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Warcaster: Neo-Mechanika – Miniature Future Science Fantasy Wargame

Warcaster: Neo-Mechanika – Miniature Future Science Fantasy Wargame

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Warcaster_MarcherWorldsLast spring, I spent some time discussing the Kickstarter for Privateer Press’ new game, Warcaster: Neo-Mechanika. The game is something of a spin-off from their popular Warmachine miniature wargame, which allows players to field an army that includes hulking metallic warjacks. Warcaster is set thousands of years in the future, in a distant galaxy, where human refugees from the Warmachine setting have set up home, technologically advanced, populated the galaxy, and, not surprisingly, found new and more impressive ways to kill each other.

To get you up to speed on the setting, the game is played in battles of armies composed of three different factions that have ample reasons to fight against each other:

  • The Iron Star Alliance are the troops representing the major government in the Warcaster galaxy, the towering monolithic empire that is seemingly necessary in any sort of space opera-style setting. They’re not necessarily evil, but they like order, and they exist to enforce that order.
  • The Marcher Worlds is a loose ragtag group of independent worlds that resists the order the Iron Star Alliance seeks to impose upon them. If you’ve watched Firefly, these would be the equivalent of the Browncoats that Malcolm Reynolds fought for.
  • The Aeternus Continuum represents a darker faction of human society, a vast cult of pirates and murders that is banned across both the Iron Star Alliance and the Marcher Worlds. They are dedicated to a form of techno-necromancy that seeks to use medicine and sorcery to grant immortality to their leaderships.

That initial Kickstarter has been fulfilled, with a surprising amount of speed given that their production facilities had to deal with a pandemic lockdown for COVID-19. I’ve now had the chance to play through the game several times, to develop some more detailed thoughts on the game … and let you know about their next plans for the game, including a current Warcaster: Collision Course expansion Kickstarter that ends at 3 a.m. Eastern Time on Friday, November 6. You can buy any of the factions’ existing or new products through the Kickstarter, but they’re also available through the Privateer Press store or your local game store.

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Delve Deep in Lost Catacombs in Empire of the Ghouls from Kobold Press

Delve Deep in Lost Catacombs in Empire of the Ghouls from Kobold Press

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Empire of the Ghouls (Kobold Press, April 2020)

The Free City of Zobeck, a booming trade city in Kobold Press’ popular Midgard, is one of my favorite modern adventure settings. It’s a terrifically imaginative urban environment with guilds, gangs, and gods, a notorious Kobold Ghetto, the Arcane Collegium, a clockwork wizard school, and much more. It was originally designed by Wolfgang Baur and, according to Kobold Press, is where the setting of Midgard was first born, “a clockpunk city forged in the fires of revolt, with monsters and magic drawn from the dark folktales of medieval Eastern Europe — plus details of devils, Kobold kings, and plots galore.”

Zobeck has been well supported over the years, with releases like Tales of Zobeck, Streets of Zobeck, and multiple editions of the Zobeck Gazetteer. But the most ambitious supplement to share geography with the free city is Empire of the Ghouls, funded by a hugely successful 2019 Kickstarter that raised over $168,000.

Weighing in at a massive 345 pages in full color, the standalone Empire of the Ghouls is a complete adventure campaign for characters from 1st to 13th level, fully compatible with 5th edition D&D and other modern RPGs. It details a Ghoul Imperium in the depths of the underworld and a series of interconnected adventures that delve deep into its secrets.

This heavy and highly readable volume is one the more ambitious and entertaining adventures to cross my desk in years, and it’s now available to all. Here’s a look at the wonders within.

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Future Treasures: The Fractured Void: A Twilight Imperium Novel by Tim Pratt

Future Treasures: The Fractured Void: A Twilight Imperium Novel by Tim Pratt

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Twilight Imperium, Third Edition (Fantasy Flight Games, 2004), and The Fractured Void (Aconyte, November 2020)

Tim Pratt has been nominated for all the major genre awards, including the Nebula, World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Mythopoeic, and Stoker, and he won a Hugo in 2007 for his short story “Impossible Dreams.” His most recent books include the Axiom trilogy, and the 10-volume Marla Mason series.

His upcoming book is a space opera with a twist — it’s based on the rich background created for Twilight Imperium. Yes, that Twilight Imperium, Fantasy Flight’s epic (and I do mean epic) game of space conquest, politics, and trade. Designed by Christian T. Petersen and first released in 1997, Twilight Imperium is one of the most successful science fiction games of the last few decades. It’s been continuously in print for over two decades, and gone through four editions. The mythos that has grown up around the game and its 17 playable races is sprawling and rich, and certainly deserving of a line of fiction novels. I’m definitely looking forward to the first, The Fractured Void, and Pratt is an excellent choice to kick off the line. Here’s the publisher’s description.

A brave starship crew are drawn into the schemes of interplanetary powers competing for galactic domination, in this epic space opera from the best-selling strategic boardgame, Twilight Imperium.

Captain Felix Duval and the crew of the Temerarious quietly patrol a remote Mentak Coalition colony system where nothing ever happens. But when they answer a distress call from a moon under attack, that peaceful existence is torn apart. They rescue a scientist, Thales, who’s developing revolutionary technology to create new wormholes. He just needs a few things to make it fully operational… and now, ordered to aid the scientist, the Temerarious is targeted by two rival black-ops teams intent on reacquiring Thales. Can Felix trust Thales? Or is this a conspiracy to tip the balance of power in the galaxy forever?

The Fractured Void will be published by Aconyte on November 3, 2020. It is $16.95 in trade paperback and $9.95 in digital formats. Get more details and read an excerpt here, and check out the handsome fourth edition of Twilight Imperium at the Fantasy Flight website.

See all our recent coverage of the best in upcoming SF and fantasy books here.

Survive in a Post Apocalyptic World: Posthuman Saga by Mighty Boards

Survive in a Post Apocalyptic World: Posthuman Saga by Mighty Boards

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Posthuman Saga by Mighty Boards

I miss walking the crowded aisles at Gen Con. In fact, these days I wonder if we’ll ever see something like the vast Exhibit Hall of Gen Con ever again. Hundreds and hundreds of vendors proudly displaying wares, and tens of thousands of eager gamers, all crammed into a vast indoor space bigger than a football stadium. And I do mean crammed — sometimes those narrow aisles were so packed you could barely move.

Just the thought of that makes my skin crawl these days. Talk about a potential pandemic superspreader event. You could take out an entire generation of gamers in 72 hours. Yiiiii.

Like all major social gatherings this year, Gen Con 2020 was canceled. But that’s okay. Truth be told, I’m still processing the hundreds of photos I took as I wandered the Hall in awe the year before. The impossibly large Gen Con Exhibit Hall is something every gamer should experience at least once, if only to get a sense of the vast scale and enormous creative energy in our hobby. It’s been fourteen months, and I’m still a little overwhelmed by the experience.

I’ve slowly been processing it all by writing about the games that most impressed me, like Alien: The Roleplaying Game, The City of Kings, Escape the Dark Castle, and Heroes of Land, Air & Sea. And now we come at last to one of the most visually impressive titles on my list, Posthuman Saga by Mighty Boards, which throws players into a beautifully designed and adventure-filled post apocalyptic world.

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A First Look At The Sword of Cepheus for (cough) Travelers in Sword and Sorcery Realms

A First Look At The Sword of Cepheus for (cough) Travelers in Sword and Sorcery Realms

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Art: Stephanie McAlea

I don’t like complexity in my tabletop-roleplaying games. It’s not just my age, I’m also more interested in the adventure than the stacking the of feats and traits. And, as a GM, frankly, the chaotic exploding synergies of games like Dungeons and Dragons make me feel panicky.

However, I don’t like it when glossing over resource management breaks genre conventions — if torches can’t run out, if food isn’t scarce, then players will turn each dungeon adventure into weaponized archaeology.

Unfortunately, I’m also — on reflection — unkeen on randomized emulations that  take away the possibilities and drama created by choice: “Oh, you rolled a ‘1’. Whoops your arrows ran out.” (Some games square this circle a little.)

That’s why I was excited when Omer Golan-Joel announced he was working on a Sword and Sorcery game called (drum roll) Sword of Cepheus: 2D6 Sword and Sorcery Roleplaying.

The Cepheus Engine is the flagship for a movement of indy 2D6 games, all under an Open Gaming License related to a certain classic SF game. 2D6 games are generally old-school emulators, with encumbrances and resource management. However, unlike D20 OSR stuff, they have recursive rules — the clue is in the “2D6” — and skill lists rather than classes, meaning you don’t have lots of bolt-on background abilities and feats, because your skill list is your background and distinctive range of capabilities. Normally, character generation is a mini-game in itself. You navigate a career, with one eye on the possibility of aging badly — chicken versus the Grim Reaper — also generating your own backstory as you go.  It’s not so good for big sweeping stuff, but perfect for adventurers having adventures.

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The Continuing Mission: Star Trek Adventures

The Continuing Mission: Star Trek Adventures

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Star Trek has been a revered franchise for decades, and the FASA Star Trek RPG released in the 1980s is a oft cited classic game. The current RPG, Star Trek Adventures, is published by Modiphius. Supported by multiple supplements, adventures, and a forthcoming Klingon core rulebook, Star Trek Adventures is a compelling RPG that will let you live out your own Star Trek stories, regardless of era.

The game is oriented toward The Next Generation era of Star Trek, but the rules allow and often speak specifically to running games in the Original Series and Enterprise eras (Deep Space Nine and Voyager fall within The Next Generation era). Even the Kelvin timeline (i.e., the new film series with Chris Pine as Captain Kirk). Modiphius does not have the license rights to the newer Discovery, Picard, or Lower Decks series showing on CBS All Access, but adapting the game to suit those settings is readily done.

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Understanding the New Order

Understanding the New Order

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Since Disney’s acquisition of Star Wars and its consequent films and streaming episodic shows — the very good The Mandalorian being only the first of several planned — many would be forgiven for forgetting the very long time between The Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace. 1983 to 1999. In that time, novels and comics were the primary vehicle for keeping Star Wars stories going, including the Thrawn Trilogy of novels by Timothy Zahn, published from 1991 to 1993.

For roleplayers, West End Games published a Star Wars role playing game in 1987. This game proved to be successful, and the quality of the material was so good, that Zahn referenced — at the instruction of LucasArts — the sourcebooks when writing the Thrawn Trilogy. With the game, players could finally engage in the universe and with supplemental materials to help expand and frame the universe that was — until that time — largely confined to the original trilogy of films and a poorly received Christmas special.

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Doom, Zork and Wizardry: 20th Century Retro Gaming

Doom, Zork and Wizardry: 20th Century Retro Gaming

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Zork and Zork II for the Apple II (Personal Software and Infocom)

Back in the day, I used to play a lot of computer games. And to be honest, I still spend a fair amount of time each week playing, though these days it’s pretty much limited to Lord of the Rings Online.

I started out in the late 1970’s on the Apple II computers in our high school or at the houses of a few of my friends who were lucky enough to have a computer. I bought my first computer, a Commodore 64, when I went to college in 1981, and played a variety of games on it. I particularly remember Wizard of Wor, which was a port from the arcade game that I loved (my friends and I spent a lot of time, and quarters, in arcades during this period).

Later on, after I’d move to a Windows PC, my wife and I, along with a group of friends and family, used to play a lot of first-person shooters, such as Doom, Duke Nukem, Heretic, Hexen, Day of Defeat, Call of Duty and many others. To this day, several of my nephews and nieces still sometimes address me as Duke, a shortened form of the in-game nickname I used in the multi-player games (and no, it had nothing to do with Duke Nukem, but rather was inspired by David Bowie).

When Deb and I went to law school in 1985, we quickly found one of Cambridge’s top attractions (at least if you were a science fiction fan!). This was the Science Fantasy Bookstore, which was owned and run by Bruce “Spike” MacPhee. We used to visit the bookstore quite a bit during the three years we lived there, and always enjoyed talking with Spike, who was a passionate and knowledgeable SF fan. Spike had founded the bookstore in 1977 and it stayed open until 1989.

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Board Game Review: The Captain Is Dead

Board Game Review: The Captain Is Dead

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The-Captain-is-Dead-board-game-review (1)Anyone else feel like we’re living in a Golden Age of board games? Or have I just been playing more because of COVID? We’re spoiled. Gone are the days of cutting out your own cardboard counters and coloring in your own dice with a crayon.

What, none of you ever played Metagaming MicroGames? They were pretty great. I think Sticks and Stones was the first time I experienced a point-buy mechanic.

But enough GenX 80s nostalgia.

The latest in my personal quarantine parade of top-notch-in-every-respect board games is The Captain Is Dead from The Game Crafters (J.T. Smith and Joe Price) and AEG. I tried this game, originally developed on Kickstarter, with the kids the other night. Everyone had a raucous and exciting time. It’s one of those games you end up thinking about after the box is closed and put away. As a matter of fact, the kids are still talking about it two days later. It’s designed for 2-7 players, though after a couple sessions it seems to me there would be no effective difference if you wanted to solo play handling 2-7 crew yourself; no mechanics would need to be changed.

The premise is that you’re in a starship and have just suffered a massive, Wrath of Khan-style surprise attack from aliens out for a bit of the old ultra-violence. Multiple systems are down. Aliens are teleporting in to occupy the ship. The crew may be afflicted with strange disorders. But worst of all, the Captain is gone, crisped without so much as a “Kiss me, Hardy.”

You could say this game beings in medias res.

And if you don’t play tight and co-oppy, it’ll end there too.

You maneuver surviving officers and crewmen around the ship trying to restore function, with the overriding goal being getting the jump drive repaired so you can get the heck out of Dodge. And that’s the first of the many wonderful elements to this game, there are 18 characters to choose from, ranging from a fleet admiral down to a janitor (color-coded according to their role in the starship’s sub-systems, because cost-saving 60s TV production measures live on through the ages like military specs), each with unique abilities that I believe would combine to make this game highly replayable. There’s even an ensign, if for some reason you want the rest of your co-opers to constantly yell “Shut up, Wesley!” at you.

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Many Paths of Character Creation

Many Paths of Character Creation

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For many RPG gamers, creating characters is one of the highlights of gaming. They get to make significant choices and craft and hone their character to their vision. If they are invested in the character, players typically engage more in the collaborative storytelling environment that RPGs are. For many players, this is the most creative time in the process, for thereafter they engage in the setting as laid out by the game master (GM). They may have an influence on the game and that setting, but the act of creating primarily — if not exclusively — resides with the GM after character creation. Even in truly sandbox games where the players can go wherever and do whatever, they are operating within the construct of the GM.

RPGs across the spectrum devote pages to character creation, often taking up a significant portion of any rulebook and entire supplements that provide new options. Most games lay out these options as a series of choices the player makes — though always reserving GM fiat.

Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars: Force and Destiny, and others use a process whereby you select a species (if applicable), select a career, apply a number of adjustments to the basic character template, and then make choices about talents and specializations and skill choices. The names may vary (class, feats, etc.), but the basic principles remain. For example, in Force and Destiny from the core rulebook, players choose from one of eight species. These have default attribute score adjustments and some level of unique trait or ability (breathing underwater for Nautolans for example). Players then choose from one of four careers and then choose from one of three specializations in that career. One of the narrative or logical challenges with this construct is that if you want to play a 40-year old human smuggler, you may have the exact set of skill points, etc., as other players, who may have a 20-year old bounty hunter just making her mark on the world. Truth be told, this is not a significant challenge, but one nonetheless. Particularly in class-based systems. My 40-year old cleric is at level one — the same as that 20-year old barbarian.

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