Review: Homeworld Revelations

 

 Overview

Taking a computer game of fleet management and tactical combat and making a pen-and-paper tabletop game from it was an ambitious task, and the Modiphius team have done a great job of it. Instead of producing a super-complicated, crunchy and hyper-simulationist game, Modiphius gave Homeworld: Revelations a very character and story driven focus that cares more about good drama than strategic fidelity.

A little background

Homeworld, the computer game, came out in 2000 (yes, children, there were video games before the millennium and some of them were damn good) earning numerous awards including E3’s "Best Strategy of the Year", PC Gamer's "Game of the Year" award, IGN's "Game of the Year" award for 1999, and USA Today called it "Top Game of the Year". The original game was followed by Homeworld:Cataclysm the same year, and Homeworld 2 in 2003. Homeworld Remastered was released in 2015, and a prequel game, Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, was released in 2016. Homeworld 3 is set to release next year (2024) and this month Homeworld Mobile released for iOS and Android devices.

The Homeworld games are all Real Time Strategy games where the player directed the efforts of a fleet of space (or desert) vehicles in a series of missions in a campaign that combined to tell a grand story. Thoroughly voice-acted and delivering stunning visuals, the Homeworld series combined epic storytelling with tense decision making, limited resources and tactical combat.

For me personally Homeworld has always been one of my favorite games series. The stunning visuals, music and animatic-styled cutscenes were a beautiful relief from overdone cutscenes and awkward FMV acting of the day. The galaxy-sweeping story of a long lost peoples first returning to their ancestral homeworld, then defending it from existential threats, was epic and compelling. The ‘side story’ of Homeworld: Cataclysm was especially moving in the quality of storytelling and voice acting which really sold the drama.

But Homeworld has always been a tactical/strategic story. The playthroughs are the same, and only advance when you succeed in the chain of challenging missions that make up their arcs. Many missions had only one ‘right’ solution and in many ways the story missions served as training for the player in how to best manage and maneuver their fleet. 

But we’re not limited to PC simulation games anymore. Thanks to the Homeworld: Revelation tabletop roleplaying game.

The Core Rules

Homeworld: Revelations (herein to be referred to as “HW:R”) is a 2d20 game, produced by Modiphius. In the last few years, Modiphius has emerged into the industry as a game producer of note. The flexibility of their house 2d20 engine has supported RPGs for such diverse IP’s as Conan the Hyborean, Dishonored, Fallout, Star Trek Adventures, Infinity, and DUNE among others. This year (2022) Modiphius also released a 2d20 System Reference Document, opening the 2d20 system to writers to come up with their own games using this versatile system. They’ve also become publishers of a variety of non-2d20 games such as the Elite Dangerous RPG and Liminal, and wargames like Fallout: Wasteland Warfare, The Elder Scrolls: Call to Arms and Five Parsecs From Home, and many others.

I’ve written previously about 2d20, specifically my review of Star Trek Adventures, and HW:R is a pleasantly familiar riff off the ST:A ruleset. It has a wonderful emphasis on character  cooperation and it’s ‘momentum and threat’ mechanics give your sessions a kind of meta narrative power that allows players and GM to influence the action beyond just rolling to hit and rolling damage. HW:R has a more developed character advancement system than ST:A does. 

Character creation

HW:R characters are similar to ST:A characters with six ability scores and six broad ‘skills’, plus Talents and Focuses and ‘Truths’. Character creation is done in phases: choosing or rolling randomly for Background, Environment, Upbringing, Profession and Career events. By the end, you’ll have a character that is broadly competent with added focus on their specialties. The book assumes you’ll be playing a Kushan/Higaaran, but all the ‘races’ in the Homeworld verse are essentially human, so playing a Taiidan, Kadeshi, Turan, or even Bentusi should be easily adaptable. Options exist for in-play main character and supporting character creation. (The supporting character growth from ST:A would supplement the core HW:A rules nicely.) 

One minor complaint I have is the personal equipment of the setting is remarkably pedestrian. For a sci-fi setting, the choices for personal equipment and weapons are limited and not terribly imaginative. HW:R is a more hard sci-fi setting than Star Trek, but even so I expected more energy weapons and advanced tools to use. On the plus side, there are plenty of examples of more interesting equipment and tools from related games, like Infinity, which can be ported over. 

Ship combat and construction

Homeworld: Revelation treats ships like characters, which is great for story-based storytelling. It means a cinematic focus on character and ships are characters rather than focus on a map and pieces on a board. The 2d20 system handles this well. One twist from how ST:A and HW:R treat ships is that while in ST:A ships have ‘departments’ which function like Skills, Homeworld ships don’t. In ST:A, when you perform an action using a ship’s systems and technologies, the ship helps you in your test with its own dice roll using its Systems + Department scores. In contrast: in HW:R you use the ships’ Stat with your own Skill rating. HW:R ships also don’t have shields, like most ST:A ships do: Combat is dangerous and getting disabled or destroyed is easier in HW:R compared to ST:A.

There’s a wealth of ship designs from the original Homeworld computer game, both the player-controllable versions as well as the mission-only specific designs that formed crucial challenges during the campaign.

Ship creation follows two methods: first is “take an existing ship and modify it,” and second is a more detailed methodology starting with a base scale and making choices with a limited pool of points. On the one hand this is far easier than, say, 2300AD’s Aerospace Engineer’s Handbook, and the HW:R book has plenty of examples of the exotic and weird technologies of the Homeworld setting. On the other hand, this system heavily penalizes smaller ships over bigger ones by limiting the points available for customization. In my opinion the GM should just tweak things to fit their story needs and not worry about ‘point balancing’ things. 

Historical and cultural infodump

The HW:R book details the extensive historical background of the Homeworld universe, and gives plenty of hooks for creating your own stories within its many-millennia old universe. One of the concerns I had when anticipating this game was ‘what are my players going to do?’ and this book does a good job of providing ideas for games set in several different timelines: from before the events of the original Homeworld Game, to events hinted at in the forthcoming Homeworld 3 game. There’s also sections describing the major ‘geography’ of the galaxy and notable locations visited in the games. These should be sufficient for inspiration for new additions in your own games. 

The HW:R book contains plenty of material on the main cultures of the Homeworld games: the Kushan, the Hiigarans, the Turani, Taiidani and Bentusi, and it is made clear that there are plenty more cultures that aren’t detailed in the setting. It’s a big galaxy, after all.

There's a long section describing Kiithid society (the hero culture from the computer games), intended to give major insight and inspiration to roleplaying characters in the game. The other major cultures (Taiidan, Turanic, Kadesh, Bentusi and even the progenitors) get a thorough writeup as well.  

Gamemastering and cast of characters

Finally, the “Gamemastering” and “Non-Player Characters” chapters of the core book give advice on using the specific tools for the GM that the 2d20 game engine provides. The NPC chapter gives many examples of allied, neutral and enemy characters for your games. 

Pros and Cons

+ The flexible 2d20 game system. If you’ve played any other 2d20 system, HW:R will be easy to get into, even with ship combat added to the mix. Coming from Star Trek Adventures will be even easier.

+ Loads of lore, setting and background info that expand well upon the Homeworld universe. 

- Initial equipment options are bland and lean, compared to many other Sci-Fi RPGs. Plenty of room to add your own ideas and those from other games, however.

+ Every ship and objective from the original Homeworld game is here with stats and background.

- Ships from Homeworld: Cataclysm, Homeworld 2 and Deserts of Kharak are absent, but can be abstracted or built using the included design framework.

+ Setting details that allow playing in multiple era’s in the Homeworld series. An ambitious GM and group could even run a ‘legacy’ series of stories where they play descendants of characters from previous games.

- I want more but this is just the first book, and maybe Modiphius will open up the RPG IP to fan-made content if they don’t publish more material themselves.

+ One could run a pseudo-wargame with this game. It wouldn’t be Star Fleet Battles, but if that’s what you want go play that. 

Verdict

Homeworld: Revelations has been worth the wait. This is a slick game of character drama set in a universe of epic quests and action, back-dropped by mass spacecraft battles without overly complicated rules. There are plenty of story hooks baked into the historical and background information sections. 

I give Homeworld:Revelations 5 out of 5 stars.

Gaming snob? (Or “Shut up and play”)

I have a problem. I only want to play the ‘perfect’ game engine: one that has the perfect balance of crunchy details when I want it, and offer a totally streamlined experience the rest of the time. One that I can tell anything in. The perfectionist in me seeks a zen-like clarity of the perfect framework.  However, there is no such thing as a one-system to rule them all...

I make the joke that the aging gamer in me is getting tired of learning new game engines, but that’s not really true. I LIKE reading up on new ideas, new frameworks. There are venerable games I feel beholden to because of the nostalgia I feel for them. But when I sit down with those old books I feel the age of the writing; The mechanics holding things back. I’m progressive at heart: keep what works, try what might be better, leave behind what doesn’t work any longer. I’d often try and update or adapt an old setting to a new framework. But that can be tricky… Games are written the way they are to achieve the intended atmosphere and effects. That’s something I have to accept, even embrace. Also: just because there’s a rule for it in a game engine, doesn’t mean I have to use it (as a GM. Players can’t go ignoring the rules the GM sets for them.) That said, there’s always room for improvement.

Within me there are two gamers: the Storyteller and the Simulationist. The Simulationist is the part of me that has been trying to make sense of the world and how it works for as long as I can remember; life makes more sense to me when I have systems that explain things. Models that I can use and apply and evolve with experience: I wanted to know how things were made: I got into Car Wars because you could design vehicles in that game. I loved science fiction, so I got into Traveler for its starships (I own all five official versions and a couple unofficial versions). I fell in love with big robots so I got into BattleTech, Mekton and Silhouette (Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles). Everyone played D&D, but I got into GURPS and the HERO games because they were all about character design. And that’s just the first two decades of my gaming experience.

I started gaming as a Simulationist, and it’s still in my bones. But I have grown more in the second two decades as a gamer, leaning far away from simulationism. Or more accurately: looking for systems who’s mechanics were less interested in simulation fidelity than in emphasizing and supporting good storytelling. Games like Burning Wheel, FATE, Cypher, 7thSea, White Wolf (now known better as Storyteller). Games that shifted the mechanical focus from beat-by-beat dice rolling to determine to-hit, damage, saving throws, etc. and more into narrative influence and more into meeting the intent of the character (and player). Twenty years of chasing simulationist games has taught me that while random dice and table rolls can inject drama and make interesting stories, most of the time dice just hate me. Most simulationist games aren’t focused on fun, but that’s another diatribe. I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t trust dice mechanics when it comes to making fun gaming experiences. 

The Storyteller loves good exposition, strong characters, immersive settings, drama. The best games I remember actually playing sometimes never had dice thrown or character sheets or rules referenced. Shadowrun by candlelight when the power was out due to a major storm. Pure character interactions during back-at-camp scenes when not exploring dungeons in tactical mode. Meta gaming discussions outside game time with the GM and other players, expounding upon the world and setting up scenes to come. The Storyteller appreciates detailed mechanics when it suited the storytelling, but not when they get in the way. Mechanics inform the story, not drive it. Leave the detailed simulationist stuff to computer games these days; they’re far better at handling the minutiae.

Yet there are games that go just a bit too far away from my simulationist roots. Powered by the Apocalypse at its core is proving difficult for me to grok. “Wait, I only roll dice when i say the magic trigger words?” I love the dice concept of the Genesys engine and their absolute focus on degrees of success, failure and complication. But in both cases it’s just out of my comfort zone. I need to see them in action more. 

I feel like my time and attention are a limited resource, especially when it comes to gaming. I don’t want to waste time of games that I don’t think will be fun. But this is also holding me back. While I can read how a game is supposed to be played over and over again, it takes actual play experience to see how they actually work.

I need to play more. Try new things. See what works and doesn’t.

SO. To appropriate, or rather, adapt a koan of wisdom for writers: As writers read more than they write, so game designers need to play more than they write game systems. I think I need to start hosting a regular game test day; pick something I haven’t tried at all or very much and see how it works in actual play.

Who’s in for trying new things?

Incentivizing Failure, or “Making failure fun”

Classic Dungeons and Dragons games, and some modern hardcore ones, may end in ‘total party kills’ or ‘wipes.’ Sometimes this is because the characters choose to take on something they really weren’t prepared for or even capable of defeating; sometimes it’s bad planning and sometimes the best possible plan fails because of a couple bad dice rolls.Aside from the gravitas and potential hilarity of these events, not to mention elevating the perceived threat of whatever did the party in, what’s the next step? Start with a new cast of level one characters? There’s a certain appeal to starting over, trying new concepts and tactics. However, I happen to be one of those kinds of players who get rather invested in their characters; their death by arbitrary dice outcomes is an emotional cost that’s anxiety inducing. 

I wonder sometimes if this is how George R. R. Martin ended up writing his infamously character-lethal novels; he couldn’t find anyone willing to roleplay tabletop with him again after arbitrarily murdering off everyone’s characters?

It also depends on the conflict system: D&D rolls dice twice per melee attack or offensive spell casting; one could just miss outright, one could hit but then roll very low for damage; or miss a saving throw against a spell. Characters often have enough hit points to survive several attacks. This all combines to make conflicts decided over several rounds of exchanges so the averages tend to even out: you might have missed this turn, but critically hit next turn, and so on.

Other game systems are more abstract in their conflict handling; In a Powered by the Apocalypse game, for example, an entire conflict could be resolved in a single roll, and in PBtA, you either completely fail 45% of the time, succeed ‘at cost’ 27% of the time (you win but get hurt), and perfectly succeed the other 27% of the time (before you take into any modifiers). That’s potentially a lot riding on one roll.

Of course, character death is the extreme example of bad dice luck. Negotiations, investigations, crafting and other ‘systems’ that are determined by dice rolls (or card draws or whatever your resolution mechanics are) can fail at dramatic moments and derail stories and even end campaigns abruptly if not handled well.

Some games already take failure into account, mechanically speaking:

Burning Wheel games, for example, track success and failure on every stat and skill roll. When you reach a certain number of ‘tests’ against your current skill or stat rank, it goes up by one instantly and automatically and your progress of tracking tests starts over again. In Mouse Guard, you need failed tests as well as successful ones to advance.

In the Dragon Ball Z rpg, by R. Talsorian games, characters have an overall Power Level (something characters actually talk and brag about in the fiction, and is also a stat in the RPG mechanics). Comparing this stat to your opponent’s determines how much experience points you gain just for encountering them. Win or lose. This incentivizes challenging characters more powerful than yourself to grow stronger. An excellent example of game mechanics modeling story/world themes.

Aside from the mechanical aspects, most modern Game Master’s guides and ‘how to roleplay’ essays address -to a greater or lesser extent- not letting dice rolls derail a good game or story. However I feel this is often unclear, and information provided a little too late. Mechanics that enforce design goals is more direct, and sometimes a more subtle way to guide a game. 

It’s worth also pointing out that succeeding all the time gets boring; the anime One-Punch Man being a wonderful exception; but Saitama’s end solution to his problems is the punchline (pun intended) to the comedy; it’s what leads up to that point that’s the story. Let’s stick a pin in that for later, because it gives me ideas...

So. How do we structure play, mechanics and stories that make failure not only tolerable, but even desirable in some cases?

Failure can be tied to growth, like in Burning Wheel games. BW emphasizes characters challenging themselves (and the failure that comes with that) to get better at things. The point of a Burning Wheel game isn’t always character growth: growth is just the natural outcome of testing one’s abilities. In a game where character death is quite the possibility, however, striving to grow means walking a tight line of challenging your character’s abilities but not going so far as to die from it. 

Some games make character death much harder to achieve; in 7thSea 2nd Edition when your character takes their fourth Dramatic Wound they become ‘helpless’ for the rest of the scene. To kill a helpless character requires a special effort on the part of the villain, one that can be easily interrupted by another character. Also, in the genre of 7thSea, proper Villains are often too busy in their schemes to bother with the effort to kill a hero (unless that hero has time and again foiled the Villains plans and royally pissed them off). The fiction of the genre influencing how the game mechanics work, and the mechanics support the genre of the fiction. 

A clever GM can make failure lead down alternative and interesting paths when the characters fail to do something. Can’t pick the locks to the dungeon you’re trapped in? Introduce a lazy, corruptible or sympathetic guard to the scene and let the players make another different approach. Let there be an earthquake that damages the structural integrity of their prison. Unfortunately this can lead to too many Deus Ex Machina moments, and really make the characters (and players) feel disempowered. 

Now so far we’ve looked into mechanics and characters, but not considered the player in all of this. FUN is had by the players, not necessarily the characters, and defining what’s fun for the players directs us to how to make character failure interesting and entertaining. There’s a strong reliance on the social contract here, with players trusting GM’s to try and make the game entertaining and the GM trusting the players to participate fairly with each other and respect the GM’s role in the game. After all, GM’s are players too, and deserve to have fun at the table as well.

Here’s where having a clear scope of genre and play established between the GM and players is so important. Sure your players characters may have goals, but what are the players definitions and limits on having ‘fun’? What’s fun for one player may be torture for another and knowing that distinction is critical. 

Ask yourself: when the character’s metaphorical (and maybe literal) back is against the wall due to circumstances and bad dice luck, what’s the players ideal way out of the situation? Then go with that. 

Let us introduce some example player archetypes: the role-player, the storyteller, and the tactician. There are plenty more variants and alternatives to these but for the purposes of demonstration let’s start with these three:

The “Roleplayer” is deep into playing their character and will likely get more out of pushing their characters boundaries than clever tactical decisions or min-maxing their character’s design. When a roleplayer’s character fails at their initial attempt at something, they’re probably going to be more happy to roleplay their way out of the situation than any other method. They will make decisions in character and accept the consequences because “they were acting in character”.

The “Storyteller” player is into what’s best for the drama: With character goals and motivations and natures in mind, they’ll pursue what both tells the best story and advances that narrative, rather than rely on dice or mechanisms. 

I’ll give a personal example here. At the climax of a long campaign, my character met their nemesis for a final confrontation. The fate of the kingdom and the fragile treaty holding four cultures together was in the balance.

Now, I have rather terrible dice luck; I prefer to roleplay/storytell, and i didn’t want to trust dice to decide the outcome of this crucial moment. I asked the GM for a sidebar and we talked about how we both wanted the scene to play out. What would satisfy us both. With that in agreement we went back to the table and together told of their epic final duel and how James Covington saved the day and redefined the covenant of Avalon forever after. Not one die was rolled.

Best damn conclusion to a campaign, ever. We still talk about the outcome and the ramifications of how it ended to this day.

The “Tactician” will enjoy gaming the system for the best possible outcome. Their knowledge of the game world, combined with their understanding of the game system will be their way out of the situation. They probably have a greater grasp of the mechanics of the situation than any other player; it’s their preferred playground.

Now these are all generalizations, but they’re useful starting points for conversation between everyone at the table.

This is where we bring Saitama back into the conversation. For those not familiar with the anime/manga One Punch Man, it’s a spoof of the superhero genre where the titular hero can defeat anything with one punch: Underworld demons, city-stomping kaiju, extinction-event sale asteroids, and even rainy days. Each with a single punch. What he can’t do is qualify as an actual superhero, or even hold down a regular job. If One-Punch Man were a role playing game Saitama wouldn’t even have a combat stat or skill: just a trait: “Can defeat anything with one punch.” And it’s his get-out-of-trouble card as well: When all else fails, punch the problem. Perhaps the point is to see how long a situation can go (and how absurd it can become) before Saitama resorts to punching something.

This gives us a framework: For each character define their absolute go-to problem solver. It can be a skill, talent, quirk, whatever. It doesn’t even have to be something intrinsic to the hero and certainly doesn’t have to be something under their direct control: weird and extreme luck; a face and personality that turns the head of even the vilest and most sadistic member of the opposite sex; they will fall head over heals in love or infiltration with the hero (a la Tenchi Muyo and other ‘harem’ anime). Whatever it is, it has to be something the player enjoys. The character may not understand it, or hate when it happens, but in all cases and circumstances, the player must be enthusiastically onboard with it. 

I think this process can either be done proactively (“I can always punch my way out of problems”), or on the fly as game is played, or some combination of the two. The important thing in all cases is the earnest conversation about expectations, goals and comfort levels. Don’t force a player who’s not a great in-character talker to roleplay his character fast-talking out of a situation if the player isn’t into it. Don’t expect the roleplayer to know the best combination of dice and character details necessary to game their way out of a tactical nightmare. 

In descending order of importance it should be: player FUN, fidelity of character and world next, and implementing mechanical systems last. Another way to look at it is this: Mechanics exist to support and formulate the world and character concepts; world and characters exist to support and enable player fun. Different players have different definitions and limits to fun. So not all characters, world and game mechanics will 'work' for all players. Communication of expectations and deciding what mechanics support those expectations is the framework we want to utilize.

What do you think?

Finally! A game of Microscope!

I've been fascinated by the concepts of Microscope for quite a while, yet never had the opportunity to play in one until just recently. Over Discord and via a shared Google drawing with a group of first-timers (well, ALL of us were new to the game though two of us had read the core rulebook in advance) crafted "the rise and fall of the clockwork gods" and it was a lot of fun.

Cannibal artificial gods, cyberpugs, twisted love stories involving deities and mortals, and the big final question: "Are mortals doomed to be consumed in the end?" While it took a bit to get started, cross-riffing ideas soon took over and the game moved quickly; next thing we all knew it was five hours later.

The big takeaway for myself was about SCENES. Scenes in Microscope can be dictated, or played out in an improv way. I don't feel terribly great at improv roleplaying, but it's a skill I can work on. Another thing that's useful to have handy are books or other tools for generating random names of peoples, places and things. One player had access to these in our game, and we'd all ask at time: "please give me a couple names for this Scene." Another possibly useful toolset would be Inspiration Pad, but that tool needs some setup time if you want really personalized tables to roll on.

The biggest challenge to playing Microscope remotely, obviously, is the tableau of cards. Traditionally Microscope is played around a table with 3x5 or other notecards getting dynamically created and moved around the board as your non-linear history is filled out.

Enter Google Drawings. With an hours' fiddling, i was able to create a tableau for playing a Microscope game that could be dynamically updated and changed as the game played:

(this is my template, after some needed changes that were discovered in-game)

Players were invited to edit the Google Drawing, and the screen was streamed to Discord for those who couldn't view via a Google account. I saved the 'template' drawing, copied it, and filled out the copy as the game record (with a date for the document title)

The core Microscope rules talk about order of play in terms of 'left' and 'right' of the current player, as makes sense in a in-person roundtable setup. However in online play a more linear lineup of players in an online setting, i.e. Discord, the rules have to switch to 'before' and 'after' or 'above' and 'below'.

The final board for our game looked like:

Traditional tabletop Microscope alternates the orientation of the 3x5 cards, so that Periods, Events and Scenes have a visual flow that helps distinguish one kind from another as well as their relationships (which Scenes are part of which Event). As can be seen in the sample play screen above: some cards ended up being much larger than others because of content. In my final template, the card text will shrink down to fit in the shape, rather than require resizing objects as they are updated.

Having successfully played Microscope online, I am definitely going to try again. Either with the same gang as before or with new players. Any takers?

Mobile games and the illusion of choice

So on a whim, i downloaded the super-hyped "Star Trek Fleet Commander" mobile game. Free to play but pay real monies to advance in a reasonable lifetime. Like most mobile games that are more complicated that Fruit Ninja this game gives you an utterly awful illusion of choice.

Sure, there's a 'deep and varied' tech tree for researching

Sure, there's a 'wide variety' of buildings to construct, manage and upgrade.

Sure, there's dozens of starships from canon and unique to this game to build.

Sure, you can recruit tons of characters from the 'verse to crew your ships.

However all these sub-systems don't actually present you any choice; you must upgrade in a specific order, often waiting until thing X over there has been updated a few times before you can even start on Thing Y, which you need to even dream about doing Z. The game helpfully has built-in links so that if you're missing a pre-requisite a handy tap will take you to the node/module/building that hasn't been paid enough attention to yet (which more often than not has two or three more things that have to happen first). But I submit that if you have to build in helpful links to navigate an intentionally byzantine progress tree, you're fixing the wrong problem.

Really, the upgrade game could be reduced to 'tap this one button to upgrade the next necessary thing', and skip all the fliting around looking for the one obscure prerequisite you've neglected and now suddenly need to pay attention to. The game knows what you need to do and the order you need to do it, and the AI 'character' who's ostensibly there to help you knows what to do next. Making the player stumble thru the miss-presented 'options' until they do the right thing is insulting to the player's intelligence.

Your characters can only advance once you've unlocked enough character-specific 'shards'.
The more rare and 'valuable' the character, the more shards you need to promote them every level.
And shards are only available via random loot-boxes; character rarity plays into how often you get a given character's 'shards.'

The first couple hours of interaction is a railroad of forced actions, which I suppose is to teach you the basics of resource management and performing building and upgrades. In practice it's as bad and boring an experience as the opening to Skyrim in terms of not really letting you do anything but look around and experience a forced narrative.

As for the ships in the game: you're presented with a long list of pretty ships, but here as well there's no choice involved. You will start with the lowlylesst bucket, acquire all the intermediate and incrementally better crafts, on your way to the end-game stuff which people are really here to play. The JJ Verse Enterprise, for example, is one of the three LAST ships to unlock in the game at this time.
Talk about putting the carrot on the end of a mile-long pole...

Flying your ships around is a pretty easy to use interface. You can have a number of ships out doing things at the same time. The problem is: objectives are intentionally spaced out so you spend minutes waiting for your ships to get where they need to go, only to tap thru a couple dialogs, maybe make a choice, then find and tap on the next destination. Otherwise ship missions are: go kill "X guys of level Y or higher," which is as old and tired as it was in the days of Everquest.

Two days into playing it, and I finally broke down and gave it $4.99 real money to give me the premium currency (gold-pressed latinum, of course) which you use to skip the in-game resource and real-time costs of playing the game. I figure they deserve some money for the effort they put into it, but I don't know how much longer I'm going to actually play the damn thing.

In summary:

• While thematically and graphically gorgeous, this game embodies all the terrible Skinner-box techniques and time-wasting design choices that game design has adopted into their paradigms like parasitical organisms; making themselves mandatory to engage with in order to play.
• There's no choice here; no freedom of expression. At time of writing, I've unlocked PVP (wheee. not.) and I expect every other player, aside from the luck of the lootbox, has pretty much exactly the same ships, loadouts and even characters.
• Really, the only things one could consider fun about this game is enjoying A) the luck of your lootbox rolls, and B) pride in sticking out the forced timers and actually building up to any level of accomplishment in the game.

Postscript:

Though I am a bit tickled about having unlocked this cutie:

ShadowRun in the RISK engine: Magical shenanigans

So Shadowrun is one of my favorite settings. It was the thing to play with my high-school friends, and has been continually supported and updated in the <mumble mumble> decades since those wild days. While the fifth edition of the core Shadowrun game has updated concepts and modernized the setting well, it's also become an incredibly crunchy and over-complicated game in my opinion.

Thus, I've been thinking about using other game systems to play in the world of Shadowrun, or any urban-fantasy 'esque setting, really. Because 7th Sea 2nd editions' RISK engine is my current favorite to hack, i'll start with that.

First up: magic. That's the key change to RISK to align with the concepts and feel of Shadowrun.

My goals in writing this were:

• Use RISK mechanisms: Raises, Approaches, Consequences and Wounds.
• Keep the spell Categories and have them do double duty as magical Approaches.
• Rather than worry about individual Spells the characters know, this lets players freeform what their characters are capable of doing. If characters are well versed in specific kinds of spells, that's handled by Advantages that grant dice pool bonuses when they use that Approach.
• Support the themes (Shamanic vs. Hermetic traditions) while still using the same core mechanisms
• Physical Adepts
• Conjuring/Summoning Elementals and Spirits, and use the Brutes rules to handle them.
• Drain as a possible Consequence for nearly all magic use; this helps keep Mages from overpowering things. You can push your limits and take more Drain when dramatically appropriate.

MAGIC Trait

Mages gain a sixth Trait:  Magic. This represents how attuned your body is to channeling  the alien energies of the ether. Your Magic Trait is primarily used to determine when you suffer Drain. Sometimes, you’ll use your Magic Trait when involved in approaches where sensitivity and attuning to magical energies is involved.

Your Magic Trait starts at 2 when you buy the Mage Advantage. There is also a Neophyte Mage Advantage, which costs less and your Magic starts a 1.

Your Magic Trait can be increased via Stories, just as any Trait can, however there is no upper cap to your Magic trait!

Magical Skills:

Spellcasting
Summoning
(no Enchanting skill for now; making magical things should be the goal of a Story).
Rely on the Larder, Armory and Stash optional rules to handle acquiring goods and resources.

Dramatic and Action Sequences.

Magic Approaches and their dice pools:

• Combat   Brawn + Spellcasting
• Illusion  Panache + Spellcasting
• Manipulation Finesse + Spellcasting
• Health     Resolve + Spellcasting
• Detection Wits + Spellcasting

REMEMBER: if you spend Raises during a Sequence that aren't within your Approach, the GM can tax you with another Raise to do so. No cheating "I roll lots of Raises using Magic. Then spend them on non-magical things during my turn" behavior, and this enforces that when Mages light up the 'juice, doin' magic will be all they focus on.

Drain:

Every time take a magical Approach to a Risk, you risk taking Wounds called Drain. On any given action where you spend more Raises than your Magic trait rank, you take the excess in Drain.

Another way to look at it: every time you spend Raises to do magic, you take that many wounds of Drain. Your Magic Trait is how much of that Drain you can soak before it actually affects you.

Wounds from Drain fade quickly, just as flesh Wounds do. They disappear after the Dramatic or Action Sequence they're acquired during ends.

Magic Advantages:

• (3pts) Mage - allows spellcasting in the first place; grants you the Magic Trait at 2.
• (2pts) Neophyte Mage - allows spellcasting in the first place; grants you the Magic Trait at 1.
• (3pts) Physical Adept- you're a Physical Adept. Now go buy some Adept Advantages to do something with it.
• (1 or 2pts) [School-specific boons]  (totemic connections , or specific hermetic lores?) Add two dice to a specific magical Approach
• (2pts) Spellslinger - Act as if you generated one more Raise than you did, for determining Initiative
• (4pts) Warcaster - (as Duelist) Combat spells inflict your (Skill rank) in Wounds, for 1 Raise. Otherwise Raises spent = Wounds inflicted. (Note that most magic attacks don't automatically inflict Dramatic Wounds, but maybe some major metamagic feat can cause that...)
• (3pts) Initiation - repeatable; unlocks 1 Minor and 1 Major metamagic feat per level of Initiation.

Initiation Metamagics:

    Minor metamagics add free minor tweaks to how your spells work
    Major metamagics add Drain, but have major effects on how your spells work
    <Obviously there's more to expand upon here yet to do.>

Physical Adepts:

Buy the Physical Adept Advantage. This opens access to more Adept Advantages.
Each Adept Advantage changes how the character can use their Magic trait when performing very  specific other Approaches.In general: you’ll get to add your Magic trait in dice, get free Raises, or be able to do something  ordinary humans can’t without magic.

For example: "Supernatural Strength" lets you add your Magic Trait in dice to your Brawn when your Approach is all about applied force.

Physical Adepts don't have to worry about Drain.
<Yeah, there's a lot more to explore here, but I wanted to hammer out the framework first.>

Summoning:

Summoning is a separate skill than Spellcasting; it’s used when summoning and binding  Bound Entities to your service, as well as Banishing them back to whence they came.

• At any one time, you can have up to your (Panache) in Bound Entities in your service.
• Each Bound Entity has a Threat Rating, and works like a Brute Squad. Depending on the type, the Entity may have special rules or traits.
• Each Bound Entity owes you a number of Services. When it completes the last Service, it dissipates or returns to wherever it came from.

Summoning a Bound Entity is a Dramatic Sequence:

• Declare the Type and Threat Rating of Entity you wish to summon.
• You must generate (½ Threat Rating) Raises to successfully summon/conjure the Entity.
• You must resist (Threat Rating) Wounds of Drain.
• Opportunity: you get one Service for free when you succeed. You can gain additional Services, one a one-for-one ratio for additional Raises spent on this Opportunity.

Burning ritual summoning materials can add dice to the summoning test.
See Larder, Armory and Stash for optional rules about acquiring and using expendable assets.

Banishment:

You can use your Summoning skill in a Action Sequence or Dramatic Sequence to do damage  directly to a Bound Entity; weakening it, or removing it entirely from this plane of existence.

On your turn, declare Banishment as your Approach. Roll Resolve + Summoning to generate Raises.

Each Raises Raise spent on banishment reduces the target Entity’s Threat Rating on a one-for-one basis.

The Entity will inflict it's Threat Rating in Drain upon you; resist with your Magic trait rank. This Drain can also be resisted with Raises from your Banishment test.

No One Game Engine, part 3

As a continuation of my No One True Game, train-wreck-of-thought, consider Mephit James' gaming blog and their recent roundtable post about what game engine would you use when playing in the Civilization: Beyond Earth video game setting.

What I find particularly interesting is that this isn't just the author's take on what they'd do but has the disparate input of several fellow GM's and their take on how they'd run their own games in a common setting.

The discussion exemplifies that there's no such thing as one universal system and that the choice of game engine really depends on what you want to emphasize and embody when telling your stories. The GM's that contributed identified such game systems as Infinity, Uncharted Worlds (an Apocalypse World variant), Coriolis, Mutant Year Zero, and one of my personal favorites: Eclipse Phase. Each of these games has a different focus, different emphasis, and different 'character' and therefore color how your experience playing that setting with those rules would be.

It's rather like asking: "What would a Harry Potter-verse movie be like if directed by Ron Howard? Or Michael_Bay?
Or Uwe Boll?"
(but seriously: don't consider the latter two)

Such discussions expose lesser known game systems to a wider audience (I now need to check out Uncharted Worlds, and its many supplements, for example). This can only be a good thing in the long run, even if it introduces some short-term hits to the wallet and adds to the what-do-i-run-next windmill of thought.

In nearly all cases the GM's also talked about how they'd tweak, modify or otherwise adapt those engines to suit the setting. That's another important takeaway from this discussion: Its okay to hack your core rules to align closer to your setting goals.

Lets shout that out again for the lizard brain: It's okay to hack core rules when a tweak or two will make them even more suitable to a different setting.

The Apocalypse World Engine is a great example of this kind of fan-made alteration. I've seen offshoots focusing on MechWarrior-style mercenary campaigns to crash-landed-aliens-trying-to-adapt-to-modern-human-culture (think an anime version of Alien Nation).