Super News Thursday

I keep bumping into superhero RPG news this week so I thought I would share:

Mutants and Masterminds

• Emerald City is out in PDF and will be out "soon" in print
• Next up is the Cosmic Handbook
• Q2 2014 is supposed to see the compiled Gadget Guide book released
• Gen Con 2014 will see Freedom City 3rd Edition
• The "weekly PDF" for 2014 will be the Atlas of Earth Prime, a series of articles on the rest of the world of Freedom City and Emerald City

ICONS

• Adamant is running a 10th anniversary sale and Team-Up! is on sale for $1.99. 

Savage Worlds

• Pinnacle is working on Necessary Evil 2!

Lots of cool stuff there. It's nice to see a full schedule for M&M. I like everything I see on that list. I picked up all of the weekly villain releases in 2011 and the power profiles in 2012 but this year I backed off of the gadget guides, just getting some here and there, because they weren't as immediately useful as the other stuff. A collected guide though is something worth getting. I wonder how setting material will do in that format? They mentioned that it will be priced a little higher, be a little longer, and will come out every two weeks. If there's some crunch in there too then those could be very interesting. Updated Freedom City should be a treasure trove of ideas and characters.

Team-Up - Hey, for being two years late it's pretty cool. I'll probably put up a full post about it down the road.

Necessary Evil 2 is a surprise - I never thought they would seriously return to that specific universe - but it's a good one as that is a great campaign. Apparently this one will also involve playing villains pushed into unexpected behavior. Christopher McGlothlin is writing it and I've liked a lot of his stuff (Time of Crisis for M&M among others) so the limited information I have is all positive so far.

Trek Tuesday: The Last Unicorn Star Trek RPG

I used to own this book, in fact I bought it the month it came out back in 1998. My main impression was visual - this was the first full-color, full-of-photos RPG book that I had seen and it blew me away when I flipped through it in the store. Plus, it was Trek! We hadn't had an in-print Star Trek game in about 10 years when the FASA RPG petered out with the Next Generation Officer's Guide. Now there was a new Trek game, from a company I'd never heard of, using a system I had never seen before - and it looked amazing!

To continue with the visuals I had a lot of experience with FASA products, from Trek and Traveller in the early days on into Battletech and Shadowrun where they entered their "art is everything" phase, and even they did not publish full-color rulebooks. Even their Trek game was not overstuffed with photos - the main rulebook was, but the supporting material mostly used line art. TSR had gone sort-of full color with the 1995 AD&D 2E revisions (the black cover PHB-DMG-MM) but even then it was mostly black text on white pages with some red headers and some art here and there. This new Trek book was way past that, with full color photos from the show all over the place and LCARS borders in different colors. The closest comparison I can make is with Underground and it's use of color to mark different sections and full color art throughout the main rulebook, but even it didn't have photos to draw on like this. LUG's Trek stood above all others in look and presentation.

The next impression was (not coincidentally) the price - it was $35! This was by far the most I had ever paid for a single rulebook and it was a shock, but the presentation - and the subject matter of course - won me over and I picked it up as soon as I could. Remember the D&D 3E books that came out in 2000 were $19.95 full-color hardbacks, and later jumped up but only to $30. This was a couple of years before that. Even sticker shock and general stinginess can be overcome with the right content and presentation.

Mechanics-wise I was somewhat disappointed. My standard of comparison was FASA's Trek game and it was a percentile roll game with a large skill list, an action point personal combat system, a fairly detailed ship combat system, a Traveller-esque character generation system, and in general a lot of simulationist crunch, to use the popular phrasing. I played it for years and I loved it. LUG's Trek worked on a 1-5 scale for stats & skills which seemed incredibly narrow and limiting at the time. It also had a much shorter skill list which also seemed limiting. On the plus side it did keep a sort of lifepath/background generation system and it added in Hero/GURPS style advantages and disadvantages which could add some flavor to a character beyond their stats, skills, and service record.

I also was not impressed with the die mechanics. That 1-5 stat is how many dice you roll for a skill check, then you take the highest die and add it to your skill rating (also 1-5) and that's your total. So the entire range of possibilities is defined by a d6+5. That certainly makes every point count but that is a huge amount of variability. One die in the pool is the drama die and on a 6 you get to add another die to the total, on a 1 there are increased consequences for failure. The recommended difficulty numbers are 4 (Routine) - 7 (Moderate) -10 (Challenging) - 13 (Difficult). Those seemed really high considering you're going to average around a 4 + skill level).

Starships were also less detailed and starship combat was far less gripping than FASA's game.

I was disappointed enough with the whole thing that I only tried to run it a few times and only played it a few times before the book hit the shelf. So much potential wasted. I eventually sold it or traded it for something else.

Recently though I've been digging into Trek after a long phase of not really caring so much. I stll have my FASA Trek stuff and a complete set of the later Decipher Trek RPG but I wanted to take a second look at LUG.  I picked up a copy of the book again (less sticker shock this time) and at first glance it's still very pretty.

Rules-wise I like it better than I did then, probably because I've played a lot more rules-light games and get this idea more now than I did then. It definitely leans towards the rules-light end of the spectrum, though it gets oddly detailed in some areas like starships, which ironically enough now seem almost too detailed to me in relation to the rest of the game system.

The game also is clearly and proudly in the narrative structure camp of gaming. Adventures are built around scenes and acts and there are really no random encounters and that kind of thing found in the book. That's fine, I can work with that when I know it up front. There are still some elements of a "Trek Universe Simulator" there but it's mostly a "Trek Series Simulator" rather than a physics engine like the FASA game was.

I am still not sure about the main resolution mechanic - relying on a handful of d6's still seems very swingy. I play enough 40K to know how unpredictable a few of them can be (saving throws for a terminator squad come to mind). I think to make this game work I would have to be very very strict about limiting tests to "only when there is truly a chance of failure" which is something I am not always good at doing. It would also need to follow the narrative convention of "one stealth check gets you from the shuttlecraft landing site to the hidden klingon base" rather than the more traditional "one stealth check per 100 feet" approach used in most of the games I have played. I'd be willing to give it a try, but it's definitely something I would have to watch.

So, yes - I like the game better now than I did and I might be up for giving it a try sometime. Only one of the Apprentices is really interested in Star Trek so I'd have to talk one of my other friends into it and that's going to be a tough sell. It's definitely going on the list as a secondary/try-out game though.

The End of Paragon City - One Year On

Somewhere, the Mighty Crimson Fist is still fighting crime ...

City of Heroes came to an untimely end one year ago yesterday, specifically about 2 am Sunday morning my local time. It's still a sore spot around here and while I don't lay awake nights pining for it I do miss it at times. Quite a bit of the wallpaper rotation on my main PC is CoH screenshots so it still feels very recent to me. There are efforts underway to create some new games in the spirit of CoH but for today I'm wishing the original was still around.

Early on the last day in Atlas Park. Kaptain Amerika is the red one in the center there.

Motivational Monday

One of my favorites, redside or blue - the fury mechanic made them a lot of fun to just jump into the middle of a crowd and start throwing punches. Incredulous Bulk, Master of Beast-Fu, The Thangg - I do miss running around as those guys. Hopefully one of the successor projects brings in a similar mechanical approach and they can rise again.

Thanksgiving!

All is well, off to the parents for the day with the whole crew. Not quite as rowdy as above, but probably not as quiet as Mr. Baggins would like it either.

Overreaction Wednesday

I'm taking it easy this week but there is one thing I got a chuckle out of. Mike Mearls has a post on "design elegance" here.

Now this article is fine, the funny part is the comments. One commenter posted what I was thinking:

"Great article on Design, followed by bad comments from readers."

Yep, but it is funny to see the newer generation freaking out about saving throws - apparently now the "old way" of doing them is the fort/reflex/will of the d20 era, and the move to using ability checks (like most of the rest of Next and a lot of other games over the years) is somehow more complex than adding a separate sub-system to the game in addition to ability checks. I was fine with F/R/W but just rolling this into stat checks is simpler overall. What would have happened if they had been around before 3E?

Birthday Tuesday

No, not me - Apprentice Twilight has a birthday today!

She turns 16 ... sigh ... in some ways it doesn't seem anywhere near that amount of time, and in other ways ... yeah I can feel it. Like Indy said - it ain't the years it's the mileage.

So we're doing all the typical high school stuff - friends over, movies, boyfriend (grumble), and the usual multiple-instanced birthday celebrations that go along with the blended family thing too. It's not terrible to end up with cake and presents spread out over a couple of weeks.

Though she's no longer as interested in playing games with me, nor as eager to curl up and watch a Godzilla movie as when she was smaller, we still find moments. As I write this she and Apprentice Who have spent the morning watching the season premiere of My Little Pony, some Teen Titans, and some classic Pokemon cartoons, so she still fits into the family pretty well. She went to AnimeFest as Fluttershy and other kids were recognizing her so she's doing something right. I like to think my hobbies that fall outside of the typical - like what I write about here - have helped her realize that it's OK to do her own thing.

There is that new adventure we are just beginning - driving. So far she's cautiously interested but not bugging me constantly to go practice more and I'm fine with that. Driver's Ed looms in the next few months.I'm teaching her how things work, not just how to operate them and so far that's gone well too though with teenage girls what's ok today may be boring and stupid tomorrow. Somehow ponies and the boyfriend have not been part of that cycle but I am crossing my fingers on the one at least.

Anyway, enough dad rambling - time to do some birthday stuff!

Motivational Monday

Another type I had limited experience with but really enjoyed having on a team, this was more Lady Blacksteel's style and her favorite was Callie Hot-Bone, loosely based on an "Ugly Americans" character, a gravity/fire dominator - "fling 'em around then set them on fire" is a remarkably effective tactic, especially when unencumbered by hero type ethics.

40k Friday - Heavy Weapons: Havocs and Devastators

Lately I've been picking up some heavy weapon infantry for my marines. It's an area I felt was lacking and I had a chance to rectify that. I thought I would talk a little bit about why.

Going back to the early days of 1st edition devastator squads were fairly common. Most of what we had were infantry figures anyway, and various single metal figures and plastic or metal weapons were easy enough to come by in those packs. Vehicles were a lot less common in those days other than dreadnoughts, land speeders, and some bikes, so you didn't see massed tank armies on the table, especially in the RT days. Back then a marine devastator squad was 330 pts vs 250 for a tactical squad and that bought you two missile launchers and two heavy bolters vs the single missile launcher and flamer of a tac squad, with the rest of the squad the same. (Heck, back then you could equip your dev squad with jump packs too but I never did.) Battles were smaller so having more big guns on the table could have a big impact, even if you were just shooting infantry.

In second edition things started to change as vehicles became easier to manage rules-wise and more effective points-wise. A Marine tac squad was 300 points as was a devastator squad - before paying for weapons. A tac squad typically still ran under 400 points (missile launcher, flamer, some assault gear) while a devastator squad was pretty much guaranteed to be over 400 - 4 missile launchers put it up close to 500. At the same time a classic configuration Predator (autocannon turret + las cannon sponsons) was 135. Hmmm. To be more direct, a dev squad with 3 lascannons would be 435 with no other upgrades while a Predator Annihilator with triple lascannon was 165. You could take two of them and have 100 points left over! I know I started seeing a lot more tanks this edition, and the devastators (and mole mortars and tarantulas) started to thin out.

It probably didn't help that the 2E squads came with one of each weapon type

As second edition moved into third we saw a lot more vehicles entering the game. Every race had dreadnoughts/robots, and most had bikes/jet bikes. All the basic marine tanks were in place (Rhino-predator-vindicator-razorback-whirlwind-land raider). Eldar Falcons and Vypers were flying around. Ork battlewagon transports died out but were replaced by trukks and buggies and trakks.Tyranids had big tough gun-toting creatures. The dark eldar entered the game with their over-gunned light vehicles.

With third edition came the now-standard Force Organization chart. Devastators were now competing directly with tanks for slots as well as points. A ten-man marine devastator squad was now 150 points + weapons, so a quad missile launcher squad would be 230 points. There was new flexibility though - you could take only 5 men, a sarge and 4 weapon troopers, and that would run 155 points. A classic predator was 125. Tanks were still better in many ways but at least the costs were a little closer.

This trend continued, peaking with 5th edition where vehicles were very strong and I don't know that I ever saw a single devastator squad on the table. Over time I broke my own dev troopers up and used them to fill in the heavy slots of tactical squads as alternatives to the standard missile launcher.

With 6th edition though I think they are viable again. Vehicles are weaker with the new hull point mechanic. Assault is weaker too, meaning your missile squad is less likely to get steamrollered by an infiltrating assault unit. Shooting is the way to go for most armies and devastator squads have plenty of shooting. Also many of them can serve an anti-flyer role now with the addition of flakk missiles to the arsenal - they may not be the best way to deal with flyers but they are an option.The point cost of these squads has gone down too.

Plas-ma cannons on a hero-clix map!
Plas-ma cannons on a hero-clix map!
(sing it with me!)

I came back around on devastators to some degree watching Apprentice Blaster's Long Fangs shoot up my troops over the last few years. He tends to go heavy on missile launchers with an occasional plasma cannon thrown in and it's been pretty effective. They were also a pretty effective choice reading articles online and many SW tournament armies had lots of long fang units. I also saw the effectiveness of ork loota mobs sitting back and blasting away at things. This too was backed up by online reports as most tournament style ork armies included multiple loota units. I figured I ought to look into it for my marines and started picking up heavy weapon troopers.

I already had a unit of 4 heavy bolter marines and 4 lascannon marines. Those are kind of the extreme ends of the range though. I still like the heavy bolters as I think they are pretty effective agains orks, necrons, and eldar, three armies that live in my house. I think 4 of them should be able to chew up a squad pretty nicely. In a pinch they can shoot at AV10 or 11 vehicles as well. The lascannons are less generally useful and cost more points but should provide some intimidation against a lot of opponents. They would mainly be anti-vehicle and anti-heavy infantry. I was thinking about using these with my Crimson Fists, especially the bolters, but that is my tank-heavy army and I'm not sure I want to trade a predator in for a dev squad. I still might do it but I'm not totally sure just yet.

Old School Missile Launcher

The main choice of marine players for this kind of squad seems to be missile launchers, and I agree with all of the reasons, namely range and flexibility. With the new flakk option you have a squad that can take on hordes, tanks, and flyers fairly well. There is a point cost of course, but it is only one force-org slot. I could probably scrape one together out of my existing marines but I went ahead and picked one up so I wouldn't have to do that. These guys will likely go into my Dark Angel force as I think they fit in the best. Still might go to the Fists, I just need to sit down and sort it out.

The other option I am toying with is the quadruple plasma cannon squad. Yes, it's probably overkill and yes, on average I should lose one of them over the course of a 5-turn game, but the only units in the game that can ignore that kind of firepower are AV14 and flyers. That leave a wide range of targets, from terminators to bikes to transports to hordes. There is some intimidation there and they are still cheaper than lascannons. With the return of infantry as a big deal in this edition I think they're worth trying out, and being able to fry enemy marines with no armor save never goes out of style. Now it seems like the Dark Angels would be an obvious home for them but my DA's have a lot of plasma firepower already - I'm actually thinking about putting this squad into the Fists as well.

Rogue Trader-era chaos heavy weapon troopers. I like their weird-looking bio-mechanical armor and weapons so I managed to pull together enough to make a dedicated havoc squad. Now to try them out on the table...

Chaos Havocs are similar to the above loyalist squads. The preferred weapon for them is four autocannons from what I see online - I agree that's a solid choice and I am working on putting a squad like that together myself. I also went ahead and picked up a quad missile launcher squad too. If you add in the Flakk option they do get a little pricey but again it's incredibly flexible with frag-krak-flakk options and it only takes up one force org slot if you want to go with tanks or obliterators for the rest of them.

There are two other things to consider beyond weapons loadout:

Squad sizes - I have two preferred approaches.

• For most games, since we fight mostly smaller battles here, I like the 6-man squad. Sarge, four weapon-toters, and one extra trooper I can sacrifice if the squad gets hit. Plus, this size squad fits into a razorback if I want to make them mobile (not that common but possible) or if I just want to add another relatively cheap heavy weapon and armored target. Blaster's long fangs have a twin-linked lascannon razorback and it has done well for him.
• For larger games I may take the full ten-man squad and combat squad them into two double-weapon teams. This gives me some flexibility on targeting and some protection when being targeted by the enemy. It could also let me take different weapon setups but I don;t see that happening a whole lot. 

The psychic factor - Divination librarians have a default power that lets a unit re-roll misses. This is a very popular ability for those armies that have it and Dark Angel marines are one of them. It's very tempting to take a devastator squad and park them with a divination librarian. Give him a power field and the whole squad has a 4+ invulnerable save. He is also handy if they get assaulted. Considering that the current bane of devastator and long fang squads is the Chaos Heldrake with his AP3 ignores cover flamer template, this is an especially good move if you play chaos at all.

Overreaction Wednesday

It's been a couple of weeks since the last one of these - it feels like we're in a slower period now - the big cons have come and gone, the Next playtest is going internal, and there's not as much going on in general as far as new stuff.

Next

• Apparently Mike Mearls said something about evil character support not being included in the PHB. I doubt this as what is described sounds pretty clunky but then I don't much care either as my groups don't usually play evil characters anyway. There's a poll and a discussion here on EN World. This sounds like the kind of thing people get all excited about and then find out there's really not much to it when the game is finally released. 
• Here's a fairly interesting article on design for Next. I'd like to see stuff like this in the DMG down the road to help guide the future. 
• Here's the article on the Warlock class design if you haven't seen it. This one didn't do a ton for me. I didn't care about them in 3rd but I thought they made some sense in 4E and had some interesting concepts tied to them. For Next's broader approach to classes I think they're going to be about as distinctive as 3E sorcerers were vs. wizards. I hope they prove me wrong but they've never struck me as a "needed" class. They feel more like something that should go in an arcane magic supplement or they should be refit into a more defined niche, like fighter-mage.

4E

I was happy to see that the D&D Encounters adventures are starting to show up on DTRPG. These are one of the harder to find types of books for 4E, at least at a reasonable price, and they are exactly the kind of product that should be available in PDF. This is 12 encounters with a coherent theme for $4.99 - sounds fine to me. Hopefully the rest of them become available shortly too. Being modern products I can't see too many barriers to getting them out there.

Pathfinder

The next big rulebook for PF is the Advanced Class Guide which is supposed to feature new hybrid classes, each of which is a mix of two existing classes. There's a big interview with the designer here and it looks like the beta starts very soon. From their own announcement:

Now that you know when to expect the playtest, on to the new class. Up to this point, we have talked about 7 of the 10 classes: the Arcanist (a mix of sorcerer and wizard), the Bloodrager (a mix of barbarian and sorcerer), the Hunter (a mix of druid and ranger), the Shaman (a combination of oracle and witch), the Slayer (a blending of ranger and rogue), the Swashbuckler (a mix of gunslinger and fighter), and the Warpriest (mixing the cleric and fighter). The 8th class is...

The Investigator. This class blends together elements of the alchemist and the rogue to make for the ultimate sleuth. Using extracts, sneak attack, and a new mechanic called inspiration, the investigator is skilled at putting together clues, finding hidden foes, and striking enemies with precision. Think of him as part Sherlock Holmes, part Doctor Jekyll. Using inspiration, the investigator can add a bonus to certain skill checks, saving throws, and even attack rolls.

Now there are some interesting ideas here and I love the enthusiasm but beyond possible niche bleedover (a mix of druid and ranger? I thought ranger was sort of a mix of fighter and druid already? etc) I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone say that Pathfinder lacks class options. In fact I'm not sure what it does lack with lots of classes, races, gear,, four monster books, and magic and combat supplements Pathfinder is pretty well-stocked in most areas. I'd like to see more of the "interesting new systems" type stuff like we have in Mythic Adventures and Ultimate Campaign, but that's probably my always-the-DM side showing. Have people really gotten bored with 20 or so classes and per-level multiclassing? Where do they find the time? The only holes I can see compared to prior versions of D&D is a psionics system and a monsters-as-pc's supplement. I suppose they will get to those eventually. In the meantime I will take a look at the beta version and see if anyone wants to try them out in our game.