Independent and Proud
By The Warden
When I first sat down to craft this week’s edition of Under The Hood, the likely topic was the recently released Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Game… until I realized it was a little too likely. When I set out to write this column for RPC, my mission was to delve into the forgotten corners of the RPG industry and poke around at the mechanics and how they all come together. While my interest in the Marvel RPG is definitely peaked, I can’t help but feel the tiniest fraction of guilt at ignoring my independent brothers and sisters struggling to be recognized in the hurly burly of all this mass promotion. Particularly since many of my past articles have discussed the issues of being noticed in the crowd that is the roleplaying market.
Today I’m going to offer a glimpse at three independent RPGs, each featuring their own unique mechanics, concept, and presentation. It’s something I’d like to provide every now and then as I’m also an independent RPG publisher and designer. Seems only fair, right?
KISS MY AXE
In this game, players take on the roles of Vikings pitting their valor and bloodlust against the witches, curses, and high seas of a grim and violent world. Using the same mechanics developed in the earlier mentioned Sword Noir RPG, players develop their characters using descriptions fixed under categories like Quality and Traits. While the mechanics of how these descriptions work together to create modifiers to your dice roll remains consistent, what you choose for these descriptions is left to your own imagination. The more specific your description, the less likely it will apply in any situation. Each description is given a Rank with a modifier, so a Rank of Good provides a +2 modifier whenever you can apply the description, while a Rank of Exceptional offers a +6.
These details are enhanced even further with Aspects such as Background, Concept, and Faculty. When the time comes to roll 2d10 to accomplish a desired action, the onus is on the player to describe how they will take all these pieces to increase the chances of success, creating a truly open-ended and imaginative experience when you get into the thick of it. (To this end, it must be stressed experienced players – or at least an experienced host – is key to playing a fun and successful game of Kiss My Axe. If you’re always caught up in having the rules telling you what to do, you’ll likely struggle and get caught up on semantics and details.) The key to playing this game is for the player to tell the GM what they will do and fill in the details as necessary, not asking the GM if he can try something. Embellishing and enhancing your actions by assuming the role of GM for your character’s turn is the key to playing – and enjoying – this game. While I’ve never played a story game before, Kiss My Axe relishes on the concept of a shared storytelling experience and relishes in a group of good friends. If you know what makes your GM squeal like a little kid, you’ll do just fine.
Unlike its predecessor, Kiss My Axe is built as a fantastic exploit, though there are realistic factors such as fighting multiple opponents, seizing the initiative, and the limits of magic. As I’ve never been a fan of magic in RPGs (see Steve Winter’s recent column on magic as cheating to get an idea why), this Viking magic style treats magic as an interloper rather than a welcome guest.
You can find more information on Kiss My Axe at Sword’s Edge Publishing’s website and purchase PDF or POD copies on RPGNow or DriveThruRPG.
NIGHT OF THE CRUSADES
As much as I suck at history, I used to have an incredible fascination with the Crusades in my youth and yearned to find a way to make it work as a historically accurate roleplaying game. Needless to say, I failed to build something I was even remotely satisfied with and now find all my books and the old VHS mini-series hosted by Terry Jones just sitting on a bookshelf.
So when I caught a glance of the beta for Night of the Crusades by M.J. Alishah, I was intrigued and curious. The biggest issue with publishing anything about the Crusades is that you’re just as likely to find a way to publish a game on the Holocaust without confronting the issue of racism on a massive scale. Night of the Crusades overcomes this obstacle in two ways: by taking neither side and leaving the game open to whichever viewpoint your players wish to take (including a neutral one) and incorporating magic into the game to break away from the harshness and brutality of historical truth while embracing a new level of severity through insanity.
The game uses the d100 system allowing characters to roll percentile dice complicated by difficulty modifiers (an Easy target adds 20% to your roll, for example). While the mechanics are simple and familiar, what makes this game stand out is the darkness and mystique written on every page. Sorcery has converted this holy war into a truly grim battle for every Muslim and Crusader’s soul. It’s what strikes me about this material, as it’s the presentation rather than the mechanics breathing life into this game.
Admittedly, I’ve only read the original beta version and have not caught up on any revisions made in the recent release (which is free, I should point out), but I would highly recommend this one simply as a very cool read.
You can download a free PDF of Night of the Crusades from RPGNow or DriveThruRPG. There’s also an Interactive Character Sheet released just this past week as well.
6D6
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m not a fan of card games. I think it goes back to the early days of Magic when it “threatened” to take traditional RPGs off the market (plus my dad ran a comic book store and he hated dealing with kids and their damn Magic cards, so I’ve inherited his displeasure). Over the years, cards have crept into tabletop games and now there seems to be a move to create a collectible card RPG, including last year’s Untold.
The 6d6 system created by Chris Tregenza and published by 6d6 Fireball is a card-based RPG where your characters are described entirely through cards. I’ve been spending the past week reading through the 6d6 Core PDF in between my own assignments and projects and was impressed at how this system can truly mimic traditional RPG combat, encounters, and character development. Reading through the core rules themselves is a bit daunting as there are numerous keywords to consider, yet once you lay down the cards themselves it all becomes rather clear and concise.
While I’m still tearing through the PDF at the moment (with my page turning speed increasing as I get further into the book), characters are built as a collection of cards suitable to their design and the particular genre you wish to play. On your character’s first turn, you have 4 cards in your Dynamic pile to draw from in the round with each card offering an amount of d6s plus modifiers you can apply whenever you play that card. There is no restriction as to when or how that card is played other than how you choose to use it, meaning you can easily use a movement-based card as a means to gain a bonus to an attack to describe a charging attack. Based on the cards you play, you can roll a number of d6s in an effort to attempt your described action. Defense or opposition works in a similar fashion where you must choose appropriate cards to allow you to make an opposed roll to thwart the opponent’s efforts.
There are two explicit functions in the game allowing it to function like any traditional book-based RPG: pseudo-cards and flow. All characters have two flow per round and each flow can be used to draw a new card from the deck or return a played card from the Static pile back into your hand or you can use a flow to play a pseudo-card. Pseudo-cards are basic actions you would assume all characters can perform yet do not have a card for. Movement, for example, can be played as a pseudo-card if you do not have an actual card. These pseudo-cards do not grant dice and face restrictions, yet can allow your character to function as if you were a hero in any other RPG you’ve been known to play.
6d6 Core describes the basic function of the 6d6 system and you can find a couple of expansion games with more on the way (including 6d6 Bots and 6d6 Magic). I’ll have more to say on this game as soon as I finish a proper review, but find myself comfortably willing to recommend this system to anyone who likes cards with their dice. You can purchase it at RPGNow and DriveThruRPG and keep up to date on the future of this system through the 6d6 Fireball website.