Posts in Category: News
Traveller vs Starfinder
Sci-fi role playing games have been around for a long time and I have been a fan since I first found the Traveller box set in the 1980s. A few decades later I found myself caught up in the Starfinder release by Paizo and ran a year of Starfinder Society play. I found that both systems had strengths and weaknesses and may appeal to different groups of players.
Starfinder is a science-fantasy RPG that is based in the Pathfinder universe. The game is very much a mixture of science fiction and fantasy. There is magic in this game and hi-tech. It’s a neat game with many interesting stories. I found it to be a little too fantasy and the rules seemed to be focused more on role playing and less on depicting sci-fi worlds. The planets descriptions don’t include gravitation constant or air pressure or atmospheric composition. I think this stems from the Pathfinder roots of the game where fantasy characters don’t leave the planet and never have to contend with three times normal gravity or an atmosphere that’s mostly ammonia. If you like role playing in a futuristic setting using a familiar ruleset that isn’t over loaded with science then Starfinder is a game for you.
Traveller is a much more realistic sci-fi role play game with actual physic equations in the book for interplanetary travel. The rules support all the realities that Starfinder glosses over. There is no fantasy, no magic, and no pantheon of semi involved deities. I think the challenge for new players is the dearth of materials and editions and meta-plots. I tend to play RPGs in localized settings and situations and original Traveller lends itself to this as well. The Imperium is always a large impenitrable backdrop in my games that players don’t interact with directly unless they are dealing with government issues. Akin to how I deal with the the DMV in real life. The universe in Traveller is giant, but since communications travel at the speed of spacecraft you can have local and isolated places that follow their own rules and social norms.
I like both systems. I enjoy Starinder when want to play Pathfinder in space and when I need a more crunchy science fiction adventure I head for Traveller.
DCC Road Show
I have run two open DCC games now at the Randolph campus of Vermont Tech. Each game has a unique set of players so I did the Portal Under the Stars for both games and ran a level 0 funnel. Fair warning: I will be mentioning some Portal Under the Stars spoilers.
Game 1
The first game was with some people in my 5e D&D group who have played together for a long time. They enjoyed the simplified DCC system and really like the idea of the funnel and disposable characters. The first fatality was met with laughter as a blacksmith decided to force the very first trapped door and then failed their saving throw.
This team found more death along the way and eventually fought the big bad boss successfully. In the treasure room there was a PvP event where one of the players who had managed to keep all their lvl 0s alive was mercilessly assaulted and lost 2 characters in the brawl.
Game 2
Game two was a smaller event and with people completely new to each other and the system. My intro for Portal is slightly modified from the text as written. I usually have the old man in the tavern with the lvl 0s telling a tale of how is older brother went into the portal and returned with enough gems to move away from the farm and live a life of luxury in the big city and how that was 40 years ago to the day.
Some of the players, used to modern games, started to question the start more deeply and they wanted the old man to tag along or though about doing something else (aka not going into the dungeon) I had to peek around the curtain a little and let them know that in DCC this was the hook and the game is inside the portal. Mulling around town would result in a game of fetching firewood for the blacksmith, emptying chamberpots, and mucking out horse stalls 🙂 They got the idea and the game moved along.
This team worked out a whole scheme for the statue room and had things timed out for when someone should run and which direction to go. A few players were stuck in the side rooms and the skulls in the burial chamber did manage to bring down a player. The fractured party made it to the throne room and fled after the first two rounds of combat. Of course the troops pursued the players and caught up with them in the reflecting pool as the carefully planned exit scheme fell apart. A luck spear (pitchfork) throw ended the life of the general and saved the party from an almost total wipe.
There will be a game 3 in November and we will most likely play level 1 characters since we’ve had a bunch of people get through the funnel. Now everyone wants to play someone with a class.
Pulp Detective — a review
Pulp Detective is a solo card and dice game set in the mystery/detective genre of the 1930-40s The art work is very thematic and reminds me of comics like The Shadow.
The setup is easy. You pick a detective from a list of characters. Each detective has a unique special power that you can use during play. You have two other cards: one tracks which item is in your inventory and the other tracks stamina (aka health) and how many clues you have found.
You have a set number of hours to collect enough clues to confront the villain and solve the crime. At the start of the round you select three cards from the investigation deck face down and pick one to play, one to discard, and one to put back into the deck. There are three types of investigation cards and each type has a probability to grant specific rewards if you succeed.
The card you play has a task (much like Elder Sign or Five Year Mission) that you use the dice to roll the correct symbols. Here’s one of the tricks of this game: the dice have non-standard faces. Each die has a multiples of the same symbol (e.g. the two eyes and two newspaper die) but each die is unique so pick which die to roll carefully.
Impressions and game play thoughts
This game is super difficult. There is a lot of randomness in how the cards come out of the deck and what symbols turn up when you roll. There’s a merciful mechanic where if you fail a card task you can take a token that counts for one of the dice faces you did roll during the attempt. If you are successful and don’t need to roll all your dice on a card you can peek at the three cards that come at the start of the next round. You need to pay close attention to the time tracker and take care picking what type of card to put into play each turn. My first game I just grabbed whatever looked good and lost very quickly.
The game is thematic and feels like an old Humphrey Bogart movie as you rough up an informant, then have a shoot out, then find a tied up dame who has a clue for you. It’s just I had a terrible run of luck with the dice and could not get enough clues to find the bad guy for the final conflict. I do look forward to trying until I solve the case. The core game has three cases in the box.
Origins vs. GenCon
A few folks have asked me about conventions in general and GenCon in particular. I wanted to share my impression about the two summer time shows in the mid-west.
First GenCon. It is big and crowded and expensive. It’s the “best four days in gaming” because it is the primary show in the U.S. for most publishers to make big product announcements and releases. Paizo, Asmodee, Arcane Wonders, Fantasy Flight, Upper Deck, and all the other industry leaders bring new and exciting things to GenCon every year. It makes sense, this is where those companies can get the most exposure for their products. The exhibit hall is enormous and packed full of all sorts of vendors. It takes a full four days to visit all the booths and attend sessions and play games. There is almost too much stuff going on.
Origins is smaller with fewer vendors and a few new products. Since Origins happens at the start of summer a lot of companies do teaser releases or have demos of games they hope to have ready for GenCon. You can make it around the exhibit hall in single day and have plenty of time to play games. The show is easier to get to and less expensive (parking, hotels, etc.) but downtown Columbus has less to offer than downtown Indy. However I tend to find my way into the German village and grab a creme puff at Schmitd’s while I’m attending.
Which Con is right for you? If you don’t mind crowds and waiting in line and want to see the hot new releases of the year and wish to attend panels with the designer/editor/authors then you are headed for Indy and GenCon.
If you don’t care much for crowds and want a more relaxed experience Origins is fantastic. I got to talk with designers at Origins who were simply too busy at GenCon either talking briefly to the many fans in line or out of their booth in meetings.
Gencon 2018
This year I had the great luck to be near Indianapolis during the best four days in gaming and I attended my 5th GenCon. Lot’s of exciting things happened while I was there. The short version is I met much of the development team from White Wolf and picked up Vampire 5th edition and got swept away in the energy at Goodman Games and discovered Dungeon Crawl Classics.
Origins Game Fair
This Sunday I got to visit the Origins Game Fair in Columbus Ohio. This is a four day convention about card, board, and role play games. There are competitions and tournaments for games like Magic the Gathering, Settlers of Catan, and others. The schedule is packed full of things from early in the morning until very very late at night.
I did not attend any of the paid game sessions, nor did I get to attend the evening sessions since I only had Sunday. There are a bunch of things to do and see outside the exhibit hall, but I didn’t do or see anything like that this trip. I had thought about trying to get in Saturday for a session of Pathfinder 2.0 or one of the evening learn to play (Malifaux or 40k) but schedules just did not work in my favor.
This was my second trip to Origins. Last year I went up on a Saturday and wandered around and got into a game of Small World. This year I did a bunch of demos in the exhibit hall. I find Origins to be just about the right size for me. There is plenty of things to see and do but it is seeable and doable. I drove into town and parked and that was easy with plenty of parking open at 8:30AM. When I left the con at 4:30 PM the traffic around the convention center was quite managable. None of the booths felt cramped, none of the common areas were packed and none of the food venues were swamped. It was all very chill.
Photosythesis – a review
The abstract tree growing and harvesting game from Blue Orange is not something that I would have normally picked up. It’s a game about growning trees. Every once in a while I find a game that is outside my normal fare (pirates, Cthulhu, space conquest, fantasy combat) that I find fun and fresh. Photosythensis is in this club.
GenCon 50
This year was the 50th anniversary of GenCon and it was a large and amazing trip. We went out for all four days and managed to try some new things. I played my first convention RPG session, the Starfinder test game. It was not bad but it did feel a bit off. We played a much more mechanical combat mission. With the mat and miniatures it felt more like a board-game than a true RPG experience. It was hard for me to build rapport with stranger so that I could play my character’s personality beyond the archetype.
Another new experience this trip was eating from the food trucks and drinking in the beer tent. In years past we’ve had minors in tow and it was difficult to try these things. The Sun King beer was very good and the wait for dinner was not terrible. The people in line were friendly and the food was very tasty.
The expanded exhibit hall was still very cramped. It could have been the record attendance but the experience matched years past with being bumped and jostled and slowly wading through people to get anywhere. The stadium display of GenCon’s history was very well done and I hope GenCon continues to move more things into the stadium in future years.
Origins 2017
This was my first trip to the Origin’s Game Fair in Columbus Ohio. This convention is smaller than GenCon with fewer exhibitors and much wider asile space in the exhibit hall. There were many great demo spaces for trying out games. I went for just Saturday during the day.
I didn’t attend any scheduled events; to be fair, I didn’t do a lot of research on what seminars were available, but the whole convention felt more like a place to play games rather than buy games or attend paid seminars. Origins definitely had less of a commercial vibe
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I found it quite nice to have an exhibit hall that I could explore and feel like I saw everything that I wanted to see. I left Origins with a feeling that I had seen what was there and I didn’t have any underlying concern that I had missed a vendor or missed out on seeing a game and that was a nice feeling.
I didn’t I didn’t stay in a hotel and since I only went one day I don’t have a good price comparison between Gen Con and Origins. I would attend Origins again it was a lot of fun with a lot less pressure and people and crowds.
The Grizzled with expansion and still no W
We tried the Grizzled with the expansion and it was a better experience. The new mission deck mechanic is good for taking pressure off the mission leader and makes each mission unique. Keeping speeches and a more forgiving lucky charm reset does a lot to help make the game feel more winnable.
We lost. It was the very last mission and we might have won but we couldn’t finish the mission and the threat deck ran out. I can see us winning next time.