I was afraid of this. When I started this blog I thought, “This will be different I will be in here updating all the time.” Yeah right, I should have known better.
I think that about covers it though and there is no reason to go on and on about it. So let’s get back to games.
I picked a few new RPG’s that I have been reading that are very interesting, I have kinda swung back to my RPG over board games mood.
The first is Lesser Shades of Evil (here after referred to as LSoE) an RPG from EOS Press. This game is big, bigger than most of the Indie publications I have been getting as of late. Most Indie RPG’s now a days are about rules and very little about setting, LSoE has a lot of setting and the rules are designed to carry that setting. The game is about having God like power over normal people and what you do with it. It is set in post apocalyptic future where everyone follows the All Seeing, a god that rewards good people and punishes the bad. Players work for the All Seeing as Godlings carrying out the punishments and the rewards part to the normals, but you are anything but normal. Most of the time I shy away from radically hyped up settings (there are exceptions, there are always exceptions) because while they sound really good when you read the book, you have to read the whole book to get the setting. Trying to get all your players to read an entire book before the play the game is next to impossible. And trying to explaining every qwerky little detail of the setting never seems to never work and is honestly boring. LSoE has fixed this, sort of by suggesting the best way to start a campaign is with the players starting off as regular people with no knowledge of what is going on, and slowly moving them up as the start to understand what is really going on. I have skipped over a ton of setting in this article because I don’t want to give it away but I think it is worth it. If you are ever asked to play this game I would highly recommend it, if you have a good GM it will be definitely worth it.
Another game I got was White Wolf’s Changeling the Lost. Another setting for the their World of Darkness setting. Here you play a human that has been lured into the lands of the Fae, and have have become one of them. You are fighting your way back to regain the former life you lost. This is a pretty big departure from the original Changeling the Dreaming they released a few years ago. Changeling the Lost seems a little darker and more brooding then Changeling the Dreaming. If you enjoyed White Wolf’s re-releases of Vampire, Werewolf, and Mage (I like everyone, except Mage) then you will like the Changeling. As a side note White Wolf never intended to re-release Changeling and it was through fan interaction that the decided to make the game.
And now for a few Indie game titles I have picked up.
First on my list is Dread, which I haven’t finished reading yet but I can tell you so far it is very interesting. Like most Indie games it doesn’t really have a setting, it more about the rules and atmosphere. It is meant to be a horror game, but instead of using dice you use a Jenga set to resolve conflicts. I don’t want to go into all the details here but they have set up the rules to really ratchet up the tension with Jenga and this could be a lot of fun. If I ever finish the rules and run it I will definitely post report here.
Next is The Blossoms are Falling, a setting book for The Burning Wheel RPG. Burning Wheel is an RPG I love that I have never run. Every time I get ready to run it, I chicken out and do something else. I just want want to run this game right and am afraid I will get lazy and botch it and my group will never want to play it again, I hate irrational fears… Anyway Blossoms is set in Feudal Japan and has all the life paths and stuff you need to RPG in this era, very cool stuff. Since it is one of my favorite era’s of history ever since I started playing Legend of the Five Rings. If you don’t know about Burning Wheel check out BWHQ, they make both Burning Wheel which is a fantasy RPG a little like D&D in that there is not hard setting. They also do Burning Empires which is a Sci Fi setting based on some cool comics that is really worth checking out.
For board gaming I got a bunch of new war games from GMT and have been slowly going through them, I also have few new titles from MMP that very interesting. Here are the highlights.
From GMT I got Roads to Leningrad, two different operational games about the German Army Group North and their battles to reach Leningrad. Good stuff, solid simple rules, a great buy.
Also got Clash of Giants II a Ted Racier WWI game, I love his stuff and it has really gotten me into WWI, but I haven’t opened this one yet so I will have to give a report later.
Glory III a civil war game is next on the list, again I haven’t gotten to yet, but I am a big Civil war fan and am looking forward to this.
I also got The Great War, another Ted Racier WWI game. This was originally published a two separate games in Command magazine years ago. They have combined the games into a great big WWI strategy game that I have just started to look at, again very cool stuff.
From MMP I got Afrika II a reprint of a old The Gamers title that covers the battle for North Africa. The rules like fairly light and seems like it would be really fun.
I also got A Victory Lost and Red Star Rising, both games based on the Eastern Front of WWII but designed by Japanese designers. One of the designers made Fire in the Sky another MMP game which I thought was very good, I like their designs because they are so different from Western designers.
A Victory Lost is a simple intorductory war game about the battles that followed the siege of Stalingrad. The interesting thing is the rules are easy but the strategy I can already see is rather complex. I don’t think this will make the game difficult for beginners but I do see why it has won so many awards and it highly rated on Board Game Geek.
Red Star Rising is the entire war in the Soviet Union during WWII and is a bit more complex, not because I would say that the rules are really all the complex but because they are such a radical departure from what Western war gamers are used to. Simple things like defenders can advance after a battle if the attackers retreats is a rule not seen a lot (in fact I can think of a single Western game that has it, but I sure there is one I don’t know about somewhere). I have taken a small break from these rules just to get my head straight again but in a way am looking forward to trying this game out.
Well that is everything I want to report on right now, I will be trying to update this blog more often but you know how intentions go…
