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BattleTech: Combat Manual: Mercenaries
Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs
by Taryn F. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/11/2015 21:39:40

It has some racist and sexist artwork in it, and the chapter on Force Building is hard to get through. Plus, the whole book basically requires the Alpha Strike Companion, and one of Catalyst's employees admitted to me on their forums that omitting this from the description was an error.

Having said that, the artwork of the "Unseen" mech redesigns is pretty, and there are a ton of named characters of both (binary) genders and multiple ethnicities. And if you can digest the rules, and own a copy of the ASC, this should make your Alpha Strike battles much more entertaining ... at least the ones with mercs in them. There's even a "character sheet"-style thing to print out, where you can list all the pilot and lance special abilities for your company (3 lances, or 12 mechs, plus optional support units) at a glance.

Oh yeah, there are a lot of textual errors and typos as well, a lot of which you should be able to tell was not what was intended. Unlike with the artwork (and Catalyst's typical wall-of-text wording), I'm confident that most of those will be fixed once this is out of beta.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
BattleTech: Combat Manual: Mercenaries
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The Chosen Visitor - A Dungeon World Playbook
Publisher: Yaruki Zero Games
by Taryn F. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/22/2015 02:50:37

Don't let the schoolgirl fool you -- this is actually a comprehensive treatment of the "person from earth ends up in fantasy world trope," and lets you play characters much more diverse than Kagome from Inuyasha! It falls short on the actual execution in several ways, though.

First, the moves. Most of them are actually really cool and flavourful, and I like how it's designed to make the character stand out for better AND for worse. A lot of the advanced moves seem like basic, character-defining things, though, the kind that you SHOULD get at least one of starting at level 1. (You don't even get a fighting style at level 1, but you DO get to pester the NPC who brought you here literally whenever you want. And it says you get "useful knowledge [or] a boon" every time, with no drawback.)

So, it's roughly half "a handful of different, well-written tropes based on this concept," and half "a grab bag of multiclass stuff." And most of it you only get through leveling up.

Second, the editing. While the prose itself is well-written and I didn't catch any problems with it, there are some pretty noticeable layout errors. The ones I caught: The "Someone's Got To" move's title is merged with one of the bullets from Revered as the Chosen One, and the second page of advanced moves in the playbook itself is labeled "Gear." These aren't really BIG things, but they give the impression of haphazard work.

I don't think it's unsalvageable, though. At the very least, it makes a good starting point for someone who wanted to make this trope their own.

(Also, it's CC-By-SA licensed.)



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
The Chosen Visitor - A Dungeon World Playbook
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CthulhuTech: The Shadow War Quick-Start Rules (V2)
Publisher: WildFire
by Taryn F. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/22/2015 01:49:43

The Horned Ones (animal-people who rape the player characters) are still around, the artwork of female characters is still skeezy, the use of the term "China Doll" to describe an albinistic person is REALLY insensitive, and there are some unfortunate racial attitudes in the descriptions of how the playable species see themselves.

Also, the rules are still basically those of a 90's style RPG, one that's on the upper end of the complexity scale. Character creation has fifteen steps, and the "optional disadvantages" make for some very silly min-maxing. It feels like it WANTS to be a miniatures game, but the fiddly rules place it closer to 80's BattleTech than a modern skirmish game like Malifaux or Warmachine (or even 7th edition Warhammer 40,000).

On the plus side, the experience point system is much less punishing than CTech v1's, Tenacity no longer seems to be the god stat, MOST of the creepy stuff CTech is known for seems to be absent, and it no longer assumes that the players and their characters are all guys with its pronoun use. The rules look like they've been cleaned up a lot in general, and even the fifteen-step character thing is spelled out pretty well.

Just ... don't expect anything significantly better or more playable than a 90's style RPG. And since this is basically just the character creation rules, it would be really hard to try to play this without other Cthulhutech books.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
CthulhuTech: The Shadow War Quick-Start Rules (V2)
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Creator Reply:
Just to help understand your concerns better, I have some questions: 1. The Horned Ones don\'t appear in the Open Beta core. Are you referring to older material, or did we miss something? 2. There isn\'t art in the Open Beta core. Are you referring to female art you found inappropriate from older material? 3. The mechanics are simulationist, not more indie narrativist. Is that what you mean by 90\'s? 4. What are you finding in this Open Beta package that you still find creepy? We\'ve gone through great lengths to mature the tone of the product and focus on what makes the setting cool, not the chock faction. I\'m happy to hear that you like the new character advancement system. Now, your character advances much faster, and you have more ways to advance your character. The latest Open Beta has all the rules you need to play now. You can still use V1 enemy stats, as they basically still work. Dhohanoids will be in a new iteration soon. Thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts!
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The Edgy Designer - A Dungeon World Playbook
Publisher: Weird Age Games
by Taryn F. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/01/2015 16:47:26

Finally, an RPG supplement which understands that fedora-wearing white guys are the REAL oppressed minority! It even lets them bring their Ren Faire sword and armour into the World of Dungeons, and strike away at their Social Justice Warrior foes with either steel or cutting words before retreating to their Google+ safe space.

The only real downside is that, as we all know, Dungeon World is Not A Real RPG. And so the people that this was made for will never know the joke, I mean joy, of True Old School Gaming with a character made just for them.

Fortunately, it's Creative Commons licensed! So a True Old School GM can easily pick up the material and concepts in this PDF, and create an Old School class based on it, with gender- and racial- based prime requisites instead of ability scores. I recommend a d20 Hit Die, double the normal starting gear, and an EXP progression which is faster than any other class', but with class features that stop working if the Edgy Designer realizes that he has an unfair advantage.

Multiclassing with Paladin would be optional, but recommended.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
The Edgy Designer - A Dungeon World Playbook
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