X is for Conspiracy X

(and X-files too!)

One of my all time favorite shows is the X-Files.  It was a fantastic myth of everything that made for good TV in the 90s.  Sure it went on a little too long, but when it was good it was the best thing on TV.

So it should be no surprise that I enjoy similar themed games.  I like Alternity Dark Matter and I mentioned the Unexplained earlier.  But my favorite has been Eden Studios'  Conspiracy X.
So today X is for Conspiracy X.

ConX (as it is called) comes in three different editions.  There is the original rules, a GURPS version and the newest Unisystem version which makes system-wise compatible with WitchCraft RPG (but still not thematically compatible).  I have all three, but I prefer the newest Unisystem version, not just for the system, but it brings ConX out of the paranoid 90s and into the post millennial, post-9/11 world.

So what is ConX about?  Well  the basic system is Classic Unisystem so I won't detail that all here.
The premise is that the U.S. Government has been in contact with three different alien races over the last few decades and how they have all these various plans for the world.  In addition to all of this there are rival government agencies and all sorts of unrelated (or related) weirdness going on.  The focus is much more psychic powers and MKULTRA than the magic and covens of WitchCraft.

Con X 2.0 also has rules for more equipment, weapons, and governmental agencies.  The coolest mechanic in the game though has to be the Pulling Strings one.  Very useful when working through the myriad of governmental bodies you will need to deal with.  These alone make it worth the price if you play any other Classic Unisystem game.

Ok, so my love for the WitchCraft RPG is well known and well documented. Creating a WitchCraft world of adventures, situations or even meta-plots of my own are nearly second nature to me.

But I also like Conspiracy X. A lot.  The games are not really thematically compatible and both have very different points of view on magic, gods, monsters and the like.

If you like conspiracies and the X-Files, Con X is your game.  If you want to run a paranormal game, but don't want to get bogged down in myths, legends and want your magic to be somewhat more controlled then Con X is your game.

Here is another way to look at it.  You are a character in a Modern Paranormal game.  Suddenly a glowing figure appears before you.  What is this creature?  If you say Alien, then play ConX.  If you say Demon, then play WitchCraft.  Both games can be used for horror, ConX is dark sci-fi, WitchCraft is dark fantasy.


Plus it will be a feature of this years Free RPG Day! So stop into your local game store and pick a free game.

Question for you all

I was digging through the depths of my hard drive tonight and I found the remains of one of my oldest documents.

"The Urban Survival Guide" was going to be a guide book for living in and running adventures in cities.

I never finished it but it got me thinking.
Have you all ever used cities as a main adventure area?  In a D&D like game?

I have Vornheim and it is awesome, but any city is fine for this discussion.

W is for What Next?

(Apologies to all coming here for the A to Z challenge, you might not be all that familiar with the back story of today's rant.)

I wanted to talk about World of Darkness today. But instead I am going to rant.  Well not rant so much as complain about gamer privilege. I know in the scope of things this is so minor as to be non-existent. But yet here I am...

W is for What Next?

So unless you were away from the internet like was all day yesterday you probably missed the "Big news" that Monte Cook packed up books and told WotC, "Screw you guys I'm going home."

Ok, not exactly like that.  Lots of times people leave projects on properties they love due to disagreements.
I have left playtests in "protest" before over a direction the author wanted to take that I felt was a bad idea.  I won't name names either, but it was a property I really liked and was honored to be a part of.  The game in my mind still sucked, but plenty others still liked it so maybe I was the one in the wrong (I don't think so).

So Monte Cook has left Wizards and his work on D&D Next; the nom-de-net for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition.

I am a D&D fan. I am a D&D loyalist in fact.  I have every single edition and played them all.  I have nearly every retro clone.  I bought into the D&D 4 hype and bought a ton of books for it. I loved moving the minis on the maps with my kids, I loved the fact that the classes were balanced and I loved that 1st level characters all had something to do.  I disliked how long combats took. I disliked all the meta-gaming that had to go on with feats and surges and actions and markings.  But it was D&D and I still was able to do the sorts of things that worked for me.

Now we are going into the next version, and I have barely played the last version.  My kid's group, The Dragon Slayers, are wrapping up their 3.x game.  We have gone through many of the "Classic" adventures and as much as I love 1st Edition, I really don't want to go back to it.

I know.  I am complaining about having too many games to play. Woe is me...

I guess I'll wait for the playtest like everyone else.  But I have to say that at the moment, D&D 5/D&D Next is not filling me with a lot of excitement.

Meybe I'll just back to D&D Basic and house rule the hell out of it.  Start characters at a higher level (really, wizards should have more spells than 1) and use some of the rules I like from 4e (bloodied) and 3e (multiclass).

V is for Victoria RPG

Continuing my exploration of Victorian era RPGS I can't help but mention the the game that uses the eponymous Queen herself.

Today, V is Victoria.

Victoria is the premier game from Daniel Hodges and Hazard Gaming.  Unlike most of the games I have reveiwed, Victoria is focused on running a game in the historical Victorian Era.  So focus on class, station and no magic (well...mostly).

Victoria is heavy on atmosphere and history.  In fact among the Victorian games, Victoria stresses the history the most.  It is trying to go for an authentic feel of the era sans monsters, magic.

So what does Victoria have? Well for starters character concept is king here.  You should have a good grip what sort of character you want to play.  The book suggests thinking about characters from literature or history.    One of the things things you are going to want to do is decide on your class.  Not how it is typically used in games, but social class.  Social class is everything in this game and there are plenty of examples of of how to use it in play.   The game is really targeted to the newer player with plenty of examples of game play and how to use skills.

Speaking of which, looking at the character sheet you might be surprised to see that everything is a skill.  The first three group are grouped by Social Class.  So there are Upper Class skills (High Society, Linguistics, etc.), Middle Class (Adventure, Law, etc.) and Working Class (Stealth, Street,etc.).  Depending on your class you have more points to allocate to one of the groups and then secondary and tertiary.   You can move points between skill groups (at a cost of course).  There is a fourth group, Personal, which are closer to "Attributes" but are treated just like skills.

The mechanic is a very interesting one and one I have not encountered before to be honest.  The skills are ranked 2 to 12, but you start around 7 and work your way out.    You roll a 2d6 and when you roll the number of your "Main" (a spread of scores) you make it, if you roll outside you don't.  Pretty easy really.
Double "1"s are a critical failure and double "6"s are always a distinctive success.  In either case you can be granted Plot Points.

Plot Points play like Drama Points or Hero Points in other games.  In Victoria the Point economy is bit freer with points being spent and gained quicker.  So if your Main is 5-9 and you roll an 11 then you can spend 2 Plot Points to extend your range and make it.  I mentioned before that critical rolls can grant you Plot Points.   If you fail, if you can describe your failure well then that is worth some plot points to be used at a later challenge.

Half the book is for the players and the other half for the Gamemaster.  The Gamemastering section is not to be missed really, especially if you are a new Gamemaster or starting one.  There is great advice here.  There is also good game-based advice for the giving out the Plot Points and how to reward play based on Social Class.

Chapter 10 is an interesting one since it deals with the Supernatural.  The "paradigm" of Victoria is the "Sherlock Holmes" one.  That is there is no magic, but many people that believe in it.  I think that is where this game works the best.  Some background (but not stats) are given for many creatures.  Chapter 11 similarly deals with alternate settings.  Chapter 12 is an example adventure that stretches science to near Frankenstein levels.

Victoria works best as "Charles Dickens" or "Sherlock Holmes" the Game.  Realism with real problems.
If you want a game with more magic, then we have those as well.  Take advantage of this game's strengths.

I would use this as an expansion is most any Victorian game to add another level of realism to the play. There is quite a bit of history and even a handy guide for how much various professions make in a year.
The character creation section is fantastic for any Victorian era game since it does require you to think about your character not as a collection of stats and numbers, but rather as a concept and as a person within society.

The book itself is fantastic to look at.  The layout is clean and easy to read. The art is the similar PD art found in Ghosts of Albion, Gaslight and Victoriana, but to me that is a good thing.  That is what a Victorian game should look like.

If you like historical games and like your games with a bit more realism in it, then Victoria is a great choice.

You can also go to Daniel's webpage to hear his weekly Podcasts.   In fact next week I am going to be in Episode 11.
http://www.hazardgaming.com/
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=99046&affiliate_id=10748&

Dirty Nel
So, the one thing about Victoria is it lacks a proper magic system and supernatural creatures are non-existent.
That all being said, that doesn't mean I can't try to emulate my street faerie prostitute Dirty Nel.
You can see her in her Ghosts of Albion, Rippers, and Victoriana aspects. Here she is as a normal human.  She is still a prostitute working for the elite upper class. Her clientele are not just the upper class, but the upper-class spiritualist and occultist of the age.

Name: Dirty Nel
Class: Working
Occupation: Prostitute/Informant
Backstory: Nel is a young elfin-looking woman. She claims she fell on hard times, but Nel didn't have far to fall.
Flaw: Fallen Woman, Greedy
Skills


Upper Class

	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
High Society					X	X	X				X
Linguistics						X	X				X
Medicinal						X					X
Research						X					X

Middle Class

	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
Adventure					X	X	X				X
Law & Inv					X	X	X	X			X
Martial						X	X				X
Tactics & Org.					X	X	X				X

Working class

	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
Chameleon				X	X	X	X	X			X
Stealth				X	X	X	X	X			X
Street*				X	X	X	X	X	X		X
Trade & Source					X	X	X				X

*extra skill speciality: Dark Secrets


Personall

	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
Atheltics						X	X				X
Machines						X					X
People					X	X	X	X			X
Wits					X	X	X				X

Possessions: clothes, boots, purse, couple of knives.
Ht: 5'0" Wt: 6.7 stone Age: 16
PP: 4
Money: what she made the night before.

White Dwarf Wednesday #13

Wow.  I am not doing so well on this one am I. I missed last week and didn't catch it till almost Saturday.
So we move on to Issue 13.
For starters the Editorial page has gotten a facelift. In it Ian Livingstone wants to know about your gaming group to start building a list of contacts.

In what is the big feature of this issue are the new AD&D Combat Tables. 4 tables that will be in new PHB.
The Fiend Factory is back with some faves like Doombat and Shadow Demon.  We also get the Imps, which look like they were changed into the mephits.  Don't have my Fiend Folio handy to be sure, but they look the same.

We some additions to the Traveler rules.  Part 1 includes Skills and their uses as Poisons and chemical warfare.
Open Box hits another high point with reviews of B1 In Search of the Unknown and S1 Tomb of Horrors. Don Turnbull gives them 9 and 10 respectively.   Equally as impressive is the 9-point review given to Games Workshop Dungeon Floor Plans.

The issue keeps on giving with Brian Asbury's Houri character class. This class has become a bit infamous in the last few years. I have even posted about it in a past, here and here.

More from the Valley of the Four Winds.
Some new spells. Most are good, though I dislike "Laser", not really a fantasy type spell.  
Some more letters.  Most are about the monsters in FF.  First a letter about how the monsters are already going downhill in quality.  Interestingly one of the letters is from Don Turnbull himself about how Monster Mark is dead with the advent of the new AD&D system.
Some news and some ads.

Quite a bit of quality work in this episode.  While the amount of content hasn't changed (just yet) the quality is up.  Despite the letters, I still think the monsters of FF are still good.

U is for The Unexplained

The Unexplained is a game I have known about for years and have wanted to pick up, but something else always pushed it's way to the front of the line.  So when it appeared on DriveThruRPG a couple of weeks ago I knew I had to get it.  I also knew it would make for a great post for the Blogfest.

So today U is for The Unexplained.

I had reviewed the Unexplained's sister game, Now Playing, a while back.  TU uses pretty much the same rule system, Fudge, though the focus is less on emulating a TV show (though there is that there) and instead emulating a real world full of cryptids, ghosts and UFOs.  In many ways The Unexplained is very much like a 70's monster hunter documentary or even a 90s conspiracy show.  Given it's ties, systemwise, to Now Playing it is easy to guess that the author, Bradford Younie, is a big fan of shows like Dark Skies, the X-Files and certainly Kolchak the Night Stalker.  If Now Playing is the TV version, then The Unexplained is the reality they are based on.
Chapter 1 of the book covers a bit of the background of the game with Paranormal Societies, including the FPI (detailed later).

Character creation begins in Chapter 2.
Like many games you have 6 attributes (Brawn, Agility, Stamina, Reasoning, Perception, Will) and these are give levels in words, not numbers.  So "Fair" "Good" and the like.  This is a Fudge game so the levels of everything are words.  Like all Fudge games character creation is a fast affair where where you start with a concept and work from there.  Authors (not game authors or players) might find this exercise interesting for their own characters since there is no/less number crunching than with other games.
The next chapters cover all the other things that can define your character.
TU has a bunch of skills (Chapter 3), Traits and Faults (Chapter 4) and various other means of describing your character (Chapter 6).
If you have ever played Fudge before then you will get this game in a flash.  If you have never played Fudge, then it is simple to understand and the mechanics are not at all difficult. Chapter 6 covers all the gear your character might need.  Enough to make Stanzt, Spengler and Venkman happy or Thelma to go "Jinkies".

Chapters 7 and 8 cover the rules of the game and Storytelling (Game Mastering) respectively.   Chapter 7 is your Fudge basic information as it is applied to this game.  Chapter 8 though is a very good chapter on running any sort of paranormal type game.  I have read dozens of chapters like this and this one still had some good advice for me.

While most people go to Fudge games because of the ease of character creation and game play, what I like most about this game is how well researched it is.  I play plenty of paranormal/horror/conspiracy type games.  After a while one begins to look like the other and I tend to compare them favorably to unfavorably to games like WitchCraft, Conspiracy X and DarkMatter.
The Unexplained stands up to these game rather well.  Characters are assumed to belong to the Foundation of Paranormal Investigations (FPI), which plot wise and thematically puts it between ConX and DarkMatter. They even have their own website, http://www.paranormal-foundation.com/.    The FPI is a game conceit, but that doesn't mean you have to use it.  You can go rogue if you like. Make your game more "Supernatural" than "X-Files".

The rest of the book breaks down this research into major game-playing areas.
Chapter 9 covers Ghost Hunting, with Chapter 10 on Ghost Ships in particular.  Given some the material on Carnivore Games website, I would say Ghost Ships hold a particular interest to the author.  The chapter is nicely done and very in depth.  If you need to know something about Ghost Ships for an RPG then this is a good place to start.  Chapter 11 cover Cryptozoology, so bigfoots, lake monsters and the like.  Chapter 12 Parapsychology and psychic phenomena. Chapter 13 is all about UFOlogy including the various alien races  that have come to Earth, the Greys, the Reptoids, the Nordics.  Exactly what you would expect.  Crop circles are also detailed.  Chapter 14 covers magic.  Again this is a modern view on real world magical practices, as if they were really magical.  So a nice overview here.  But I will admit, I have a hard time mixing UFOs and Magic.  This is not a fault of the game, but rather one with me I think.  This chapter though is a good overview of many magical traditions and ritual magic.

There is also a sample adventure/investigation at the end.  Appropriately enough it is about Bigfoot.
The character sheet is similar to the one found in Now Playing, and there is a nice touch of a Character Creation Questionnaire that should really work with every paranormal like game.

I mentioned the research, the game is full of interesting tidbits such as eye-witness accounts, photos and case notes from dozens of "real" reported cases of the supernatural and the paranormal. Everything from cryptids, to ghosts, to UFOs. Thematically this places it closer to ConX than say WitchCraft, though without all the baggage of the government. One gets the feeling that Younie spent many, many hours doing nothing but reading up on conspiracies and everything outside the regular media to give us this information.

A nice treat in the end is the OGL (Fudge is now released under the OGL) AND a plain language declaration what is open and what isn't.  Plus, for lack of a better word, an "openness" about publishing your adventures or supplements that can be used with Now Playing or The Unexplained.

I really liked Now Playing, but I like The Unexplained even more.
The Unexplained has a nice charm about it that I find very attractive.  Now Playing changed my mind about playing Fudge based games, and this might change my mind about running them.

Who should buy this game?
If you have ever been curious about Fudge then this is a good game to pick up.
If you enjoy supernatural/paranormal games then get this.
If you are a fan of Now Playing, then absolutely get this.

Links
http://www.paranormal-foundation.com/
http://carnivoregames.com/wp/
http://www.facebook.com/theunexplained
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2010/07/willow-tara-fudge.html

T is for Tunnels & Trolls

Tunnels & Trolls is another good game that I rarely got the chance to play.

It has spent it's entire life being unfavorably compared to D&D which, while somewhat merited, is disappointing all the same.   T&T was the SECOND RPG ever created.  It came right on the heels of D&D, written by amateur game designer Ken St. Andre. Ken saw D&D and decided that it was poorly done, so he went home and wrote his own rules.
You can read about his recollections here, but what I want to do is talk about mine.
I have talked about Tunnels and Trolls in the past, mostly dealing with the whole Outlaw Press affair.

I think one of the reasons my group avoided Tunnels & Trolls, other than the appearance that it was "D&D Little Kids" was the humor.  T&T had a humor about it absent in D&D.  Today I can look at it and appreciate it for what it is, but then that was too high a mountain to climb.  This roleplaying stuff was serious business to my 12-13 year old mind.  And there was the whole status deal.  I learned early that if you were not playing "The Right Game" you could get shunned.  Yes social elitism from a group of social outcasts (read: nerds) but it happened.  So even if I was so inclined to try T&T, I doubt if I could have gotten anyone to play it with me.

Looking back today I can say while I am disappointed that didn't give T&T the chance it deserved back then, I can certainly make up for lost time now.  I make an effort to go to the Flying Buffalo booth each Gen Con and buy something, even if it is something small. The T&T fan communities, Trollhala and Trollbridge are the two largest I know of, are very active.  Truth be told, maybe even more active these days thanks to the OSR.

Anyone familiar with D&D will recognize a lot in T&T.  Same sorts of creatures, same sorts of adventures. Players have levels, races and classes.  Plenty of weapons, spells that go 20th level and magic.
I would love to play this a couple of times with my kids, or even sit in on a Convention game.

You can still get official Tunnels & Trolls products from the Flying Buffalo website.