Freebies

Jan 23 2013

Gaming on the cheap – 2013 Edition (Part 1/2)

”Roleplaying games can be an expensive hobby, especially when you are the game master.” With these words I started a post in 2009 called “Gaming on the cheap” and it’s still true. But in the meantime a lot of new free games have been released which are worth a look. There are also a couple of inexpensive games available if you are willing to spend a few dollars. But I will talk about those in the next post of this series. Let’s start today with the free games. You’ll notice that there are a couple of games on that list I was involved with, so I hope you don’t mind.

Atomic Highway

In 2011 Colin Chapman released the PDF version of his post-apocalyptic roleplaying game Atomic Highway for free.
Atomic Highway is powered by the V6 Engine, a rules-light game system which is as easy as it’s brilliant. While there’s an assumed setting, AH is basically a toolbox for the post-apocalypse.
It works great with Mad-Max-style games and even comes with rules for modifying your ride.
If you are really excited about post-apoc gaming you could also pick up the cheap Irradiated Freaks supplement which adds new options to the game.

Arcane Heroes

Arcane Heroes is a 5-paged rules-light fantasy game I wrote in November 2010 after playing way too much Fable III. It’s inspired by said game and uses a simple dice pool system for task resolution. Even though it lacks a proper setting it should be fully playable if the GM is willing to fill the holes with his own ideas. The system could probably be easily adapted to other genres as well.

Arcane Secrets by my friend Andrew Modro expands on Arcane Heroes and adds new spells.

A Wanderer’s Romance

 awr_cover

A Wanderer’s Romance is a 45-paged game of martial arts duels and tea-making contests written by Chris McDowall. And it’s one of the projects I was proud to be a part of. Back in 2011 I did the layout for AWR and I have to admit I am still proud on how it turned out.

If you are into the fantasy wuxia genre you definitely should check out A Wanderer’s Romance.

Badass

“Have you ever wanted to play a game that kicks that logic in the face, twists its arm behind its back and makes it cry for its momma?”

Jay Steven Anyong’s BADASS is exactly that game. It’s a rules light beer & pretzels game in which you play badasses doing badass things. In Badass you can play dinosaurs, robots, ninjas, cops, teachers (yes, there are badass teachers), gamblers, and more. If you ever watched a totally over-the-top Hong Kong movie, you know exactly how BADASS is meant to be played.

Icar
image

Icar is a space opera created by Rob Lang which comes in the form of a 187-paged PDF. Compared with most of the other games mentioned in this post, Icar is huge – both in page count and depth.

It’s also one of the games I always wanted to give a closer look, but never had the time to. I love the sci-fi genre and I – as I probably mentioned before – have a soft spot for percentile system, so there are multiple reasons to give the game a chance.

I wish I had more free time.

By • Freebies, News & Reviews, RPG • 6

Oct 22 2012

Ask The Readers: Have you played Arcane Heroes?

arcane_heroes_cover In November 2010 I released a 5-paged rules-light RPG called Arcane Heroes. In Arcane Heroes the player characters are members of ancient bloodlines during an industrial revolution. It uses a simple dice pool mechanic for task resolution and contains everything you need to play the game.

The game was created in less than 24h and is probably still a bit rough around the edges. Recently I have been thinking about revising and expanding the rules. There’s also no setting to speak off, so there’s another aspect to improve on. But before I start working on a major overhaul of the game, I am looking for feedback of people who actually played Arcane Heroes.

If you have played Arcane Heroes or even just read it thoroughly, could you please give me your feedback? Are there any rules that are broken. Do you feel that there are certain things missing from the game? Please share your thoughts below!

By • Ask The Readers, Freebies, Game Design, Other Systems, RPG • 7

Oct 18 2012

Free Music for use in your games

Especially in certain genres, music can be an important part of the gaming experience. In horror games the immersion can be extremely deep if you employ the right background music. Over the years I have collected various movie or video game soundtracks, classical music, etc. that are suited for this purpose.

While looking for royalty-free music that I can use for a podcast project that never saw the light of day, I stumbled upon Kevin MacLeod’s Incompetech. Over the last few years Kevin has released countless pieces of music that can be used freely under a Creative Commons license. He also created a site with music released as public domain. If you are looking for a piece of music for your game, chances are very high, you find something fitting on Kevin’s sites.

Examples of Kevin’s work:

House of Leaves

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Covert Affair

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Five Armies

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Lithium

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All tracks are © Kevin MacLeod, Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.

For more awesome, royalty-free music check out incompetech.com!

By • Advice, Freebies, Music, RPG • 3

Oct 15 2012

WR&M Tactics – beta testers required!

Christopher Brind has written a very interesting supplement for Warrior, Rogue & Mage that adds some extra depth to combats. “Tactics” is inspired by action-point based systems found in games like Space Hulk and provides each player with a number of action points that can be spend on various actions. At this moment Christopher is looking for beta testers willing to help him playtest these new rules.

If you want to learn more about WR&M Tactics, check out this thread at the forums!

By • Freebies, Other Systems, RPG, WR&M • 0

Oct 11 2012

Unified Rolemaster Playtest

Rolemaster I have to admit I still have fond memories of the long Rolemaster campaign a friend of mine has run back when I was at university. Rolemaster is one of those quite crunchy games we enjoyed to play back in the day. Actually it’s was not so bad during play, but character creation usually took ages. Also levelling up was always something that took quite a while.

What I totally loved were the awesome critical hit tables. Our GM definitely enjoyed describing the results of these critical effects in a lot of details, and everyone at the game table had a lot of fun. Even though I now prefer games with much lighter rulesets, I still believe that Rolemaster is an interesting alternative to other fantasy roleplaying games. And if you don’t try to squeeze every optional rule into your game it’s actually less crunchy than some other games out there.

A while back, I.C.E. announced that they are currently working on a new, unified Rolemaster edition and in order to make it the best Rolemaster yet, they are conducting an open playtest. If you’re interested in playtesting the new Rolemaster, just head to the official forums and download the Character Law and Spell Law documents.

I am not sure, if I’ll actually have the time to give the new Rolemaster a try anytime soon, but it’s definitely worth a look.

By • Freebies, News & Reviews, Other Systems, RPG • 3

Sep 26 2012

What about Amethyst Renaissance? A review…

A personal note before diving into this review, hello dear reader, it’s good to be back. As the ebb and flow of the accelerated MA program 5 week schedule I am forced to be absent from the blog for extended periods of time. I apologize! I know Michael, the creator and force behind the blog, keeps things running smoothly and I am thankful he keeps a space for this roadie (inside joke) in the blog. It’s good to be back, for a couple of weeks at least… Thanks for reading, on to the review!

When I first saw the announcement for Amethyst some years ago I went, “Yay an RPG based on my favorite DC comic character aimed at Tween girls!” Then I realized how wrong I was… (In case you are wondering, it’s this Amethyst I’m talking about.)

I’m talking about Amethyst, the setting by Dias Ex Machina games. I missed the original D20 version published in 2008 (available for just $3.99 in PDF). As they ramped up for publication of the D&D 4th Edition version, Amethyst Foundation, all the promotion and sneak peeks of the game tempted me, but by the time they published the book I had quit that edition so I passed. Mind you it was NOT easy; reviews about the book really tempted me, specially this one by fellow blogger and contributor to Stargazer’s World Greg Schuster, aka Shinobicow.

Then along came Amethyst Renaissance, a Pathfinder RPG version of the game. I was thrilled. The fine folk of Dias Ex Machina provided a PDF copy for review and I was more than happy to read this huge book. And believe you me, it is a HUGE book. 399 pages of Awesome!

I will try not to retread what Greg said in general about the game. Suffice it to say this book is a gorgeously illustrated, beautifully laid out book. The writing is top notch. Like previous versions of the book this is a post-apocalyptic world but here the disaster comes from the clash of magic and technology. I love the concept, the cover is evocative, so is the art, but for me the setting was encapsulated by a map that came along with the digital product (with some gorgeous wallpaper and assorted other images), a map of a changed North America labeled Canam. The map and the names, this image just fires my imagination.

More

By • Freebies, Humor, Just my two cents, News & Reviews, Other Systems, Pathfinder, Reviews & First Looks, RPG • 9

Aug 7 2012

Freebies: Five By Five

5X5 cover Today I stumbled upon Jeff Moore’s blog Dreams and Dragons and (re)discovered his awesome rules-light RPG Five By Five. I think I have downloaded and leafed through it a while ago, but I forgot about it and failed to recognized its awesomeness.

With the free 22-paged PDF Jeff Moore provides us with a rules-light roleplaying game that can be used to run games in every genre. Characters are described by three player-defined traits, a weakness and health. Traits are ranked from Untrained to Legendary and come in two variants: action traits and intensity traits. The first kind comes into play when a character wants to perform actions related to said trait. The second kind gives bonuses to damage or damage resistance.

Action resolution is done by rolling two d5 (a d6 where the 6 is counted as 0) and multiplying them. The result must be lower than the action value of the trait in question to succeed. Damage rolls are done by a single d5. Weapon intensity modifiers are added to the die result.

The only drawback of the game is that it doesn’t come with any setting and only one example character. It would have great if Jeff had provided us with a few more examples how to use the game, but that’s just a minor quibble. While I am currently taking a break from GMing, this is definitely one of the games I’ll love to run in the future. Now I only need a cool setting!

By the way, Rob Lang has written a review of Five By Five, that you might want to check out.

By • Freebies, News & Reviews, Other Systems, Reviews & First Looks, RPG • 3

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