Savage Worlds is a gaming system designed to provide a basic framework around which games in all sorts of settings can be built, but especially games in the Sword & Sorcery genre will perhaps find the best home there. Howard Andrew Jones explores one such setting …
Legends of Steel: Savage Worlds
Jeff Mejia
Evil DM Games (70 pp, $12.00 PDF, January 2009)
Reviewed by Howard Andrew Jones
A lot of games wear their hearts on their sleeves. They’re labors of love. They almost have to be, because one doesn’t usually get wealth, fame, and women by playing and designing games. When it comes to Legends of Steel, the heart it wears on its sleeve is mine. I wasn’t remotely involved in its creation, but I’m a huge fan of sword-and-sorcery, and Legends of Steel seems to have been designed, more than most other games I pick up, with me in mind.
In 2004, I made my first trip to GenCon and was overwhelmed by the experience. I don’t remember much about the specific tables I visited, but I do remember coming across this new game, HeroScape, which applied a modular style to tactical war gaming – not just in the building of the army (which was usually modular in some sense), but in the design of the playing surface and terrain.
Just as Howard describes himself below, I was also the sort of person who always chose storytelling games over wargames. I had bought some Warhammer units, but had spent so much time painting them that I’d never actually gotten around to playing the game … and even if I had, the lack of terrain would have annoyed me.
With HeroScape, all of these elements came packaged together in a master set, and you could expand on the experience easily enough with various expansion packs. Six years later, Howard describes his experience with the current incarnation of the game.
The Traveller RPG was originally released in 1977 as a game system in which players could explore generic space adventure games. (One of the game’s creators, Marc Miller, claims the idea came from wanting to do Dungeons & Dragons in space.)
If you like playing games set in space – whether space opera, hard SF, planetary romance, or space cowboys (you know who you are) – you might want to check out Traveller‘s flexible system to help supplement your gameplay. You can find out more from their current publisher, Mongoose Publishing, or go to the source of all (questionable) knowledge, Wikipedia.
Today, we’re presenting three reviews from the pages of Black Gate which focus on Traveller materials. Two are of new supplements from Mongoose and the third review is for a CD-ROM containing many supplements and modules from earlier editions of the game.
A few years back I asked him about the solo Dark City Games adventures that Andrew Zimmerman Jones and Todd McCaulty had reviewed so favorably for Black Gate. John happens to have a larger game collection than most game stores, so I’d come to the right person.
Solo games were great fun, John told me. “Here’s an extra copy of an old game you’ve never heard of that’s really cool. Go play it.”
That was Barbarian Prince. And yeah, it was pretty nifty (you can try it out yourself with a free download here, along with its sister solitaire product, Star Smuggler).
I started playing and enjoying the products created by Dark City Games, which the rest of the staff and I have continued to review for the magazine.
But what are these solitaire games like?
The most obvious analogy is to say that solitaire games are a little like computer adventure games played with paper, with dice and cards taking the place of a computer game’s invisible randomization of results.
My first thought was something along the lines of “how quaint,” but it turns out that while the play experiences are similar, the flavors are slightly different, even if playing them stimulates similar centers of the brain.
It’s like switching off orange pop to try some root beer, or vice versa. You may not drink one or the other exclusively, but they both sure are sweet on a hot day.
"You mean your only plan is to stand behind a few feet of mealie bags and wait for the attack?"
While playing a solitaire game you may not see any computer graphics, but your imagination will paint some images for you.
And there’s the tactile pleasure of manipulating the counters and looking over the game board and flipping through the booklet and rolling the dice.
Solitaire in no way means that you will get the same game play each time, and to my surprise I’ve discovered that a well designed solo board game has better replay value than many computer games.
Years ago, one of the biggest names in the gaming industry, the woman behind the Dragonlance world of Dungeons & Dragons, struck out by creating her own gaming company: Margaret Weis Productions.
Their first game was the Serenity Roleplaying Game, reviewed back in Black Gate 10 (Spring 2007). Based upon the tragically short-lived “space cowboy” Joss Whedon television series Firefly, the game mechanics were a proprietary system which they called the “Cortex” system. It has provided the basis of their numerous games based on television series: Supernatural, Smallville, Leverage, and Battlestar Galactica. (Coincidentally, the Supernatural RPG is reviewed by yours truly in the upcoming Black Gate 15.)
In 2009, Margaret Weis Productions came out with a stand-alone rules for the highly-adaptable Cortex system. Unfortunately, space considerations kept the review from making it into Black Gate 14, but we share it now for your internet reading pleasure:
Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer is a deck-building game from Gary Games. “What is Ascension?” you may ask. Here’s a quick intro from the Ascension website:
Ascension is a fast-paced deckbuilding game that’s quick to learn, easy to setup, and packed with endless hours of replay value! Our goal with Ascension was to make a game that we would bring out again and again for our own game nights. With an all-star team working on design and development, including Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour Champions Justin Gary, Rob Dougherty, and Brian Kibler, we spent the better part of a year making a game that will appeal to fans of the board games, trading card games, and non-gamers alike.
It’s also useful to have a bit of the background for the world in which the game is set. Again, from the Ascension website:
The game takes place in Vigil, a world that has been protected for millennia by the Great Seal, keeping the realm free from divine influences. It was put in place after an ancient war with a corrupt god, Samael the Fallen, when it was decided that none of the gods should be able to interfere. But now, the Seal is failing, and nightmarish Monsters that had been forgotten are breaking through. Your job, as a hero of Vigil, is to take your small, ragtag band of Apprentices and Militia, and gather an army powerful enough to lead you to your destiny as the Godslayer, and in doing so, slay Samael once and for all.
The next obvious question is: what is a deckbuilding game? Deckbuilding implies that you do not start with a predetermined deck, i.e. one of your own choosing before the game begins. Rather, you begin with a starter deck and customize your deck through the course of the game, hopefully in such a way that allows you to outplay your opponents, who are customizing decks of their own.
We’re finally nearing the end of the Black Gate 14 online tour, just as issue 15 nears completion. Whew! Timing is everything.
Today we’re looking at the Gaming column, edited by Howard Andrew Jones. Like Reviews Editor Bill Ward, Howard pulled out all the stops to make sure it was the best we’d ever had for our blockbuster 14th issue. The result was 20 pages of in-depth reviews of the most exciting gaming products of the year, including:
Alien Module 1: Aslan, Gareth Hanrahan (Mongoose Publishing) Traveller: Tripwire, Simon Beal (Mongoose Publishing) Traveller: FASA and Gamelords, CD ROM (Far Future Enterprises) HeroScape Expansion Pack 1-4: Blackmoon’s Siege(Wizards of the Coast) Legends of Steel: Savage Worlds, Jeff Mejia (Evil DM Games) Level UPIssue 1, Magazine (Goodman Games) Far Avalon, Martin Dougherty (Avenger/Comstar Games) Shard RPG Basic Compendium, Aaron de Orive and Scott Jones (Shard Studios) Hero’s Handbook: Tieflings, Edited by Ken Hart (Goodman Games) Hero’s Handbook: Dragonborn, Edited by Aijalyn Kohler (Goodman Games) Forgotten Heroes: Fang, Fist, and Song, Edited by Aeryn Blackdirge Rudel (Goodman Games) Forgotten Heroes: Scythe and Shroud, Edited by Aeryn Blackdirge Rudel (Goodman Games) Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Core Rulebook, Jason Bulmahn (Paizo Publishing) Pathfinder Module: Crypt of the Everflame, Jason Bulmahn (Paizo Publishing)
We’re big fans of Dark City Games at Black Gate. Todd McAulty first reviewed their solitaire fantasy adventure The Island of Lost Spells in Black Gate 10, and Andrew Zimmerman Jones picked up the thread with a look at Wolves on the Rhine (BG 11), and Void Station 57 (BG 13). Howard Andrew Jones carries on the tradition in the upcoming BG 15 with a review of one of their latest titles, The Oracle’s Breath.
We even included a complete solo adventure from Dark City Games in Black Gate 12, Orcs of the High Mountains, and posted a short solitaire SF adventure by Dark City here on the BG website, S.O.S, a prelude to their At Empire’s End.
Dark City have re-captured the spirit of the best solitaire adventures from the dawn of role-playing, particularly the classic Metagaming titles like Death Test. Their games are easy to learn, quick to play, and a lot of fun.
To celebrate their success during the year, Dark City Games is offering a buy 4 get 1 free special on their website — a 20% discount.
Select any four games from their extensive catalog of Ancient World (fantasy), Time and Space (science fiction), or Untamed West (western) titles, and receive a fifth game of your choice free. The sale even includes their newest titles, such as Raid on Cygnosa and At Empire’s End.
I am currently in a master’s program for Counseling Studies, and part of that is the study of psychological theories. Something I have learned is that many theories have been presented over the years about psychological development. What stages are involved, what the normal “process” of psychological development is, and so on.
This got me to thinking. Do gamers go through a development process? (And by that I mean tabletop role-players. Video-gamers may go through a similar process, but that’s not my focus.) Perhaps someday, when I have to write a research paper, I will base it on this idea. Because I’m a geek like that.
Anyway, here’s my initial theory on The Stages of Gamer Development, from a psychological point of view. This theory assumes an average gamer, introduced to the hobby during adolescence (ages 11-13 or so), who continues playing through adulthood. Obviously there will be many who do not fall within these parameters. But, given it’s a psychological theory, it is a broad generalization at best, and open for individual interpretation of course.
In my ongoing Art Evolution series, I explained my plan to collect ten of the greatest fantasy role-playing artists of all time for a shared project. They were to illustrate a single character in their most recognizable style. So far, the list has included Jeff Laubenstein, Eric Vedder, Jeff Dee, and David Deitrick with this week adding the first female name to our list of esteemed artists.
The ‘Space: 1889 Lyssa’ was in the bank, and by the this time I was seeing there was a kind of universal key involved in the process. I needed a perfect combination of money, sincere flattery, and being as genuinely personable as email allows to sway this pool of talent. Artists are a funny lot, as are writers for that matter, and I’d begun to get the hang of corresponding with them. I’d also started a rather fine collection of art and the more I got, the more I understood that I needed a venue for what I was trying to accomplish. Still, my project was in its infancy, and I figured as long as I was making progress with my list of favorites, why not ride it out and worry about the details later.
Looking over the latest images, I came to the conclusion that David, like Jeff, was a gem in my eye but had moved out of the industry’s limelight a decade ago. Although popular and recognizable in his day, the RP art world had moved on. It was something I noted a great deal in my list, and as a person with deep feelings toward the work these men and women created, it was a tough pill to swallow.
Savage Worlds is a gaming system designed to provide a basic framework around which games in all sorts of settings can be built, but especially games in the Sword & Sorcery genre will perhaps find the best home there. Howard Andrew Jones explores one such setting …
