jamat:
Just saw this review on rpg. Net and wondering why the reviewer only gave it a the following scores
Style: 2 (Needs Work)
Substance: 2 (Sparse)
https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/18/18204.phtml
What do people think I think this is unfair though I understand individual opinions are just that but still
Eh... Dunno, you didn't say anything in particular about it and it's a wall of text so... here goes?
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Well, an interview with the games author on the Kickstarter page featured his answer to the question: "What are you most happy with about the game?" His answer, "Getting rid of hit points". He didn't. Fortune points are also hit points.
I don't necessarily see that he said Fortune Points are hit points, but judging by what you (jamat) told me earlier, "Injured/wounded/taken out" are the hit points. Which is a feature I don't like
in general. I'm cool with it being done that way in horror though, and even outside horror, I'd still play it, I just don't particularly like it.
I can't really speak to the amount of the source material should have been included, but he said it was a little thin. That's kind of a touchy prospect too though. I wrote a game based on a fusion of GTA V online and Saints Row 3-4 so I had to nod to them a lot, but like not really overtly copy anything from either game. Whether that's a substance demerit is probably more subjective to one's understanding of how much of The Expanse's substance you could include without running afoul of copyright or trademark law breach.
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The default method is to birth your PCs with random tables; making choices is also valid but slows the process down, particularly if there are min/maxers around.
So far I've found the opposite, and explicitly allow choices because I've repeatedly found the opposite. This may be a thing related to forum play though.
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Step one is called Concept: "Come up with an idea of the character you're interested in playing". Don't waste your time doing that until the end of the process if you're going down the path of the random character, your concept will almost certainly be wrong.
It's not related to The Expanse I'm sure, but the Modern AGE Companion has freeform character creation that looks like it would work really well with "come up with a concept" first. So in that regard it kind of depends.
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One of the final steps in the process is to determine your character's Income, a single value used for making a purchase test; abstraction is good, there's no need for the players to track their character's credits. I know these tidbits because the rules for making purchases are included here. In the character generation chapter. Odd. Perhaps the equipment or rules chapter might have been the spot?
It pains me that they're not in both places actually, but of the two I agree it would make more sense in the equipment chapter. That looks like a stylistic demerit, and one I don't disagree with.
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Take the highest Income value and reduce it by one, that is now the new income value for all party members. [...] Let's say I have ten dollars, I give up one dollar and now have nine dollars and so do you. So I went from having ten bucks to eighteen. Awesome. I must have misread that surely? Nope. A party member with equal Income can increase your income by +2 when helping to make a purchase; you've given up one point of income but now get a bonus of two. This one missed the sanity check on its trip through proofing.
Don't get it myself. If it really works that way, I could potentially have something better soon.
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The chapter is rounded out with a list of goodies your character earns when a new level is gained. How does this happen? A single line in the entire book is devoted to this, arguably important, topic. It reads: "The GM decides when the characters gain a level".
Horseshit. I left the UESRPG development boards explicitly for this reason. You would have to come up with something
really impressive to sell me that the game is even worth a positive substance score at this point.
I'm cool with "there are no levels, but sometimes you can gain points/perks/advanced moves" like GURPS and PBTA do. But you have to be more specific about when levels/points/perks/advanced moves are gained or I'm out.
Short of them telling me what things are worthy of experiential gain, I would just use the Modern AGE experience/level scheme unless there's just some obnoxious idea specific to The Expanse what a level actually means. He goes on further to say that Modern AGE appears to be the basis of the game, so it looks like I was on the right track with that idea.
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Vehicle combat is included, again, short and sweet which is just as well because you can't buy or hire a vehicle and there are no statistics provided for these non-existent modes of transport.
While I've never been satisfied with the vehicular rules, it hasn't stopped me from playing any other AGE game.
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This game has a lot of stunts. [...] I mean a LOT. In total the Stunt count is, 59. Yep, 59. [...] Combat just went from fast and furious to, "Hang on a mo, let me check one of these charts for a nice tasty Stunt". This is overkill
My only objection to the volume of stunts was something I pointed out on Reddit where you can't do any grappling unless you generate 1 or more stunt points so you're stuck using Stunt Attack every turn if you want to maintain any grapple.
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Exploration really only covers the rules for getting hurt outside of combat but does have a subsection entitled "Investigations". [...] It lays out a method for providing the characters with leads and clues some (most) require a test[...] The author warns us against using a path that leads to a dead end. Good advice too, except if progress relies on a dice throw, a failed test is a dead end unless the GM wants to fiddle with rules.
Disagree. A failed test could very well just be a confusing clue that isn't a dead end, but framed deliberately by the GM in a way the players don't understand right now... This used to be a point of pride for me, but I don't always run investigation games, so I haven't had much chance to see if I can do it still.
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towards the back of the book in the GM's section we're told that actual roleplaying is a good thing and should be attempted if everyone feels comfortable; I would say if you didn't feel comfortable, play a board game. If I was a brand new player I would only be required to read the Player's Section and would be left with the impression that roleplaying is an exercise in dice rolling and, frankly, pretty dull.
I'm neutral about that. I generally prefer people who speak in volumes, but I can't be too picky or I have no game. I would also hazard that if you only read the part of the volume you're obligated to read, your false impressions are your own fault. I don't fault the game either way though.
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Here's what the rulesmeister tells us, "...be sure to communicate openly when (NPC) social Stunts seem to take away the players' agency..." Not only is this another terrible example of the rule system promoting dice-play before role-play but I'm pretty sure the nature of roleplaying gets bent if not completely snapped in two.
It's not really any different than telling a player "ok, you've been hit with a confuse spell" and they fail a save. Also you can say "NPC is attempting to use ____ stunt, so you should hit ____ TN to avoid having this stunt used on you." so thinking the nature of roleplaying is snapped in two is a little bit short sighted.
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Thrust, gravity, mass, spin, apoapsis and periapsis; plus a bunch of other propeller-head stuff. It's good material since The Expanse is what I would call Hard Sci-Fi (aliens and protomolecule hybrids aside). I learned some interesting facts here and the material is well presented. Either the writer is keen on his science or a darn good Googler. Sadly none of this is of any use in the game - spaceships run on their own science-free rails; no room for hard sci-fi here.
Appears to be a substance objection couched within a style complement. Or vice versa. Not sure which
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I have no problem with this approach but it veers sharply from the "hard" approach of the books. We aren't treated to deck plans, we don't know what to expect on board a ship. Ships have no character.
Looks like a job for a good GM honestly, not an actual problem as such.
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The reason I mention the perceived shift in writing style is because I find the text of the main rules quite dull, the writing doesn't inspire, it doesn't make me want to get out the dice, gather some friends and take the game engine for a spin. Also there's my pet bugbear; the style is a mixture or instructional material and conversational writing. A rulebook is a text book, I really want to see lots of flavour text but when I'm learning or referencing the rules I want clear, concise writing. The conversational tone pads out the rules; if I could remove every superfluous "Generally speaking", "In general", "Generally" and "As a rule" from the book I'd have a much shorter and easier to read book.
Weird flex bro.
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Back to the Guide. Something has happened in the solar system. Something big. The biggest something in fact. Everyone knows about it, it's on the news, the subject of system wide speculation and if you want to find out about it as a player or GM you'll have to search for it. The most important part of this game's story is hidden, buried in the descriptions of the various locations of the solar system. This is wrong.
No it isn't, it's letting the GM have their own game. This is excruciatingly common in RPG splat books, and honestly, no not so much of a problem.
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The GM's section opens with a bunch of additional rules including combat modifiers such as high ground, obscured target et cetera. I can't see a reason why this information doesn't live in the Action Encounter section.
Other than the writer not being Bob Ross, I agree.
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There's also three pages devoted to the different types of role-players and how to deal with 'em. Holy moly...do we need to categorise our friends?
Yeah, if you want to come up with a game that is fulfilling for the greatest number of them you do. This is really only inapplicable for groups where people are getting paid to play the game (I'm looking at you Geek & Sundry) so their personalities and character motivations can take a back seat. It's a pretty standard practice in games without regards to the AGE system.
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There is some good work here but two areas stand out and not in a good way. The first is entitled Dealing with Canon; there are three options and each gets between seven and four lines. The last these is to ignore the background completely. Um? I'll save the second gem until we get to chapter 15. The Churn is revealed for the first time and it's something new for me. The GM tracks Churn as a numerical value that increases as the game progresses, when Churn reaches certain thresholds something bad happens for the party to deal with. Interesting. It represents the hand of fate that slaps the party in the face just when they thought everything was going well. Although the GM is offered the opportunity to spend Churn points to slap the players sooner rather than later, this time with an automatic test failure. This seems a tad adversarial for my tastes; is the GM playing against the players?
I'm slightly less adversarial leaning, but sometimes adversarial is needed. We'll call it neutral.
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if the protomolecule never happened, why am I playing this game? Why not play Traveller instead? Bonkers.
Probably a fair point. I dunno about the game, or the source material.
I can't say much further, but I HATE games that don't give you progression guidelines, and I'm not super happy about the system lacking HP.
