4 posts tagged “game”

RPG Review: Alpha Omega

Jan 12, 2009
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This weekend I was perusing the multitude of RPG blogs that I've got clogging up my feedreader and came upon one fellow's list of his Games of 2008. Intrigued I read on and he mentioned a new game called Alpha Omega, a post apocalyptic setting that he referred to as "Rifts done right."

Those three words had me intrigued, because among my personal projects going on is a task involving converting the RPG Rifts to a system that doesn't perform fellatio on deceased donkeys. After perusing the game's website and discovering that the book looked to have a rather high production value (it was pretty) and this was a brand new company's first product I felt incumbent to spend $30 of my hard-earned dollars on their PDF. This is pretty steep for a PDF, but it was also over 400 pages and I'm always one for supporting new game companies, especially when they're not D20.

After beginning my reading the first impressions were promising... then they got better... then they had me dancing jigs of excitement. The themes and setting of this book were absolutely beautiful! The setting was so rich and full of opportunity and adventure!

The premise of Alpha Omega is that 250 years in the future, humanity has endured much hardship, our neglect of our planet cased catastrophic disasters, resource competition from this turned into all-out nuclear war which decimated the world. Added to this a nearby comet unleashed a storm of meteors upon earth setting mankind back even further. Humanity was forced to retreat into massive arcologies where it closed it's self off from the hostile outside world.

Tied closely within this setting are the agendas of two alien races, called the Seraphim and Olaphem, essentially angels and devils though the game doesn't force mythical morality down one's throat preferring a more ying/yang approach. These aliens are on the cusp of returning to earth to carry out another stage of their eternal war. They've been gone for several millennia, and in their stead they left children from their occasional couplings with humans, called the nephalim, which existed amongst humanity for many years in hiding until circumstances forced them to reveal themselves. They are superhuman and possess magic and vast genetic superiorities to humans. The game also hosts a few other player option races that continue along these lines, lesser nephalim are diluted bloodline of the evolutionary aliens, the grigori are bio-engineered beings created to serve the Seraphim and Olaphem, and then the technology in the game opens up play possibility to androids, bio engineered people, mutants from the wastes, or an interesting vampire-like mutation of humans originating as a Mormon colony called the necrosi.

The science fiction aspects of the setting are crisp, well thought out and refreshing. I love them so much, character creation is the same, the options for character ideas is as limitless as the game advertises and each one has so much depth that I could barely contain my excitement.

Which is why my next section of reading was such a kick in the balls.

The system. It looks good superficially, almost simple even but this is a lie. It's a point based adaptation of D&D that feels like it was heavily influenced by GURPS, this would not be that horrible in theory, but then they created the mechanic that totally breaks the game. In Alpha Omega, 1 does not equal 1, or even 1 set die. Every number from 1-100 listed in the trait section refers to a section on a chart that tells you which dice to roll. 12 might equal 4d4's + 2d6. This complexity of dice conversion gets exponentially worse when you factor in resisted actions, multiple actions, combat or teamwork.

This game... this gem of creativity and potential has been completely RUINED by their dice mechanic. They actually say at the beginning of the game that they try to accommodate the play style of people who don't like to make rolls often, this should have set off warning bells in my head. I'm a gamer and game designer that prescribes to the school of thought that the system MUST be able to resolve any uncertainty or conflict that the players can get themselves into, but this one admits that their system sucks too much to do that. No wonder some players prefer an unrolled play style with this game, after reading their dice mechanics I can fully understand. Only masochistic engineers and mathematicians that jerk-off to the periodic table nightly would enjoy it. Metaphorically it's like the game designers created a stunning work of art, foiled it in gold, Ivory and ebony... and then lamenting the fact that their work of art wasn't big enough they pulled it from it's foundations and dropped it sloppily on the heaped corpses of dead dice manufacturers rotting in a swamp.

In that way Alpha Omega keeps unerringly to it's theme, good and bad, light and dark, beginning and end. The duality of the setting is represented in my favor for it. The setting is nearly perfect, as close to perfection as I've seen in a game world actually, but the dice mechanics are a disgrace. On the up-side at first glance I think it would be fairly simple to enact a better dice system and make the game playable. As for me, I've put the game aside and am wondering if I can hire their setting writers to build me a setting for Hardkore's game mechanics.

Wednesday Yahtzee Smash Brother's Brawl Edition

Apr 23, 2008
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Well, I've been gone for a week and didn't deliver on last week's cheap cop-out theft type blogs that are my wonderful way of cheaping out and not creating real legitimate content. So please, feel free to send me tons of hateful comments. I invert their virulence and turn them into cupcakes. Anyhow, I totally disagree with Yahtzee's tone here kuz I found Smash Brother's Brawl fun as hell, it brought me back to the days of Mario 3 platforming and I loved it.

So hey, enjoy some Yahtzee just for the sake of enjoying it, kuz for all it's misguided venom, it's still the best review out there.

Zero Punctuation - Smash Brother's Brawl

Coming Up on the Home Stretch of the Exalted Publication Drought

Mar 25, 2008
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Exalted, Second Edition

Alan Alexander

I've been waiting for freaking ever for White Wolf to release another book in it's Exalted game line. I've got to say I'm disappointed in their constant delays for the past 6 months. I buy every Exalted book they realize because I run a regular exalted game and have the most serious kind of brand loyalty that there is. I regularly visit their forums regarding exalted and even subscribe to a podcast put on by a couple of loyal gamers.

Normally White Wolf tries to keep to a schedule of releasing one book for their exalted line each month, which back around last October if you looked at their release schedule would remain pretty consistent. However the hotly anticipated Dreams of the First Age release has been delayed over and over since it's original release date in December. Other books have been delayed over and over to the point where a book that wasn't even on my radar back in November is being released this april along with three other books that I've been dying to see since 2007.

Now I subscribe to the White Wolf developer's livejournal, and they've posted a fairly good apology and explanation about the delays, but to a

Exalted Dreams of the First Age (Exalted)

John Chambers

gamer who just plays the games, this might feel like neglect. I don't know what White Wolf's sales figures show, but simply from the forum records I can see that enthusiasm for Exalted is considerably greater than for their other game lines, so it would behoove them to work hard to keep their fan base.

Anyhow, 4 Books within the Exalted line are coming out in April, and this concerns me, these aren't cheap books and 4 books will amount to over $150.00 which is a tough expense to swallow all in one month. Normally I buy books on both PDF and in hardcopy because they're that important to me but that's a huge expense, and I'm pretty affluent as far as gamers go.

Dreams of the First Age has the potential to lead the way for a huge line of new supplements for the game that could carry this current edition of exalted for an extra two years so that they don't need to move on to an Exalted 3rd Edition after the majority of the supplements are released. Which would be a very good thing, because while changing editions to re-release the supplements makes financial sense and keeps games developing, it alienates fans who have to spend money again to buy books that are essentially reprints of the old ones with only minor tweaks. However with Dreams of the First Age being released in the same month as three other supplement books, I have a feeling that the gamers will have to pick and choose what they buy and this may effect things negatively as far as their revenues go.

So anyhow, if any of you have gotten this far through this post which I can only assume is extremely boring then my hat's off is to you... I apologize and please don't think that boring posts like this are going to be a trend, I don't mean to alienate you. But I'm on the edge of my seat counting down the days til I get my new Exalted books downloaded on PDF and get to spend my Christmas and upcoming birthday gift certificates in the bookstore. So this is important to me.

A Vox Masquerade Proposal

Dec 13, 2007
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The other night I had an idea about how to tell the stories I want to tell. I've had all these ideas in my head wanting to get out, but for some reason I was unable to express them, but now I have an idea. I would like Voxer's to help me tell these stories.

This is still in the planning stage, but I've decided I need some feedback on certain things. What I propose is a game where people create alternate persona's, and then create blogs for those alternate persona's. I in turn would feed people personal and global events which would guide these persona's along the path of the stories I am telling. The world the stories are told in will seem exactly like our own, but subtle events and changes I make as the story progresses will reveal new things that are happening around everyone and draw different persona's together as they get wrapped up in the events of the story.

I would be setting up a vox account for widespread events in the story, and players would keep track through those stories, however the persona character's account will not be linked to it. In this way I would hope that players would be able to keep their persona's secret from the other players so that they would have to discover each other by accident. Of course I wouldn't be able to enforce this, but I would highly suggest it in the name of fun for everyone, even those who aren't involved in the game directly but would just like to watch.

What I'm asking is the following:

-Does any of this make sense?

-Does it sound interesting or appealing at all?

-Is creating a new vox account and making up a 'fake' blog too high a barrier of entry?

I know blogging takes effort, and fake blogging is likely much harder for you if you're not an extremely creative sort. But I will be with everyone involved to make things very interesting. I will not reveal anything of the story or setting except for this: There are things modern man has forgotten.

Any comments questions or opinions on this idea are more than welcome.

RPG Review: Alpha Omega

Wednesday Yahtzee Smash Brother's Brawl Edition

Coming Up on the Home Stretch of the Exalted Publication Drought

A Vox Masquerade Proposal

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4 posts tagged “game”

RPG Review: Alpha Omega

Wednesday Yahtzee Smash Brother's Brawl Edition

Coming Up on the Home Stretch of the Exalted Publication Drought

A Vox Masquerade Proposal

About Me

Places My Presence Has Tainted!

My Groups

Neighborhood

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