A Role Playing Games Blog
Freebies
Mistborn
1October 21, 2011
Yesterday Crafty Games released its Mistborn Adventure Game Primer on DriveThruRPG for free. I have to admit I haven’t followed the development of the Mistborn Adventure Game at all. I haven’t heard of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn novels before and I thought it was just another run-of-the-mill fantasy series. Oh boy, was I wrong.
I also expected the game using Crafty Games’ Fantasy Craft system. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that the game uses an all new system. Don’t get me wrong, I like Fantasy Craft. It’s a very cool rule system and I think more people should check it out. But it always was a bit too rules-heavy for me. It’s basically on the same crunch level as Pathfinder or D&D 3.5, but I just don’t have the time for such rules anymore. I want my game rules to be light. But I digress.
So yesterday I downloaded the aforementioned primer to see what all the fuss was about. And I was blown away. The rules are really, really light-weight and have a very narrativist feel to them. That was something I haven’t expected, but I like it. I like it a lot. I think I have to “borrow” some of their ideas for the game I am currently working on. I hope the Craft Games’ guys don’t mind. 
I also quickly realized that the game was no classic fantasy but sounded very unique and the world had some Victorian feel to it. At least that’s what the interior artwork reminded me of. I think I’ll have to get one of the Brandon Sanderson novels soon to learn more about the world. I already downloaded an excerpt from the Kindle book, but I haven’t had the time to give it a closer look.
Alas there are a few things I don’t really like about the primer. The description of the rules is terribly vague. I had to read the paragraph about how to read the dice results several times before I had a faint idea how it’s supposed to work. It get even worse when it comes to conflict. There’s talk of “action dice” you get, but there’s no explanation what these dice are, how many you get, and so on. Perhaps a few examples would have helped.
But overall the primer did what is was intended to do: it piqued my interest. It made me interested not only in the game, but also in the novel series. And I definitely recommend you check it out.
First Look: Anima Prime
1October 20, 2011
Yesterday night I was browsing RPGNow in hopes of finding an interesting RPG I haven’t heard about yet. With thousands of titles on the site, it’s actually pretty easy to find stuff I haven’t seen before. What finally caught my interest was a game by the name of “Anima Prime – Steambots and Mega Swords”. Obviously the author of the book, Christian Griffen, set out to write a pen & paper game inspired by the Final Fantasy series of video games as well as Avatar: The Last Airbender and similar anime shows. It was just $10 and looked like I could like it, so I bought it.
While flipping through it I noticed that the game has been licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 US License. That means you can take the rules and design your own game around it and even sell it as long as you share it under a similar license and give the author of Anima Prime proper credit. You can also share material you wrote for Anima Prime under the same conditions. That’s always nice, especially because CC is much less complicated to work with than the OGL. There’s also a free edition available at the official site that comes in a simpler layout and without the artwork, but aside from that it should contain the same content as the paid version.
From what I’ve seen so far, the rules are not too complicated and the dice pool system it uses seems to work fine. Combat is a bit more elaborate and allows the characters to perform fancy moves, summon “eidolons” and there are “soulbound weapons” at the characters’ disposal.
The artwork and layout are pretty nice, especially if you are in the manga style. The 196-paged PDF also comes with a setting for you to play in, but the rules also contain quite a few tips on how to create your own setting.
All in all Anima Prime looks like a fun game. I’ve always wanted to run a game in a Final Fantasy-inspired world and it seems as if Anima Prime could handle this perfectly. If you are even remotely interested in the genre, you should at least check the free version out.
Freebie: Système Alamänder
0October 19, 2011
On the D101 Games site I found a link to a free OpenQuest-based game. The game is obviously set into the world of a French fantasy book series by Alexis Flamand which combines humor, criminal mysteries and fantasy – or at least that’s what I think the French descriptions said.
The 44-paged “Système Alamänder” is a beautifully laid out PDF that makes me wish I was fluent in French. Alas I am not, so the only thing I can do it look at the pages and admire them. 
In the case you speak French and if you have perhaps even heard about the book series you should have a look at the “Système Alamänder” and after that please come back here and let me know what you could learn about it.
Damn, I wish my games were looking that great!
Two new WYRED releases
0October 19, 2011
I think I have talked about WYRED before. It’s a cyberpunk roleplaying game written by R.E. Davis aka Rev.Lazaro and powered by the Wyrm System. Today he released two new versions of it:
Rough Draft 5 is the final iteration of the normal d6-based rules. But he didn’t stop there. Rough Draft 6 uses a new d12 mechanic, which is something I actually planned for the SF variant of Wyrm. From what I’ve seen WYRED has a lot of promise and if you are into the genre you definitely should check it out!
You can get the details on both releases here.
Free FATE
6October 10, 2011
Recently I decided to switch to Free FATE for my current FATE games. This has mainly three reasons:
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It’s free. We used Starblazer Adventures before, which is an awesome FATE game, but I just can’t expect all my players to get the book.
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It’s short. With just 48 pages is much more compact than most other version of FATE. Of course it doesn’t genre-specific rules, but I can easily use what I need from other FATE games.
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It’s available in German. One of my players don’t speak English at all, so I had to translate everything for him. Especially when it comes to stunts this can become quite the task.
Some people might say that my first reason is moot, since not every player needs a copy of the rules. That’s of course true, but some players are interested in reading the rules themselves – which I support if possible – but I just couldn’t lend them my book because I needed it to prepare for the next session. And SBA with it’s 600+ pages is not what I would consider “light reading”.
Free FATE is basically the shortest version of FATE I could find that doesn’t oversimplify things. I especially like the way stunts are handled. Instead of listing dozens of individual stunts Free FATE provides you with guidelines for your own stunts.
From what I’ve seen so far the rules presented in Free FATE are 100% compatible to Starblazer Adventures. So the switch from SBA to Free FATE should be pretty painless.
By the way, Free FATE is one of the few games where the German translation is actually better looking than the original one. While R Grant Erswell did a great job collating, modifying and augmenting the FATE rules, he’s layout skills are not up to par. It would be awesome if Kathy Schad, who did the layout for the German translation, would give the English original a facelift as well.
[Freebies] FU: the Free, Universal Roleplaying Game
1September 15, 2011
Recently I discovered FU, the free, universal roleplaying game by Nathan Russel.
At the core of FU are Descriptors. Descriptors are adjectives or short sentences that descibe one aspect of the character. Each character has four Descriptors: Body, Mind, Edge and Flaw. Examples for the Body Descriptor may be Nimble, Tough, Fragile. A character’s Edge may be “Use Bull Whip” or “Read Minds”.
In addition to that each character gets to pick two pieces of equipment that are described by an adjective and a noun like “Fancy Dress”, “Ancient Pocket Watch”, “Faithful Horse”.
New Airship Pirates downloads
0September 8, 2011
There’s now new Airship Pirates material available at the Cakebread & Walton website: deck plans of the Pirate Ship Cordelia, as well as maps of the North American Wastes and the Sierra Nevada area.
If you are still waiting for your copy of the rulebook to arrive, you at least get some more material to check out while waiting. And if you already own Airship Pirates don’t forget to have a look at the errata available there as well.
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