A Shared Fate

The truth is that generic RPGs are not exactly interesting to review. They lack flavour, they lack the substance of a background that is usually the reason to buy into a RPG, and mechanics are never the most enticing thing to write or read about. Well, okay, but what you are reviewing when it comes to the generic RPG is its tone, the type of game it supports, and of course, its mechanics. So Steve Jackson Games’ GURPS is a mechanically detailed game with a realistic tone whereas Savage Worlds from Pinnacle Entertainment Group is broader in terms of tone and mechanics that particularly supports pulp action. Both are traditional RPGs in that they require a GM who creates the world and serves as the gatekeeper through which the players act and learn about the world. So what then of FATE Core, a more recent generic RPG?

Published by Evil Hat Games, FATE came to prominence in 2006 with the publication of the pulp action RPG, Spirit of the Century. It is a storytelling style RPG in which the player characters are competent and capable, and above all lead dramatic lives. The default game—other FATE-powered RPGs with their own settings do not necessarily require this—involves shared world building duties between the players and the GM. This is part of character generation, done through the creation of Aspects, the equivalent in FATE of advantages and disadvantages. Play is similarly collaborative, as players and GM alike can invoke and compel everyone’s Aspects to bring drama to the game. Above all, the task of both GM and players alike is to “make everyone around look awesome.”

The latest iteration of the game, the ENNIE Award-winning FATE Core was funded via Kickstarter and comes as a handsome digest-sized hardback. It is well-written, the content is clear and easy to understand, and it is engagingly illustrated. The illustrations primarily consist of kung-fu cyber-gorillas, magic cops, and the trio of characters—Landon (swordsman and ‘Discipline of the Ivory Shroud’), Cynere (‘An honorable thief with a fast blade’), and Zird the Arcane (‘Wizard for Hire’)—that together with their setting form the basis of the examples throughout the book. 

In honour of this artwork, our sample character is a combination of the magic cop and the kung-fu gorilla. Archibald  ‘Mourning Archie’ Maugham is a cop with the New Orleans police department, in a world where there is magic and there are intelligent gorillas and monkeys. 

Archibald  ‘Mourning Archie’ Maugham
High Concept (Aspect): Magic-Monkey on a Mission
Trouble (Aspect): Monkey in a man’s world
Aspects: Manners maketh the monkey, Should a monkey meddle in magic?, An eye for the ladies
Stunts: A good gorilla is hard to keep down, A gorilla’s grip, Just the facts, ma’am
Skills: Physique (Great +4); Investigate, Contacts (Good +3); Fight, Magic, Notice (Fair +2); Athletics, Rapport, Shoot, Will (Average +1)
Physical Stress (Physique): 1 2 3 4
Mental Stress (Will): 1 2 3
Refresh Rate: 3 Fate Points: 3

As can be seen by this example, characters are defined by their Aspects, Skills, and Stunts. Aspects describe elements of a character and to work effectively, they need to be double-edged, that is, each should be both an advantage or a disadvantage. For example, the Aspect ‘An eye for the ladies’ could be used as an Advantage to spot a particular woman in a crowd or a bonus to seduction attempts, but as a Disadvantage, it would mean that the character would be easily distracted in female company. In play, an Aspect is Invoked by the player to gain an advantageous bonus or a reroll, but Compelled to trigger its disadvantageous elements. It costs a player a Fate point to Invoke an Aspect, but he will gain a Fate point if the Aspect is Compelled. (A Compel can be resisted by a player, but this costs him a Fate point).

So for example, Archie is chasing Flyss the dip, a well-known pickpocket who frequents high class joints. With a flash of his badge he gets into the Cat’s Pajamas, a nightspot where Flyss is sometimes seen. He scans the crowd and will use his Notice skill of +2 (Fair) to spot the miscreant, but the GM knows that Flyss knows how to work the crowd and sets the difficulty at +3 (Good). This is not an easy roll, so Archie’s player Invokes one of his Aspects—‘An eye for the ladies’—to gain a +2 on the roll.

Conversely, instead of Archie’s player Invoking ‘An eye for the ladies’, the GM could Compel the Aspect. Were this to happen, Archie would charge into the Cat’s Pajamas and get distracted by the other pretty ladies in the joint so he fails to see Flyss slip out of the back door. In this, ‘An eye for the ladies’ has worked as a disadvantage, so why would Archie’s player let this happen? Well, for two reasons. First, because it earns Archie a Fate point, and second, because it is interesting and it contributes towards the drama.

Stunts provide advantages or bonuses under certain circumstances, usually to skills. Skills simply provide a bonus to skill rolls, there being a limited number of broad skills in the game. Where a character lacks a skill, he simply has it at Mediocre or +0.

Mechanically, whenever a player wants to undertake an action, he selects a skill and rolls four Fudge dice—FATE having originally been derived from the Fudge RPG mechanics—special six-sided dice, each of which has two faces marked with a ‘+’ symbol, two faces marked with a ‘–’ symbol, and two faces left blank. The ‘+’ and ‘–’ symbols cancel each out and the blank faces add nothing, so the results range simply between +4 and –4. The result is added to the player’s skill, aim being to beat a target set by the GM, an Average target being +1, a Fair target being +2, and so on, the targets matching the skill values in terms of progression. Should a player’s result match the target, then he succeeds at a cost; if the result is one or two points or shifts above the target, he simply succeeds; and if the result is three or more  shifts, he succeeds with style. In combat, shifts usually represent damage inflicted upon a target, but should a character succeed with style, then he can place a temporary Aspect in play, that can either be used once and then it is lost, or used once for free with subsequent uses requiring a Fate point to be expended.

For example, Archie has finally tracked down Flyss to her apartment, only to find that it is alight and burning furiously. He charges in to get his quarry out, only to discover that Flyss does not live alone. Now he not only has to rescue her, but also her roommates! As the building collapses around him, Archie’s player makes a Physique check against a difficulty of +2 (Fair) to hold up a support long enough for the girls to get out. He rolls ‘+’, ‘+’, ‘+’, and ‘–’ for a total of +3, which when added to his Physique gives a result of +7, which when compared to the target grants Archer five shifts! Archie’s player gets to set up two advantages at a cost of two shifts each. First, he buys ‘No-one gutsier than a gorilla’, essentially a temporary reputation, but second, he buys ‘I pulled your ass from the fire’, which he plans to Invoke when he interrogates Flyss.

Aspects like this can be set up on locations, objects, on NPCs, and on player characters, and then during play both the players and the GM can interact with them, Invoking and Compelling as necessary. Similarly, the GM can design and create places, people, and things all with the simple use of Aspects that get to the core of anything that he designs and creates, and again these can be Invoked or Compelled as part of FATE Core collaborative play. This collaborative element of the game begins before character creation, indeed it starts with the players sitting down with the GM and working together to create the world in which they want to play. This includes the genre, the campaign name, issues for the characters to face and deal with, and then locations and NPCs. From this the players can get an idea of their characters’ place in the world and what each wants to do before character generation. This in part is also collaborative, the players tying some of their character’s Aspects into previous experiences with each other. Should the players and GM know what they want, then it would be quite possible to create a world, characters, and the basis for a campaign just by sitting round the table and talking.

Further, Aspects are mutable. They can change as a game progresses and its events affect each of the players. Typically they come after a Milestone has been reached in a campaign, perhaps revealing thwarting the plot of a campaign’s villain, the greater the Milestone, the more that a player can change about his character. So for example, over the course of a campaign, Archie’s relationship with Flyss goes from cop and snitch to cop and contact to gorilla and girl, so perhaps the Aspect, ‘An eye for the ladies’ might become something like, ‘A girl for the gorilla’. In general though, FATE Core involves little in the way of character progression, skill improvement in particular, being slow and steady. The focus in FATE Core is the play and the drama, not gaining Experience Points, but a great touch is that alongside discussing player character progression, FATE Core looks at world progression, the idea being that both should go hand-in-hand. When you think about it, this is obvious, but it makes sense in as dramatic an RPG as FATE, that it should be an explicit point.

Mechanically, FATE Core is straightforward and not particularly complex—especially for the players. For the GM it is a slightly more complex game, but again not overly so. There is solid discussion of the mechanics and their nuts and bolts, of creating and running scenarios, and of designing and creating ‘Extras’, the elements that support a game, whether that is magic, cyberware, vehicles, and so on. This discussion of the rules and the mechanics is also supported by a discussion of how to run the game, but what it comes down to is a simple question, “What matters in this scene?” Answering this question should be dramatic and interesting—and it should have scope for equally dramatic and interesting failure.

In addition, it is easy to take FATE Core and use its mechanics to adapt the game, setting, film, book, or television series of your choice. Evil Hate Games has already done this with its The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game, but the simplicity of the game’s skills and the adaptability of its Aspects and stunts make this mechanically easy. 

Now this is all great, and FATE Core is a very readable set of rules, but FATE has a problem. It is not a fault intrinsic to FATE itself, but rather with what FATE is—a storytelling RPG. Arguably, every RPG involves storytelling, but FATE Core focuses on it in particular by shifting narrative control. For a quarter of a century, the RPG has followed the model mentioned at the beginning of the review, that is, a GM or DM serving as the gatekeeper for the world through which the player characters learn about and interact with said world. Coming out of the Indie School movement, FATE Core takes ‘aspects’ of the narrative away from the GM and hands them to the players and their characters. This can be seen at first in the collaborative process of creating the world, but shows most obviously in the use and application of Aspects. It further shows in the move away from the ‘yes/no’ binary mechanics of older non-narrative games, to mechanics where the mechanics not only give the ‘success/failure’ binary results, but also the results ‘succeed, but with consequences’ and ‘fail interestingly’. This is a shift in both play style and thinking. It takes adjustment.

In no way is this problem insurmountable and in no way is it an impediment to playing FATE. It is certainly not the fault of FATE itself, but of decades an ingrained play style, and for the players it is a matter of adjusting to thinking about how their characters interact with the world. It helps that FATE Core is well written and gives plenty of examples. It helps that FATE requires a GM, that it is not a wholly GM-less, narrative storytelling game, the distinction being that someone is still in charge, presenting the world, but that someone is someone the players interact with rather than work through. It helps even further that Evil Hat Games makes available FATE Accelerated, a much condensed, but still very playable version of the rules for the pocket-friendly sum of $5. Arguably worth each player having a copy.

At the beginning of the review, I stated that the generic RPG is all about its tone, the type of of game it supports, and its mechanics. FATE Core is light in tone, though like most generic RPGs the tone can be made much darker, depending upon the genre. Mechanically, FATE Core is definitely light and broad rather than detailed, veering towards the cinematic in style. The detail in FATE Core though is in the drama that comes out of its play with the use of Aspects. Its combination of a GM and narrative play elements, primarily its Aspects,that enable player input, arguably place FATE Core in between the traditional RPG and the GMless, narrative storytelling RPG, making it a highly accessible bridge between the two.

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Cogs in the Sky

As delightful a little game as Cogs, Cakes & Swordsticks: Cracking Adventures in the Empire of Steam is, one of the issues with it is that it is a little too polite, lacking shall we say, any sense of menace, of threat, and of perfidy. Pleasingly, such concerns with this roleplaying game of Steampunk pulp are addressed in Atlantis City in the Clouds: A Supplement for Cogs, Cakes, & Swordsticks. Published by Modiphius Entertainment, it details a complete setting—one mentioned in the core rules, an adventure involving a threat to this setting, and supporting materials.

Her Majesty’s Flying Steam City Atlantis is the wonder of the age. Designed by the combined talents of Isambard Kingdom Brunel and George Stephenson and completed by Brunel’s son, Henri Marc, as the late Prince Albert’s last wish, it floats in mid-Atlantic, chained to the artificial island of Monturiol. This second jewel in Her Majesty’s Empire—as opposed to the Jewel in her Crown that is the Indian subcontinent—has become a noted tourist destination, a port of call for transatlantic dirigible flights, and of course, a target for England’s enemies, as well as the Balloon City Sky Pirates!

A slim volume—much like its core rules, Atlantis City in the Clouds is divided into just two chapters, plus a pair of appendices. The first chapter details Atlantis itself, the second presents a full adventure, whilst the first appendix, ‘Dramatis Personae’, provides a full set of pre-generated adventurers that can be used as player characters or NPCs and the second, ‘New Attributes’, lists and explains all of the Cogs, Cakes, and Swordsticks attributes that appear with the NPCs in Atlantis City in the Clouds.

Her Majesty’s Flying Steam City Atlantis consists of an upper and a lower ring. The latter is home to the six Directional Steam Assemblages, the mighty, ever thrusting engines that keep the city, itself known as ‘The Cog’, aloft. Each is fed a steady supply of coal—dug from the mines that run from underneath sea surrounding Monturiol below—around the clock. Their engineers and stokers work shifts, the stokers receiving one shift off a week to spend at their leisure on Monturiol, officially the only place where they can purchase alcohol. Monturiol primarily consists of the mine, surface docks, and an army and navy base.

In comparison to the shadowed enshrouded works below, the upper ring has all the conveniences and attractions of a genteel small town—hotels and boarding houses, covered markets, shops and arcades, police boxes (sadly green and octagonal rather than square and blue), parks and teahouses, and even a museum, though that is housed in the Pinnacle, the residence of Atlantis’ governor. Overall, it has the feel of a small English seaside town, perhaps Bournemouth or Scarborough, though only if either such towns could be reached by dirigible and had their own diplomatic attaches posted there by Canada, France, Prussia, and the USA. Accompanying the descriptions of the various locations and establishments are numerous NPCs, from businessmen and proprietors to pirates and members of the military via workers, diplomats, and engineers.

The adventure, titled ‘Adventure in the Clouds’ is a three act affair which begins with the adventurers receiving tickets to travel to Her Majesty’s Flying Steam City Atlantis as tourists. There is plenty of time for the adventurers to interact with their fellow travellers before they arrive and even explore Atlantis a little. Yet when a murder victim dies with the name of a player character on his lips, their trip takes a dark turn. Was this a simple case of robbery gone wrong or a murder with a deeper motive. Uncovering both the motive and the culprit reveals dark plans are afoot…

Atlantis City in the Clouds is neatly presented with an array of illustrations done in a slightly cartoonish style. It even comes with an index, a surprising inclusion for a book of its length. As much as the book’s description will suggest adventure ideas to the GM, what the book lacks is more story hooks. The five included under the heading, ‘Not What It Seems’, do feel underwritten, though this is the supplement’s only real weakness. In keeping with the Steampunk genre, the setting of Atlantis City in the Sky is a slightly more of a cosmopolitan, politically correct place, such that positions of power and influence are not wholly dominated by Caucasian men.

Atlantis City in the Clouds provides Cogs, Cakes, & Swordsticks with much needed support. The book as a whole is a quick, but quite detailed read. Hopefully Modiphius Entertainment will follow this up with further supplements as there must be numerous places to visit in the world of Cogs, Cakes, & Swordsticks and take tea. In meantime, Atlantis City in the Clouds: A Supplement for Cogs, Cakes, & Swordsticks brings peril and perfidy to Cogs, Cakes, & Swordsticks, perfect for an assignation’s game over tea.

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Monkey Magic!

If you are English and of a certain age, you will remember a television series by the name of Monkey. Although based on the Chinese novel Journey to the West, the television series was in fact Japanese and would be dubbed into English as Monkey. It was broadcast by the BBC in the early evening on BBC2 beginning in 1979 and would become a cult favourite, telling as it did of the adventures of the upstart Monkey King, who after having been released from Heaven-imposed imprisonment by Tripitaka, a Buddhist monk, must accompany by the monk on a pilgrimage to India. They are joined by Sandy and Pigsy, ex-angels who were expelled from Heaven for failing to prevent the irrepressible Monkey’s misdemeanours and turned into ‘monsters’. The series ran for two seasons and was noted for its over the top wuxia action; its ‘Oriental’ accents; and its boundless optimism.

Irrepressible! is the RPG based on Monkey.  Published by Postmortem Studios via Chronicle City, it is a diceless RPG of mythic moral adventure in a China of fable and legend. The players take not the roles of Tripitaka or Monkey, Sandy or Pigsy—though the stats for all four are included in the rulebook—but Pilgrims like them. Heroes, monsters, monks, and other who have been cast out of Heaven for transgressing its many laws, or even the undead or demons, they are all pilgrims trying to get back into Heaven. In order to do that, they must redeem themselves and society at large, which Buddha says has lost its way and fallen prey to earthquakes and floods, famine and fire, banditry and warfare, corruption and immorality. By exposing the corruption and immorality and saving the peoples of the Earth, the Pilgrims can bring enlightenment to society and achieve redemption.

Each Pilgrim is defined by a Weakness, a fatal flaw that he cannot overcome; a Curse, whatever punishment Heaven has opposed upon him; four Traits, powerful skills, abilities, or powers such as Monkey’s ‘Cloud Flying’; and six Virtues. Each Virtue has a yin/yang value, essentially a Virtue/Demon pairing. The six are ‘Charity/Selfishness’, ‘Uprightness/Wickedness’, ‘Forbearance/Impatience’, ‘Dispassion/Passion’, ‘Dauntless/Cowardice’, and ‘Contemplation/Impetuosity’. Each pairing has a mid-point, representing perfect balance, and can go five points either way. Virtues represent a Pilgrim moving towards Enlightenment and grant him Karma, whilst Demons are easier to call upon and more effective when undertaking actions. 

A player chooses his character’s Weakness and Curse, Traits, and assigns fifteen points to his Virtues and Demons. Of each pairing, a player can only assign these points to one side of a pairing, thus to ‘Uprightness’ or ‘Wickedness’, but not both. Lastly, he adds up all of the points assigned to Virtues. This is his Enlightenment. When it reaches twenty-five, the Pilgrim can ascend to Heaven—and so becomes an NPC.

Our sample Pilgim is Shi Yusheng, was once the darling of the court, mannered, pretty, charming, and talented. Yet such a situation could not last and she found her position at the court slipping as it became enamoured of one young ingénue after another. She knew that she had to find a way to reclaim her beauty, her search involving ever stranger methods, finally settling upon alchemy as a means to gain her looks and keep it. It took years, but eventually she managed it, but upon attaining both, she was punished for her transgression against the Mandate of Heaven. She has been cursed to be eternally ugly except for a single hour per day when she as beautiful as she once did—during the rest of the time, she usually wears a veil.

Name: Shi Yusheng
Weakness: I can never look less than my best
Curse: Immortally ugly
Trait: Alchemist
Trait: My clothes are my weapons
Trait: A lady of the court
Trait: I am old and wise

Virtues & Demons

Charity OOOOO/O/XXXOO Selfishness

Uprightness OOOOO/O/XXOOO Wickedness

Forbearance OOOXX/O/OOOOO Impatience

Dispassion OOOOO/O/XXXOO Passion

Dauntless OOXXX/O/OOOOO Cowardice

Contemplation OOOXX/O/OOOOO Impetuosity

Enlightenment

7

Doing anything in Irrepressible! involves drawing from the Six Demon Bag. It contains not just the potential universe, but its luck and karma—the latter represented by beads. It contains five white beads for each Pilgrim, plus white beads equal to the value of each Pilgrim’s Virtues. So for example, Shi Yusheng would contribute just seven white beads to the Six Demon Bag as well as the standard five white beads. In addition, the Six Demon Bag contains a single black bead—this represents the negative karma.

The base difficulty of an action determines the number of beads to be drawn to succeed at it, the difficulty modified by the appropriate Virtue or Demon and by the Pilgrim’s Weakness or Curse if appropriate. If all of the beads drawn are white, then the Pilgrim succeeds, if one is black, then he suffers a setback, or even a disaster. If a Pilgrim wants to succeed spectacularly, then he can draw yet more beads. All of the beads drawn are kept in front of the players and only go back into the Six Demon Bag when the black bead is drawn. Essentially the Pilgrims are pushing their luck whenever they draw from the Six Demon Bag and the more actions they attempt, the more likelihood that one of their number will suffer a setback or disaster. This adds a degree of dramatic tension to the play of Irrepressible! It is possible to add beads back into the Six Demon Bag during play and to increase the number of beads by doing something heroic and gaining the notice of Heaven in doing so, or by a Pilgrim improving one of his Virtues.

Scenarios are described in terms of ‘Scrolls’, mini-campaigns in terms of ‘Books of Scrolls’, and whole campaigns of ‘Books’ in terms of ‘Sagas’, the latter representing a whole pilgrimage. Each Scroll is bookended by a proverb at its beginning and a lesson discussing what happens if the proverb is fulfilled or what happens if it is not at Scroll’s end, just as was heard at the beginning and end of each episode of Monkey. Solving the intervening adventure involves making one or more moral choices, which ultimately should fulfil—or not—the proverb that inspired the adventure. Irrepressible! includes a lengthy list of Chinese proverbs. It also includes a sample scroll, ‘The Blood Village Scroll’, a short, ready-to-play scenario that serves as a solid example of a Scroll. 

Unfortunately, as much fun as Irrepressible! might well be, the rulebook is anything but that. It opens poorly. Once the engaging introduction is out of the way, the rulebook jumps straight into a fifteen-page description of Heaven and its various inhabitants, from the Jade Emperor down to all of the lesser gods. None of this information is irrelevant to the game or its setting, but it takes twenty pages—one third of Irrepressible!—before an explanation is given as to what the players and their characters do in the game. It takes another fifteen pages—now over a half of Irrepressible!—before the author gets round to explaining what the GM and his players need in order to play Irrepressible!; vitally important because the game is diceless. Thus there is no mention of the Six Demon Bag, let alone the fact that Irrepressible! requires beads to play. Despite containing fifteen pages devoted to Heaven, Irrepressible! contains nothing describing where the adventures take place—Earth. Except that is, in the included Scroll. A bibliography would have been nice too.

Ultimately Irrepressible! is let down by self-editing and underdevelopment. It deserves to be better organised and better presented—perhaps in a second edition? Nevertheless, although just like Monkey, Pigsy, and Sandy, Irrepressible! has its problems, it rises above them to present a simple narrative driven game of redemption, moral choices, and Monkey magic!

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An Afternoon Tea Game

Lords, ladies, gentlemen, and other yet to be enlightened folks, there is an Empire – an Empire of Steam! – to be upheld and protected. Founded on Her Majesty’s faith in the computational advancements of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, in the engineering developments of Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Robert Stephenson, and in the technological travel possibilities of Henri Giffard’s steam powered dirigibles, all culminating in the creation of Her Majesty’s Flying Steam City Atlantis in the midst of the Atlantic, this Empire of Steam is a wonder of the age! It is an age that the Ministry of Computational wish to uphold – and who knows to what ends its Ministry Men will go? Whilst Great Britain enjoys her ‘Steam Age’, Europe is undergoing La Belle Époque, France recovering in the wake of Bismark’s unification of the German States and the Americas has entered a Gilded Age that see the USA’s North American Space Exploration Board in a race for the Moon with Canada’s Hudson’s Space Company – as advised by Jules Verne! This is the setting for Cogs, Cakes & Swordsticks: Cracking Adventures in the Empire of Steam, a roleplaying game of Steampunk pulp published by Modiphius Entertainment through Chronicle City.

This is a polite little game intended to be played and run with the minimum of fuss and the maximum of manners, preferably in the comfort of the sitting room with tea served in bone china, a neatly filled cake stand, and the company of like-minded friends. The game is light enough that in the absence of character sheets – sadly something that the game does indeed lack – and dice, a gaming group could use as something as simple as napkins and a suitably marked sugar cube! Alternatively, simple paper, a pen, and a single six-sided die per person are sufficient.

As much as Cogs, Cakes & Swordsticks is the game title, each element is an Attribute integral to a character in the game. ‘Cogs’ covers a character’s technical, mental, and knowledge skills; ‘Cakes’ his personality and social skills as well as your social standing; and ‘Swordsticks’ his physical and combative skills. For each Attribute a character possesses a single descriptive trait as well as a value at +2 or +3. Two are set at +2, the other at +3. A character also has a Foible, not a flaw in game terms, but certainly something that might get the character in trouble or provide a plot hook for the GM to use. 

‘Derby’ Ned Billingsgate
Cogs: Fast Hands (Can empty a pocket in a thrice; open a lock just like that; and fan the Aces!) +3
Cakes: East End Urchin (Knows his way around the rougher parts of London; sometimes mistaken for other urchins; knows how to charm the charitable) +2
Swordsticks: Slippery as an Eel (Can get out of trouble if he has to and avoid blows; slips easily into buildings) +2
Background: Ned Billingsgate is an orphan, abandoned on the steps of Mrs. Miggins’ College for Wayward Foundlings, a baby farm and orphanage. Eventually it turned out that the education in the orphanage was less about books and more about thievery and burglary. Ned became adept at both, yet like his brothers and sisters, he would be beaten by  Mrs. Miggins if he did not bring enough home. So he ran away to make his own life. He acquired the nickname ‘Derby’ from the hat he wears.
Foible: Cares for his brothers and sisters at Mrs. Miggins’ College for Wayward Foundlings

Cogs, Cakes & Swordsticks is mechanically very simple. To undertake an action the player and the GM agree as to the appropriate Attribute and applies its modifier to the result of a single six-sided die. If the result beats a given target, two for Very Easy, three for Easy, four for Medium, and so on, then the character will have succeeded. A roll of one is an automatic failure, a roll of six is an extraordinary success. If a character lacks an appropriate Attribute, then he always has a +1 modifier. The system is simple and fast as is combat which uses opposed rolls for most situations, the loser has to reduce one of his Attributes by one.

As written, Cogs, Cakes & Swordsticks is designed to be picked up and played with the minimum of fuss. Within a page or three, the game has explained the basics to the rules, and within five pages has presented three ready-to-play characters and a scenario to run for them in a single afternoon’s tea. In ‘Time Flies By’ the staff of the Bedfordshire Gentleman’s Parcel & Post must deliver a package to St. Pancras Station via the Midland Railway. It would appear to be a simple enough task were it not for the dread Steam Train Pirates! The book also includes several scenario seeds as well as a lengthier scenario, ‘Devices & Designs’, in which the adventurers must track whoever broke into the British Museum.

Physically, Cogs, Cakes & Swordsticks is a slim black and white volume illustrated in an engagingly mannered style by Geof Banyard. The book is solidly written and has a certain homespun quality to it. There is good advice for the GM, the background is nicely thematically presented, and there are lots of examples in terms of characters and actually Cogs, Cakes, and Swordsticks Attributes. Yet, as a game, Cogs, Cakes & Swordsticks is lacking something, and that something is a menace, a threat, and perfidy even… It is perhaps a little too polite.

Politeness counts for a great deal though and Cogs, Cakes & Swordsticks: Cracking Adventures in the Empire of Steam is delightfully easy to pick up and play possessing manners and elegance in its lack of complexity. Above all, it is a charming and proper little game that deserves a little more background and a lot more danger!

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Who's got game RIGHT NOW?

For the most part, roleplaying requires preparation – which can be problem. Roleplayers, just like everyone else, have at their fingertips any number of other forms of entertainment, often quite literally. Whether it is a computer game, a television programme, or a movie, they do all of the preparation for the player, the viewer, and the cinema goer. Roleplaying does not work that way – the referee or Games Master has to prepare the adventure, understand its ins and its outs, and give some consideration to what the players and their characters might do. What though if there was the roleplaying equivalent of the movie? Well, thanks to Chronicle City, there is – Adventures in Kaphornia 01 – Draconian Rhapsody: A Fantasy Movie For Your Game Table.

Originally published in German by Ulisses Spiele GmbH, Draconian Rhapsody is not an RPG, but more of a scenario that comes complete with all of the rules to play it. It promises to have done all of the work for the GM, to provide simple rules, and of course an adventure that everyone can jump straight into. Designed for play by between three and four players, plus the GM, it comes with those simple rules, eight pre-generated adventurers, and an adventure that should provide an evening’s worth of gaming – all for the price of two movie tickets.

Where a traditional RPG starts with the rules for character generation, Draconian Rhapsody starts with an explanation of the sample heroes. Each character is defined by his Skills – of which there are twelve, from Close Combat and Ranged Combat to Strength and Willpower; plus his Special Ability, and his Stamina and Fate Points. For the eight pre-generated adventurers, the Skills range in value between eight and thirteen and have either four or five Stamina points. All have five Fate Points. All have a Special Ability, some more than one. For example, Gragg the Barbarian has ‘Battle Frenzy’, which enables him to roll an extra die in combat if he continues to attack an opponent for more than a single round. Some Special Abilities require a player to expend Fate Points. Flamelet the Fairy, for example, has ‘Flying’, which allows her to circumvent a Climbing or Running challenge by expending a Fate Point and so moving by flying. Besides being expended to activate Special Abilities, a Fate Point can be used to gain a ‘Adrenalin Boost’ to recover in combat from having lost all Stamina and to ‘Raise the Ante’ to gain bonus dice to roll and add the results to a failed challenge.

To undertake a Challenge in Draconian Rhapsody, the Narrator states the Challenge – for example, to out-run a boulder that is rolling down the tunnel towards them, the heroes each face a Running [4] Challenge – which means that each character needs to roll four successes to overcome the Challenge. Everyone then rolls a number of six-sided dice equal to their Running skill. Each five or six rolled counts as a Success. If a character fails to get enough Successes, then he can ‘Raise the Ante’ and try to get more Successes. In combat, successfully overcoming an Attack Challenge and gaining a number of Successes equal to the opponent’s Defence inflicts a point of Stamina loss on an opponent, but it is possible to inflict a Severe hit and thus more damage.

Playing the game is particularly player-facing. In combat, the player characters always act before the opposition; a character never dies, but if down always recovers back up to one Stamina at the end of an Act; and when it comes to the action in each Act, the Narrator presents the various Special Actions that the players can undertake and the Challenges involved. For example, the heroes are being chased through a mine by an Orc horde and have just raced across a rope bridge only to find their way blocked by an Ogre guard and a barred door! Having described the situation, the Narrator reads out the following:

During the combat you may choose from the following Special Actions:

1. Hack through the ropes supporting the bridge, a Strength Challenge
2. Face off the horde coming across the bridge to give everyone time, a Close Combat challenge
3. Swing out on ropes to strike at the horde coming across the bridge, a Reflexes challenge
4. Get the Ogre to lift the bar on the door, a Persuasion challenge

Not all of the game or its rules favour the players. The Narrator gets his own Fate Points, but he has to earn them by taking his own actions that make things more difficult for the players. For example, in the situation above, the characters might face a Reflexes [4] Challenge as orcs swing out madly on ropes to attack them. In return, the characters will receive extra Experience Points come the end of the adventure for this and any other Narrator Action that gets thrown at the players.

The adventure in Draconian Rhapsody is a five Act affair – or to be fair, a four Act affair and an epilogue. The adventurers arrive in Kaphornia and through circumstances beyond their control discover that Countess Esmeralda of Belzheim needs a dragon, alive and inside of a week. Of course, who gets to go in search of such a beast? The subsequent adventure is humorous, if not silly in places, and very like a movie, is very much a pre-determined affair. That though, should not be held against Draconian Rhapsody, it is the point of the book after all. Were it not as pre-determined, even as heavily scripted compared to the traditional roleplaying scenario, then it would require more preparation time, and that is not the point of Draconian Rhapsody.

In addition that point – the minimal preparation time required to get it ready to play – Draconian Rhapsody can also do something else. It can serve as an easy introduction to roleplaying. After all, the rules are light enough, the adventure is straightforward and intentionally cinematic in tone, and everything is presented and explained to the characters during play. If the adventure proves popular enough, then there is a sequel, Adventures in Kaphornia 02 - The Island of the Piranha Men, already available which uses the same characters. Of course, having done for fantasy, it would be interesting see the format and the simple mechanics used in other genres – could you do A Science Fiction Movie For Your Game Table, A Horror Movie For Your Game Table, or – gasp – A Call of Cthulhu Movie For Your Game Table?

Rounding out Draconian Rhapsody is a nine-page, detailed example of play. It does a good job of showcasing the rules, although it is a pity that it never gets as far as the roleplaying scenes given in the adventure. Physically, Draconian Rhapsody is reasonably well presented with decent illustrations that have a slightly cartoonish feel that matches the tone of the adventure. Although it is readable, Draconian Rhapsody does need another edit as the presentation and the writing is slightly rough in places.

On the back cover of Draconian Rhapsody it suggests that can be prepared and made ready to run within half an hour. This is the case, but an experienced Narrator should be able to prepare this much more quickly. The rules are light and easy to understand, the setting and the adventure are light and familiar, and the whole package has an immediacy that few RPG titles ever achieve. Draconian Rhapsody: A Fantasy Movie For Your Game Table is a nicely done, all-in-one package that delivers a scripted fantasy movie that you play.

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Adventure to the MAX!

Over the years the roleplaying hobby has thrown up a number of games specifically designed to be played by kids and in the process, actually introduce them to the hobby. Whether that is uncovering mysteries in PandaheadProductions’ Meddling Kids, exploring the magic of the woods and its denizens in Firefly Games’ Faery's Tale, adventuring in, beyond, and above the Atlantis of Third Eye Games’ Mermaid Adventures: An RPG of Undersea Fun, or protecting society from the dangers of big nature in Mouse Guard RPG from Archaia Studios Press, they invariably combine relatively simple mechanics with a setting that will spark the imagination of the younger, neophyte player. In each case, their aim is to help the parent who wants to introduce his child to his hobby and thus help the child who is curious about the fantastic adventures that he hears about, or sees, his parent playing. 

The latest RPG to aimed at kids is Adventure MAXIMUS!, a traditionally themed game published by Eden Studios, Inc. and set in a fantasy world. This can be the fantasy world of the Game Master or Maximus Master’s own devising, or can be the one lightly sketched out in the pages of Adventure MAXIMUS! This is the world of “Ex-Machina,” once known as Magisterica before the Reign of the Wise Wizard Kings ended. Following this apocalypse is a world in which mythical creatures roam the lands and both food and trees can talk. As much as the setting is traditionally themed in its fantasy, what sets it apart from others is a vein of light-hearted, if not slight silly humour, that runs through it. This shows in the setting, for example, there is a nation called The Take-Out Kingdom, in some of the actions that characters can take, each of which has a card of its own, and in several of the monsters that the adventurers will face. The presence of this light-hearted humour is intentional, as it is designed to engage the younger player’s imagination and to encourage him to think and engage with the world.

For the most part, the elements of the setting that the players and their characters interact with during play are represented by cards which are drawn from several decks. These include a Blue Race deck, a Green Class deck, an Orange Action deck, Purple Spell deck, a Red Item deck, a Black Monster deck, and a Gold Map deck. A character is comprised of a Blue Race card and a Green Class card, and will be equipped with cards from the Orange Action deck, the Purple Spell deck – if the character can cast spells, and the Red Item deck. The cards from the Black Monster and Gold Map decks are used to create adventures in conjunction with the game’s Adventure Sheet. (There are ten cards in the Green Class deck, eight in the Blue Race deck, ten in the Orange Action deck, thirteen in the Black Monster deck, eighteen in the Purple Spell deck, thirty-four in Red Item deck, and fifteen in the Gold Map deck.) In addition, Adventure MAXIMUS! uses its own “Maximus” dice as well as needing numerous tokens to represent Action Points, Damage Points, and Experience points. 

To create a character in Adventure MAXIMUS! a player draws three Blue Race and three Green Class cards, choosing one of each as his character’s Race and Class. Both provide special abilities whilst the Green Class card sets the number of Orange Action cards, RedEquipment cards, and Purple Spell cards – if a spellcaster, that the character can have. These are randomly drawn. The Adventure MAXIMUS! character sheet has specific places for all of these cards.

So for example, Louise creates her first character. She draws three Blue Race cards and gets Elf, Giantkin, and Food-kin. She chooses Giant-kin she wants to play a big fighting type and Giant-kin can use “Close Attacks” at “Far Range.” For her three Green Class cards she draws The Guard (a warrior who protects others), The Officer (a true warrior and leader of men), and The Sparklemancer (who is all about making friends). She decides to choose the latter, if only for the fact that not only is the idea of a Giant-kin running around in a gown and wielding a wand funny, but so is her Class Power, “Jazz Hands” which lets her dazzle her opponents with this dance move. Of course, this is a “Close Attack,” but since she is a Giant-kin, she can do “Close Attacks” at “Far Range” or “Jazz Hands from Afar”! The Sparklemancer also gives her Close Attack +1, Far Attack +2, one Action Card, three Equipment Cards, and three Spell Cards. For her Action Card, Louise chooses one which gives her “Double Flip!”, “The Naked Goblin!”, and “Lippy-Hippy-Shake!”. The first forces her enemies to lose an Action Point if they see her “Double Flip!” with her sword; the second gives her a +3 Scary bonus and if her enemies fail a Fear Test they must flee because of her big armour (or in her character’s case, her big gown as she is a Sparklemancer); and the third forces all of her enemies to dance as Louise actually gets up from the table and dances! These three actions cost her two, three, and three Action Points respectively.

For her spells, Louise receives “Banana Slips” (makes the floor slippery with the essence of banana peel), “Jared's Reducer!” (because she can shrink both herself and others, and sometimes she wants to be smaller), and “Feel the Heal!” (to make her friends feel better if they get hurt). For her equipment, Louise gets a pillow, a pot of super glue, and a length of rubber hose.

Louise the Sparklemancer

Weapon: Wand Armour: Gown

Attacks: Close A­ttack +1, Far A­ttack +2

Class Skills: Fast Talk +3, Notice +2, Crime +4

Willpower 2

Class Power

(1AP) Jazz Hands: +1 Willpower against one target's Willpower, if successful the target is Dazed for one round.

Race: Giant-kin

Giant-kin ability – Reach! You can use Close A­ttacks on things that are in Far range. Big, tough, and kind are words used to describe Giant-kin, but many prejudiced people will run in fear from you.

Action Card:

(2AP) Double Flip!: You can Dazzle your enemies with your sword play, they lose an Action Point if they can see your Double Flip!

(3AP) The Naked Goblin!: Your armour makes you look a lot bigger than you really are, you get a +3 Scary bonus. Enemies that can see you must make a Willpower test or flee in fear. Any enemies who win the test are immune to this effect for the rest of the encounter.

(3AP) Lippy-Hippy-Shake!: You have the uncanny ability to make your enemies dance when you dance. Get up from the game table and dance, enemies dance until you stop.

Spells: Banana Slips (1AP), Feel the Heal! (2AP+), Jared's Reducer! (4AP)

Equipment: Pillow, pot of super glue, rubber hose.

Adventure MAXIMUS! is designed to be an action orientated game. Once the action – or a “Courageous Situation” starts, whether that is getting into a fight, climbing a mountain, or entering a competition to bake a pie, then the Maximus Dice come out. What a character can do over the course of a single Round is determined by the number of Action Points he has, these being set by his Blue Race card. These are spent not only to undertake normal actions such as walking, running, looting, attacking, charging, using a skill, and so on, but also to undertake the options given on the character’s Orange Action cards and his Purple Spell cards – if he has any. A character can spend as few or as many Action Points as he likes and they always refresh from one Round to the next.

When it comes to skill rolls and other actions, a character rolls a number of Maximus dice equal to his skill. Each Maximus die is a six-sided die marked with three blank sides, one side with a single sword, a second with two crossed swords, and a third with a Maximus symbol. Each sword represents a success, so the crossed swords represent two successes. The Maximus symbol also represents two successes, plus it allows a character to roll another die and add its success to his total. As long as a player keeps rolling the Maximus symbol, he can keep rolling and adding successes. 

At its most basic, as a player rolls a single success on the Maximus dice, then his character succeeds at the desired action. Some skills require a player to roll two or more successes to achieve his desired aim. For example, the First Aid needs two successes to be rolled if a character wants to restore healed one dot on his or another character’s Health Track. Opposed skill rolls require one participant to roll more success than the others if he is achieve his desired aim. 

Combat though, is kept even simpler. Initiative is determined by the highest number of successes as you would expect, but only in the first round. In subsequent rounds, initiative order actually passes to the left, so that the player who acts first moves round the table rather than being randomly determined. Simple and for the most part a fair means of handling it, although there is nothing to stop the players rolling for initiative each round as is traditional. Actual combat is a matter of rolling the Maximus dice and rolling as many successes as possible. Armour negates these successes, so whatever gets through is taken as damage to the defender’s Health.

In keeping with the light nature of the rules, the advice for the Maximus Master is kept quick and simple. First and foremost, it adheres to a simple rule that applies to the Maximus Master as much as it does to the players – “Have FUN!” Second, that he should keep the game going by saying “Yes, and…” to all of the impossibly inventive ideas that his players might come up with. For example, heroes have tracked down the thief who stole the Frog God’s favourite jewelled eye and are racing after them along a steep path down the side of a mountain. Louise the Sparklemancer tells her Maximus Master that she wants to cast Banana Slips to make Barry the Burglar lose his footing. Of course, her Maximus Master says, “Yes,” and then describes how Barry the Burglar not only loses his footing, but also loses hold of the stolen jewel which goes flying through the air only to land on the gas bag of the aerial steamship that was passing below…! 

In addition, preparing an adventure is made all the easier for the Maximus Master with the inclusion of the “Who-What-Where-How Adventure Creation System.” By following its simple step-by-step instructions in conjunction with the Black Monster and Gold Map decks, plus some input from the players in form of names and descriptive words – or if preparing the adventure ahead of time these can come from the rulebook’s “Courageous Maxi-Libs List” – the Maximus Master can create a whole adventure. First, he draws a Boss Monster card from the Black Monster deck and equips him with Action, Item, and Spell cards as necessary. This is the “Who” or villain of the “Who-What-Where-How Adventure Creation System,” whilst another Red Item card is the “What” and a Yellow Map card forms the “Where.” Together these elements form the Climax Map of the adventure. These steps need to be repeated two more times to create two more Adventure Maps that the player characters must travel through in order to get to the Climax Map, although neither of the Monsters faced in these Adventure Maps will be Boss Monsters. 

The Maximus Master also needs to fill out the following statement using the players’ suggestions or the “Courageous Maxi-Libs”: “A message has been delivered to your Adventure Call Box. ‘________’ has asked for your help! ‘________’ has the ‘________’, you must travel to the ‘________’ in the “________.’ Bring back the ‘________’ and you will be rewarded!” So for example, “A message has been delivered to your Adventure Call Box. The Wizard Of Zoz has asked for your help! Sweet & Sour and Sweet & Spicy!* have the Clean Underpants, you must travel to the ruins in the Forest of Doors. Bring back the Clean Underpants and you will be rewarded!” In order to get through to the Forest of Doors, the player characters will have to travel through Teddy Bear Junction and then to Gum Drop Falls. 

* Twin chicken chunks from the Take-Out Kingdom that were just born bad. 

What is so good about the “Who-What-Where-How Adventure Creation System” is not just the ease and speed with which the Maximus Master can create an adventure, but also the fact that it can be picked up and used by the very players that the game is written to be run for. In other words, kids can run this as much as adults can. In combination with the card-driven means of creating characters, the “Who-What-Where-How Adventure Creation System” gives Adventure MAXIMUS! a strong capacity for "Pick Up and Play." Not necessarily such that the game can be played straight out of the box – though the RPG is easy to learn in terms of its mechanics, but the preparation time for an adventure is mere minutes rather than the hours it might be with other RPGs. Just as it is for character creation. 

Adventure MAXIMUS! could be run as a fairly straight forward fantasy RPG, but that would be to ignore its potentially rich vein of humour and silliness. This shows more in the decks of cards that support the game – the Black Monster deck, the Purple Spell deck, the Yellow Map deck, and the Red Item deck than the Blue Race deck and the Green Class deck. In fact, with just the one humorous or silly option in each of the latter two decks – the Sparklemancer in the Green Class deck and the Food-kin in the Blue Race deck – the game feels disappointingly traditional in terms of what characters it offers the players to play. In fact, the choices can be best described as “fantasy vanilla” and it would have been nice if some other choices had been included, preferably ones that matched the game’s humour. Yet once past the Blue Race deck and the Green Class deck and the options and choices for the Maximus Master are a lot more varied and mine much more of the vein of silliness. Whether that is the Bunny Mummy!* from the Black Monster deck, the Foothills of Fungus** from the Yellow Map deck, or the Bunny Borough Bow*** from the Red Item deck, they all show that Adventure MAXIMUS! is intended to be anything than wholly serious in its feel and style. 

* My favourite monster! 

** Actual hill-sized feet upon which grows fungi!!

*** Also known as the Velveteen Wackit because an arrow fired from it never inflicts damage, but anyone hit is turned into a bunny!!! 

Physically, Adventure MAXIMUS! is neatly presented in full colour. In its current form it does need another edit, but it has two more pressing problems. The first is that it fails to state up front what it is, not what a roleplaying game is, but what Adventure MAXIMUS! is and how it is intended to work. It becomes apparent after reading through the whole of the short rule book, but this seems at odds with the “pick up, get playing” intent of the design. The other issue is that there is not enough background, though that said, this lack allows plenty of room for the Maximus Master and his players to create as they go. A lesser issue would be that there might not be enough cards for long term play, though there is nothing to stop anyone from creating their own cards. 

As much as the origins of Adventure MAXIMUS! as a fantasy RPG lie in Dungeons & Dragons, its tone and feel have a more contemporary source – contemporary television animation. It recognises that it is silly, but it embraces this aspect in a joyous fashion whilst referencing this, that, and the other in postmodern “reference anything and everything” fashion. Adventure MAXIMUS! is not necessarily the Adventure Time RPG and certainly is not based on the Cartoon Network Studios animated series of the same name, but it is not impossible to suggest it as an inspiration. The combination of the two in Adventure MAXIMUS! results in an RPG that can be played as a traditional fantasy RPG akin to Dungeons & Dragons, but by design is much lighter in tone, with a setting and means of adventure creation that allows room aplenty for player input and player imagination.

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Under the Sea RPG

The Walt Disney Company does not do roleplaying games. None of its many and varied properties has ever been licenced as a roleplaying game. Which in some ways is a shame, for the gaming hobby is aging and its adherents have young children or even young grandchildren who do not have an easy way into the hobby or a means of being introduced to the hobby. As much as Fantasy Flight Games’ forthcoming StarWars: Edge of the Empire RPG is effectively the first Disney RPG, the lack of an actual Disney RPG based on its more family orientated properties seems such a missed opportunity. Yet what if there was an RPG that was like a Disney RPG, both in terms of feel and tone? One that would appeal to a younger audience? One whose rules were simple and easy to understand? And one that was easy to run and came with easy-to-use support?

Mermaid Adventures: An RPG of Undersea Fun fits all of those requirements, and more. Plus it comes from an unexpected publisher, Third Eye Games, better known for its more mature themed, action-orientated RPGs, Apocalypse Prevention, Inc. and Part-Time Gods. As its title suggests, Mermaid Adventures is all about the lives and escapades of the seafolk in and around the magical kingdom of Atlantis under the sea. They will help King Neptune and Queen Anastasia as well as their friends and others; take part in the annual Undersea Olympics; explore the Dark Lands that lie beyond the borders of the Kingdom of Atlantis, home to pirates, bandits, and worse; and generally have a fantastic time!

Players in Mermaid Adventurestake the roles of these seafolk, all of whom are half-human and half-sea creatures. They include Fishfolk, traditional mermaids known for their curiosity; Eelfolk, who make great friends, but like to play jokes and pranks; Jellyfolk who are almost transparent and are great hunters; Lobsterfolk, hardshelled, but charming; Octofolk, tentacular seafolk with an aptitude for magic; Rayfolk, who can make themselves flat and have a reputation for sneakiness; the big and strong Sharkfolk; and the spiny, Urchinfolk, obsessed with magic.

Characters are easy to create. A player selects the type of seafolk that she wants to play; this sets the base value for the character’s five attributes – Body, Mind, Charm, and Luck – and gives a single positive Quality that all members of the selected species possesses. For example, Octofolk start with the free Quality of Tentacles, which enables them to get things done quickly when using their (hands) tentacles. Five points are assigned to the character’s attributes and then the player rolls on a number of tables to determine hair style and colour, eye and fin colour, some extra details about the character (possessions, clothing, knowledge, features, and so on), and the character’s goal and its accompanying Quality. Lastly, the player selects four more Qualities. These from Artistic and Beautiful to Weapon Training and Writer via Mechanical and Nosy. Additionally, a character can chose Magical Qualities like Healing Touch, Lullaby, and Water Bending. Lastly a character can have an Animal Companion, essentially a second, less capable character that the player controls. This is a slightly more costly option though.

Our sample character is a pretty princess, perhaps a little spoiled, but still generous of heart and ready to go off on adventures. Her nosiness sometimes gets her into trouble, though she will often try and charm her way out of it. If only her parents were not immune to such attempts! She owns a yo-yo, a toy that she found which must have been dropped overboard by a human!

Princess Pandora
Body 2, Mind 2, Charm 3, Luck 3
Hair Colour: Red Hair Style: Bangs 

Eye Colour: Amber Fin Colour: Light Blue
Qualities: Adventurous (Free); Beautiful, Royalty, 

Lullaby Song (Magic), Nosy
Goal: Giving (Take a hit to Luck to let any player make any reroll)

Extras: Yo-yo, Pointy Ears

Mechanically, Mermaid Adventures uses what the designer calls the “PIP System.” It requires a handful of white dice and a handful of black dice (or just dice of two different colours). The white dice are positive, whilst the black dice are negative. To undertake an action, a player rolls a number of dice equal to the appropriate attribute, with results of four, five, or six being counted as successes. A player can roll more white dice if she can involve one or more of her Qualities. The difficulty of the action determines the number of black dice to be rolled, with a Mid-Range Task calling for two black dice to be rolled, a Tough Task requiring three black dice to be rolled, and so on. Rolls of four, five, or six on the black dice count as failures and cancel out any successes rolled.

A player only needs to roll a single success to succeed at a task. If she rolls three successes more than failures, then the result is counted a critical success and she gains a small bonus. Conversely, rolling three failures more than successes results in a critical failure with extra consequences… If a player rolls an equal number of successes and failures, then she succeeds, but with minor consequences. A player can attempt a re-roll for a Task, but must take a “Hit” on the attribute, temporarily reducing it by one.

For example, Princess Pandora wants to hold a midnight feast for her friends and knows that the cook will not give her anything. So she attempts to distract the cook whilst her friends sneak into the larder and pinch some goodies. The Games Master or Navigator sets the difficulty of the Task at Tough as the cook knows what a little madam Pandora is, so Pandora’s player has to roll three black dice. Pandora’s player will use her Charm of 3 of course, but for her Royalty Quality – she swishes her tail a bit! – and Giving Quality – Pandora explains that it is for her friends! – she gets to add two more white dice. On the white dice, Pandora’s player rolls 1, 2, 5, 5, and 6, and 1, 3, and 4 on the black dice, or three successes and two failures. Cancelled out, that just leaves her with a single success, which is enough to distract the cook and Pandora’s friends will be able to get into the larder a whole lot more easily.

The same mechanics are used for combat and conflicts, the rules for both covering not just fights, but also attempts to charm or persuade major NPCs or other player characters, to trick them, or to use magic on them. In these cases, the acting player character always rolls the white dice, while the defender rolls the black dice, essentially serving as the Task’s difficulty. Further, in these cases, if a player character or NPC is successfully attacked, they take damage to the defending attribute. Should a character suffer enough damage to reduce an attribute to zero, then it can no longer be used, and the character will suffer an even worse effect, such as suffering a bad scar for the Body attribute being reduced to zero, or being drained of magic for the Luck being reduced to zero. These effects are rolled randomly.

For the Navigator or Games Master, there is a selection of NPCs, advice to Navigator to keep the game moving and exciting, whilst also allowing the players to add details to make their undersea world as real as they want it. This is as much as the advice really amounts to, but in the hands of an experienced Navigator, this should be no problem. Were this squarely aimed at a neophyte Games Master, then this section would be sorely lacking, and it might be worth addressing if Mermaid Adventures were to be given a second edition. That said, the Navigator also receives a set of tables to roll adventure ideas on and a quintet of ready-to-play adventures. These see the player characters come to the rescue of a sinking ship, enter the Undersea Olympics, get lost in the Dark Lands, and more…

Physically, Mermaid Adventures is not quite perfect. It is engagingly presented, particularly in terms of art, done in full colour by Melissa Gay, in a style that perfectly captures the light hearted nature of the game. That said, the layout is a little rough in places, and the book could really do with another edit to give it a little more of a polish. The book is easy to read and an experienced eye will run through this is in an hour or so and be ready to run it with relatively little preparation.

The inspirations behind Mermaid Adventures are obvious and they show in its lightness of the treatment of its subject matter and its setting, which is very lightly drawn. This lightness is supported by the mechanics, which are easy to grasp, and all together they make the game very accessible. Similarly, the scenarios make Mermaid Adventures easy to run and there are more ideas to be got out of the adventure generator, though more adventures would not be unwelcome. Above all, the illustrations do the most to capture the feel of the game and setting – light, adventurous, and action packed. These serve to make the RPG suited to play by younger players, with the setting particularly orientated to young girls, though there is nothing to stop young boys playing too.

Mermaid Adventures: An RPG of Undersea Fun is a game with charm, one that is nicely suited to be run for a younger audience.

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