fr16.pdf

RPG REVIEWS

FICTION

Reviews by Christopher Carr

Contested Ground Studios

Kryomek

Magnificent Egos

www.contestedground.co.uk

www.kryomek.com

www.magnificentegos.com

A|State

Karetaker Security Walkers

Reviews by Mark Theurer

Review by Mark Theurer

Written by Martin Fenelon

Jeff Valent Studios

www.jeffvalentstudios.com

Louis Porter, Jr. Design

RPG ADVENTURES

Reviews by Mark Theurer

www.lpjdesign.com

Dungeons & Dragons

Haven, Rap Sheet

Maidenhead Miniatures

Chariot of Tanith Ebar

www.xxx.com

Review by Mark Theurer

Written by J Michael Tisdel

Reviews by Clay Richmond

Green Ronin

D20 Modern

Kryomek USA

www.greenronin.com

www.kryomek.com

Rise of the Rat King

Book of Fiends

Reviews by Mark Theurer

Written by Gabriel Ratliff

Review by Clay Richmond

WARGAME REVIEWS

Luftwaffe 1946 Miniatures

Corwyl, City of Wood Elves

www.luftwaffe1946.com

Review by Brian Ahrens

Pinnacle/Great White Games

Reviews by J Michael Tisdel

Nocturnals

www.peginc.com

Adiken Miniatures

Review by Mark Theurer

Showdown

www.adiken.com

Medieval Player’s Manual

Review by Mark Theurer

Reviews by Clay Richmond

Review by J Michael Tisdel

Games Workshop

Excalibur Miniaturen

Aasimar & Tiefling

www.games-workshop.com

www.excalibur-miniaturen.com

Review by Graham Platt

How to Make Wargames Terrain

Reviews by Mark Theurer

Fast Forward Entertainment

Review by Clay Richmond

Privateer Press

www.fastforwardgames.com

LOTR: Siege of Gondor

www.ikwarmachine.com

Demonwars: Enchanted Locations 10

Review by Graham Platt

Reviews by Mark Theurer

Review by Larry Naeyaert

Majestic 12

Pinnacle/Great White Miniatures

Demonwars: Gazetteer

www.mj12games.com

www.peginc.com

Review by Larry Naeyaert

Starslayer

Reviews by Mark Theurer

Encyclopedia Vanguard

Review by Mark Theurer

20 QUESTIONS

Review by Mark Theurer

For the Masses

Magnificent Egos

Encyclopedia of Exotic Weapons

Review by J Michael Tisdel

www.magnificentegos.com

Review by Clay Richmond

FANPRO

Written by Mark Theurer and Chris

Clark

www.classicbattletech.com

Book of All Spells

Battletech: Dropships...

Review by J Michael Tisdel

Review by Joe Jeandervin

NEW RULES

Badaxe Games

Kryomek USA

Confrontation

www.badaxegames.com

www.kryomek.com

www.rackham.fr

Unusual Treasures

Frontlines: Korea 1950-1953

Random Terrain Placement

Review by J Michael Tisdel

Crocodile Games

Written by J Michael Tisdel

Living Imagination

www.crocodilegames.com

www.livingimagination.com

FIGURE SCULPTING

War Gods of Aegyptus, 2nd Ed.

Charge!

Chronopia

Review by Mark Theurer

Review by J Michael Tisdel

www.excelsiorentertainment.com

BATTLE REPORTS

Paradigm Concepts

Devout Shadow Stalker

www.paradigmconcepts.com

Excelsior Entertainment

Written by Excelsior Staff

Slaves of the Moon

www.excelsiorentertainment.com

Review by J Michael Tisdel

ADVERTISERS INDEX

Great Canadian Miniatures

Ultimate Warzone

Shadow of the Devil

IFC, 93

Mark Theurer & Clay Richmond

RPG Objects

4, 59

Review by J Michael Tisdel

Rackham

Excalibur Miniaturen

Bastion Press

www.rackham.fr

Pinnacle/Great White Games

www.bastionpress.com

Hybrid

Wolfe Games

Doom Striders

Reaper Miniatures

25, 70

Mark Theurer & J Michael Tisdel

Review by Mark Theurer

Zombiesmith

TERRAIN

BYMTL

FANPRO

Dark Age Games

Fantasy Buildings, part 1

www.shadowrunrpg.com

Majestic 12 Games

Shadowrun: Man & Machine

Written by Clay Richmond

WarZone GTS

21, 39, 46, 63

Review by Duffy Carter

Crocodile Games

MINIATURE REVIEWS

Dark Basement Minis

OTHER GAME REVIEWS

Reaper Miniatures

Fantization

53, 73, 86

www.reapermini.com

Eos Press

Excelsior Entertainment

74, 95

Reviews by Mark Theurer, J Michael

Tisdel and Clay Richmond

www.eos-press.com

Magnificent Egos

Maidenhead Miniatures

Abuse!

Luftwaffe 1946

Review by J Michael Tisdel

Thunderbolt Mountain

Privateer Press

www.thunderboltmountain.com

Kryomek USA

RPG REVIEWS

BASICS

A|State is produced by Contested Ground Stu-

dios and is a 254-page hardcover book. It’s

described as a gothic-horror science-fiction rpg,

something that could turn out to be quite inter-

esting. It has a retail cost of $40.00 US and is

intended for more mature audiences.

and then they increase to x2 cost all the way up to x4 cost when

in the 90-100 range. Age can affect the number of points you

have for attributes/skills so you’ll have to decide if you want to

play a young buck full of piss & vinegar or an old geezer who’s

seen everything…or somewhere in between of course. Your

character concept (advantages and disadvantages) can also add/

subtract from your attribute/skill points with which you’ll build

your character, in a similar fashion to how they work in Champi-

ons. Finally, your upbringing play a factor in how you turn out,

giving you attribute bonus(es) and extra skills. So, you’re a col-

lection of attributes, skills, and quirks that make you stand out

against the crowd. Nothing too earth-shattering but also nothing

out of whack, which leaves character creation as a pretty simple

affair, but The Players section came after The Procedure section

and I’d have rather the order was switched so the book talked

about skills, attributes and characters before getting into what

rolls are made.

THE SETTING

A little more than half of the book ( The Pref-

ace, The Precepts, The Place and The Power) goes into great

detail about the setting of the game. The Preface is a piece of

fiction that is only five pages in length and I really got a good

initial feel for the rather bleak world. After reading the introduc-

tion my summing up would be something of a cross between

Necromunda/Mutant Chronicles/The Fifth Element/Demolition

Man, well something like that but not too much like any of them.

Either way, I liked the intro fiction. The world of A|State is one

of futuristic flying cars and people killing each other with rusty

blades for a scrap of food. The City, where our adventures/lives

take place is made up of many distinct differences in technology,

transportation, status, accommodations, etc…that there are al-

most endless possibilities for play. The Precepts presents lots of

information about The City, some coming from simple text on

how television works, and is controlled, in the world of A|State,

but also in the form of short stories that do a lot to bring the

world to life. The Place gives a map of The City along with a

very nicely detailed section on what you’ll find crawling around

through the alleys and tenements and who you’ll meet. The

Place is not a short read at over 60 pages but it was very interest-

ing and tons of what is presented there could be ‘ported over to

other futuristic settings if you like. The Power is just under 40

pages in length and really gives you a good sense for who, or-

ganizationally, is doing what in The City. Criminal organiza-

tions, governmental entities, corporations, religious organizations

are all presented with enough detail to use them in an adventure

but also leaving room for a GM to add some of his own personal-

ity to. There is a mysteriously supernatural element to the game

in the form of the Shifted. There are many theories about the

shifted but none can really tell the whole story about them. Are

they aliens, monsters, some other kind of horrors? None or all of

the above? There are five races or types of Shifted presented,

from the ghost-like Drache to the monstrously horrific Ubel that

are described as having skeletons made of rotting wood with ex-

posed muscle and sinew and wearing tattered rags for clothing

and carrying rusty blades to hack their victims into pieces. I

found the background to be disturbing enough to want to explore

and play in but not enough to be a turn off.

SKILLS & COMBAT

The rules pertaining to the mechanics of “how” you do what you

want, whether that be rendering first aid, trying to bribe an offi-

cial or splattering some guy’s brains against a wall, are handled

in The Procedure (for info on die roll, modifiers and effects) and

The Players (regarding specific skills and their use) sections and

require a percentile (d100) roll to check for success. This roll

starts off at your skill level and let’s say you’re firing a pistol

with a skill of 50 at close range. Your range modifier is 00%

(that’s a good thing!) but let’s say you are walking (-10%) in a

poorly lit room (-10%). You’re suddenly down to a 30% chance

to hit, but you can aim to improve your chances but that will take

time and if you’re spotted you might have wished you’d shot

first. Called shots are also allowed (-20%--40%) but aiming for

an unarmored area might just mean the difference between life

and death. If you don’t take a called shot your hits are allocated

to a random area. Combat rounds last 1-second so expect a lot of

lead to be flying around over the course of a short period of time.

If you hit someone and they have armor it might reduce the dam-

age or then again the hit might just come straight through. Shock

Points help determine how hurt you are but how many you take

from a hit is determined by comparing the damage of the hit to

your Resiliency (Health/10) and then comparing that to the hit

location to see how many SP’s you take. If you accumulate more

SP’s than your Resiliency you might go unconscious and at SP’s

equal to your Resiliency x1.5 you’re about to die. Of course, a

Serious head shot will also kill you. The system starts off pretty

easy with a d100 roll but does get into a few look-ups and com-

parisons, but should flow pretty easily after a few times through

it.

CHARACTERS

As you would expect, characters start off with a set of stats

(Strength, Agility, Dexterity, Health, Awareness, Intelligence,

Willpower and Personality). Most are self explanatory, but Agil-

ity differs from Dexterity in that the former deals with “large-

scale body movements” and the latter with “fine manipulation”.

The higher the better with a rating of 90 in an attribute is awe-

some. When building a character you start off with points to buy

attributes and skills. Attributes cost 1:1 until you get up to 70

STUFF

The Product is about 30-pages long and describes the weapons

and equipment that you’ll want to buy. Since this is a UK pro-

duction (printed in Canada) I was not surprised at all to the costs

in Pounds. Not everything has an illustration to go along with it

but those that are here are very well done computer generated

images. In fact, all of the images in the book are computer gener-

ated and were very well done.

THE END

The book ends in an adventure that spans fifteen pages and in-

cludes information (somewhat brief) on running a game of

A|State and several adventure seeds that can set up many new

games with some of the prep work already done for the GM. If

you’ve read any of my previous reviews you’ll know that having

an introductory adventure included in a book is a big plus and

this one will set the mood of the game and involve characters

right away. I like that it’s scaled for 3-6 players so smaller

groups will get immediate use out of it also. There are two ap-

pendices at the back of the book, one dealing with the timeline of

the game world and the other with a glossary of terms that will

come up in common conversation. A set of tables is also here to

keep page flipping to a minimum, but I’d suggest just photocopy-

ing them and the character sheet to keep out on the table. Curi-

ously, I only found a permission statement allowing the copying

of the character sheet, but not the tables. Everything wraps up

with an Index and a few ads. The index is very welcome but

could have been a bit more complete. As an example, I was

searching for information on Resiliency, but it was not listed in

the index. I found it in section where it should be but some page

flipping and skimming could have been avoided had it been in

the index.

playing, we always have one person that volunteers to be the

scribe (or report writer) for the current adventure. They usually

use at least two pages for a single adventure so I’d say that the

amount of room provided here is only adequate for some very

limited amounts of information. If you’re part of a “crew” or

organization there is a page for you to detail a pretty fair amount

of information about it. For the dog lovers out there, no not that

kind of dog lover but I’m sure they’re floating around Haven

somewhere, you get a whole page for man’s best friend. Make

sure it’s a bad-ass pit-bull or rottie that’s hard as nails and willing

to jump in front of a bullet for you. Then write up a new one. If

you’re into, well your character anyway, better living through

chemistry there is a page for you to list your three most used

drugs and their effects. For the kung-fu fighters out there, you

get a page for HTH combat maneuvers and training. Another

sheet for firearms, one for vehicles, one for movement values /

environmental tolerances / hit locations and finally one where

you can draw out your crib.

VALUE

Everything in the Rap Sheet was easy to read and all of the

spaces were large enough to write in without having to resort to a

microscopic script. If you're a big fan of Haven it’s likely that

you’ve already gone to the trouble to writing all of the stuff con-

tained herein on your own so in that line of thinking you might

not get a lot of use out of the Rap Sheet. Along another line, it’s

really, and I mean really, easy to become a greasy red stain on the

ground in Haven and you might not want to go through writing

and erasing exercises too often. Actually, at lower (and some-

times higher) experience levels in any game you can get really

dead really quickly so that’s really a drawback to any character

folio, not just this one. The biggest problem that I have with the

Rap Sheet is it’s very like to be obsolete soon (or maybe already

depending on when you read this review) because Haven is being

ported over to d20 Modern. My feeling on the transfer of Haven

to d20 Modern is that it will be great because there are undoubt-

edly more d20 Modern players out there than Haven players and

bringing the setting to d20 Modern will bring a well fleshed-out

modern dark action setting to one of my more liked games. So,

for Haven in general it’s a great move and a good amount of the

old material can be transferred across without too much trouble

but products like the Rap Sheet are pretty much out of luck, ex-

cept for players of Haven that want to stick with the original sys-

tem. Sure, there will be some out there but they will start to fade

away if/when all haven support goes in the direction of d20. If

you’re old-school and plan to stay that way then the Rap Sheet

can have some use for you but some pages might go unused if

you don’t have a dog, use drugs, etc… For me, I’ll be waiting for

the d20 version with bated breath so I can unleash it in my d20

Modern campaign.

VALUE

First off, the “mature” tag is warranted but I was not offended by

anything here. One thing that I really, really liked about A|State

is that even though it’s a thoroughly bleak and dark world that the

characters find themselves, they are heroes and are expected to

do good. I don’t mean namby-pamby everyone hold hands and

pretend that things don’t suck, but actually being good guys,

helping people out and giving a sense of hope in what otherwise

is a rather hopeless situation. Forty bucks is a bit higher than you

might normally pay for a book this size, but it’s a hardback and

that almost always pleases me. I found the setting very playable

and the I did like the percentile mechanic for determining suc-

cess/failure. Definitely take a look at the demo version (a 1.2MB

PDF) available at their website ( www.contestedground.co.uk )

first but I think that if you like that you’ll love the book and it

will be well worth the price.

BASICS

Rap Sheet is a character folio, or “Player Re-

source Kit” as it’s labeled, for Haven: City of

Violence by Louis Porter, Jr. Design. It’s 16

pages (including a single advertisement page)

is bound with a soft cover depicting the skyline

of Haven. It will set you back five bucks.

INSIDE

The first three pages cover your basic character

information like attributes, skills, special abilities, etc… and also

has spaces for your three most-used firearms, something good to

have on-hand and easy to find. For those that are artistically in-

clined there is a spot to sketch out your character. Two more

pages are devoted to contact lists, which you’ll probably accumu-

late a decent number of. If you live long enough, that is. Living

long enough is a whole other story in Haven, though. The next

two pages are reserved as an adventure log with enough space to

write notes about six blood-soaked adventures. There’s enough

space here to write down some basics but not much more than

that. In my adventure group, regardless of what game we’re

BASICS

The book of Fiends is put out by Green Ronin

Publishing. The book is actually a compilation

of three works, two of which have previously

been published, Legions of Hell , and Armies of

the Abyss . The new work, which they added, is

Hordes of Gehenna . This was originally sched-

uled to be published as a stand-alone book, but

when D&D version 3.5 came out, it was de-

cided to put all three into a single tome and provide the needed

updates to make all compatible with edition 3.5. It is a hard-

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: