera counterpart to D&D’s fantasy implementation. Like Dungeons and Dragons, the Esper Genesis rules aren’t fully encompassed in a single volume. Just as Dungeons and Dragons is split into the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual, Esper Genesis will eventually be comprised of the Core Manual, the Threats Database, and the Master Technician’s Guide.

This review is focused on the Core Manual (the only product currently available), but like Dungeons and Dragons and the Player’s Handbook, most players will only need this book to play the game, and the Core Manual provides most of the rules that will govern play, so it serves as a good overview of what the system will look like.

Examination of Contents Commencing in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

This review is based on the PDF of the product, and the physical books should be available later this summer (as of the time of this review). The book is 304 pages, including an ad for the other upcoming books, and the Crucible Core, the organized play program for the game. There is also a two-page list of Kickstarter backers and play testers, a four-page index, and a three-page character sheet.

The production values of this book are comparable to most top tier RPG publishers, with some striking art and clear, attractive formatting. The flourishes, such as borders around sidebars, take on a more “holographic” look, and stat blocks for things like threats or powers use the same format as the Dungeons and Dragons books.

There is impressive artwork throughout the book, but the artwork on the cover, as well as several pieces showcasing starships or the species native to the setting are particularly impressive.

Introduction

The introduction gives a brief description of roleplaying in general, the core resolution mechanic, the three aspects of play, and the underlying assumptions of the setting. The core mechanic (d20 + modifier compared to a difficulty number) and the aspects of play (exploration, social interaction, and combat) should be familiar to players of 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons.

The explanation of espers and the Crucibles sets the broad expectations of what the setting is—it is a space opera game set across an entire galaxy, where the player characters are people that have developed extraordinary powers, tied to the ancient, lost technologies that created the Crucibles, which generate the cosmic energy known as Sorium.

Character Creation

The next chapter of the book walks players through the steps of creating a character, as well as showing the XP progression chart, as well as ability score and proficiency bonuses, which all match those same items from the OGL.

The steps, as laid out, are as follows:

Create a Concept

Choose a Race

Choose a Class

Generate Ability Scores

Select Your Equipment

Finalize Your Character

One thing that stands out is that race seems to be used as a term here and in the next chapter, but the races are also referred to as species in multiple places as well. Terminology seems to be used to highlight the similarity to the D&D rules, even though other 5th edition based games, like Adventures in Middle-earth, utilize different terms like “culture.”

Races

This section includes nine species that are prominent in the setting, and most of those species have subspecies associated with them. In addition to the species presented in this section, there is a sidebar that notes that the Master Technician’s Guide will have more rules for randomly determining species of NPCs, underscoring that these are the most common, not the only, sentient species in the galaxy.

The races that appear in this section are:

Ashenforged (Artificially engineered from the dead)

Belare (Energy beings in containment suits)

Dendus (Tentacle haired inventors)

Eldori (Spiritual and philosophical humanoids)

Human (With multiple subspecies based on where they grew up)

Kesh (Shape shifting explorers)

Matokai (Reptilian creatures associated with different elemental energies)

Promethean (Neo-humans with genetic modifications)

Valna (Catlike hunters)

Many of these species lean heavily on sci-fi tropes, but I was pleasantly surprised that there were fewer direct correlations between existing D&D races and the races in the game. Except for humans, the closest D&D correlation is probably the Matokai and the Dragonborn, but the subspecies of the Matokai are more significantly different than just having a different breath weapon and a different damage resistance.

Classes

The classes chapter details the various available classes and what abilities they pick up at each level. In case you are a player that doesn’t come into the hobby from Dungeons and Dragons, the classes represent, broadly, the adventuring occupations of the characters. When a character gains a level, they get some static benefits, and they may have a choice between multiple paths that reflect exactly how they pursue that profession.

The classes that appear in this section are as follows:

Adept (Channels supernatural power through willpower)

Cybermancer (Analogous to the D&D Warlock in mechanics, manipulates powers by tapping into “online” avatars)

Engineer (Analogous to D&D Cleric in mechanics, uses toolkits to summon, modify, boost, heal, and attack using Techniques)

Hunter (Analogous to D&D Ranger in mechanics and function)

Melder (Channels supernatural powers to produce external effects)

Sentinel (Analogous to D&D Paladin in mechanics, melded to combat cybernetics to boost energy to weapons when attacking and to produce Techniques that can boost allies)

Specialist (Analogous to D&D Rogues in mechanics, with the option to pick up some powers based on subclass choices later)

Warrior (Analogous to D&D Fighters in mechanics, with the option to pick up some powers based on subclass choices later)

While it is explained more fully in a later chapter, instead of powers being magic and divided into Arcane and Divine, the powers that classes gain are instead divided into Channeling or Forging. Channelers have powers that allow them to directly manipulate cosmic energy, while characters with Forging abilities have powers that allow them to interact with technology in ways that regular users cannot.

The Engineer, Hunter, and Sentinel are probably the easiest to grasp for people that have played D&D 5th edition, as they gain a number of “tech slots” that they can spend on prepared techniques, and those techniques have levels, much like D&D spells. Forging-based characters will use their toolkits to assemble devices that can perform microsurgery, or that can assemble into mechanical allies, for example.

Channelers don’t have a direct analogy in the D&D Player’s Handbook, but borrow a bit from the point based spellcasting optional rules in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, and from the Mystic class that was released for playtest in Unearthed Arcana on the Wizards of the Coast website. Channeling talents have a level, and it costs a certain amount of points to trigger that ability, but the Esper Powers chapter has more rules on using more points to channel powers at a higher level, or to attempt to channel a power when a character doesn’t have enough points to trigger them.

Warriors and Specialists each have three subclass options, one of which, for each, gives them a channeling progression, while each class also has two subclass options that only gains “powers” that are essentially represented as abilities that can be used between rests or that grant situational bonuses. In D&D terms, each class has two non-spellcasting subclasses and one spellcasting subclass.

I wanted to particularly mention the Cybermancer, because I think the class flavor is a good example of what Esper Genesis does well when the game is at its best. The Cybermancer is very much like the Esper Genesis version of the Warlock, but the flavor feels very rooted in a science fiction game. The Persona that the Cybermancer manifests is essentially an avatar in the SIM, the computer network used throughout the galaxy. While Cybermancers are channelers, meaning they directly manipulate cosmic energy without manipulating a toolkit or implants, they learn their techniques by interfacing with what their Persona learns on the SIM. It is a wonderful mirror of the Warlock/Patron relationship, but made into something different and appropriate for a science fiction setting.

Personality and Background

In this chapter, there are details for character height and weight based on species, alignment, languages, backgrounds, and Esper Genesis. Backgrounds, for anyone unfamiliar with D&D 5th edition, grant a few skills, some gear, a situational benefit thematic to the background (such as always getting food and lodging from a certain organization, as an example), as well as traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws, which can be roleplayed to gain Inspiration.

I am not a fan of utilizing alignment in this setting. Even in D&D 5th edition, alignment has limited mechanical impact, but there are still cosmic forces from other planes of existence that literally embody those alignments. In a science fiction setting, I worry that alignment becomes permission to treat some NPCs differently with impunity, which even in the most black and white space opera seems to run counter to the core elements of the stories.

The Esper Genesis table has a list of circumstances under which the character first found out that they have Esper powers. Since all players have at least some minor Esper power that the average member of their species doesn’t have (even if it’s just a little bit of a boost on some skills because of their natural synergy with cybernetic implants), this chart is potentially relevant to all characters in the game, and can provide some nice additional backstory for characters that want it.

Equipment

The Equipment chapter has details on how much it costs to buy a variety of gear in the game, including weapons, armor, and vehicles. Cubil, the currency of the galaxy, can be physical in form, or just numbers in an account that can be transferred as long as everyone has access to the SIM.

While there are several hand to hand weapons, there are more ranged weapons than D&D has, and many of those weapons have the option to attack an area rather than firing at a single target, changing the attack from an active attack roll to a save made by targets in the area that has been fired upon.

Weapons that have the high-velocity or explosive trait either do an extra die or double damage to characters that either don’t have high tech armor or a PSD (Portable Shield Device). It’s actually a nice way to keep the damage ranges in the same expected range that D&D establishes, while still explaining that high tech weapons would tear up characters from low tech worlds that don’t have natural protection from those weapons.

Some weapons have a recoil trait, meaning that a character needs a minimum strength score to fire that weapon without a penalty. There is a relatively short list of weapons compared to other granular science fiction games, but there is a sidebar mentioning that the damage from an auto-pistol, for example, could be projectiles, plasma bolts, or radiation blasts, and to achieve that effect, leave all of the other game stats the same, and just change the damage type to piercing, radiant, or necrotic damage.

While not fully detailed, forged weaponry is mentioned as something that will be detailed in the Master Technician’s Guide, and represent items made from ancient, lost technology, or experimental gear that is analogous to D&D magic items. They can be made, but not reliably mass produced, and may produce more impressive results than the gear commonly available.

Vehicles are touched on in this section, but only to the extent of displaying the price, carrying capacity, and speed of various planetary vehicles. Starships appear later in the book.

Customization Options

The Customization Options detailed in this book deal with multi-classing and introducing feats into the game. Multi-classing allows exceptional characters to start taking levels in a second class to gain some of those benefits, and feats are special abilities that expand a character’s capabilities in one specific area.

Notable to players familiar with 5th edition D&D—Forging and Channeling don’t stack when multiclassing. In other words, in 5th edition D&D, there is a consolidated spell slot progression for spellcasters that multi-class, which can be used for both Arcane and Divine spells. Forging and Channeling don’t work the same in this setting, so while your character can get a special progression chart if you multi-class between, for example, Engineer and Hunter, or Melder and Adept, an Engineer/Adept would be limiting their progression in both Forging and Channeling.

Feats are similar to the feats that appear in D&D 5th edition. Some of them have effects that often grant a bonus to an ability score and a situational bonus to an ability, as an example. However, there are more feats that modify ranged weapons, explosives, or vehicles.

Using Ability Scores, Adventures and Exploration, and Combat

With very few exceptions, these chapters have the same content as the similarly named D&D chapters in the Player’s Handbook. This section includes how and when to use ability checks, when various skills apply, outlines of what exploration or social resolutions might look like in the game, and rules spelling out how to determine initiative and procedures in combat.

The very minor expansions to the rules involve how high gravity, low gravity, and zero gravity might affect various situations, and those rules are usually very simple and logically extrapolated from how the core OGL rules handle similar situations.

 Starships and Space Travel

The Starships and Space Travel chapter details the various size of ships, how combat differs for starships versus ground based combat, and gives some sample stat blocks for smaller ships, as well as NPC stats for ships of those same sizes.

Combat works very similar to ground based combat, except that all the characters on a ship act collectively. Characters can perform various maneuvers that can either target their own ship, or a ship within sensor range of the ship, and depending on the maneuvers used, those maneuvers may allow allies to use a bonus action to do something, or allow an enemy to spend a reaction to mitigate the effects of a maneuver.

Ships stats are directly affected by pilots and engineers on the ship. For example, the ship has a base defense score, modified by the pilot’s wisdom, and the ship’s hull points have a base level, modified by the intelligence bonus of the engineer on the ship. Ships also have Hull dice, which function in a manner like Hit Dice for characters. Under certain circumstances, crew members might be able to spend Hull dice to repair the ship in combat, but the ship needs to make port and get repairs to restore its Hull dice.

Starship combat always seems to be a sticking point for science fiction settings, where characters can easily run out of things they can do to contribute to the overall game. I like the maneuver system, how characters assigned to roles can affect ship stats, and how maneuvers can generate options for reactions and bonus actions, so I’m optimistic that this will be a robust and dynamic system for starship fights that doesn’t leave too many players without something interesting to do. Although the initiative turns change from individual turns to ship turns, it also feels like it does a good job of still utilizing the same concepts and action economy present in the rest of the game.

Esper Powers

This chapter details special rules that involve triggering and using Esper Powers, as well as detailing the many Esper Powers in the game. There is more detail on how Channeling varies from Forging in this section, including different options available to power users of each type.

Lower level Forging powers often have enhanced effects if triggered with higher level slots, but all it takes to trigger a Forging power at higher level is to use the higher-level slot. Channelers, on the other hand, can eventually trigger powers at a higher level than 5th level, but they can only do so a limited number of times per day (even if they have the points to trigger them), and must make a special saving throw to see if they can do it successfully, suffering consequences if they fail.

I am unsure what is gained from changing the “safe” range for Channeling, and how to trigger higher level slots. While it gives that set of powers a unique feel, it also introduces the ability to take penalties and lose the points used to trigger a power without gaining any benefit if the save is failed. I feel like it may be a disincentive to playing higher level Channelers if the only “safe” course of action is to only use 5th level or lower abilities consistently. It seems like it would be the equivalent of making a wizard roll a concentration check for any 6th level or higher spell any time they cast them, with the consequence of them not only failing to cast the spell, but losing the spell slot.

This section has another example of a “flavor change” that is simple, but really conveys the difference between genres. Instead of spells that can be cast as rituals, which take longer to cast but don’t expend a spell slot, some Esper powers can be used “Conventionally,” meaning that the device you have on you can utilize the power as part of its normal function, it just takes longer to do so without pumping extra cosmic juice through the device.

The Galaxy

This section of the book gives a very broad sketch of the setting. There are explanations of various regions, corporations, and power groups that operate in the galaxy. There is a color map showing the relative position of the various regions in the galaxy.

The Crucibles, giant moon sized devices built by an extinct civilization, are synched in such a way to allow a galactic standard year. The Crucibles are mined for Sorium, which allows for the most advanced devices in the galaxy to work, and FTL drives can latch onto the location of a Crucible to transport from one Crucible to another.

Finding and activating new Crucibles is a big deal, since it expands the capacity for reliable space travel, and provides a new source for Sorium. Sorium seems to renew, if it isn’t extracted faster than it can regenerate, but control of the power source for almost every advanced device in the galaxy is a major motivator, and the more active Crucibles, the more Sorium can be harvested without worrying about exceeding the Crucible’s capacity to produce more.

I really like the Crucibles and Sorium as a source for the extraordinary powers in the setting, because it provides a good corollary to magic in the OGL rules, while still latching onto an established trope in the space opera genre—the lost, ancient alien culture that was way beyond anyone in the current era.

Appendix A, B, C and D

The appendices to the Core Manual include a summary of conditions, stats for various threats, inspirational material, and the list of Kickstarter contributors and play testers.

The threats that appear in Appendix B are examples of creatures that can be summoned by powers or bonded to characters due to class features, although several of them can serve as examples of what threats look like in the setting. One side effect of seeing the stats for various threats is to highlight that the Core Manual doesn’t explain much about the various creature types. They are mentioned in the Hunter class entry, and they are assigned to various threats here, but we really don’t know why Spyders are Netherants, for example.

I particularly like that the Inspirational Material in Appendix C includes not only books, but also graphic novels, manga, motion pictures, anime, television, and video games. While just about any roleplaying game published in the modern era could include a wide range of media for influences, science fiction, especially, spans a wide range of storytelling media.

Reviewer’s Log—Supplemental

Over the years, I’ve developed a very specific opinion on Dungeons and Dragons and how it emulates genre. Dungeons and Dragons is generally not the best game to play any specific setting that wasn’t created FOR Dungeons and Dragons. As written (not referring to an adaption like Adventures in Middle-earth), D&D isn’t the best game to run a game in the Hyborean Age, Nehwon, Narnia, Middle-earth, or Westeros. However, it is one of the best games to play if you want to get a taste of multiple styles of fantasy in one game system. Dungeons and Dragons creates its own subgenre by blending in elements from multiple other subgenres.

Esper Genesis does something similar with science fiction. It isn’t a game system to run Star Wars, Star Trek, The Expanse, or Asimov’s Foundation series with. It does appear to be appealing to those that may want at least a taste of multiple settings in their science fiction, creating its own form of hybrid space opera from the elements of the best examples of the form.

In fact, if I were to point out existing science fiction settings that are close to the baseline assumptions of the setting of Esper Genesis, it would be the settings in video games like Mass Effect or Destiny, likely because those video games are attempting to do the same thing—synthesize a level based gaming experience from the tropes of the best of space opera media.

Genesis

 It is easy to find a cross-section of archetypes from some of your favorite science fiction in this game, and if you already understand the 5th edition OGL rules, the learning curve is low. 

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There are several places where Esper Genesis does an amazing job of taking the structure of something that exists in Dungeons and Dragons and re-flavoring it perfectly to space opera. The Cybermancer, for example, it just similar enough to something that exists that you can see its basis, but diverges enough that you don’t constantly think that it is just a re-skinned Warlock. The species strike a great balance between playing on tropes and being too familiar. The starship rules do a great job of using existing templates from the games rules and doing something just a little bit different with them, making them feel familiar but customized to work in a special circumstance. The overall conceits of the setting, with the ancient alien technology, the Crucibles, and the Sorium, all feel like they have a science fiction story behind them, while also being a perfect bridge to explaining “magic” and “magic items” in this setting.

Genesis Wave

There are a few places where race and gender are used, where the science fiction setting would have been a perfect place to use more precise and proper terms like species and sex. For all the places where the book does a good job balancing changing an element versus a more direct adaption, I’m not sure that the higher-level Channeling rules tell a story with the rules that need to be told. Even though it is beyond the book’s scope to provide detailed rules on threats, an explanation of creature types would have been nice, since they are mentioned in multiple places.

Qualified Recommendation–A product with lots of positive aspects, but buyers may want to understand the context of the product and what it contains before moving it ahead of other purchases.

If you don’t like the underlying rules of Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition, or level based RPGs in general, this will not be the game that changes your mind. It very intentionally, and very skillfully, recreates the 5th edition D&D experience for a new genre.

If you like d20 based systems, and want one that does a good job of playing with the tropes of space opera, this is a game you will likely enjoy picking up. It is easy to find a cross-section of archetypes from some of your favorite science fiction in this game, and if you already understand the 5th edition OGL rules, the learning curve is low.

What are your favorite science fiction RPGs? Do you prefer your space exploration to lean more towards hard science fiction, or space opera? Do you like having a wide range of well-defined careers in your science fiction games, or do you want a more open selection of skills and talents? Let me know in the comments, I’d be glad to hear from you!

Esper Genesis Review published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

[kayawagner]

Esper Genesis Review

Esper Genesis is an ambitious project that is attempting to utilize the 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons based OGL to create a space opera counterpart to D&D’s fantasy implementation. Like Dungeons and Dragons, the Esper Genesis rules aren’t fully encompassed in a single volume. Just as Dungeons and Dragons is split into the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual, Esper Genesis will eventually be comprised of the Core Manual, the Threats Database, and the Master Technician’s Guide.

This review is focused on the Core Manual (the only product currently available), but like Dungeons and Dragons and the Player’s Handbook, most players will only need this book to play the game, and the Core Manual provides most of the rules that will govern play, so it serves as a good overview of what the system will look like.

Examination of Contents Commencing in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

This review is based on the PDF of the product, and the physical books should be available later this summer (as of the time of this review). The book is 304 pages, including an ad for the other upcoming books, and the Crucible Core, the organized play program for the game. There is also a two-page list of Kickstarter backers and play testers, a four-page index, and a three-page character sheet.

The production values of this book are comparable to most top tier RPG publishers, with some striking art and clear, attractive formatting. The flourishes, such as borders around sidebars, take on a more “holographic” look, and stat blocks for things like threats or powers use the same format as the Dungeons and Dragons books.

There is impressive artwork throughout the book, but the artwork on the cover, as well as several pieces showcasing starships or the species native to the setting are particularly impressive.

Introduction

The introduction gives a brief description of roleplaying in general, the core resolution mechanic, the three aspects of play, and the underlying assumptions of the setting. The core mechanic (d20 + modifier compared to a difficulty number) and the aspects of play (exploration, social interaction, and combat) should be familiar to players of 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons.

The explanation of espers and the Crucibles sets the broad expectations of what the setting is—it is a space opera game set across an entire galaxy, where the player characters are people that have developed extraordinary powers, tied to the ancient, lost technologies that created the Crucibles, which generate the cosmic energy known as Sorium.

Character Creation

The next chapter of the book walks players through the steps of creating a character, as well as showing the XP progression chart, as well as ability score and proficiency bonuses, which all match those same items from the OGL.

The steps, as laid out, are as follows:

Create a Concept

Choose a Race

Choose a Class

Generate Ability Scores

Select Your Equipment

Finalize Your Character

One thing that stands out is that race seems to be used as a term here and in the next chapter, but the races are also referred to as species in multiple places as well. Terminology seems to be used to highlight the similarity to the D&D rules, even though other 5th edition based games, like Adventures in Middle-earth, utilize different terms like “culture.”

Races

This section includes nine species that are prominent in the setting, and most of those species have subspecies associated with them. In addition to the species presented in this section, there is a sidebar that notes that the Master Technician’s Guide will have more rules for randomly determining species of NPCs, underscoring that these are the most common, not the only, sentient species in the galaxy.

The races that appear in this section are:

Ashenforged (Artificially engineered from the dead)

Belare (Energy beings in containment suits)

Dendus (Tentacle haired inventors)

Eldori (Spiritual and philosophical humanoids)

Human (With multiple subspecies based on where they grew up)

Kesh (Shape shifting explorers)

Matokai (Reptilian creatures associated with different elemental energies)

Promethean (Neo-humans with genetic modifications)

Valna (Catlike hunters)

Many of these species lean heavily on sci-fi tropes, but I was pleasantly surprised that there were fewer direct correlations between existing D&D races and the races in the game. Except for humans, the closest D&D correlation is probably the Matokai and the Dragonborn, but the subspecies of the Matokai are more significantly different than just having a different breath weapon and a different damage resistance.

Classes

The classes chapter details the various available classes and what abilities they pick up at each level. In case you are a player that doesn’t come into the hobby from Dungeons and Dragons, the classes represent, broadly, the adventuring occupations of the characters. When a character gains a level, they get some static benefits, and they may have a choice between multiple paths that reflect exactly how they pursue that profession.

The classes that appear in this section are as follows:

Adept (Channels supernatural power through willpower)

Cybermancer (Analogous to the D&D Warlock in mechanics, manipulates powers by tapping into “online” avatars)

Engineer (Analogous to D&D Cleric in mechanics, uses toolkits to summon, modify, boost, heal, and attack using Techniques)

Hunter (Analogous to D&D Ranger in mechanics and function)

Melder (Channels supernatural powers to produce external effects)

Sentinel (Analogous to D&D Paladin in mechanics, melded to combat cybernetics to boost energy to weapons when attacking and to produce Techniques that can boost allies)

Specialist (Analogous to D&D Rogues in mechanics, with the option to pick up some powers based on subclass choices later)

Warrior (Analogous to D&D Fighters in mechanics, with the option to pick up some powers based on subclass choices later)

While it is explained more fully in a later chapter, instead of powers being magic and divided into Arcane and Divine, the powers that classes gain are instead divided into Channeling or Forging. Channelers have powers that allow them to directly manipulate cosmic energy, while characters with Forging abilities have powers that allow them to interact with technology in ways that regular users cannot.

The Engineer, Hunter, and Sentinel are probably the easiest to grasp for people that have played D&D 5th edition, as they gain a number of “tech slots” that they can spend on prepared techniques, and those techniques have levels, much like D&D spells. Forging-based characters will use their toolkits to assemble devices that can perform microsurgery, or that can assemble into mechanical allies, for example.

Channelers don’t have a direct analogy in the D&D Player’s Handbook, but borrow a bit from the point based spellcasting optional rules in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, and from the Mystic class that was released for playtest in Unearthed Arcana on the Wizards of the Coast website. Channeling talents have a level, and it costs a certain amount of points to trigger that ability, but the Esper Powers chapter has more rules on using more points to channel powers at a higher level, or to attempt to channel a power when a character doesn’t have enough points to trigger them.

Warriors and Specialists each have three subclass options, one of which, for each, gives them a channeling progression, while each class also has two subclass options that only gains “powers” that are essentially represented as abilities that can be used between rests or that grant situational bonuses. In D&D terms, each class has two non-spellcasting subclasses and one spellcasting subclass.

I wanted to particularly mention the Cybermancer, because I think the class flavor is a good example of what Esper Genesis does well when the game is at its best. The Cybermancer is very much like the Esper Genesis version of the Warlock, but the flavor feels very rooted in a science fiction game. The Persona that the Cybermancer manifests is essentially an avatar in the SIM, the computer network used throughout the galaxy. While Cybermancers are channelers, meaning they directly manipulate cosmic energy without manipulating a toolkit or implants, they learn their techniques by interfacing with what their Persona learns on the SIM. It is a wonderful mirror of the Warlock/Patron relationship, but made into something different and appropriate for a science fiction setting.

Personality and Background

In this chapter, there are details for character height and weight based on species, alignment, languages, backgrounds, and Esper Genesis. Backgrounds, for anyone unfamiliar with D&D 5th edition, grant a few skills, some gear, a situational benefit thematic to the background (such as always getting food and lodging from a certain organization, as an example), as well as traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws, which can be roleplayed to gain Inspiration.

I am not a fan of utilizing alignment in this setting. Even in D&D 5th edition, alignment has limited mechanical impact, but there are still cosmic forces from other planes of existence that literally embody those alignments. In a science fiction setting, I worry that alignment becomes permission to treat some NPCs differently with impunity, which even in the most black and white space opera seems to run counter to the core elements of the stories.

The Esper Genesis table has a list of circumstances under which the character first found out that they have Esper powers. Since all players have at least some minor Esper power that the average member of their species doesn’t have (even if it’s just a little bit of a boost on some skills because of their natural synergy with cybernetic implants), this chart is potentially relevant to all characters in the game, and can provide some nice additional backstory for characters that want it.

Equipment

The Equipment chapter has details on how much it costs to buy a variety of gear in the game, including weapons, armor, and vehicles. Cubil, the currency of the galaxy, can be physical in form, or just numbers in an account that can be transferred as long as everyone has access to the SIM.

While there are several hand to hand weapons, there are more ranged weapons than D&D has, and many of those weapons have the option to attack an area rather than firing at a single target, changing the attack from an active attack roll to a save made by targets in the area that has been fired upon.

Weapons that have the high-velocity or explosive trait either do an extra die or double damage to characters that either don’t have high tech armor or a PSD (Portable Shield Device). It’s actually a nice way to keep the damage ranges in the same expected range that D&D establishes, while still explaining that high tech weapons would tear up characters from low tech worlds that don’t have natural protection from those weapons.

Some weapons have a recoil trait, meaning that a character needs a minimum strength score to fire that weapon without a penalty. There is a relatively short list of weapons compared to other granular science fiction games, but there is a sidebar mentioning that the damage from an auto-pistol, for example, could be projectiles, plasma bolts, or radiation blasts, and to achieve that effect, leave all of the other game stats the same, and just change the damage type to piercing, radiant, or necrotic damage.

While not fully detailed, forged weaponry is mentioned as something that will be detailed in the Master Technician’s Guide, and represent items made from ancient, lost technology, or experimental gear that is analogous to D&D magic items. They can be made, but not reliably mass produced, and may produce more impressive results than the gear commonly available.

Vehicles are touched on in this section, but only to the extent of displaying the price, carrying capacity, and speed of various planetary vehicles. Starships appear later in the book.

Customization Options

The Customization Options detailed in this book deal with multi-classing and introducing feats into the game. Multi-classing allows exceptional characters to start taking levels in a second class to gain some of those benefits, and feats are special abilities that expand a character’s capabilities in one specific area.

Notable to players familiar with 5th edition D&D—Forging and Channeling don’t stack when multiclassing. In other words, in 5th edition D&D, there is a consolidated spell slot progression for spellcasters that multi-class, which can be used for both Arcane and Divine spells. Forging and Channeling don’t work the same in this setting, so while your character can get a special progression chart if you multi-class between, for example, Engineer and Hunter, or Melder and Adept, an Engineer/Adept would be limiting their progression in both Forging and Channeling.

Feats are similar to the feats that appear in D&D 5th edition. Some of them have effects that often grant a bonus to an ability score and a situational bonus to an ability, as an example. However, there are more feats that modify ranged weapons, explosives, or vehicles.

Using Ability Scores, Adventures and Exploration, and Combat

With very few exceptions, these chapters have the same content as the similarly named D&D chapters in the Player’s Handbook. This section includes how and when to use ability checks, when various skills apply, outlines of what exploration or social resolutions might look like in the game, and rules spelling out how to determine initiative and procedures in combat.

The very minor expansions to the rules involve how high gravity, low gravity, and zero gravity might affect various situations, and those rules are usually very simple and logically extrapolated from how the core OGL rules handle similar situations.

 Starships and Space Travel

The Starships and Space Travel chapter details the various size of ships, how combat differs for starships versus ground based combat, and gives some sample stat blocks for smaller ships, as well as NPC stats for ships of those same sizes.

Combat works very similar to ground based combat, except that all the characters on a ship act collectively. Characters can perform various maneuvers that can either target their own ship, or a ship within sensor range of the ship, and depending on the maneuvers used, those maneuvers may allow allies to use a bonus action to do something, or allow an enemy to spend a reaction to mitigate the effects of a maneuver.

Ships stats are directly affected by pilots and engineers on the ship. For example, the ship has a base defense score, modified by the pilot’s wisdom, and the ship’s hull points have a base level, modified by the intelligence bonus of the engineer on the ship. Ships also have Hull dice, which function in a manner like Hit Dice for characters. Under certain circumstances, crew members might be able to spend Hull dice to repair the ship in combat, but the ship needs to make port and get repairs to restore its Hull dice.

Starship combat always seems to be a sticking point for science fiction settings, where characters can easily run out of things they can do to contribute to the overall game. I like the maneuver system, how characters assigned to roles can affect ship stats, and how maneuvers can generate options for reactions and bonus actions, so I’m optimistic that this will be a robust and dynamic system for starship fights that doesn’t leave too many players without something interesting to do. Although the initiative turns change from individual turns to ship turns, it also feels like it does a good job of still utilizing the same concepts and action economy present in the rest of the game.

Esper Powers

This chapter details special rules that involve triggering and using Esper Powers, as well as detailing the many Esper Powers in the game. There is more detail on how Channeling varies from Forging in this section, including different options available to power users of each type.

Lower level Forging powers often have enhanced effects if triggered with higher level slots, but all it takes to trigger a Forging power at higher level is to use the higher-level slot. Channelers, on the other hand, can eventually trigger powers at a higher level than 5th level, but they can only do so a limited number of times per day (even if they have the points to trigger them), and must make a special saving throw to see if they can do it successfully, suffering consequences if they fail.

I am unsure what is gained from changing the “safe” range for Channeling, and how to trigger higher level slots. While it gives that set of powers a unique feel, it also introduces the ability to take penalties and lose the points used to trigger a power without gaining any benefit if the save is failed. I feel like it may be a disincentive to playing higher level Channelers if the only “safe” course of action is to only use 5th level or lower abilities consistently. It seems like it would be the equivalent of making a wizard roll a concentration check for any 6th level or higher spell any time they cast them, with the consequence of them not only failing to cast the spell, but losing the spell slot.

This section has another example of a “flavor change” that is simple, but really conveys the difference between genres. Instead of spells that can be cast as rituals, which take longer to cast but don’t expend a spell slot, some Esper powers can be used “Conventionally,” meaning that the device you have on you can utilize the power as part of its normal function, it just takes longer to do so without pumping extra cosmic juice through the device.

The Galaxy

This section of the book gives a very broad sketch of the setting. There are explanations of various regions, corporations, and power groups that operate in the galaxy. There is a color map showing the relative position of the various regions in the galaxy.

The Crucibles, giant moon sized devices built by an extinct civilization, are synched in such a way to allow a galactic standard year. The Crucibles are mined for Sorium, which allows for the most advanced devices in the galaxy to work, and FTL drives can latch onto the location of a Crucible to transport from one Crucible to another.

Finding and activating new Crucibles is a big deal, since it expands the capacity for reliable space travel, and provides a new source for Sorium. Sorium seems to renew, if it isn’t extracted faster than it can regenerate, but control of the power source for almost every advanced device in the galaxy is a major motivator, and the more active Crucibles, the more Sorium can be harvested without worrying about exceeding the Crucible’s capacity to produce more.

I really like the Crucibles and Sorium as a source for the extraordinary powers in the setting, because it provides a good corollary to magic in the OGL rules, while still latching onto an established trope in the space opera genre—the lost, ancient alien culture that was way beyond anyone in the current era.

Appendix A, B, C and D

The appendices to the Core Manual include a summary of conditions, stats for various threats, inspirational material, and the list of Kickstarter contributors and play testers.

The threats that appear in Appendix B are examples of creatures that can be summoned by powers or bonded to characters due to class features, although several of them can serve as examples of what threats look like in the setting. One side effect of seeing the stats for various threats is to highlight that the Core Manual doesn’t explain much about the various creature types. They are mentioned in the Hunter class entry, and they are assigned to various threats here, but we really don’t know why Spyders are Netherants, for example.

I particularly like that the Inspirational Material in Appendix C includes not only books, but also graphic novels, manga, motion pictures, anime, television, and video games. While just about any roleplaying game published in the modern era could include a wide range of media for influences, science fiction, especially, spans a wide range of storytelling media.

Reviewer’s Log—Supplemental

Over the years, I’ve developed a very specific opinion on Dungeons and Dragons and how it emulates genre. Dungeons and Dragons is generally not the best game to play any specific setting that wasn’t created FOR Dungeons and Dragons. As written (not referring to an adaption like Adventures in Middle-earth), D&D isn’t the best game to run a game in the Hyborean Age, Nehwon, Narnia, Middle-earth, or Westeros. However, it is one of the best games to play if you want to get a taste of multiple styles of fantasy in one game system. Dungeons and Dragons creates its own subgenre by blending in elements from multiple other subgenres.

Esper Genesis does something similar with science fiction. It isn’t a game system to run Star Wars, Star Trek, The Expanse, or Asimov’s Foundation series with. It does appear to be appealing to those that may want at least a taste of multiple settings in their science fiction, creating its own form of hybrid space opera from the elements of the best examples of the form.

In fact, if I were to point out existing science fiction settings that are close to the baseline assumptions of the setting of Esper Genesis, it would be the settings in video games like Mass Effect or Destiny, likely because those video games are attempting to do the same thing—synthesize a level based gaming experience from the tropes of the best of space opera media.

Genesis

 It is easy to find a cross-section of archetypes from some of your favorite science fiction in this game, and if you already understand the 5th edition OGL rules, the learning curve is low. 

Share1

Tweet1

+11

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Email

There are several places where Esper Genesis does an amazing job of taking the structure of something that exists in Dungeons and Dragons and re-flavoring it perfectly to space opera. The Cybermancer, for example, it just similar enough to something that exists that you can see its basis, but diverges enough that you don’t constantly think that it is just a re-skinned Warlock. The species strike a great balance between playing on tropes and being too familiar. The starship rules do a great job of using existing templates from the games rules and doing something just a little bit different with them, making them feel familiar but customized to work in a special circumstance. The overall conceits of the setting, with the ancient alien technology, the Crucibles, and the Sorium, all feel like they have a science fiction story behind them, while also being a perfect bridge to explaining “magic” and “magic items” in this setting.

Genesis Wave

There are a few places where race and gender are used, where the science fiction setting would have been a perfect place to use more precise and proper terms like species and sex. For all the places where the book does a good job balancing changing an element versus a more direct adaption, I’m not sure that the higher-level Channeling rules tell a story with the rules that need to be told. Even though it is beyond the book’s scope to provide detailed rules on threats, an explanation of creature types would have been nice, since they are mentioned in multiple places.

Qualified Recommendation–A product with lots of positive aspects, but buyers may want to understand the context of the product and what it contains before moving it ahead of other purchases.

If you don’t like the underlying rules of Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition, or level based RPGs in general, this will not be the game that changes your mind. It very intentionally, and very skillfully, recreates the 5th edition D&D experience for a new genre.

If you like d20 based systems, and want one that does a good job of playing with the tropes of space opera, this is a game you will likely enjoy picking up. It is easy to find a cross-section of archetypes from some of your favorite science fiction in this game, and if you already understand the 5th edition OGL rules, the learning curve is low.

What are your favorite science fiction RPGs? Do you prefer your space exploration to lean more towards hard science fiction, or space opera? Do you like having a wide range of well-defined careers in your science fiction games, or do you want a more open selection of skills and talents? Let me know in the comments, I’d be glad to hear from you!

Esper Genesis Review published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com