My experiences with the Fallout RPG so far have been an interesting mixed bag. On the one hand, I've enjoyed the 2d20 system more than I expected. The core of the system is quite clean and easy to pick up. The combat rules are pretty straightforward. The give and take of player control over their …
Continue reading Fallout Friday: Judging A Book By Its Errors
After hearing about it from many people over the last two years or so, I finally decided to read Blades in the Dark. Here are my impressions. (not a review; just personal takeaways) First, the game is another of the interminable line of games that builds on the framework of Apocalypse World but with the …
Seriously, this post has big spoilers so if you care about that, don't read. With that out of the way, I wanted to write a few small things about Wonder Woman 84 that occurred to me while watching the film over the holidays. Some of it is just about the storytelling but there was at …
"Risk it all!" That's the tagline for this new edition. In 5e, it was, "everything has a price." I think the design team must come up with a pithy sounding phrase and build mechanics around it. Wouldn't be my choice. But hey, we've reached part five of my assessment of Sixth World (6W) edition of …
Matrix The wireless world and the 'runners who manipulate it are often some of the most complex characters in any Shadowrun game. I know that one of the goals of the new edition was to try and improve the play-ability of the Matrix and hackers. To a certain extent, they did achieve this goal. Many …
Magic! I want to clarify something. Shadowrun is a complex game. Personally, I think that a certain level of complexity is vital to the experience, considering that you have a game that wants to encompass near-future mercenaries and criminals with advanced technology while also maintaining the trappings of a full-fledged fantasy game. It's a balancing …
Combat The combat system in Sixth World (6W) Edition does not resemble previous editions much at all. The changes are pervasive and make me wonder again about the amount of play testing behind the system. Aside: the tone of the writing in this book really bugged me. The book is clearly written as aimed at …
I got a copy of the core book for Sixth World from GenCon this year. So I've spent some time with it and, now that the PDF has been released, I thought I'd discuss it. There's a lot to take in so I'm devoting this whole week to my assessment of Shadowrun Sixth World (Edition). …
I thought about not even writing about this game. Here's the short version. I love Battletech. I don't love this new video game. To examine that statement with a bit more nuance... I'll just give you my impressions of the game. Take them as you will. I've put about 20 hours into the game and …
The Rhetorical Gamer 