Mail Room: Zweihander

My first thought is if Warhammer FRP, old-school D&D, and Call of Cthulhu produced a mutated spawn of Chaos this would be it. I had a feeling flipping through this book it almost defines a new genre, like how rock and roll came from blues, while staying true to the original source.

And they took special care here, as this game seems heavily playtested and poured over by those who love the genre. I can't speak to many balance issues at this point, but from the attention to detail and effort I just have this feeling care was taken by those who know the influences and those who want something that isn't broken.

And the book is over 600 pages huge. And it feels complete. A monster section 243 pages long. A full sample adventure. Hundreds of professions. Only 36 skills and 72 talents? Amazing. They kept control of the beast of complexity and splurged in the places where splurging is needed. A horn of plenty in choices, but a finely curated meal in places where complexity would mean too much choice and the death of the game.

And I see you, familiar but lovable OGR system reference document monsters of standard fantasy poking your head in and around here and there. The game mixes the best of Warhammer with the standard OGR tropes and standards? This is like getting everything for Christmas I swear, but I don't swear because this is Christmas so I just say, "Thank you, Santa."

A Story...

Back when my brother and I got heavily into tabletop miniatures, we were devout Advanced Heroquest players. We had two of the Heroquest board-games just for the extra minis. Our characters and stories were woven around a strange mix of D&D figures, Heroquest minis, Warhammer army figures bought as "new monsters" for our games, and all sorts of other random things even down to those plastic farm animals you buy in the buckets at toy stores.

The genesis of our heroic journey was in a strange world filled with everything, but still with the flavor and tone of the world rooted in a Warhammer-y grim and perilous reality. The adventures were crazy and mixed up, but the look was based on Warhammer with a mix of all of the greats from other games and worlds.

Open a door to a room and have a "eye tyrant" type beholder-like monster from D&D show up? Fine! Let's fight, roll initiative and let's hope it has some good treasure hidden in there if we survive. If this world is locked in the dark flows of chaos, that means anything can go, and warped, twisted versions of creatures from other imaginations and realities are fair game.

Our world was very much a bastardized Warhammer Plus and we loved the heck out of it. We never really had much lore, only playing in a place where two competing factions of a wizard named "King Midas" and a dastardly giant of a man "The Black Knight" waged an eternal war over the future of the realm. Both of them were corrupt and greedy to the core, with Midas playing lip service to the races and forces of good as much as the Black Knight pulled in dark elves and the races of evil to his side.

It was a simple setup and sort of an iconic battle of good and evil, where both good and evil were both evil but they at least tried to make an effort to put up a good appearance while they were stuffing their coffers under the table.

Fantasy Heartbreaker?

I see that term a lot in discussions about this game. As if being a game derivative of another is a bad thing. Every version of D&D starting at AD&D has been a fantasy heartbreaker then. Some versions of D&D also broke our hearts, in a manner of speaking, when they dropped support or expanded the game into players begging for a new edition to clean it all up. Again. D&D itself could also be described as a Tolkien, Leiber, and Lovecraftian fantasy heartbraker for that matter.

When does it just not matter what labels you use? I don't really like the term, and I have seen games come along, such as Cepheus Engine, and lay down an OGL interpretation of a rules set a lot better, cleaner, and not changed for the sake of sales and/or change. Versions of a beloved rule set that will now be around forever, just like Basic Fantasy, Dungeon Crawl Classics, or even Labyrinth Lord.

The only heartbreak I feel is not getting on the boat earlier with these games. Not that somehow they are lesser, because a lot of them are love letters to the way we used to play that is long gone and preserving that part of our history is an important part of the legacy and story of our hobby. Yes, in love letters there is heartbreak, but often that heartbreak can motivate us to find the next thing to love and to rebuild a better life and purpose.

So yeah, my heart was broken when they stopped supporting Gamma World. But these days, I have two games to replace what I lost - Mutant Crawl Classics and Mutant Future. Are they what I lost? No. Can I port that old stuff in easy? Yes. Does it matter they aren't Gamma World?

In some ways, they are better than what they replaced. Be careful of idolizing the past too much, because you can get stuck in it easily. Would I love a Zweihander version of Gamma World - like THIS Oh I would be on that like a Barl Nep to radioactive slime. And then I would have three games. I think I can find a way to deal with that heartbreak just fine, thank you, and in some ways, I appreciate the motivation to craft newer and better games.

And This Game is It

And now, the game and world we came up with in our heads has a set of rules inspired by the rules we used, with the "make your own world" and "use anything you want" feel to it all. And it is long. The art is serious and consistent. The books binding is incredibly professional - certainly to the level a collector's book would be printed and bound. Seriously, make a giant version with gold leaf pages, color plates, and metal parts on the cover that looks like a bible (and printed by a bible company) and I would buy that at three times the price. The book is drop-dead beautiful, especially if you get hit by it - it is that heavy.

It will take me months to read through and pour through this. It is like getting gifted a part of your past, one you forgot and put long away, and realizing what you once had was a part of the dreams and games of many others like you who you never knew.

Do I like this more than Warhammer 4th? That depends. Warhammer 4th is still missing a good deal of the content I already have in my collection of WH3 books, and I want to see more before I judge that game and give a final opinion. WH4 is pretty and laid out well, but it feels incomplete. This game is much more complete and the depth is there to dive into.

And this is without taking the Main Gauche supplement into consideration.

The bible comparison feels right. This game is such a love-letter to the genre it feels like a religion and not a game. But a game it is. I have a long, but wonderfully dark and exciting, road ahead of me reading this.

Mail Room: Warhammer FRP 4e

Beautiful layout, very nice full-color presentation, consistent artwork, iconography that reminds me of 3rd Edition (oookaaay), and an end to the book that feels rushed and jammed in there.

Only 36 pages of monsters? No meaty treasures and magic items section? I know, pages of magic items aren't in this game nor Zweihander, but the latter game has 243 pages of monsters in its bestiary. Warhammer's color monster illustrations are really nice, but I get this feeling the book ran out of pages and I am waiting for the expansion that fills the rest in.

Some have commented on the illustrations being changed for inclusiveness, and I think that is sort of a non-argument. Some of them are downright silly (with scrolls on top of hats), and Warhammer has always had that element of parody and Monty Python humor going on so you could see this is as commentary of the same D&D-style over-the-top fantasy tropes and be right at home. "Excuse me sir, why is there a scroll on top of your hat?" Not that the more inclusive notions should be played for laughs, because everyone should be able to play, but there is a right way to do this that I feel is a huge lost opportunity.

Change the World

What bothers me with the notion of inclusiveness is that they added those cultures into the existing world and didn't take a chance to expand the world's lore. What I would have given for this world to change, for a large Asian-themed trading company to take a part of the old world, for wealthy nations from African-like nations to arrive on the shores, a Hispanic-themed trading nation, and the melting pot to happen and we get all sorts of interesting things going on.

And don't make those perfect Mary Sue cultures, give them just as many problems with corruption and natural enemies that they are thematically interesting to play in all by themselves - I should not have to show up to The Empire to have fun. Let me play in these places and have the Warhammer experience. Create a new melting pot area, a new faction with serious troubles, where everyone is better together - but with deeper problems threatening what could be a better future. Make some of the Old World factions new bad guys who resist the new ways.

Change things. Advance history.

I know...heresy! Change nothing! But...this is a RPG. Take advantage of that. Craft a world that sings to those wanting to jump in. Give them interesting places to start, and let them enter the world.

Myself? Count me in with the heretics. I would love for this world to change, for new cultures to arrive and be fun to play in, and for the inclusiveness to feel like a natural progression of the world. This way, you can have a mix of all sorts of backgrounds in the existing classes, and you get that dramatic flourish of the world growing, coming together, and battling its demons together.

Let people play in this moment where the world changes.

Setup a conflict between the old ways and the new, and leave it for the players to resolve.

Even if this had to be an alternate timeline, I feel the entire game could have been taken in a new and exciting direction, possibly with reexamining some of the traditional Warhammer backgrounds (dark elves, dwarves, etc) and giving them nuance and internal conflicts that would make the game even more compelling while increasing the inclusive factor for everybody.

It Doesn't Feel all There

To me, the game looks cool, but it feels cut short and I feels misses a huge chance to take things in a new direction that would make for some compelling stories and fascinating RP in that universe. I feel it sticks to tradition and "what's safe" just a little too closely, and gets confused as it tries to paint the old world with a new set of paints when it could expand the canvas and create drama and history.

And then I feel the book abruptly stops and I want more. It falls off a cliff. Parts feel missing. I want the rest of this book. I want the other iconic races from the wargame. I want relics and artifacts. I want some of the fun from Mordheim and Advanced Heroquest. I want a big book of Chaos. It does not feel complete as it is, sadly.

Yes, I could do an updated world in other dark fantasy games, but for a new edition of a favorite universe, I would have loved to see things shaken up a little more and getting people talking. I would have loved the game world to expand a little to increase diversity in a way that mirrors history, but in a way is a very cool Warhammer take on a changing world.

More soon on this, but these are my initial feelings after giving the book a flip through.

Oh, and my book has an odd issue with the pages being warped some and sticking together as I flip them. Not ink-sticking, but just like the entire block of paper was cut strange and now wants to move as one huge brick of wood fiber. Odd. My book is cursed by Chaos.

Rimworld: AI Storytellers

 

So I fired up one of my notorious time-consumers last night, the PC game Rimworld, and after multiple stop-starts with updating mods I got it to work again to a degree where the experience is as how I remembered. This is the thing about games with mods, spend any time away from them and you do all this setup work again because everything is likely broken with patches or updates.

So why talk about Rimworld? Well, for one it is a game like the ones I am looking for - a solo RPG style experience without being too predictable. Something I can play, watch how stories play out, and enjoy the trials and tribulations of a group of people from a distance while best trying to guide them on their path through some guidance and suggestion.

This is one of those games I always go into having high hopes for, but walk away feeling I spent way too much time with for way too little satisfaction.

Random Event Simulator

Taken as a whole, the events in this game seem so random and generic it feels like they just exist to slow you down and ankle bite the player. I am not feeling any "story simulation" from this game. Do the characters have long-term ambitions, goals, fears, short-term desires, hopes, and dreams? Sure they have psychological attributes, but those feel more reactive than they do things that feel like they create a compelling narrative.

Let's say I created a pawn called Captain Kirk, from the Star Trek series, and I tried my best to make him profile-wise as the character in the TV shows and movies. Now, would more of Captain Kirk come from the game's interactions with those values, or my perception of that name and likeness? Yes, there is the "something" the player  brings to the experience, but the game has to be able to give something back more than just a random event simulator.

I invariably get Captain Kirk standing at sandbags with a bolt action rifle fighting off raiders, farming rice, and sleeping more than I do Captain Kirk doing Star Trek things. Is there a mystery to be solved? Does the Federation order me to go somewhere and help someone? Did Spock find strange crystals nobody understands thatr he thinks he can communicate with?

I know, I want the impossible, a game with random events that produces realistic narrative stories. Kind of like AI Dungeon does today in text, but we will get to that later.

That said, I love Rimworld as a game and I have hundreds of hours in it, it is just as a sole RPG replacement I feel it falls flat. Maybe I need to tweak the storytellers, but in a way I get the feeling I am just adjusting dials on a Photoshop action and tweaking a photograph's levels when what I want is a real drawing done by hand and a piece of art.

Traditional Western RPGs?

Then play a game like Wasteland or Divinity: Original Sin! Right? I don't get a lot of fun out of those games because they say "create any character you want" and they deliver "but run them through this same scenario and set of events." I miss the old Daggerfall and Morrowind days where you could create an "any thing you want" character and the world existed to react to your trouble-making. Those were too-simple games, but the direction I loved. I get tired of finding the same lost book, rescuing the same cat, and helping the same tired town with a new character the next time through.

Is it too much to ask that my new character build and concept have an experience as unique to him or her as he or she is to the world right now? No, instead, you are the chosen one, just a little different this time, and can you help me my cat is stuck in the same old tree again. The last person got it out just fine, let's see how you do it.

Burn the tree? You can't do that.

Fly up to the cat with my wings? You can't do that.

Shake the tree with my great strength? You can't do that.

Scare the cat with my fear spell? You can't do that.

Sigh.

Let me go get the tuna from under the dock where those goblins are, I guess. Mister, do you think it is still under there?

We always seem to have those goblins under the docks with exactly one tuna fish, yeah. Last person through here said it was the quickest way to solve this, whatever that meant. I am sure an Angel of Death like you could take care of them quick like that Shadow Rogue did last time, but he just stole the tuna without fighting them and that wasn't really fair in a play balance or mechanics sense.

I will be right back. I may be a while because I may go play a pen-and-paper game for a while to get that feeling of "do anything" and "go anywhere" back for a while so I can take those feelings back into this game and project my hopes upon it.

Go right ahead! But don't expect me to support all those mods when you get back!

Game Shopping: Zweihander vs. Warhammer FRP 4th

 

So...you want to talk grim and perilous? Obviously reading Rolemaster Classic and desiring a more realistic and gritty game, I am going to have to talk about two of today's dark fantasy greats. I ordered both of these and they are coming, so I will be able to compare them soon.

What follows is what I read about them and my though processes on why I chose one over the other.

Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play: 4th Edition

This was the game I went looking for, because I know Warhammer, own the 1st (and third) edition games, and when you are talking a dark, violent, and realistic game you immediately pick up a classic. And I heard they had a new edition out, how cool! So looking I went for this, and it led me down a path through a dark, twisted woods full of shadows and lurking eyes upon my soul.

And over there in the "customers also bought" section of the product page was barely the sign of another path off the main road towards Warhammer 4th Edition. Some game called Zweihander I never heard of? Nah, it mustn't be anything much. That path looks barely traveled, best to stick to the main road and keep heading towards what I know...right?

Games inspired by are rarely as...good...

Right?

Zweihander

So I peeked down the path, read reviews, and learned some dark secrets. This was developed as a OGR retro-clone of the Warhammer 2nd Edition "style" of game - but even darker. Even more brutal. Unforgiving. A world that not only hates you, but scars you, changes you, and twists you into a dark shadow of yourself. The reviews were glowing, but then again, I heave read lots of glowing reviews of games I own but never play. What makes this so special beyond healing being more difficult and it not being Warhammer?

Many said they would keep using Warhammer Fourth to play Warhammer, because why stray from what works? Some said Zweihander does it just fine. But one review in particular caught my eye. Zweihander can do all that, plus modern gritty fantasy such as countless novels, films, games, and other worlds. It doesn't feel like a Warhammer with the serial numbers filed off of Game of Thrones, The Witcher, or Final Fantasy Tactics. It feels...like a dark and gritty version of those places, worlds, and peoples. It is those places of darkness if you want it to be. You make it into a dark place of your own.

It is dark like Warhammer, without the Warhammer feeling or world. Without the call to battle. Just the darkness. And the despair.

And that opens up...options and possibilities.

Oh...really?

No Armies of Plastic Figures

I love Warhammer - both worlds. The dark and gritty one in the role playing game. And the one filled with giant formations of painted figures standing proud on the field of battle. It always felt to me like the world existed in two realities: a dark one with death and hopeless fear, and another brightly painted and lined up in formation. This always bit our roleplaying campaigns in this world, since we played the tabletop wargame, the roleplaying game saw its share of dwarves on motorcycles with a gunner firing a crank-fired black-powder chaingun on a rear pintle mount. The dark elves showed up with their metal battle garter-belts and whips. Chaos always fielded a massive army like the Soviets in East Germany.

Our games felt like Warhammer Fantasy Battles: The RPG.

They were fun, but grim and perilous went out the window. Those crazy mohawk dwarves showed up, with no fear, and whirled like two-axe wielding dervishes through formations of Skaven. I guess we were still kind of high on the paint fumes of all those figures we had to paint, or in some way we wanted to see those figures come to life in the roleplaying game. We were kids, we didn't know better, and it is a natural urge when the wargaming hobby and the RPG are so closely connected.

And yes you may have started out peasants and rat catchers...but...I am going to be one of those army figure heroes someday, hold a giant banner, hold a heavy bolter, wear my power armor, and...wrong game but you get the idea. We weren't even in the right mindset. We were heroes in a world filled with armies.

With Zweihander there is none of that. You build the world as a dark reflection of your nightmares. You pick the setting. There is no invisible contract that the world can't end as it is consumed by chaos because that would mean hundreds of hobby shops would go out of business and the next version of the rules couldn't be printed. Your world can end. This is your story.

Go Anywhere, Do Anything

The Zwiehander "it can be anything in the darkness" feeling appeals to me. That do-anything, go anywhere, explore the darkness within draws me in. Warhammer with its iconic monsters and setting is always kind of like D&D's cosmology to me now, the Skaven, Chaos, Empire, Elves, Dwarves, Dark Elves, and other icons of the setting are so well-known and set in history they feel like D&D's beholders, Tiamat, displacer beasts, ropers, intellect devourers, mind flayers, and other "product identity" copyrighted creations at this point. I am a fan of them all like I am Luke Skywalker or Iron Man.

But what if I wanted something of my own? Where would I go? It is hard to use Warhammer for generic fantasy because the urge to have the Skaven (tm) show up is too great when using that book. If I wanted to have the "rat people" to be the result of some mad experiment of a alchemist in a campaign my players would smile, say "okay", and roll their eyes because the referee is changing things again and this is a "not Warhammer" using Warhammer rules. Those are really Skaven haha. You know how it goes.

With a set of rules without that established, any monster in any campaign is what I want it to be. Are the rat-people the result of demonic magic? A failed experiment? Pollution? Genetic manipulation? They came from the dark magic jungle of evil across the ocean? Are they ship rats who evolved because of a cursed island and now copy those same sea pirates,. but insane with funny hats and parrots?

My next campaign they may not even show up. They may be something different. They may change size and be tiny rat people. They may be the enemies of the dwarves in another game. The players won't know and they don't know what to expect.

The game is mine.

The darkness is infinite and unpredictable.

A Choice to Make

That appeals to me, because in the true darkness you don't know what terrors lurk - and the nature of the darkness you face is unknown. As a GM, that appeals to me greatly. This is why I went with Zweihander first, and I will look at Warhammer 4th mostly for nostalgia. I love the Warhammer world, but mostly for nostalgia at this point. It will be fun seeing them like old friends.

Also Warhammer 4th is about 360 pages where Zweihander is over 600 - so Warhammer 4th sounds like the tighter rules set for a game, while Zweihander sounds like a novel in RPG form. While I enjoy both, there are times when a concise set of rules tightly put together appeals to me in a mechanical and play sense. I will hold my final opinions for when I see both, but it should be an interesting comparison.

Also, Warhammer was - and still is uniquely British. Zwiehander as I hear is an American author, but a superfan of the dark fantasy genre with new ideas to add into the mix. An interesting contrast.

Especially against the retro-80's Rolemaster Classic standing over there looking like Don Johnson playing Robin Hood. Gotta love that hair and those pastels.

Well, both books are in the mail and more soon.

Genesys

 

Genesys was always a strange game for us. Generic System is obviously the word play, and considering this game's pedigree, the system powered all of Fantasy Flight's Star Wars games, it should have been a shoo-in for a lot of fun play. But it didn't take off with us, despite us loving Edge of the Empire so much.

From what I read, quite a few people love this game, and it is one of their favorite "do everything" systems like a Savage Worlds, FATE, GURPS, or other generic systems.

I suppose our group was in the middle with giving Pathfinder First Edition a serious go with a complete set of electronic character creation tools and trying to justify a huge investment in books. Books that were more fun to read than play, honestly, for fantasy artwork and inspiration. This, and all we had was the basic book - no setting, gear, worlds, spells, monsters - just kind of a rules framework and that is it.

Special Dice Needed

The game even had its own special dice, which were cool but always looked like they were covered with Star Trek symbols to me. One of them, the advantage symbol, looked almost just like a Star Trek triangle chevron thing, like what Federation people have on their uniforms. Some of them even, the failure dice, even looked like Klingon symbols. When I first saw them, I was like, yep, Star Trek dice.

They work exactly like the dice in the Star Wars game, so if you know how those work, it is an easy thing to transpose the symbols and get going.

Suns cancel X's (four point symbols-ish). A's cancel chakrams (three point symbols). Big Sun and Big X don't completely cancel each other (in successes and failures, yes; in good and bad things happening, no). I wish they didn't use circle icons on the successes and threats, I thought those two cancelled each other at first.

I ended up calling the suns "bangs" and the X's "slams" and remembering, "bangs and slams cancel and determine success." I also called the A's "checks" and the chakrams "traps" and again "checks cancel traps and determine advantage/threat." The big sun? Big bangs! The big slams? Grand slams! And you could do a cool wrestling game with these rules.

We're Gonna Need Another Book

The base rulebook really isn't enough, it is a base selection of talents and gear, and to do anything really cool you will been a supplement or a player-created expansion adding genre-specific gear, talents, and opponents. They have a fantasy book and a cyberpunk style book, so you are covered either way you go since you could easily base modern or sci-fi gamer off the cyberpunk Android game book with a little work. Fantasy is fantasy so the Terrinoth book has you covered.

This hurt our adoption of these rules, honestly. Our lives were busy and converting a setting over just to use this set of rules was too much work for a nebulous benefit. Games like GURPS have a great selection of worldbooks and equipment lists to pick and choose from - you could throw a basic "most anything" together just using the basic book, from fantasy to sci-fi and many points between. To be honest I would have liked to see more in the basic book for standard gear and genre support, that would have helped get us started. There just doesn't seem to be much "gas in the tank" without buying either the Terrinoth or Android books to get playing.

Hopeful for New Things

I hope this game continues, if those rumors are ture and we are getting an announcement soon. It really is a cool rule system and it really deserves a chance to shine and get attention - despite it isn't a newer game it still does a lot of things really well and I know this system like I know Edge of the Empire, so my fandom for these style of rules makes me an instant fan of the possibilities.

I also hope they branch out and do new things, not just as the Fantasy Flight game engine. I know the perils of licenced properties, and those don't always make for great sales sense. I could run RPG versions of just about any movie with this, like Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Trek in any era, Marvel movies, 007 movies, and just about anything you can think of.

Basing - and buying - games on licenced properties sucks, because you are darn well guaranteed the game won't last forever. No company is going to grant a perpetual licence, and very few will consider open-sourcing the rules so support can continue past the expiration date. It is cool to own "X the game" but ultimately it is more for a collectors market than it is for playing. A generic game and DIY or fan support is the way to go.

So in a way, it is probably a smart move to take a great system and de-link this from Star Wars, but I want to see more in terms of generic setting support than the books released. And certainly more than this being the FFG RPG - I want to see some new ideas and settings.

Fantasy Flight Star Wars

There is a rumor  - please treat this as rumor - of an announcement regarding this game line soon, and in fact, all Fantasy Flight RPGs. Some are saying these games will go to a new company who will manage printing and selling them, and I hope all of the out-of-print books are put back in production. This is really too fun of a game to let die. I also hope they put out PDFs of this and the books - but the books are really nice. If the rumor, and it is still a rumor, is true, I hope they keep the same quality level of print and binding for these.

If they go POD and black-and-white for less cost...I mean, fine to have the info, but I would still pay the original book's higher prices just to have these in color at that same quality level.

Base Books Worked for Us

We got the three main core books, enjoyed Edge of the Empire a lot, and the second Military focused game somewhat, and sort of burned out on the final Jedi book. The supplement books that added builds and classes were fluff for us, and they tended just to reshuffle the abilities and powers of the base builds. If I played this game again these days I would stick to one of the three core books and keep the game focused.

We were super-fans of Edge, so we got into most of the Edge expansion books, but after a while their value and the complexity they offered. We didn't collect the rest of the expansions, and just focused on the core books. That said, Edge was still the center of our game, and the other core books were just "stuff and NPC book" expansions.

Edge was the Game for Us

Edge of the Empire was the most fun for us, since it setup a classic "Grand Theft Auto" type of universe. The Imperials were the perfect "bad guy law enforcement" characters, the grand galactic war presented opportunities to work for (or betray) both sides, and the crime syndicates were the untrustworthy brokers of jobs and backstabbing.

The trouble one could get into, and the strange alliances one could make with either side, made the universe come alive for us. Had a thing for the Imperials? Work for them and hunt rebels. Loved the Rebels? Work for them and blast Imperial scum. Did your own thing? Great, play both sides off each other for maximum profit. Hate the Hutts? Double-cross them too! Or work for them. Or both. The player agency to get into trouble and do their own thing was off the charts.

When we got to Age of the Rebellion the game lost its charm, at least for us. These were just military missions. While the ships and "stuff" was fun to see, the world became a one-sided conflict and we got bored with the one-sided jingoistic warlike nature of the setting. When you are a soldier and you are told to kill and keep killing, the storm-troopers you blast all kind of feel the same. Yes, I know dramatic action where you are freeing planets and saving people in a noble cause, there is fun there, but there wasn't the malicious, cut your own path through the world, ally with who you want to, pick a new side every week, double cross everyone, answer to no one, blast the Imperials and the Hutts, ignore the Rebellion unless they pay good freedom that Edge gave us.

Force and Destiny was kind of a wash for us, and the beginning scenario was kind of a railroad and turned us off to the game. Again, this game was more of a Sith and Jedi "stuff book" for us, and we never really got into the entire Jedi/Sith game and conflict. Like Age of the Rebellion, this became more of a reference guide for us. Some classes were also repeats - like there was a melee build, vehicle build, pilot build, and "fill in the blank" type build across all three books and the need for other games that did what Edge did well did not really appeal to us to collect these books.

Oh...and all of this content resides in the Legacy universe...

Legacy is the True Star Wars

Lucasfilm had years of material and characters from the Expanded Universe to pull from, something like a "Marvel Universe" of stories and legends to pull from in order to build an entirely new cinematic universe.

And they threw it all out. This frustrates me about the current state of the stories in this universe. They created an artificial divide in the fan-base when they did not need to.

They invalidated all this stuff - the stuff in these roleplaying games. The same type of games that kept Star Wars alive in the 80's and 90's when the movies ran out and the toy sales ran dry. The RPGs that rekindled interest in the novels, seeded the videogames to come, and kept the Expanded Universe going.

And then current-day Hollywood complained, "But we have no books or comics to pull stories from to make movies with!"

I have shelves full of content, novels, games, and comics that you still own, but you don't even see. Seriously, if you don't want Legacy Star Wars, please find a good home for it.

There are things I like about the new stories and movies, yes, but if you did a Marvel approach you could have had that plus a legacy of worlds and characters to pull from like a shared mythology we all grew up with. Are the Marvel stories perfectly matching the comic books? No, but they are close enough. They pay respect to what the parents like while bringing us new things for a younger audience.

The force is a balance. So is Star Wars. But I feel it isn't what we really got in the new movies.

These corporate executives took away the stories I grew up with - ones just like those Marvel stories they pull from (but did a better job with). I feel those currently in charge are poor stewards of this legacy. These roleplaying books are some of the last best original universe content out there, and can keep stories and dreams in this universe going despite the current state of the franchise. This is what I grew up with. If I have kids, these are the stories and games I will pass down to them.

Not the ones influenced by the "Dark Side" of corporate pride and hubris.

Solo Play: GURPS 4th Edition

I keep coming back to GURPS 4th Edition. Part of why I like this game so much is that I only have to learn it once. I have the basics down, I can create characters, combat can be as simple or complex as you like, and if you avoid min-maxing you can design well-rounded characters.

There are games I struggle with, such as Rolemaster, and while documenting the individual battles with that game are entertaining and informative, when I want to invest in a longer campaign, even playing solo, my mind wonders if the rules I want are the ones I already know. I lose the crit charts of Rolemaster and/or HARP, but are those really that critical?

Social Play and Character Builds?

You have to ask yourself, how much of my solo play will be combat? If you are doing a lot of social play and character-focused play that leverages advantages and disadvantages, along with possibly the horror rules to put a layer between your solo reactions and your character, GURPS seems like a better fit.

I do like that removal of control, where the horror rules, and perhaps even rolling for reactions FOR my character to see how they will approach or view a situation, seems like a better fit for solo play than Rolemaster or HARP, or even Spacemaster for that reason.

The interplay between a social situation and the advantages and disadvantages you can build into a design adds a layer of unpredictability to social situations that you would not get from a game without them. If I design a rogue, and he has a greedy disadvantage that compels him to steal from shopkeepers and others when he is back in town - that is a moment of unpredictability and fun in social situations that can't be discounted. What if he has levels of charm and smooth talking abilities and can try to always talk his way out of the trouble he gets himself into? I can design that into a character as well, and this put a lot more options to mitigate disadvantages.

In a game where the unpredictability is only in the crit charts, you are going to have to engage in combat to experience those results and get that excitement. Thus, I am going to design combat-oriented characters, because there is little reason to build for stealth, social, reason, investigations, or any other non-combat activity. If I want to compel unpredictability in a solo game, I will leverage the disadvantage system to force the character - against my will - into social and other situations that are less optimal.

The fun will be getting away with them or getting out of them, which may lead to combat, but at least my character wasn't "looking" for the fight, or designed for it. And in fact, the non-combat skills I buy will help me get out of those situations, so there is a reason not to design a character just for battle.

Horror and Solo Play?

I get the feeling using the game's 3d6 reaction system to help me determine a course of action will be a big part of the game. Does my character react positively, negatively, or neutral (leaving it up to me)? Will he steal the necklace in the shop window? Well, roll the dice and determine a reaction. Maybe the good angel on his shoulder wins today and he leaves it be. Maybe the devil on his other shoulder wins and he tried to pocket it while no one is looking. Perhaps his greedy disadvantage take precedent and is rolled instead, or modifies this roll.

But having a horror and insanity system may also be useful. If you play in a fantasy world where magic and creatures are rare, and the world is mostly normal, then seeing a giant spider crawl out of a hole in the wall may force a fear and sanity check. My character may just well run instead of rolling for initiative and saying 'en garde!' That is fine with me, honestly, and it adds a layer of unpredictability, danger, and difficulty to the solo adventure. If I want him to be fearless, guess what? Design him that way, spend the points, and lessen the impact of fear.

Again, I have options here, and they cost character points if I want them. Is my character a spineless rogue? Let him run and don't buy that extra mental fortitude. Is he a barbarian who would go into a rage and take on any terror? Again, spend the points, make him fearless, and design him that way. The design system starts to take on more importance in your solo builds because you mitigate, or not, the bad things the system could do to you.

But you have to have some ground rules on what those bad things are, when you roll for them, and how often they happen. There is a balance here because you don't want to have the game devolve into, "take an action, make a roll to see if he does it," and so on where your character becomes almost completely controlled by the dice for every little action or every encounter.

Need to Define the Rules

But you have to have some ground rules on what those bad things are, when you roll for them, and how often they happen. There is a balance here because you don't want to have the game devolve into, "take an action, make a roll to see if he does it," and so on where your character becomes almost completely controlled by the dice for every little action or every encounter.

I am sensing a theme here. You need a framework for what rules you are going to use, and when you are going to use them. These all center around a loss of player agency if certain rolls are failed, and then using that loss of control as a bad (or good) situation to resolve using combat or non-combat skills. 

They also involved that self-inflicted "reaction roll" you make for your character, and using that to decide what to do next in a situation where a choice is needed.

If no choice is needed, don't roll. Am I eating the soup, or the sandwich? Don't roll for that because it really doesn't matter nor its it an important choice. Do I chase the bandits down, or run for help? Now that, is an interesting question, and I could see this "hero check" coming into play here to help determine my course of action.

Did I get a critical success on my "hero check" roll? Something great happens! I trail them to their secret hideout, and they are unaware! A critical failure, uh-oh, something really bad happens! Perhaps I chase them, and I end up in an ambush.

The dice decide, and my character build helps enhance or mitigate these results. Did I spot the ambush early? Given my advantages, could I? If I were extremely perceptive, I may rule there is a chance. Otherwise, I wander right into it.

What is my reaction then? Stand and fight, or flee...?