Cascade Failure

The wife's in New York over the next few days, which means I'm on single parent duty. That being said, this actually gives me a little more time to myself than usual (some married dudes with children can relate) even if it means, my waking hours with the kids is a little tougher.

SO...I was going to get back to my 4E delving (and I will, I will!), but in the meantime I wanted to talk about a different RPG I had the chance to pick up and read the last couple days: Cascade Failure, a little self-published, space opera game, built on the usual (D&Dish) class-race-level chassis with D20s and saving throws and whatnot. Oh, yeah...it's in my favorite price range: free (not even "pay what you want;" you can't give this guy money). PDF only, of course.

You might guess that such an offering was pretty crappy (i.e. amateurish, derivative) offering. If so, you'd be very, very wrong.

Greg Christopher's game is downright beautiful, with amazing production values. The full color artwork ranges from excellent to amazing...it's on par with some of Fantasy Flight Games more recent offerings, certainly a step up from D&D 4E, maybe around the same level as the last couple Shadowrun books (for me, these are all "high water marks" in RPG art). Even for folks who just dig on good SciFi art (I've written before how I find good art to be incredibly inspiring), you could due worse than taking a look...I did mention it's free, right? Check out this cover:

Really not this blurry.

I mean, that image doesn't really do the book justice. Here's a screen shot from the chargen title page:

Spectacular.

That shit is just awesome.

[sorry about the grey borders...I'm terrible at this kind of image manipulation]

But, hey, all prettiness aside, my main interest with all these RPGs is their design and potential for play. Maybe you're wondering if my "downright beautiful" description applied only to the look and layout. No...the game's pretty sweet, too.

Cascade Failure (download here) claims to be a public BETA (version 1.2, in fact), but I've seen other games that had a lot less going for them than what it has going on. The PDF is all of 95 pages (y'all know I like a low page count) and many of those pages are cover, or full page illos, or one of three (different style) character sheets, or a star map, or an OGL, or whatever. Thing is pretty, yet compact. Now what does it do in those pages? Let's put together some bullet points:

• Uses a streamlined D20 mechanic, where everything is "roll under attribute (plus modifiers)." There are two types of checks (called "responses") in the core mechanic: proactive (using skills, attacks, etc.) and reactive (saving throws). All use attributes as their base, sometimes with a level modifier (depending on class). For folks familiar with it, there are shades of 4E here, but without target numbers. I've toyed with similar designs, so I'm partial to the idea; however, "roll low" isn't the most intuitive thing for folks (outside the BRP/Chaosium crowd) and I've read complaints about this in some reviews of Cascade Failure. That being said, there are ways to fix this...but for me, it's fine as is.
• A very cool setting: immediate post-apocalypse (28 years after the fall) of an interstellar society. The whole thing is very cool, and provides a lot of different "hooks" for characters. I've spoken before that, for me, I need something more than an interesting "wide open" setting to make a game run. Even without providing a list of "adventure seeds," the setting in Cascade Failure suggests plenty of things to do and concrete directions to take, which is something I rarely encounter in SciFi games. For example, you might have some sort of war as part of a setting whether covert (Star Frontiers) or not (Star Wars), but RPGs really fall short (IMO) when this is the driving campaign arc (I should write about this sometime...look at Dragonlance as an example). The setting here...one of survival and salvage, provides motivation for small scale (i.e. personal) conflicts of the sort that would involve a party of wandering adventurers. And there's enough background fluff (without being overwhelming) to provide objectives for said adventures. Dig it.
• Really like how humans are used in the setting. They are responsible for the empire, they are responsible for the fall, they have the (stronger) potential for getting shit back together. It's human centric but humans are far from fallible and have a lot to answer for. Nice themes.
• An interesting and (for me) distinct set of classes, compared to other games. Various non-human races are fine depending on your cup o tea; they're fine but easily discarded or modified (none are "integral" to the setting). The game distinguishes race from class which  (I've noted before) I prefer in the space opera genre: if you're going to posit a number of sentient races with spacefaring capacity, they might as well be able to have different occupations.
• The empath and kinetic classes are excellent...I'll return to these at the end of this post.
• Saving throws specific to the setting (all based on attributes): very nicely done. Dig "breath" (to see if you can hold your breath...like when your spaceship suddenly holed), "pain" (for taking actions after your totally abstract HPs have been depleted), "snap" (the "reflex" save, but also used as a "full defense" type action in combat...like when you need to dodge laser bolts and have nothing with which to shoot back), and "fear" (the PC version of morale). Also love "listen" and "spot" as saving throws: makes perfect sense with the core mechanic to use these as reactive saves.
• Ambitions. Wow. Remember how much shit I gave White Star for its cop-out experience system? Here's an innovative system that works with the genre, and its got two tracks. Each character has a major ambition, something that (if achieved) they'll retire and give up adventuring; examples include acquiring a space ship, finding one's true love, avenging a wrong, or whatever. It's a built-in end-game and story driver, and (similar to The Riddle of Steel's spiritual attributes) provides bonuses in play when characters are taking actions that directly apply to the ambition (it also acts as a directional "guide" for players). Minor ambitions, on the other hand, are chosen in-play, on the fly, based on the situation at hand (i.e. both the adventure hooks and events that occur). Minor ambitions provide no mechanical bonuses, but (when achieved) award PCs XP based on the ambition. And here's the kicker: the amount of XP awarded for achieving a minor ambition is negotiated up-front between the player and the GM. Awesome...so, for example, the players discover there's a band of marauders terrorizing the local village and pose a minor ambition to shut it down for 100xp and the GM says, heck I'll give you 500xp, cluing in the PCs that the opposition is tougher than they think. OR players can "up the ante" saying they have a minor ambition to reconcile with the bandits peacefully and make them productive members of the village or some such for a fat bonus. OR the players can add an extra ambition (for extra XP) that they want to humiliate the bandit leader in the process and steal his high tech gear that he's been using to lord it over the peasants. Very hip mechanic and one I can't ever remember seeing before.
• Morality. Wow again. This is Cascade Failure's take on "alignment." You assign 7 points to three impulses: adherence (which is kind of like "law & order"), consensus (your conformity to your peer group/friends/family), and efficiency (your impulse to "get things done" in expedient fashion). The values assigned to these impulses act as role-playing guide-posts to the players, and can be used by the GM as a bonus/penalty if applicable and if "it would make the game more enjoyable." Shades of both The Riddle of Steel (again) and Pendragon virtues.
• Characters are given an age attribute (Young, Adult, or Mature) that influences how cognizant of the pre-apocalypse galaxy. Being younger gives you a bonus to physical attributes (duh) but being older gives you bonuses to figure out old tech. Remember, the setting is post-apoc so shades of Gamma World figuring out gear...however, I'm not really doing a good job of selling the setting: even though the author doesn't give us a highly detailed galaxy with pages and pages of history and planets, what he does give us is an important overview of what tech allowed interstellar colonization in the first place, how it was interrelated, and how it's breakdown (due to the interstellar war) has led to the collapse of the society. He gives you enough of the information you need. It's really spot on and elegant.
• Gosh, there's a luck score (rolled randomly; humans start with more) that can be spent in-play and never gets "replenished" (except by GM fiat). However, rather than a "get out of jail free card" (as in other RPGs), luck is used to flat modify rolls by your current luck value, decreasing by a point with every use. Man, I love this. At the beginning of a character's career, they can thus expect a lot of lucky breaks ("beginner's luck," right?) but as the game progresses their luck eventually runs out.
• Hit points are abstract and, once depleted, additional damage is applied directly to attributes (as in Classic Traveller). The attribute affected is determined by random roll and attributes correspond with wound locations...like a shot to the hand decreases DEX, while a shot to the head decreases INT. There are some rules for getting maimed and whatnot...all good, though I would have liked some cyborg parts to replace lost limbs (easily added, though).
• Equipment is nice, a short and streamlined list fine for the setting, the usual weapons/armor are on display. Includes cybernetic enhancements (though no 'borg prosthetics). The barter currency with "Value Units" is cool and setting appropriate. The various spacecraft/vehicles (these aren't available for purchase...how many chickens are you going to trade for a battle tank?) are good...abstract and they fit the marks needed...but there seems to be a missing chart here, as the text states vehicles are described by four values and we've got no idea what the range of those values are for any of these vehicles. Maybe that's why this is the "Beta" version? Vehicle combat is a mirror of personal combat which is fine, by the way.
• Factions are neat. The example factions are all very good. You can see where other space opera fiction has inspired some of these ideas (Space Battleship Yamato, for example), but they still feel very original. Especially dig the non-hostile nature of most of these (they have desires, but they aren't pitted to destroy each other). They all make good story seeds.
• Finally we have "Gifts" which are just lightweight "feats" that PCs acquire every other level (starting at 2nd level). I like these, too, especially the kinetic ones.

Okay, that's a lot of slobbering over the game. Can you tell it's my new favorite space opera RPG? That this is one I'd actually like to run?

Now, long time readers of the blog know that I'm a big fan of Star Wars, but have had issues with (pretty much) every Star Wars game that's ever been offered for consumption...from West End Games to WotC's D20 (and Saga) to FFG's most recent version. A lot of folks have touted White Star as THE  "Star Wars game"...at least as far as light-ruled, old school (D&D style) chassis are concerned. I wrote myself that it's the closest such game I've seen.

Cascade Failure is closer.

And I say this even given that the setting is NOTHING like "Star Wars." No, what I mean is that is that the system, as is, is VERY EASILY adaptable to the Star Wars setting, should one care to do so. You'll have to cut out aspects like power armor and such...but then again, there are no hard rules for such, and who's to say you can't scale mecha or power armor up to the size of AT-ATs and AT-STs?

The existing CF classes of Empaths and Kinetics can, be easily adapted to Jedi and Sith (respectively) with near zero modification...if one is willing to forgo all the "canon" nonsense found in RPGs and prequel trilogies. Using the original trilogy (solo) as a base...something I've often considered doing but always failed failed failed in ALL my designs...the "Force" users could easily be modeled on these character classes withOUT such a thing as "the Force" (the Force being instead relegated to a religion or mythological belief of the setting as a way of explaining the existing of such sixth sense powers). Personally, I prefer the Cascade Failure version of such powers to anything I've yet seen, including my own designs. These two variations of "people with strange powers" (which, again, can be classed to any species...a failure of White Star when it comes to genre emulation) will also work well for other space opera settings. In fact, they seem almost out of place in the post-apocalyptic setting of Cascade Failure (nothing about the setting material mentions folks with psychic powers, not even as minor players in the events occurring before, during, and after). But for a CF knock-off in a Lucas-style, original trilogy setting, they find a ready home.

In my opinion.

[no there's nothing like the "Dark Side" or psychic corruption in the game...imagine, for a moment, that Yoda and Ben's discussions of such a supernatural force are simply over-blown and rooted in superstition. Call it a "Force-Atheistic" version of Star Wars. Which itself is pretty cool]

Look, it appears to be a good game. It's free. It's pretty to look at. Go ahead and download it, write to the author, tell him to get his act together and put together a chart of vehicle stats and start charging something for it. Inform him that this should be available in hardcopy (it ain't, not even print-on-demand). The fact it has a 2011 copyright and I've never seen/heard of it is a crying shame. I've been looking for a space opera game this cool for a looooong time.
; )

[by the way, thanks to Age of Ravens for hipping me to this thing through his latest post-apocalyptic RPG post. You can read his review here]

White Hot Star

I started writing yet another "poor me" post about my lack of time for writing and realized that such a post is itself a waste of my time (I keep forgetting that). So F that noise.

If I wanted to just do reviews of games and game products on this blog, I'd have material for at least six months (even assuming I stopped acquiring new stuff). It wasn't all that long ago that I wrote how I loathe buying PDFs and prefer actual printed books, and how I really hate buying both. But this before my local game store (Gary's Games) closed shop, and long before I moved to Paraguay for what appears will be an extended stay. These days, I'M one of those dudes emailing publishers and asking "when will this be available in electronic format?"

[yeah, I've turned into that guy. I still prefer hard copy, but since I can only get mail order every 3-6 months (when I get state-side), more often than not I'm purchasing BOTH hard and e-copy so that I can peruse the PDF while I'm down here. New Fire, for example...a beautiful book that I will probably never, ever use...is one which I bought both in print and PDF format. I should write about it...and about Bulldogs! and Capes, Cowls, and Villains Foul and Crimson Blades and Dust Devils and...well, you get the idea]

Read.

SO...White Star. Everyone's talking about it, so I bothered to pick it up a couple days ago (at the same time as I purchased Hill Cantons Compendium II, actually...perhaps something on that later, too). In PDF form, because it was relatively cheap (I found a coupon through Tenkar's blog). Here's what I think about it:

James M. Spahn's White Star is S&W Star Wars...no more, no less. Like my years long, on-and-off B/X Star Wars project...except using Swords & Wizardry as its base. The text, monsters, and campaign ideas imply that the system can be used for more concepts: Star Trek, Firefly, Aliens, etc. But it really can't...not as written. It says it's taken a cue from other space opera stories, like Flash Gordon (and presumably Buck Rogers)...but it's lacking in areas that would allow one to run those kind of games.

Without modification, that is. Folks have already started adding their own supplemental setting material for White Star. Tenkar's doing as series of WS "pocket settings," WrathofZombie knocked off more than a dozen alien races for the game, and Calum M created a hack-splice one might call White Star 40K (if you were so inclined) set in humanity's grim, dark future. Clearly, people love a game that can be house-ruled easy-shmeazy.

Have they never seen Dave Bezio's X-Plorers?

White Star is very spookily similar to my original "first pass" at B/X Star Wars...right down to a "Star Knight" (i.e. Jedi) character class with Wisdom as a prime requisite. An "aristocrat" class based on CHA? Check...though I call mine "high born." Spahn's three robot classes? Almost exactly the same. Star Wars monsters with the names rearranged? Check and double check (though I called my Sith "Shadow Lords," not "Void Knights"). The equipment list as well (though I had "shielded" weapons occupying the spot of him "monofilaments" and I had a catchier name for my lightsaber knock-offs).

This kind of thing is easy enough to do...if you take Saga edition Star Wars and examine the differences between it, simple D20, and early edition D&D it's not very hard to "reverse engineer" to something like B/X or OD&D (or LL or S&W). That was my initial impetus for tooling around with the idea after all. The stuff Spahn has done, concept-wise, is the easy stuff.

[writing, organizing, and commissioning great artwork isn't anything to sniff at, just BTW...in this review, I'm just talking about the design of the game]

Which is to say, I guess, that I'm a lot less impressed than some folks are. I know, I know: I'm a big turd. Thanks. Now let me talk about the stuff in White Star that I REALLY don't like...

[boy, I hate this part...the "honest opinion"]

One of the things preventing White Star from being something other than Star Wars, is its conspicuous lack of a scientist/engineer class. Without such an archetype you lose a large swath of protagonist characters from classic space opera: the Spocks and McCoys and Scottys (Star Trek); the Dr. Hans Zarkovs (Flash Gordon), Dr. Huer/Dr. Theopolis (Buck Rogers), Kaylee and Simon Tam (Firefly), The Robinsons (Lost in Space)...even Cale Tucker from Titan A.E. These are major protagonists, not hired henchmen, and they allow for different types of problem solving besides blowing holes in things with your blasters, or ships guns, or "star sword." Sure it's an easy fix (house rule your own)...but it's easy enough that it should have already been included in the game (with a prime req of INT, yeah?).

[and if you're going to bother to have hired assistants, it would sure be nice to have a description...or better yet, an NPC write-up in the monster...er, "alien creatures" section. After all, these aren't ALL "aliens" (see soldier, for example)]

But that's just an annoyance. What's far more problematic is the damn experience system. I've written before that about the hardest thing to design for a space opera RPG is a decent method of character development...even X-Plorers effectively "punts" on the subject. White Star simply defaults to standard OD&D (or, rather, S&W) save that it gives XP for "credits" as opposed to gold pieces.

How is this in any way informed by the space opera genre? Sure, it makes the game S&W compatible (which appears to be a clear design choice), but how does that facilitate anything other than a Firefly/Traveller-esque game? Hell, how does that allow one to play Star Wars, the thing for which WS seems expressly designed? In which Star Wars film are the protagonists looking for a big score of cash?! This is worse than a punt...it's a knucklehead move. And, yes, you can, of course, house rule something different...but when you start needing to change the basic building blocks of the game, then you might as well be designing your own game.

[or, to put it another way: file the fantasy tropes off S&W classes, monsters, and magic spells and don't even bother buying White Star]

At least Bezio's X-Plorers gave you an XP value for blowing up enemy starships. White Star has no XP award for space combat (unless you're supposed to add up an amount for the pilots and techs aboard an enemy starship...difficult considering there's no guideline for how XP is calculated (like for, say, NPC character classes) and there's no NPC listing for things like, say, enemy pilots and gunners). Sure, you can house rule your own stuff in this regard (in fact, you have to) or steal from something like Terminal Space...but then, why are you bothering to play this game again? Because it has nice artwork?

[it does have nice artwork for B&W interior pieces]

Magic...er, force powers...er, "Meditations and Gifts" are simply the Vancian magic system re-written for Star Knights and Alien Mystics. Nothing particularly special here, and again it's just taking the "easy road" design-wise, rather than attempting to model the genre in function as well as form. But, of course, you can house rule your own system...as with everything here....

Spahn takes an interesting tact with regard to non-human races ("aliens"), creating two specific race-as-classes in the forms of the archetypes Alien Brute and Alien Mystic. I'll be honest: much as I love me my race-as-class in fantasy adventure games, the one time I feel it's better to add a species tag is in the space opera genre, where other space-faring races have their own pilots and techs and nobles and soldiers, etc. So...ballsy as it is to take this route, it's probably another thing that I'd want to house rule...especially if you want to play something that looks like the Star Wars Expanded Universe with its non-human Jedi, er "Star Knights." Just another "possible campaign setting," right? So how do you model all those be-tentacled, saber-swinging Jedi monstrosities from the prequel trilogy using only the "Alien Mystic" class? Heck, they even have a different spell list from the Star Knights' "meditations" (and Why O Why do you need a purify food & drink spell?). What if I want my Alien Brute copilot to aid in repairing my starship (or putting my protocol 'bot back together?)?

Oh, right: just house rule it.

Look, let's talk turkey for a moment. It probably sounds like I'm being awfully hard on White Star...and, yeah, I guess I am. Fortunately for Mr. Spahn, my opinion isn't valued all that much these days, even around my own corner of the blog-o-sphere. And anyway, he's making his money: White Star is #36 on the DriveThru RPG sales. I bought it myself...no one gifted me with a review copy.

Here's the thing about White Star: if you want to run something space opera-y ESPECIALLY in the Star Wars (original trilogy) variety, and want it in a familiar system (i.e. "old school D&D-esque"), then White Star is the closest thing you're going to find. It does more work than X-Plorers in a couple regards (monster lists and a Jedi/Force system), and is much more streamlined and (in my opinion) "user friendly" than Stars Without Number. But at 130+ pages, nicely laid out and well-illustrated...well, I guess I was expecting more for my money.

Actually, scratch that. For the $8 I paid, it's a quality product...I've certainly paid more money for less useful game material (consider the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide...). And I don't think the game has been "over-hyped" by the blog-o-sphere (not nearly the same way as "5E Basic" was, for example). Like I said, it's the closest thing to its target that you're really going to find. Hell, its got falcon-men and felinoids...it obviously wanted to be Flash Gordon compatible.

It's just that Flash never looted anyone to "level up."

But I AM disappointed that it didn't do more, or invest more, in the design process than what I was doing back in 2010...back when I was calling my project "B/X Starkillers." There's a reason I didn't publish something like this: it wasn't good enough. Even if I'd had the artwork and professional design layout, the content wouldn't have been good enough. And I suppose I'm disappointed that this is the best someone can come up with after all these years. Production-wise, it still doesn't hold a candle to FFG's Star Wars series of RPGs.

Tell you what I'll do: let me look over my very long-ass document that was going to be a SW-esque supplement for X-Plorers (no, it's not the same thing as my B/X Starkillers...White Star is close enough to BXSK that publishing it in any form would be fairly redundant). Give me a chance to clean it up a bit, and I'll post it to the blog as a series of posts to spice up your X-Plorers game. Free of charge. My original idea was (of course) to publish it and make some money for all my hard-earned words typed, but I am sooooo sick of looking for artists and artwork (God, I wish I could draw like some of these self-published dudes)...I'll give you the "sans art" version as a freebie.

Yes, I have no less than three other projects I'm working on at the moment, but you people deserve a bone, every now and then. Right? Sure you do.
: )