Rage, Rage by David Miessler-Kubanek
Rage, Rage is a game about the “last chance for hope in the face of futility and madness,” and the game delivers by using a variety of fears, hopes, and madness-inspired mechanics to draw out high drama from the players. Reading through it, I was struck again and again by the elegance of the framing of the game, ideas that draw the reader more into the world of darkness and madness without precluding hope.
I was particularly struck by the way that character generation develops a wealth of complex relationships around the table. By clearly tying the hopes and fears of my character to other characters, the game prompts me to think about my character sees others, and I can see great scenes coming out of the tensions that are established by the material.
Yet, the way that the game actually works isn’t quite clear to me. Each mechanic seems interesting and compelling, but after having read through the game a few times, I still don’t understand how it actually works. It’s as if there is a page missing that helps the players and GM understand how to move through the Chapters so that a coherent story comes together. In some ways, this reads more like a way of generating a story as a one-player game than it does as a multiplayer RPG. The example setups at the end help a lot, but it’s not quite enough to make sense of how it plays.
Overall, I think Rage, Rage has some great elements that could be easily expanded into a full-length game book. In fact, I think the game’s greatest weakness at the moment is the low word count; there’s lots here to build on for future incarnations of the game.
Kobold Engineer by Laura Simpson
The central idea for Kobold Engineer rocks. In it, you play a lowly Kobold who wants to climb the dungeon management ladder by serving his master, Coyote. Coyote, of course, wants the Kobolds to prove their worth by setting up a dungeon to kill heroes. The game reminds me a little of Overlord, the classic anti-hero video game for PC/XBOX, but it definitely has its own flavor and focus.
The game is played by creating and setting traps for the heroes through tokens. The players use the tokens to purchase traps and place them in the dungeon, and then run a party of heroes through the killing fields. The multiple rounds (laying traps, then playing heroes) seems like a lot of fun, and I can imagine it would make for an entertaining evening for my players. The limited tokens also introduce a great strategy element, as the players have to focus on using up a limited resource instead of just laying down traps all over the board.
The mechanics, however, are a bit messy. I didn’t understand why there were multiple Kobold characters the players could select, especially when some of them seemed to only have disadvantages. There were also different winning conditions that seemed to make it hard to keep track of who was actually ahead in the game. Given that the game is much more of a strategy game than a roleplaying game, I think the mechanics need to be significantly tighter to provide strategy players with enough control over the outcome.
All in all, I’d love to see the next draft of this game. It’s an innovative idea that I think would really appeal to most tabletop roleplayers in the same way that Munchkin does. It’s a winner of an idea, and it just needs a bit more polish and focus to really fly.
Into the Void by Kira Scott
Into the Void employs some great, simple mechanics to tell the story of a doomed crew on a mission to save Earth from catastrophe. Each player manages a collection of traits to forestall madness, as the pressure of deep space slowly drives every crew member crazy.
For the most part, the game’s mechanics are awesome and convey the setting well. Each player gets a number of inner traits (how you see yourself) and outer traits (how others see you) that can be used to gain bonuses on challenges. Win challenges and your crew gets stronger; lose and slip into madness, eventually turning on your own shipmates.
These simple mechanics set up all the right kinds of scenes. Players try to survive in a hostile environment, but the real danger is losing their sense of self in the face of deep space. I can easily imagine a game in which my character, tired of the hallucinations he’s facing, decides to kill everyone else on the ship!
That said, I think that the main room for improvement here is in the design of the scenes themselves. A lot of flexibility is given in how scenes are set up and taken down, and I worry that it would require an expert GM to keep the game moving quickly enough to ratchet up the suspense. In addition, elements like the Space Logs (monologues from the characters) are really neat, but I’m not sure they would work with less experienced players. I think some more structures with the middle of the game could make the project a lot stronger.
In some ways it’s hard to be objective about Into the Void. While the mechanics are completely different from my entry (Our Last Best Hope), it has enough similarities in scope and content, drawing from many of the same inspirations and employing many of the same tropes. Needless to say, I think its premise is a lot of fun, and I recommend that everyone give it a shot. Great game!
Now that we’ve finished with the submission process for Game Chef 2012, it’s time to get reviewing. As in past years, each person who submits a game to Game Chef reviews four of the other games and select one to move on to the next round. Here are the four that I’ve been assigned to review:
57. Rage, Rage by David Miessler-Kubanek
A RPG about the last chance for hope in the face of futility and madness.59. Into the Void by Kira Scott
A one session game of existential identity crisis in the isolation of space.62. Monsters of Glam by Matthew Sullivan-Barrett
Idealist rockers on one last tour. Will they honor their dream or tear each other apart? Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders.63. Kobold Engineer by Laura Simpson
The apprentices of Coyote, the infamous Dungeoneer, compete for his approval and for the opportunity to succeed him as the Kobold Engineer.
They all sound great, and Into the Void sounds a lot like Our Last Best Hope, but I’ve got a personal bias toward Kobold Engineer based on the title. It sounds…awesome! I’m hoping that the actual game meets my expectations.
Our reviews are due by April 25th, so I’ll be updating the blog here with our reviews for the next week or so. Please let us know if you get a chance to give these a read; we’d love to hear your comments on these submissions.
Hello Magpie Fans!
We’re proud to announce today that we have two new features on the site.
First, we’ve added an online store for Print and Print+PDF Bundles of our games: http://www.magpiegames.com/products/
If you wanted to get a print copy of The Play’s The Thing, but missed the Kickstarter, you can now order copies directly through the site. We’re going to continue to offer PDF copies directly through RPGNow.com and Indiepressrevolution.com. Please let your friends and family who want a copy of the game know that print copies are available!
In addition to the Magpie Store, we’ve also added a page for free downloads for The Play’s The Thing: http://www.magpiegames.com/tptt-downloads/
We’ve got character sheets, cast lists, nameplates, and Pete Figtree’s awesome Teacher Guide available for download. We’ve also got a brand new script for Midsummer Night’s Dream, written by Magpie Fan Jennifer Moser Jurling. Thanks, Jennifer!
Enjoy!
