Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies Review

This is a very different fantasy game. It has a very unique setting, magic system, and a rule system that encourages teamwork and detailed description. Pirates, swashbucklers, magic users, and explorers are main character themes. Lots of sword fighting and ship combat but it doesn't take place on the high seas but rather in the skies.

The setting is unique in that the world is sorta like a snow globe and emphasizes adventuring on skyships. The bottom layer is a mysterious blue liquid that objects and islands pass back and forth through but no person is known to have even come back from the other side. The very center of the word is a fire tornado that is nearly impossible to pass through but it can be done. The world has six layers of skies (seven including the bottom blue layer) with alternating directions of winds. Also each layer has six seasonal winds (seven including the fire center) with different flora, fauna, and obstacles for skyships to travel through. Within the sky are where precious materials for trading and selling can be found. Floating islands are suspended in each layer of sky shielded by a barrier clouds and fog. Skyships cannot float within this barrier and have to either dock on the edge of the islands or land in the water. From there skyships act like regular ships until they leave the barrier again.

There are seven major island nations each unique in culture and development. Trading and feuding between the nations is common so there will be a lot of travelling back and forth between some and trying to avoid ships from others. Pirate gangs also exist and are a powerful force themselves.

Each culture will give players a different Motivation in character creation and influence their rolls and character's drive. This really helps make people of different nationalities be unique. Another part of character creation is a foible, which is a character flaw. This is something to have fun with. While it may negatively effect a character it is rewarded when played out properly. Next is a Past quality giving each character a little bit of backstory that influences them in the present. Swashbuckling Forte is next and it's sorta like a character's super ability. What they're best at, a bit like a character class but not exactly.

Then each player gets five trait points. They can be attached to a quality to reduce their price but can only be used with that quality they're attached to. They influence the quality they're attached to for a bonus and help make using a quality a little different than last time for variations when used.

The core rule system is very neat and simple to use. It's a variation of the PDQ system called PDQ# Based on 2d6 for a regular challenge the player simply roles the dice, add any appropriate attributes, and tries to get over a target number. The harder the challenge the higher the target number. Another type of challenge is called a duel. Two opposing sides roles three dice (more if certain qualities give them bonus dice) to determine their attack and defense. If the defender wins they avoid the attack and get to attack next round and if they attacker wins they get to deal damage. Maneuvering, dodging, and and special moves also influence dice rolls. What I like about this system is it isn't just for physical combat. It works for mental, verbal, ships, magic, any time there's two people facing off head to head. Players get more bonuses for a challenge or duel if they can be descriptive enough to explain as to why a quality or trait helps them out each round. So players have to be toughtful in their moves and be engaging.

Ship maneuvering is a bit different though in that a captain gives each player a task as crew members and bonuses and dice are combined for the ship as a whole. This helps make each player feel like a team, each influencing their ship. Magic is called Gifts and is also different in that spell casting is open. Basically the GM determines the difficulty level for what magic spell the character is attempting to cast. It's a bit vague but basically the bigger or influential a spell the higher the difficulty. Kinda wish there was more details to actual spell casting but it isn't by no means unusable or broken.

Overall I think this is a great game with a cool setting and simple rules system. While the rules are light they cover enough to satisfy most players and don't bog down the high action and high adventure setting. It has plenty of examples and sample NPCs. While it doesn't have an index the table of contents at the beginning is laid out in such a way that it isn't necessary. If you're looking for a good pirate or swashbuckling game try this one out!

For more information about this game visit the publisher's website here.

Polaris: Chivalric Tragedy at Utmost North‎ Review

This game is really different from most. Some people are even afraid to try it. The setting is awesome, the concept is neat, but there's a glaring difference from tradition RPGs. It's GM-less. I kinda argue that it's not and I'll explain later on. A major downside is it's pretty much 4 players only. It could work with 3 or 5 and probably be very successful that way but it was made with 4 players in mind. Don't have 4 players then you've already got a hurdle to jump over to set this game up.

First off the writing in the book is as if a noble from Polaris wrote it. At least that's my impression. Very artsy and romantic. This could bug some people and I can see where they're coming from but Polaris is a high-class society. I do think this was the author's goal. From that perspective the writing could help set the mood for the setting. Polaris itself was a city "on top of the world", in every meaning of the phrase. At the north pole the people only knew of night. They mapped and named the stars. Wrote stories about them and sang songs in their city made of ice. Then one day the sun comes bringing light and heat, followed by the moon. A series of events happen that make the royal family gets corrupt. They don't know how to react to what's going on. Bad behavior and bad decisions start being made by everyone. Most people are too self-involved to even care. Suddenly a giant pit to hell opens up in the middle of the city called the "mistake" and demons called the "mistaken" come out. Worse just got worser. The only people who care to do anything are the knights.

That's where the players come in. Each play the role of a knight but they take on 3 other roles as well.
Heart- The knight. Traditional PC role.
Mistaken- The demon and antagonist of the heart. Traditional GM role with the exception of NPCs.
Full Moon- Social and Hierarchical characters associated with the heart as well as minor male characters.
New Moon- Personal and emotional characters associated with the heart as well as minor female characters.

These roles rotate with the 4 players around a table. Because of this Polaris is not so much GM-less but that the role of the GM is rotated and shared among the group. 4 different hearts and mistaken and 4 different stories for each. If you wanted something completely different you could be disappointed, if you wanted something traditional in Polaris to recognize this could be a good thing. I think it's a fair median.

Each knight has 4 characteristics and 4 values. The first characteristic is Abilities which is what the knight is trained for or knowledgeable in. Blessings are magical, sacred, or useful items in the knight's inventory. Next is Fate which are significant events and people (not controlled by the Moons) in the knight's past. Last is Office which are titles or social ranks the knight has.

The first value is Ice. Ice is how much compassion the knight has for the world around him when fighting the mistaken to protect others. Light is how well the knight can fight the mistaken on a 1 on 1 basis. Ice and Light start at 1 and improve as the knight progresses. Zeal is the knights drive to save the world. This starts at 4 and goes down as the game progresses. Weariness starts adding up when Zeal reaches 0. This is the knights sorrow and frustration to continue fighting. Each knight will lose. That's another thing that could drive people away from this game. It's not about winning, it's about losing on an epic and poetic scale. It is a "Chivalric Tragedy" after all.

The core mechanic is a bit strange. PCs perform actions by saying key phrases. The heart and the mistaken debate and bargain for what happens next. It's essentially just story telling within the game system. If an aspect is used it gets checked off and must be refreshed to be used again. When a resolution can't be found using just key phrases the die come out. It is rolled. If it's to save others then the result must be lower than Ice to be a success. If it's to save the knight then it must be lower than Light. If higher than the appropriate score then the Knight loses the conflict, but gets an experience roll. The result is compared with Zeal or Weariness. If successful Ice or Light go up a point but Zeal goes down. If the rolled failed then just aspects get refreshed. The more experienced a knight gets the more corrupt they become.

The rest of the book is made up of appendixes. Variant rules, example aspects (highly recommended), examples of playing the game (also highly recommended), and stars. Because the night sky was a major focus to the setting knowing the constellations, stars, and their meanings is very helpful when talking to people, or finding some strange item or symbol.

As I said before this game is fun but not for everyone. It could be useful if a player isn't use to GMing and would like a shot but if more people aren't use to GMing the game could get bogged down. It's interesting and could be a good side-game. There's not a lot of number crunching involved so it has that going for it. The writing and the art are both provocative of the setting. In fact if you get this just for the setting you won't be disappointed. I haven't played this as much as I would like but I'm glad I own it. The game can be purchased here. You can even choose your own price!

OpenQuest Review

I played OpenQuest up until I started my BW and BE games. Even before I got a hold of the final version of OQ I played the free version for over a year and it's derivatives even longer. OQ is in a nutshell a simplified and streamlined retro-clone of RuneQuest. Basic Role-Playing, RuneQuest (any version), Stormbringer, Call of Cthulhu, Elfquest, Ringworld, Pendragon, and a few other games all use basically the same D100 percentile dice mechanic called BRP. I've played these games a lot prior to OQ and when it comes to playing BRP in a fantasy setting I think OQ is the best because of it's simplicity. OpenQuest is published by D101 Games. The book is 188 pages long with black & white artwork throughout. The cover is very eye catching as you can see up top. The presentation is great. It has a index but the table of contents is easier to use for looking things up in my opinion. Though you won't be needing to refer to the book a whole lot in play it's nice that if it were to be needed quick research can be done.

D100 is simple enough already. You roll 2 ten-sided dice. One is tens place (00-90) and the other is ones (0-9) and you try to get a result under your skill level. The lower the result the better. So if you have a skill of 80% you just gotta get under 80. A skill at 30% means you gotta get under 30 and that's harder to do. 1's (00 on tens and 1 one ones) are critical successes and 100's (00 on tens and 0 or ones) are fumbles. In d100 the result of the tens die tends to be the most important result. The ones is just if you're barley on the edge, opposing sides got a tied result, and to determine if you got a critical or fumble. In OpenQuest there are modifiers but you don't have to keep up with a bunch of little ones. All modifiers are either +/-25% or +/-50% with the exception of some spells that are +/-10%. This gets rid of a lot of micromanagement that plagues RPGs and can sometimes be a hassle in percentiles.

Character creation is simple but different than RuneQuest. Gone are lifepaths. I don't know if this was done for simplicity or because of the way skills are laid out. Maybe both. It's a good different alternative from what is common in BRP. Each character has starting characteristics. There's eight characteristics each with a base point value of 8. Strength, constitution, dexterity, size, intelligence, power, and charisma. Players have 30 points to spend on them. All have a maximum value of 18 for humans. Characteristics can be reduced lower than 8 for some additional spending points but have set minimum values. If a player has a concept in mind this is the best method. There's a dice rolling method too if a player wants to go completely random. Attributes are second values that are directly effected by characteristics. Damage modifier, hit points, major wound level, magic points, and movement rate. There are different character creation rules if a player wants to play a non-human. It's very easy to use any non-human as a player character. From the common elves and dwarves to monsters. I played a game where the players were in a orc war-band. 2 were orcs, 1 goblin, and the other 2 were different types of undead. It's a simple and robust system.

Skills are also different than other d100 games. The skills are more broad to again cut-down on micromanagement. This is classless game but the skills are almost like career fields. This makes the characters feel more experienced and like they took an actual trade rather than picking up random skills. I like this approach because it's still more robust than classes but less hassle dealing with specific skills. When a skill is raised it's raised in increments of 5% to cut down on math and for simplify. It would be very easy to add your own skills if something you want can't be used with the skills given. I think this modification to skills is what lead to most of the major mechanical differences from RQ/BRP.

Magic is different if you're not familiar with RQ. Magic is open to everybody. Now that's easy to change if you don't want that but it was this way in RQ and it's that way in OQ. It's not bad though. It's common magic and it's fairly simple stuff. A character with just common magic isn't going to be a spell slinging wizard. It makes sense though. In the real world anybody can be a fighter but unless you specialize in fighting you're not gonna be better than average. In OQ there's Sorcery and Divine magic. These are the specialized magic fields and where more powerful spells are but they have more requirements to meet. Shamanism and the spirit combat rules to go with Shamanism are also included. So there's a lot of variety in this game when it comes to fantasy magic all using the simple and robust OQ philosophy. Keeping up in RQ tradition is the influence of religions and cults. Different gods and practices give different skills, spells, and special abilities but also require their followers to do things to appease them. Cults are more influential on Divine magic but they effect the social views of all characters and the setting one way or another.

Combat is fast and gritty. Players have a list of different combat actions. Defense, close, ranged, and unarmed all have a set of actions. When fighting the opposing sides roll. The one with the lowest roll wins and is successful with their action. If taking a defensive action the offensive attack is avoided. If taking offense they roll damage dice according to their weapon and the if the opposition is wearing armor a fixed value is subtracted from the damage. OQ uses a fixed hit points system as opposed to hit locations like most BRP games. If a character receives damage that is more than 1/2 of their original hit points in one hit the victim has to roll for a critical wound which will be nasty. Mangled limbs, loss of a limb, brain damage, eye torn out, and broken bones. These are like the Stormbringer 5th edition rules and fit right in with the simple minimal counting approach of OQ. I really liked this change and it made combat brutal without being a chore like how hit locations can be. Fantasy settings tend have a lot of fighting but in OQ it shouldn't be the only option characters have to solve a problem.

Improving a character in OQ may seem a bit slow than other RPGs but keep in mind characters start out being proficient to begin with. This might just be my opinion because BRP games never really focused on maxing characters out so much they essentially just become stat blocks with no personality or drive. There's similar rules in OQ like the previous mentioned Burning Wheel called motives. These are different than beliefs but their purpose is the same overall. To give the characters goals to accomplish and to be rewarded for them. It's a different improvement method than most BRP games but just as effective. It's more story-driven in OQ and I think that was the author's intent. Players can practice skills outside of questing to speed improvement up. There's also hero points which allow the player to change the situation they're in through plot editing. 

There's more rules for ships, mental damage, travelling, mounts, objects, healing, poisons, disease, encumbrance, suffocation, thirst and starvation, falling, illumination, and burning to death. These are all towards the back and are only needed when the situation comes up. They're all simple to apply and can make a situation more interesting in gameplay. In the back is also the monster list and the information needed to use them as characters. There's also ways to figure up random items or treasure they will have if defeated. There's about 40 in total (counting the elemental separately) and an animal list with another 25. So the selection is really good and making your own creatures here won't be a problem. (I'm glad to see the Durulz from Glorantha here ;)

There's a pre-made setting called the Empire of Gantan. It's a cool base for a setting that GMs can build on. It's like a fantasy Byzantine empire. Religion, conquest, politics, combined with magic and monsters. It's clearly inspired by Gloarantha and I think it's purpose was to make OpenQuest easier to tie in with that setting or to be built on by GMs. It comes with some sample adventures to show off the system and to give a feel of the setting. Not bad for starting out if you're just trying this game out from scratch or need some quick ideas.

You can get OQ at http://d101games.co.uk/books/openquest/. The publisher uses Lulu print on demand so if you order it will take about a week longer than most orders because of the time needed for Lulu to get around printing and binding. OpenQuest is a simple and robust game out-of-the-box but easy enough to customize and add in your own stuff. It's very easy to add RuneQuest and BRP rules if something from them fits your campaign better. This goes along great in the family of D100 games because of it's different twists on the system.

The Burning Wheel Review

This is a tablepg I've been playing and GMing recently and I love the hell out of this system. It's a dice pool d6 mechanic that works really well for the type of game it is. It's fantasy more on the Tolkien side. Human, dwarves, elves, and orcs are the core races. There's different ways each one access magic and there's also sorcery. Character creation is based using life paths and combining different stages of your characters life to give you a fleshed out character. All these things are expanded in supplements. The core covers the main ones you need to know to get the game going along with game rules. 
 
The play style the rules require to play is what sets it apart from other fantasy rpgs and other rpgs in general. Player characters have what are called beliefs. These determine goals that the characters want to achieve. It's also how the GMs can bait players into awkward situations. A thing to remember is it doesn't matter if a character succeeds or fails in a situation so much as getting closer to accomplishing their beliefs. It's a broader scope than other games where players are give multiple tasks one right after the other. 
 
The rules themselves are easy but detailed. The rule book is 300 pages but only the first 85 pages or so are the main rules. The VS. Test is the most common way to resolve tasks. You have a task with X difficulty rating that determines how many successes you need. A success is a result of four or higher and 6's give you a bonus dice. The higher a skill the more dice you roll and the greater your chance of scoring successes. The rest is more detailed rules to be used in situations that they would suit best. Duel of Wits for scripted debating, Range and Cover for archery, and Fight! for scripted combat. You don't have to use them all the time but I recommend using them in climactic parts of the game. Maybe one each session or every other session as they can slow a game down until everyone in familiar with them. BW does have a learning curve when it comes to these parts but they're not difficult to learn, just difficult to win. An important thing to remember is even if you lose at these your beliefs will be more challenged. Maybe your character works better when the odds are stacked against him or her. Another is Circles test. This takes the lifepaths of your character and tests to see if you know other NPCs. This can be tricky because sometimes who knows you or who you know isn't always going to be a friend. They can be important though especially if the group is in a strange place and need direction where to go. 
 
All races have emotional magic. Humans have faith and can call upon divinity for help. Dwarves have greed for their magic source and are of course master forgers. Elves are powered by grief from seeing their mortal friends die and sing songs that have magical effects. Orcs have hatred from seeing their mortal friends die causing them to be evil. These emotions make each type distinctive in what they can do. None are vanilla. 
 
The most fun part for me is the artha (hero points or bonus points) and character advancement rules. If you like fully expanding your characters with many options this is the game for you. You can test and practice skills. Even if you fail at leveling up a skill next time it becomes easier. You can say that character learns from their mistakes. Dice can change shades. They start black (4 or higher is a success) but go up to gray (3 or higher) and white (2 or higher). So the brighter the shade the easier it is to roll high successes. But having a white shade is considered legendary and takes a long time to get. "Let it Ride" is an unique rule because it will take several small tasks that require the same skill and average them together. So a player only has to roll one time for a skill check. If they fail they only screw up at the beginning. If they pass they don't have to repeat the same skill checks over and over. This keeps the game focused on the broader scope it's intended (challenging beliefs) and to speed up using the dice pools. An important thing about dice results that players and GMs need to remember is that when a belief is challenged in a conflict it's no longer pass/fail. A belief challenge can sometimes override dice results. Even if the player failed they're still closer to succeeding their goal by another path in the story opening up. 
 
There's also helping dice from other players and FoRKs that work with the dice pool mechanic. So if you have a similar skill or another player has one they can help with your chances of scoring more successes. However relying on help won't count towards that skill advancing. You character won't learn for themselves by just relying on help. This does however help characters that aren't part of a "scene" like a Duel of Wits between two other people to become active. Characters grow and in extended play their goals and beliefs grow too. The more ambitious they become and the more challenging the GM gets to make things for them. This gives it an overall cinematic feel. 
 
This is an awesome rpg if you're wanting something different. Is it better than D&D? I think that's hard to say because it's so different from D&D because more of the game is in the player's hands. Their goals and how they want to accomplish them are left up to them. The GM just gives them the scene and situation they're in and keeping up with the game rules. 
 
Next up is a game based off Burning Wheel called Burning Empires. A sci-fi game that takes what I just described and puts it on a galactic scale. I haven't played this as often as BW but it's becoming my favorite game. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy. For more information or to purchase Burning Wheel visit their website at www.burningwheel.org.