Wargame Wednesday - Storming the Gap: World at War 85

 

I haven't played a lot of tabletop Cold War era games. I think the only other land combat one I own is Last Battle from GDW which was closely tied to Twilight 2000 but it used all the latest Cold War-era equipment. I do have the Fleet series games from Victory Games and those were great but not at all focused on the landward side of things. There's Twilight Struggle of course but it's not exactly a traditional hex and counter type conflict simulation. There have been various computer and miniature games in this area over the years ( like the old "something 1985" series from SSI) but if we're talking strictly about board wargames this set is a little new for me.

Yeah, that's the one I had!

There were two main reasons to start digging in  to this particular game. First - the scale and the period are both of interest. As mentioned I realized this period was a bit of a gap in my experience and in my collection so I started looking at Cold War-era games. There are a fair number of options but this one chooses a specific year so we know what was definitely available and what might have been rushed into service or available in prototype form. That's a nice touch for an otherwise speculative game. 

It's also a platoon-level game which means the counters represent tank and infantry platoons which is the same scale Panzerblitz and Panzer Leader used way back when. This gives it a nice tactical feel that allows for differences between different types of equipment (like an Abrams vs. a Leopard 2 vs. a T-72) without needing to worry about details like facing and front/side/rear/top armor values. I have miniatures and some computer games for extreme detail and there is always MBT (from Avalon Hill and now GMT) if I want that. So this slightly larger view of things still feels close but should not bog down in minutia. 

Additionally this is a Lock 'N Load game which means it should be very well supported. I do not have any of their other games but they publish multiple lines of well-regarded games from Nations at War (WW2 platoon-level) to Lock N' Load Tactical  - Modern and WW2 lines - for that up-close scale of game. Their games look great, have been around for a few years now, and seem to be pretty widely played. 

There is a fair amount of stuff out for it now.

Finally the rules used in this game are refreshingly different - there is no CRT, for example. The numbers you need are right there on the counter and tell you either how many dice to roll for an attack or what you need to roll on one to succeed with whatever you are doing. Now the counters are a little busy and all of those colors and shapes and superscripts/subscripts mean something so I can see it taking a little while to learn all of the details but I appreciate the drive to put everything you need right out there on the board.

The other interesting rules element is the way it uses cards. It is similar to a card-driven game like C&C Ancients but the deck tells you which specific unit to activate, not what actions you can take - this is a huge difference if you've played any of the C&C games. There are cards for each formation in a scenario plus a few others might be added in like close air support or electronic warfare to represent the almost random appearance of certain assets. Also, you will run through the entire deck until the -second- "end operations" card is drawn which means this phase is over for the turn and the deck will be reshuffled for the next turn. This means that while you may not get to activate all of your units (like you would in a more traditional non-card-driven game) you will likely be able to do more in a turn than in a C&C turn so less of your army will feel like it's sitting there doing nothing. 

Finally there is a lot of detail in the game - missiles, reactive armor, helicopters, minefields, and more. It's all handled in a pretty intuitive way once you get the basics of the system so I don't feel like it's missing anything significant. This is a second edition of a prior game line so they had a few years to work out the kinks and it shows. 

Almost hilariously there is an associated novel line set in this ... universe(?) ... as well, so if you're missing your Team Yankee or Tom Clancy novels here's an outlet. I mean, RPG's generating books is old hat but this is a hex and counter board wargame ... well, OK ... and yes, I will probably check out the first one at least just to see what it's about. 

So I am looking forward to getting my hands dirty with this one - I'll post about it after I have some more actual play experience to share. 

Thoughts on Ascendant

 

Ascendant launched in January of 2022 and apparently did pretty well as they just recently did a Kickstarter for a new Platinum edition which is a pretty quick turnaround for a new edition of a game. I saw the KS and realized I hadn't looked at the existing version so I thought I ought to and now I finally have. 

It's a softcover book that is 496 pages long - it's a hefty tome though Hero 5th Revised is about 590, and Pathfinder 2E Core was over 630, so it's not the absolute biggest - but it's hefty. It's mostly black and white text but it does have some illustrations here and there and it does use color - title bars are done in blue while examples and specific headers are done in red so there is some thought put into the layout. There are section tabs on the edges of the pages so I do like the effort that went into organizing these rules.

The mechanics roughly described are sort of what could happen if you took the Hero system and mixed it with DC Heroes with a dash of Marvel Super Heroes. yes, it's a bit of an 80's greatest hits kind of thing. In their own words:

INSPIRATION FOR THE SYSTEM

If we have succeeded, it is because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Two particular giants deserve special acclaim: Jeff Grubb, the designer of TSR’s 1984 RPG Marvel Super Heroes; and Greg Gorden, designer of Mayfair Game’s 1985 RPG DC Heroes. Grubb’s Marvel Super Heroes RPG (sometimes called the FASERIP system) was our inspiration for the color-coded Challenge Action Resolution Table, which enables any and all actions within the game to be resolved with a roll of 1d100. Meanwhile, Gorden’s DC Heroes RPG (sometimes called the MEGS system) was our inspiration for the logarithmic mathematics that power our physics- based design. We have sought to synthesize what was best about these two games into one cohesive system that surpasses both in robustness, comprehensiveness, and verisimilitude. Whether we have, in fact, succeeded is for you to judge.

The hero similarities are my own take on it. Characters have six Primary Attributes - Might, Agility, Valor, etc. - and then they also have ten Secondary Attributes which cover everything from height and Weight to Run Speed to Income, Reputation, Passive Spotting Range, and Passive Listening Range. Then you also have two Variable Attributes - Health (physical damage capacity)  and Determination (mental damage capacity). 

That's before we get into Skills and Powers. In my eyes it's starting to look like a Hero character sheet already.

Now the DC piece comes in with "Supermetric Points" or SPs. Everything is measured in SPs - distance, speed, time, weight, density, volume, area, money, information, and fame. There is a baseline quantity of each of these that is SP 0 and then each additional point doubles the previous quantity. So a distance of SP0 is 5 feet while SP5 distance is 160 feet. There is a whole section of charts that list values/examples for all of those categories from 0-25 SPs plus notes on how to manipulate them - you can't just add them together for example. Now a lot of games since DC Heroes have used ratings like this (Mutants and Masterminds and ICONS among others) but they are hardwired in to this system even more explicitly - everything a character has or does is rated on this scale - a Might of 6 means you can pick up 1600 lbs or a Horse, for example. The normal human max is 5 by the way.

There are a ton of up-front definitions of other things too like Objects, the different type of Actions one can take, and how to resolve tasks with Challenge Checks. It's not that any one of these things is particularly complex it's that there are so many of these things right at the beginning of the rules. I go back and forth with RPGs on what should be covered first - task resolution or character creation? But there is nothing in this section that really gets me excited about playing or running this game. That said, here on page 53 we do get to see how the system works:

CHALLENGE ACTION RESOLUTION TABLE (CHART)

Once the AV and DV have been determined, the DV is subtracted from the AV to yield the Resolution Value (RV). Next, consult the Challenge Action Resolution Table (CHART). The CHART is divided into seven columns and thirteen rows (-6 to 6). Find the row matching the character’s RV in one of the two RV Columns on the left-hand side of the table. If the character is making an Attack or certain other interactive actions, it is making an Attack Check and uses the RV column labeled RV (Attack). If the character is attempting any other type of Challenge, it uses the RV column labeled RV (Other). The player or GM controlling the character then rolls 1d100 and finds the column matching the number they rolled. The color of that column is the Color Result of the Challenge Check.

That's a lot to chew on but the chart does make it easier to grasp:

For example punching someone is Valor vs. Valor. So you compare that rating,  find the difference, roll percentiles, and look at your result above. White is a fail, Green is typically a success, and the other colors indicate better and better results with some outcomes requiring a specific color minimum - that's the MSH influence. 

There are Hero Points that let you break the normal rules - every superhero game should have them  and this one does. 

Character creation uses a point build system and there are Power Limits that cap how much can be spent on any given power though there are several pages spent breaking down different kinds of limits here and both the GM and the players are going to have to look this part over fairly carefully. 

There is a lengthy powers section that looks like it covers what most people will need. 

There is an entire chapter devoted to "Objects" which covers gadgets, devices, inventions ... vehicles in this system are "crewed objects" which cracks me up for some reason. This also gets us winning section headers as "sub-object launch capability" which seems like it could get pretty deep if you model an aircraft carrier that launches attack jets which can launch missiles which might have have sub-munitions of their own in each missile. No I'm not going to try and build that right now. 

After this we get into the gear section - excuse me, the "object catalog" which covers everything from a tactical flashlight to guns to drugs to nuclear weapons. There is a pretty thorough selection of vehicles here including the aircraft carrier and jets mentioned above - missiles are in the previous part. There is also this gem of a section:

I mean .. that covers a lot, right? This is really the "things the Brick wants to throw at someone" section and I love that this is here.

There is a chapter devoted to "Movement & Travelling". It's 13 pages long and full of formulas and charts and ... this is just how this game is going to go alright? It does say "physics simulator" up front and it is not kidding.

There is a "Forensic Site Complexity" table. I am not kidding. This covers a range of sizes from "Toilet Stall" 0 SPs to "St. Thomas Island" at 25 SPs.

The game does have rules for everything from social interactions and acquiring fans to managing money to learning and memorizing information to interrogating/interviewing witnesses ... some of that I can appreciate but I have to say a lot of it just seems like needless over-quantification, especially in a superhero game. The Saving the Day section has some very cool and certainly thematic ideas - asteroid strikes, avalanches, etc. but then we get to "Disease Outbreak" which spends 7 pages breaking down all the steps of identifying, containing, and treating various diseases. I have to say in 40 years of playing and running RPGs, including superhero RPG's, I have never need this level of detail for handling a disease outbreak. Maybe someone has ... but not me. Not even in Twilight 2000 where disease is probably at its most dangerous as there is no magic, no superpowers, and not much medicine left. So this to me seems like something one would put in a specific adventure or campaign supplement that dealt with a disease outbreak as a major challenge - not part of a core rulebook for playing costumed heroes. 

The Gamemastering section wraps up the book and has my personal required elements of lots of normal NPC types, animals,  heroes, villains, and some guidance on how to organize a campaign. 

So what does it all boil down to? Well, I would have been a lot more interested in this kind of system 20-odd years ago. It is very thorough - if that's what you are looking for it's probably the most thorough superhero RPG I have encountered. They did mention "comprehensive" in that inspiration section up above and they were not kidding. But ... for me ... I just don't need multiple pages and tables for every problem a team might encounter. I like the way the main Chart system works but the overhead to get there with the SPs and the RVs and all of the details just kills it for me. In the universe of Supers RPGs I don't know where it would win out enough for me to earn some table-time. There are some things that feel like odd disconnects to me:

• It cites TSR Marvel as an influence but other than the color-coded results on the table I don't see it. MSH was very playable and did not get bogged down in details yet here the whole game is built on details. It doesn't feel FASERIP-y at all. Ease and speed of play does not seem to have been a primary concern here.
• It cites being a Physics-based game as opposed to Effects-based (Hero) or Descriptor-based (Marvel Heroic Roleplaying) but comic book physics are notoriously flexible and variable and it just seems like an odd thing to base a comic-book game on. Superpowers are not usually defined with meticulous precision in comic books or shows or movies yet that's what this game is built around. It doesn't really feel right to me. 
• The general feeling of "overkill" in so many areas. The disease section is a good example. In a campaign I was running most of this would be happening offscreen while the heroes gathered samples, carried people to safety, maybe dealt with some quarantine issues, and then helped deliver the cure. It would be about how the player characters reacted to the situation, not a procedural exercise in how the world works through it all. It's just a difference in approach and what I feel is important to a game versus what the designers here saw as important. 
• Also (and Hero has a touch of this as well) there is a lot of jargon in this system and I worry that players are going to be spouting numbers and ratings and formulas in play more than just doing superhero stuff. Thirteen pages on movement alone ... I just feel like you're going to hear "He's 8 SPs tall" a lot more than "He's the size of a skyscraper!"  - the constant need to translate feels like it could interfere with the flow. Maybe with time this would fade but looking at it as a new system it's a concern. 

So it's not a game I am likely to run anytime soon. Saying that I would still consider playing it if one of my crew had a burning desire to run it. It would be an interesting experience and might change some of my feelings about it but I do not think that's likely to happen. For now, it goes on the shelf and sticks in the back of my  mind as something to re-examine down the road. 

Wargame Wednesday - Catching Up on Years of Neglect

 

I used to play board wargames, also known as hex-and-counter wargames, quite a bit. Panzerblitz was my first - like it was for so many people - and from there I moved into Panzer Leader and then Squad Leader. Star Fleet Battles also entered my life around this time along with Starfire and Car Wars and Ogre so it was not just historical games. This was the early 80's so Avalon Hill reigned supreme in this arena with SPI, Steve Jackson, Yaquinto (Ironclads! Mythology! Swashbuckler!), and Task Force all in the mix as well. 

Over time Squad Leader became Advanced Squad Leader and squeezed out most other historical games for us. SPI was bought out by TSR and then many of it's main people started Victory Games and cranked out a whole lot of interesting things like the "Fleet" games, Ambush, and Tokyo Express among many others. Battletech entered the mix as something much easier to put together and play compared to SFB and ASL. Miniatures became more of a thing during this time thanks to Battlesystem and Warhammer Fantasy and, yes, Battletech and SFB too. Now many RPG's were being played as well but we were in junior high and high school and just had so much more time that it was easy to work in all three parts of the "triad" - RPGs, miniature games, and board wargaming. I never felt like these things were competing with each other for our time.

As time went on - though I did not notice it - the board wargames began to be squeezed out. Now things were still fine in the first part of the 90's but as we all grew up, moved out, got full time jobs, and started families our game time did thin out. RPGs maintained their primary place when we could get together as a big group. Miniatures, mainly 40K and Epic with a sprinkling of Battletech dominated the two-man gatherings. The boardgames dried up almost completely other than the occasional 6+ players game of Civilization or Twilight Imperium. Avalon Hill died, Victory Games died, Task Force died, and Steve Jackson went heavily into GURPS and then Munchkin and it felt like I didn't know any of the remaining players and didn't care a ton for what they were putting out.

About 10-15 years ago I got exposed to some of the new games at the time and it was a revelation. Card-driven games, more area-movement games, impulse-type turn sequences instead of rigid I-go-you-go systems ... there was a ton of good, interesting stuff happening. So I did step back in, picking up and playing Command & Colors, Combat Commander, and some older games I had loved like Ambush and Battle Hymn. I also dove into Federation Commander for a while and tried to make that a recurring thing again. 

After a year or two this faded though I did keep a very irregular C&C Ancients game going with Blaster for years and I did pay more attention to what was going on in the business taking the GMT newsletter email etc. I just didn't get to play a whole lot so I didn't keep up all that closely or buy much of anything. 

This past year though ... I started looking into Battletech again  - with all the Kickstarter noise coming from them how could I not? So There are new Battletech products on my shelf for the first time in years. That helped to get things rolling. I also started looking into games that matched up with whatever history I was reading at the time and realized I had missed a lot of good games. So I resolved to start rebuilding the wargame collection driven largely by what looked good and had decent reviews. For example, I watched "A Bridge Too Far" for the first time in years and ended up with multiple games on Operation Market-Garden. There are a lot of games on this section of the war so I tried to focus on 3 or 4 that seemed to cover it well ... perhaps 5.

I always had a lot of fun playing WW2 tactical games starting with Squad Leader and I still had the Combat Commander sets but there has been an explosion of this kind of game so I have been stepping into as many of them as possible - Old School Tactical, Band of Brothers, Conflict of Heroes, The Last Hundred Yards ... there are a lot to choose from. I also decided to rebuild my ASL collection (sold off in the 90's) and I've done a pretty thorough job there. I even branched out into the more recent ASL starter sets to help me re-learn the finer points of the game. 

So that's what prompted me to start this as a regular thing - I plan on stepping back into this part of the hobby and I plan to post my notes here as I do. Who knows, someone out there may be in a similar situation - "how is this new game different from Squad Leader?" Well, that's the kind of thing I can talk about here. More to come ...

40K Friday - Leviathan Work

 

I should really be working on completely finishing up the rest of the Necrons but sometimes the new and shiny takes precedence. I've started digging in to the Leviathan marines with the Balistus dreads going first (see above) because they are fairly simple to build being a simplified starter set type and also because dreadnoughts are cool. Two of those will be joining the Crimson Fists and one will go to the Black Templars most likely. The Fists are my "everything" army while the Templars are more melee focused but they do get some shooty units too. I have a couple of Redemptors set aside for them and a Brutalis but why not add an all-guns unit into the mix too? Someone has to provide all those Crusader squads with some covering fire, right?

The Terminators will also be going to the Fists - I have several squads already and the newer, bigger, types will just be additional squads for them. 

As for the rest right now I think one pyroblaster squad will join the Fists and one will go to the Templars. The Sternguard will mainly go to the Fists as well as they don't really fit my Templars. The Fists will also get one of each of the new characters and the others will likely go to the Templars - outside of the Terminator Librarian of course. He may join my Blood Angels. 

And that's really the breakdown right now - with way too many power armor armies I have to focus in at any given time so the new stuff goes into the Crimson Fists "let's get them brought up to snuff with a bunch of the new stuff" improvement program while the Black Templars await their turn (next) and the Blood Angels may be waiting for their own codex release for a big update. 

Lastly, my Imperial Fists army is all-terminators with some bikes (originally built as a Deathwing force many years ago) so I've just picked up some dreadnoughts to add to them and I am looking forward to that 1st Company Strike Force formation coming in the new codex. There will be no Primaris units added to this one - just more terminators perhaps down the road.

Also on a "new codex and it's inherent changes" note I of course finished painting a bike squad and a landspeeder squadron earlier this year, both of which now appear to be going to Legends. Ah well ...

From Leviathan that leaves the Tyranids and having gathered up quite the Nid army and the Codex and the cards it's a fairly big hill to climb. You have to start somewhere and getting them all built would at least let me play the army some to try it out. I'm probably going to start with the big monsters to run a crusher stampede as I can get that done faster. More to come there for sure.

Marvel Multiverse - The Intro Adventure PDF is Out

 

Quick note - Marvel finally put their intro adventure up in PDF form for free on DTRPG. It starts out as a straightforward hostage situation:

When the heroes arrive on the scene, the police officer in charge informs them that the situation is even worse than what they were told. The Hydra agents are demanding that the city of New York drape the Statue of Liberty in a Hydra uniform, and they’re threatening to kill a researcher every hour on the hour until that happens. There are five minutes left until the first hour is up.

I mean ... that's pretty Silver/Bronze Age appropriate I would say. As you might suspect there is more going on here than Hydra grandstanding. There is a solid map which is nice if you're going to have action scenes in a modern office building. Also there are stats for Hydra Agents (which are already in the main book), Officers, and Armored Agents (like that one up top) so it beefs up the non-super foes list a bit and it's nice to have them all right here in the adventure instead of being referred to page X. It's a nice introduction and it's exactly the kind of thing that could have been included in the main rulebook in my opinion. A free PDF is not a bad option though - thanks for that Marvel. 

That's the latest and greatest for the Marvel game as far as I know. Kang is coming in November so we will get a better look at what the big books for this game will look like then.

Firing up ICONS again

 

So I was going to be short some players this week for a variety of reasons - thus thwarting myself once again from wrapping up the Perdition Elections arc in my Deadlands campaign as I want everyone present for the finale. The bonus complication here was that the mix of players this week did not match the mix of players I have had for Warhammer, Sentinels, Marvel, or either of the Star Wars games I've run in the past year - inset appropriate emoji here. With the chance to continue an existing game game out the window I dropped back into the Hall of Gaming, took a look around, and contemplated my gaming life thus far. 

I needed something that was easy to drop players in and out of, that could be run as an episodic campaign - self contained from game to game, and something that would not take a great deal of time to prepare as this gear-switching tends to come with only a few days notice. I do not want to keep crash-course-re-learning games for one-shot runs like I've been doing so I want to pick something as the "Plan B" game and stick with it. 

Superhero games are the easiest type of RPG to manage variable player attendance issues in my experience so that's where I started. Simpler rules ... simpler character generation ... lots of support ... this was really going in one direction from pretty early on. 

So ICONS it was! I haven't run ICONS in 5 years but I ran a bunch of it from 2011 up to about 2018 and wrote about it a lot here so it's not unfamiliar territory. I mostly ran it with my kids though so my regular players have not spent much time with it. The other bonus with ICONS is that I have a bunch of short adventures for it - and I like them, which is a rarity with superhero games as most of them are not good. For some reason though this game brought out good things in people and resulted in some really fun scenarios with classic comic book themes front and center. Fainting Goat Games in particular has had a nice run.

So I spent two days re-reading the rulebook and choosing an adventure, then we got together and rolled up some characters. I ended up with only two players but that's fine for a supers game. 

• Variable Dave ended up with "Phantom Justice", an interesting mix of Phasing, Density Control, Fast Attack, and ... Spinning ... of all things. He made it work.
• Shootist Will put together "The Amazing Sub-Zero" - an Ice Controller that ended up pretty cohesive.

For this run I chose "Primal Power" from Fainting Goat. I don't want to spoil much so I'll stay general but it's a great situation involving gorillas, a zoo, mind control, a secret lab, and some other heroes, a police force, and an agency to interact with during a crisis. There are character stats and some maps to give the GM an idea of where things are happening and of course it could lead into more. 

My players being veteran superhero fans didn't even blink at a hostage situation involving armed gorillas and dealt with the initial situation quickly and efficiently. One reason for this involves one character having a high degree of proficiency with the Reflection power and the large number of tranquilizer rifles in play. Lots of mechanical interaction there but it does make people drop quite quickly when they can  be knocked out on their own turn!

I freely admit I came out of it happy that they had fun but feeling like I had a lot of homework before the next session based on the number of questions I wrote down. Combine a few new powers with not having played in a while and uh, yeah, I felt like I was behind on and off all night - it still went well though.

This weekend will probably be another session as I already know we will be missing a few players. More on that next week! 

Superhero RPG sale at DTRPG

 I just saw that DTRPG is having a superhero RPG sale all week long and some of the discounts are pretty hefty. We live a golden age of supers RPGs with more options than ever before and there are a lot of interesting new takes on the genre so it's worth a stroll through their selection to see if something catches your eye. 

Anyway, just a heads up!

Trying Out WFRP 2E

 

Over a prior weekend we were going to be short a couple of players so I pushed back the next session of Deadlands. The next one will be the finale of the Perdition Elections arc - if you've played The Flood you probably know - and since I had full attendance for the first two parts I wanted to maintain that for the big finish. This meant that we had an opening to try something like we did with Marvel a few weeks ago and with a bit of a fantasy itch we decided to try Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

I say "try" but I've run it before and run and played 1st edition going back to the 80's - it's just been awhile. WFRP is up to a 4th edition now but I don't own it and was more inclined to run the one I have a bunch of books for already than start diving into the latest version. It may have been ten years since I ran it last for the apprentices and it's never really been a thing for my current group of players so it was fresh territory for us.

I planned on running the starter adventure in the back of the core rulebook as it's pretty good for this kind of thing and has the bonus of leading into the first published adventure if you want to go that route. I'm not planning too far ahead but one of the reasons we are doing these little one or two-offs is to try out things we might play after Deadlands wraps up. If we decided to go with WFRP then having that link to a potential campaign is handy. 

So we had 3 characters rolled up:

• Grognard Mike made a Dwarf Soldier - this was by far the most capable fighter in the group with some armor and a big axe.
• Variable Dave ended up with a Halfling Entertainer - this is potentially a hilarious character with strong Blather and Public Speaking skills which could let him talk people into damn near anything.
• Next-Gen Patty came out of it with an Elven Apprentice Wizard which is a fairly rare thing in my experience for a starting WFRP campaign. We dug into the magic rules to make sure we were doing things right and he was pretty happy with his options for "Petty Magic".

Given the random nature of character creation this was actually a pretty impressive party. A fighter, a face, and a wizard is a good mix. I gave a general primer on the world while pointing to the map hanging on my wall and we have a party on their way to the town of Untergard shortly after a major chaos invasion of the Empire and a battle at the town. 

I wanted to remind us all that combat in this system is not like D&D so along the way to Untergard our party encountered 3 optimistic goblins and a fight was on. This fight went on for 7 rounds as there is a lot of "missing" in WFRP fights. Starting characters typically have a 20 to 30-something percent chance to hit and though there are ways to boost that by 10 or 20 points it's still tricky. That said anything that connects can get nasty quick. A typical weapon will do a d10 +3 or 4 points.  Everything has a Toughness number that is effectively damage resistance and armor is added to this (also absorbing damage) which will end up stopping 3-4 points for most characters. That means most of your effective damage comes from that d10 roll. Characters have a variable number of Wounds but it's typically about 10 so you can take 1 or 2 hits before it gets bad. 

It gets bad once you run out of wounds as at that point you start taking criticals which are resolved on a  set of charts based on hit location. There are ten possible results on each one ranging from very minor like a penalty on rolls for a round on up through losing a limb, and then finishing up at "dead" in whatever way the player or GM wants to describe. 

On a final note that d10 roll explodes on a "10" so a fluke set of rolls can absolutely destroy a character in one attack. Warhammer adventures typically do not include clearing a large dungeon full of monsters and this combat system shows why.

The fight against the goblins gave us a good introduction with magic, missile, and melee combat all happening. Out of the PC's only the halfling took a critical and he was just bonked on the head and knocked down, nothing too serious. Test fight over the party proceeded into town. 

I don't really want to spell out how the starter scenario goes in detail but there is some NPC interaction and then an attack on the war-ruined town by some Beastmen-type enemies. There's more beyond that but we did not have time to finish out the rest of the story but hopefully we will get to do that soon. 

It's a fun, fairly gritty system that gets more interesting as you gain more abilities from Talents and Magic and also as your skills improve and you hit more than half of the time. I'm not sure where it will end up in our survey of possible games but my players seemed to like it and that's what counts the most. 

40K Friday - Of Necrons, Knights, and Backlogs ...

 

It's been a fairly slow summer here miniatures-wise but I am pushing forward. The weather finally cooperated enough to fall within a decent range for spraying for a few hours so my Necrons are almost all base coated now. With all of the models built (barring one older monolith) I am in the unfamiliar place of having an up-to-date fully-painted army with no backlog. It is a strange feeling as pretty much every other army I have inevitably has a shelf full of boxes, sprues, and in-progress units that seem to linger for years, never quite vanishing regardless of progress made. So yes, with this new approach for the Necrons I am hoping to change that and also to start applying it to my older armies. 

For one example I decided to make Imperial Knights a full army this edition and the backlog for them at this point consists of one larger knight and a group of 4-6 smaller knights. It -really- shouldn't take that long to build and paint 7 models, even larger models, and once they are done I don't really foresee a backlog developing there. 

I also ended up adding a Chaos Knight army but this one was largely pained, big knights and small knights alike, so I really just have some touch-up and base unification to do here so again no backlog and the army is playable as it is right now with one possible new knight to add to round out the force. Maybe not zero-backlog - but close!

I added a Custodes force for this edition too but they were also mostly painted so my backlog right now is repairing a unit that arrived broken into damn near every single component that could be glued together and then adding in a few standard bearers and one more sagittarum squad. So two units and a character or two - I think I'm getting the hang of this.

The Tyranids are a new from-scratch force for me and I want to paint them up in my own scheme so this is where most of my effort will be going. It's not really a backlog when you are just starting the army ... right? I'll have more to say about them over the next few months. 

With most of the new stuff in good shape and one new army waiting to begin the gaping hole in my current state is the Imperial backlog - beefing up the Crimson Fists with a bunch of newer Primaris stuff, major reinforcements to the Imperial Guard, and massive updates for the Black Templars ... this is probably where I should be spending my time but I suspect the Nids will jump in front of them. 

Anyway there's the ramble for this week. I may actually have to put up some pictures of these things as we move into fall. More to come for sure. 

Marvel Multiverse RPG - Playtest Report

 

Saturday night four of the regular crew got together with me and we gave the new Marvel game a spin. 

One of the great things about playing in a well-known universe like this is being able to pick a character you like and jump right in. I did not want to get bogged down in character creation this first time so we picked from the 100+ heroes described in the book:

• Thing was played by Grognard Mike
• Iron Man was played by Variable Dave
• Spider-Man 2099 was played by Next-Gen Patty (who also brought a copy of the book)
• Beast was played by Battletech Terry

So that was our mix of heroes. One of the best parts of sitting around the table with a group of guys like this is that everyone has strong comic book knowledge so over the course of the evening I learned:

• Mike spent some time looking up Jimmy Durante videos and info so he could sound more authentically Thing-like and figuring out which era of Ben Grimm he was aiming for.
• Dave worked up Tony Stark's speech that kicked off the adventure with no prompting from me.
• Patty broke down the history and origin of SM2099 for us because it has been 20+ years since I looked at any of that.
• Terry spelled out the relative capabilities of original-form Beast vs. Blue-Fur Beast as we debated various numbers assigned to the different characters 

This was not doing Google-searches on the phone - this was guys talking through it as we played. Very casual and tons of fun. 

There is no starter adventure for this outside of Roll20 or Demiplane or whatever online play platform they are using so I had to put something together fairly quickly. The situation is this: Stark Industries is launching a new ferry boat in NYC harbor powered by a new Micro-Arc-Reactor. Once tested this will usher in a new era of clean safe power that could be expanded to other infrastructure uses and will also allow riders to charge up their electric cars as that becomes a more common need.  Stark will be there to make the speech, Miguel wanted to see the speech and also scout out a new Roxxon facility going in across the river, while Hank and Ben are meeting there and then going to try a new restaurant afterwards. 

Unfortunately Hydra has its eye on this new technology and has hired The Hand to disrupt things while a pair of Hydra agents steal the reactor. Classic Marvel stuff in my mind.

So this first part was to try out heroes vs. mooks as everyone that will be showing up here is at a lower rank than our heroes. I had a second phase sketched out that would have involved more actual villains but we didn't get to that point. It does leave me an easy in for a second session though.

The Scene: a large ferry boat with a lower deck about half-full of cars, 20-30 people milling around there and on an upper deck where our heroes have gathered along with a few notables. It's still at the dock for the moment. 

So some open areas, some cover, a somewhat limited area overall assuming you don't want to go into the water, an upper and lower level to add that third dimension plus some cars to throw or blow up along with a lot of potential hostages. I try to give my guys options.

This game uses 5 foot squares so I sketched it out on a battlemat and added some toy cars and 40K vehicles and a monitor stand for the second level and we were set!

Tony Stark says his piece, there is applause all around, and then a bunch of ninjas led by the infamous Elektra  appear out of the crowd and the shadows and begin ordering people to the back of the ferry.

I had thought we might work in more social interaction but my players were really just waiting for the trouble to start so we jumped right in. Initiative is the standard 3d6/d616 as they call it roll modified by Vigilance + any Traits or Powers. It is called out on the character sheet so it saves you from doing the math each time. We ended up with:

• Ninjas
• SM2099
• Beast
• Thing
• Elektra
• Iron Man

The Hand is busy doing crowd control. We decided in this universe Stark still has a secret ID as does this Spider-Man so they spend the first round ducking out of sight and changing. Beast drops into a Defensive Stance while Thing grabs a ninja and throws him into another ninja (Quick Toss - a Super Strength power) knocking them both out. - an awesome start!

Starting with this first round a growing feeling crystalized for me: many of these powers feel like 4th Edition D&D powers. I felt like it after re-reading the powers section and my players came around on it too. Here's the Quick Toss power:

Every character gets a Move Action, a Standard Action, and a Reaction every round. So the trick here is to use a Standard to grab someone, then use your Reaction to do this and damage two targets. There are a LOT of higher-end powers that do interesting things like this. 

Another thing to note is that this one has a Focus cost. Originally I thought Focus was just another damage track to cover non-physical stuff but a lot of powers (particularly the more advanced ones) have a Focus cost and there are ways to recover some focus during a fight. This feels a lot like the Vitality and Wounds system from the first version of d20 Star Wars (originally used in Spycraft) where Jedi burned Vitality to use force powers and yes there are consequences to running out of Focus. We will need to play more to see just how extensive this is in play but it is a pretty common thing among the higher-up Powers.

Next round most of the Ninjas start lining up on the heroes as Elektra moves to engage Beast. Iron Man appears as if out of nowhere and unloads a missile swarm onto part of the upper deck catching multiple ninjas in the blast!

Now admittedly we did get a laugh out of Tony Stark's area effect blast being based on his Ego but this is one area where the flavor feels a little off. Iron Man's Elemental Control powerset is labelled as "Energy" which is fine in general but a) I never pictured Iron Man as an "Elemental Control" type character and b) the character write-ups have zero notes on what the different powers are supposed to represent beyond that broad descriptor. Johnny Storm, sure, I know what his blasts and barrages probably look like. Iron Man tends to have a bunch of different ranged attacks and while I get leaving it up to the player's interpretation is a valid approach in general I didn't design this character so I would really like a few words next to each power describing what they were thinking. Which version of IM is this? Is one attack meant to represent the palm repulsors? Is another the uni-beam? Is another one missiles like we went with? Flavor is a huge part of a superhero game and this one falls down a little here. 

Another trend to note here is that it is extremely common to have multi-target powers inflict half-damage with full damage + a special effect on a Fantastic Success. Remember a Fantastic Success is a 1 on the Marvel die which is treated as a 6 for the math. So one out of six rolls you will get something awesome so if you're used to d20 critical frequencies, well, these are far more common.

The battle is fully on now and the ninjas are not having a big effect on our heroes - Beast, Iron Man, and Thing are all basically immune to ninja-punches - so Elektra is in the fight trying to keep Beast and Thing busy ...

Alright so many of the power sets have a version of this - this is for Melee Weapons but there is also one for Marital Arts and one for Ranged Weapons, among others. This is a pretty basic attack - notice no prerequisites and no Focus cost - but it does let you do something cool by striking two nearby targets with one action. In this case Thing and Beast and Spider-Man all had versions of this and used it to great effect on ninjas, but for Elektra it was ... not great. She was not going to have much impact on either of her targets with half damage.

After a few rounds Thing has leapt aft to take out the ninjas guarding the hostages while Beast and Spider-Man finish off Elektra and her helpers while Iron Man sprays missiles anywhere he can hit at least two of them. Then two Hydra agents emerge from below decks carrying a chest between them as a minisub surfaces next to the ferry and a giant man in a hydra uniform stands up next to the boat as well. 

This is called "putting a clock on it" as even a mook-fight can get more tense if the enemy has a chance to get away with something important. The heroes were having no trouble at all with the Hand but I was hoping Hydra Giant Man - I literally used the Giant Man stats - would make it a little more tricky. 

It did not work out that way as 2099 gets ridiculous with one of his moves ...

You can see this lets him move, smack two people - possibly webbing them up - and then move again. This felt very spider-mannish!

Meanwhile Beast is playing leader and starts calling out to the rest of the team ...

This felt like a perfect fit.

 IM blasts one of the Hydra Agents leaving the other one to drag the chest to the side of the boat. The Hydra Giant smacks Thing for just about no damage. Ben then sees an opportunity, leaps in between the two, and bashes their heads together!

This move takes out the last two standing combatants and that poor Hydra agent ... in Thing's words "This man needs a hospital". Iron Man picks up the sub and places it on the deck, the pilot surrenders, and the Micro-Arc-Reactor - and the hostages - are saved!

Post-Game Thoughts

• Number one my players had a really good time. Something about superhero games, especially ones using familiar characters, really brings it out. So right away I will say the rules did not get in the way of a good time.
• The core mechanic of the game is used consistently throughout and as far as I can tell resolves everything with a single roll - that's huge. It plays quick which meant my players weren't tied up doing math on multiple rolls so they naturally tended to describe what was happening with their powers. I like that a lot. It's not as detailed as the original "One Roll Engine" as seen is Godlike and others with the height and the width etc. but it is easy to grasp and plays quick.
• It feels very much like 4E D&D when it comes to powers - look at Spider Strike up there. I consider that a good thing.
• Now look at Battle Plan and Combat Support - the 4E Warlord lives! You can have a character who can fight well who can also hand out buffs throughout a combat! The whole Tactics power tree is made up of powers like this and they are awesome. Beast and Cap and other leader types feel like they actually have useful, flavorful abilities in a fight beyond just punching like everyone else!
• The possible downside here is that you are choosing from a list of pre-built powers rather than building your own and that's where the lack of flavor and customization could come in. Playing known superheroes it was not a huge problem though Iron Man did feel a little clunky with that power set. Workable, but clunky. Making your own character is going to push you down some set paths that could feel limiting but in return they will help make a cohesive character. We will have to explore that part. 
• On my previous post I had some concerns - let's talk about those:
• The 5' square thing did not feel particularly limiting.
• Lack of a skill system was not the problem I envisioned. This session was mostly combat but I think the tags and traits will allow for enough specialization that it will work just fine. this is probably something to be better evaluated in a long term campaign.
• The lack of vehicles/animals/robots and the very limited number of NPC type stats is an impediment to putting something together on the fly. There are a few agent-types in the book but not many. I've been spoiled by games from M&M to ICONS to the prior Marvel Heroic Roleplaying for including a lot of these building block type units and it does feel like a miss here. 
• I didn't change up the task numbers here as it was mostly combat and I don't see a point to adding that in to the mix. 
• This game could -REALLY- use a cheatsheet. There is a list of specific Standard Actions and Reactions and there is a size chart that is referenced a lot. Many characters have some level of "Mighty" and that references the size chart for how much you can lift and carry and what it does to your combat numbers. I may have to make one myself before we play again. 
• One rules issue I need to look up: Elektra does that double strike move to hit Beast and Thing. Beast has Defensive Stance up which gives attackers Trouble when attacking him. The attack is specifically called out as one roll vs. both targets ... how does this work? Thing inadvertently benefits from Beast's defensive move? Do we keep track of the roll vs. the re-roll separately? At the time I just went with Trouble on the roll as it's still just one roll but given how many powers use this same approach I'd like a little more clarity.

Anyway that is a very long rundown of our session. It went very well overall and at least one other player was going to pick up the book after trying it out. I am very sure this is not our last round with this system - it's just a question of where it falls in the list of options for The Next Game.