Dragon Age Inquisition Playthrough: Game Over

Okay, we finished Dragon Age Inquisition last night. It was a cool ending, and here are my thoughts on the game's ending.

I feel if we would have finished the story using the Dragon Age pen-and-paper game we would have had a better time and wrapped this up on a more personal and satisfying note. We didn't, so I am hoping we can run the entire game as a pen-and-paper campaign sometime in the near future, using the hint book as my guide I would love to do this, and I feel it would be an epic tribute to the game and the experience.

We would need to play the DLC or go read what happened to know the entire story though, because one of the characters is pivotal to the plot and the ending.

I am 50-50 on using the powers from the game or using the powers from the pen-and-paper game. The game's powers are remarkably compatible with the pen-and-paper game; if something says it does 150% of normal weapon damage that is a pretty easy thing to convert to the pen-and-paper game. Most of the powers are like this, and it would be a fun experience to run the game using the videogame's power and talent trees. The pen-and-paper game's powers are a more realistic world (and they are balanced) so this is kind of a toss-up for me.

I would definitely use the hint-book as our bestiary, there are so many cool monsters in there that is a no-brainer. The hint-book also serves as a place and world guide, it would be fun seeing these places again in a pen-and-paper game, closing rifts, and meeting the people of the world. Having these places already created is a huge boon, and with a couple artistic changes more could be added to keep things different and fresh.

Using the events in the game would also be a blast, and I wonder if the battle in the original group's base would come out the same. Yes, that is a pivotal moment, and sets up the next base and the story's transformation as an all-is-lost moment, but something makes me think a group of pen-and-paper players would somehow find a way. Similarly, I am betting many of the game's X or Y choices would come out quite differently with a referee that could make changes to the story and plot.

As for the game itself, it was a fun ride. I wanted a more epic story, along the lines of Final Fantasy VI experience, which to me is the bar set for "save the world" plots in console RPGs. There is nothing like saving the world after it has been destroyed, and this game floored us then, and it still does now. There are many similarities between the games including a "destroyed world" part, but in FF VI, you actually get to adventure there and fight back, which is the ultimate world-saving power trip for hero-types.

Dragon Age Inquisition's combat and character systems left us flat. We wanted more strategy in the fights, and playing as an archer, the entire game felt far away and spammy. I do not recommend playing as any sort of mage or archer in this game, as you miss out on seeing the battles and enemies up close. Fighter up-close or nothing, or else it is just "shoot the small blob of flashing action in the center of the screen." For 80-90% of the game, that's how it was for us. We wanted more of that "character building" and "choices matter" stuff, and more customization. Also, the game felt like it had too many MMO style cool-down spammy powers that felt the same. I would love to see less powers that mean more.

Overall, a fun game for the looks and story, but with some drawbacks and points that missed the mark for us with rules and that satisfying console RPG tactical experience. The high production values and music made this fun, along with the amazing art and world. That same world, while large, felt empty and a bit repetitive with the endless harvests and lack of monster spawns.

The war-room mechanics felt flat as well, more like a text-based level selector than an actual table where forces moved and fought. We never felt there was a war going on here, and the illusion of this reflecting the actual world fell flat for us, and thus the "war room" became more of a "mission unlock" screen and activity for us.

Fun? Yes. Worthy of a pen-and-paper play-through and campaign? Yes, by far. Overall, a worthy game not without some rough spots, but as a source of inspiration and a game world all unto itself, it is a rare gem and worthy of attention, especially as a Pathfinder or D&D alternative to Golarion or Faerun. Would I love to see a game of this production value and detail covering either of those two worlds? Yes, but I doubt it will ever happen because of the OGL's silliness and limitations, or Wizard's history with videogames.

For that reason, I see Dragon Age as a stronger and more compelling world to play in, because we got a glimpse into this world through a game that we will never get with the D&D style games. We heard the music, traveled across the lands, met the people, and suffered alongside them during a time of great tragedy. That creates a personal connection that a "Tomb of Horrors" or an adventure path can't compete with. We've been here. It is familiar and compelling. When we hear the music, we are instantly brought back there to that place. We would love to meet Varric or Bull. We would love to be back in this place. The game, despite its flaws, takes us to another place, and that is the mark of a great game.

Would I love D&D or Pathfinder to do this type of AAA game? Yes.

But I don't feel it will ever happen. These D&D style games feel like they are too focused on fiddly mathematical rules, and not the living, breathing worlds and the people that live within them. There was a point for us post D&D 4th Edition that we said "we care less about the math and we want something more", and it just feels like D&D 5 is a patch for D&D 4 and Pathfinder is still trying to fix D&D 3.

We don't want rules, we want a world.

So then, we set our destination as one more familiar and compelling, and we travel there. Right now, that is Dragon Age with its excellent pen-and-paper game, and the soundtracks and images three incredible games have given our play experience. It is a living, breathing experience, not unlike Star Wars, where if you hear the music and see the pictures you are taken to that place in a galaxy far, far away in a world a long, long time ago.

For us, that sense of place is irreplaceable, and thus, Dragon Age feels like home for our fantasy gaming experience.

Dragon Age Inquisition Playthrough: Jaws of Hakkon DLC Monty Haul

Oh, DLC, how I adore your pay-to-win nature.

So we took a detour into the Jaws of Hakkon DLC around level 18, and we had a super tough time breaking in. Most of the monsters were above level 20, and we finally got a great fight out of some of the encounters. If you are fighting, dying, and running away to regroup, you finally got my attention.

We had to change up party members, take tanks, and re-equip in order to compete. We had to pour on DPS to finish fights. We lost some fights and had to come back to try again.

Finally, after sixty hours, the game is getting interesting.

But the loot! Oh, the loot. Treasure troves full of level 21 purple gear we can't use yet because the party is severely under-leveled at level 19. Big, long, juicy lists of loot. Skins and ores that net 5-10 items in each harvest! The bounty is mouth-watering, and we are taking in this almost-cheater zone with glee and gluttony. Compared to the crappy gray-item loot and paltry harvests of other zones, this DLC area is stunning in its bounty and generosity.

Get to this zone as soon as possible at 17-18 and live here until level 23-24, it is that good. I fear going back to the regular game's zones will be something of an anticlimactic let-down. To suffer through major fights and be rewarded by a normal quality item is going to kill us the next time it happens in a regular-game zone.

I have always understood pay-to-win, and we see this in regular roleplaying games. The later books in a game are always filled with power creep, better items, and game-breaking power builds. If you pay for an extra book, you are rewarded by the company in raw power and that feeling of greatness. If you ever go back to the original book's classes and builds you feel weak, and the expansion classes call to you.

More than just your ego suffers. The game's first adventures suffer as well, as they don't feel like challenges anymore. I am sure once we load our Dragon Age party up with all this level 21 loot, once we go back to the regular game's zones our party will be overpowered and blow through every fight. We will probably lament the fact we will never find stuff as good as the DLC gear, and all of our treasure finds will feel weak and paltry. We may grow bored at the lack of challenge and the lack of gear, and we will want to head back to DLC areas just to find challenge again.

And if we ever harvest in an regular-game zone and pick up a single skin or ore we will wince and know there are better, paid places to harvest that will net us a better haul for our effort.

And so it goes. Nothing changes in the world of videogames and pen-and-paper games. If you pay for expansions, you are rewarded. On the other hand, you also ruin the balance of the original game and you lose more than you gain. How so?

Let's say your DLC is $15 and your original game is $60. By paying $15 for a small subset of better items you made the rest of that $60 game out-of-date and worthless.

Now, for a videogame you pay $15 to play a little longer, so there is a benefit to the purchase. Without that DLC, you cannot continue playing. There is a value here, you keep playing.

For a pen-and-paper game, you pay money to have new options to start which invalidate your original book, and you lose the value of the original book. So when you pay for expansion content, you lose value in your original game. With videogame, you do lose value as well in the original zones not being a challenge anymore. This hits pen-and-paper games harder, and you saw this in D&D 4th Edition game, where to play you needed to keep up with the latest book's insane power curve. You see this also in Pathfinder's later books as well.

To play with others, you need to pay up and get the latest. The 'power curve DLC' a lousy business model for players, but great for pen-and-paper publishers.

But Dragon Age? Still surviving with our playthrough, and more updates and reflections on this soon as we approach the end of the game.

Basic Fantasy: There's No Alignment System

A fantasy roleplaying game without an alignment system?

Now, I know there are many fantasy games lacking alignment systems, but to see an old-school fantasy game like this without one is a very interesting thing indeed. Basic Fantasy lacks an alignment system, the monsters have no alignment data, and the referee is free to run NPCs and monsters as he or she sees fit.

In D&D, everything is guaranteed to have an alignment. Chromatic dragons are not only chaotic, they are inherently evil. All orcs are likewise. All dark elves are lawful and evil, because they follow an evil spider god or goddess.

Got it? Good.

Really? Did I need to be told this?

I like Basic Fantasy ditching the alignment system, and the referee is free to decide how monsters and races fit into the game world without a stereotype or label automatically attached to an entire species or race.

Maybe there is a tribe of goblins that mines iron a couple of miles from the party's village that everyone gets along with. Sure, those goblins are different, but they live in the dangerous woods, and everybody gets along and the town gets the iron it needs. Maybe some of the village's traders speak goblin, or goblins live inside the town and come out at night to barter and raucously drink and break things. Maybe the town puts up with it because the business is good for everyone.

What if that red dragon up on the mountain above the village keeps to himself, and is known to only take a cow if he is hungry? He isn't evil or chaotic per-se, and the town has this legend of the dragon living there that they grow accustomed to? Maybe the dragon's presence scares off other monsters from the valley, and the townspeople kind of like having him up there. You can imagine the fun if a party of 'adventures' would have if they showed up in town saying 'we're here to kill the dragon!'

Run out of town or offered for sacrifice to the dragon?

Your call.

Question Everything

It is an interesting world more like the Brother's Grimm fairy-tales I feel, where you can't assume the motivations of something just based on its shape. Everyone is capable of good or evil, and just because something looks evil doesn't mean it is. You have to take into account motivations, situation, and personality. You have to talk, to understand, and to investigate. You have to judge a monster based on its actions instead of its race, and it becomes self-interested.

The word 'monster' is used to describe actions and intent, not color or shape.

Take the inverse role as well. Even supposedly 'good' creatures can be twisted into interesting roles once the alignment system is ditched, and the referee can apply common sense and imagination to their place in the world. A unicorn that is so fiercely protective of its grove it attacks anyone who comes near, even merchants and villagers? A cult of dark fae that worship a god of nightmares? A gold dragon that has become so greedy that it hires mercenaries and bandits to bring it more treasure, taxes roads and towns, and runs a protection racket to fill its cave higher and higher with gold.

Yes, in D&D you can ditch alignment just like this and do all of the above. But I guarantee you are going to get called on it by some players who will argue 'goblins aren't like that' or 'a unicorn would never attack innocents!' All because of an admittedly abstract and all-encompassing label called alignment. At times alignment really only feels like it exists to cause arguments.

Really, it is the referee's world, and what the referee says is how things go. That's how I play things, but really, what use is an alignment system if all it does is elicit strange looks from my players if I try to make dark elves reasonable or good monsters hostile?

Back to Basic Fantasy. Having a game that recognizes that is very interesting. Even if you use the argument that 'alignment is a guide for new players' it really doesn't have that much usefulness, because players will come into the game having watched Lord of the Rings and played other videogames that will set their expectations on what an orc is or how goblins should act, and having alignment take away a referee and group's choices on how these will act is a negative thing and not a positive one.

But, alignment is used by a referee to judge NPC reactions!

If a referee wants Sir Galahad to be a paragon of good, just play him like that. You don't need a nine-axis system for every NPC in the world telling the referee what type of person someone is, you just need a descriptive word that is often more useful that a limiting alignment choice. If this merchant is "greedy" he is greedy, and he may do things that are good or evil, depending on if it helps him earn money. In an alignment system, greed is evil, so you would probably rate him "lawful evil" if he played by the rules but cheated people for money, and that would put the merchant in an odd ideological alliance with the dark elves.

Does he go to the spider goddess' church on Sunday?

Trust me, I know how to play a greedy merchant. I don't need to know alignment. It is not useful to me. Lawful evil could mean a million things compared to the simple and expressive word of "greedy" in this situation. Even if you throw it in there, "lawful evil; greedy" it still doesn't mean much to me and it is just extra words because somebody wants to justify tagging everything with extra words to support the alignment system.

Good Always Fights Evil!

You can't really ditch alignment in D&D, because the game needs this automatic sorting bucket in which to toss the souls of the world into. The universe's cosmology is based on alignment. Deities are based on alignment. The histories of the official game worlds and kingdoms therein are based on alignments. Everything is tagged, even some pieces of equipment are more evil than others (edged weapons and poisons). If a referee goes outside that tagging the referee will get questioned, or it will be seen as a strange 'one off.'

There is another reason for alignment in D&D, and this has to do with preset motivations and a videogame-like design philosophy. It is easier to put all the bad guys into buckets. Orcs are evil. Goblins are evil. Chromatic dragons are evil. It is okay to beat them over the head and take their loot, because they are evil - the game says so.

That's what good does, right?

Yes, in a simplistic world, that is what good does. It is the same as a videogame where everything else that is moving that isn't you is a bad guy. But I don't like simplistic worlds, and I like the freedom and creativity to do what I want with a game - and not have second guessing my decisions built into the rules. More importantly, I don't want what this does to players affecting their actions in the game - I want them to think and to judge actions and intent.

If the players encounter that village full of town-friendly iron-mining goblins in my Basic Fantasy game, I want them to ask questions, think, and judge the situation based on what they see and experience. I don't want players programmed to 'see goblin, kill goblin' because 'the rules say they are evil!' They aren't so easily labeled. Pay attention to my descriptions. Stop and think. Don't let an alignment label think for you. Make your own choices based on how you want to play your character in this situation, not your alignment tag.

A paint-by-labels game is not the sort of game I run, and frankly, alignment-buckets are not the sort of help I want in a roleplaying game. The classic D&D alignment system feels like it is meant to 'grease the skids' for a hack and slash game, making the experience a simple 'us versus them' affair, and simplifying motivations so the game can be more about combat. When you eliminate the need to question motivations and actions, you can get into the next battle faster.

The Freedom to Decide

As a player, I like to have the freedom to roleplay and deal with the goblins based on how they act, not what the Monster Manual says they are. Yes, a referee in games with alignment can just do this, ignore alignment, and run the goblins this way. But the question will always be there. A new player coming in needs to be explained why the goblins aren't 'kill on sight.' Your creativity could be seen as a variant game. The game tells you 'it's your world' and then takes that back some by setting expectations on how monsters act - and players notice.

Maybe the goblins in the iron-mining village have a problem with giant burrowing beetles down in the mine the players could deal with. If they ask questions first and parlay, maybe they will be able to help. In my world, there are things that are evil, like a village-burning tribe of marauding orcs under a demon-worshiping war-chief. But I don't want them to assume all orcs are like that. That tribe could easily be evil humans burning orc villages for the same reason.

It is, in the end, a motivation thing. It is how simple you want player motivations to be. Do you just enjoy the fights and don't want entire sessions being consumed by figuring out who the bad guys are? Then yes, alignment is a useful 'us versus them' tool. Do you want a more thoughtful game where you want to focus on story, unique motivations, and have players question the world they live in? Throw alignment out and embrace freedom and creative world-building and play.

It is a personal decision, ultimately. But it is one that if you are better informed, you can make better decisions on the games you want to play, and also the parts of them that you choose to use. More importantly, you understand the motivations behind why an alignment system is used and what it does to both players and referees. What do they offer, and what limits do they impose on you?

You need to question why rules do what they do, and not blindly accept them 'because they are' or 'because they are popular.' Alignment is one of those big 'invisible systems' that are meant to control player and referee behavior, and it deserves to be examined, questioned, and understood.

The way Basic Fantasy tossed out alignment is an interesting and fascinating design choice that has more implications than saying 'it is a fantasy game without alignment.'

Dragon Age Inquisition Playthrough: Castle Seige

Wow, we almost quit before the cool part. We are continuing our Dragon Age Inquisition playthrough, and we hit the part with the castle siege. We had previously quit playing through this after a long period of grinding quests and zones, and we decided to do another last throwdown with this game.

Glad we did.

We began the castle siege part of the game, and we were pleasantly entertained by this large set-piece adventure. It was an exciting climax to the story, and we wish there could have been more of these action segments in the game, rather than the long and boring sandbox searching and questing parts in the game.

It is almost as if the sandbox parts of the game just can't compare to the story parts, and frankly while I love sandboxes, these weren't done as well as other sandbox games. It dragged the great parts of the game down, and I was wishing there was more story and less roaming. It is a hard thing to say, because I like my sandbox games and there frankly aren't enough of them, but I feel there is some truth here.

The sandboxes in this game feel large and empty, with not much going on. There aren't wars happening between mages and templars, or the good guys and the demons, and everything feels static and less alive. The zones themselves are masterpieces of world creation, pretty with weather effects and organic terrain, but they feel like they can't compare with the great story missions in this game. As a result, the entire game feels dragged down by weaker sandbox zones.

The castle siege represents some of the best work by the team, and that moment shines as one of  the great RPG action sequences in this and the last generation of console and computer RPGs. It is epic, dramatic, has lasting consequences, and it shines as a great climax to an engrossing story. I wish this part could have came earlier in the game, or the game would have even started with something like this event. We also wished the castle siege was longer, with a build up and more interactive battler parts.

We wanted to finish the story by playing this through with the pen-and-paper game, but we may just delay that for a little bit. We toughed out the boring parts and are now focusing on the story missions, and the game is rewarding us for doing so.

I still want to play a modded version of the roleplaying game, perhaps using the RPG's leveling and rules, and the videogame's powers and spells. I want to make this an epic campaign and tell our own story in this world and with this cast of characters. I will need to come up with conversions and some rules to do this, but I feel it will be a great game for everyone who wishes to join in our group's fun.

But the console game? It has been redeemed, at least a little bit, and we learned some important lessons on sandboxing and what makes for a great story adventure. There is a balance here that I feel needs to be addressed in this game, but for now, we are sticking through playing this until the end, and putting aside the optional parts for the main story line. I hope in future games they address the empty-feeling sandboxes, and find ways to insert story missions into these open and sparse spaces. As for the story missions? They are top notch and fun, and we are savoring the likely few we have left in this game.

And then, we will get to telling our own.

Star Wars Adversary Decks

Fantasy Flight came out with three sets of adversary desk for its Star Wars RPG, and they are a great tabletop resource for playing the game. They are quick NPC cards that cover minions, rivals, and PC-like opponents and allies in the roleplaying game.

As an in-game resource, I can't see how I would play without these, as they give me a quick NPC stat and skill block to quickly create a character from. With a little modification, you can swap skills and boost abilities for a customized NPC if you so desire, the baselines are solid enough that you could mod these cards for talented individuals or elite storm-trooper squads with little effort, and it sure beats flipping through the book for NPC stats.

There are three decks and they are pretty inexpensive, so they are must-buys for me. Each deck gives you twenty cards, which feels like enough value for a deck, and there are three decks focusing on imperials and rebels, citizens, and a rogue's gallery of villainy.

I would like to see new decks covering the galaxy's monsters, Jedi and Sith, pirates and spacers, and even notable NPCs from the movies. I could see these cards going off in many useful directions, and I would also love to see cards covering starship, vehicle, or equipment stats, complete with pictures and the rules for each. I would go to the dark side just to get decent starfighter stat cards, those would be a cool and useful addition and help me greatly when players hop in their X-Wings and start blasting TIEs.

Will I use these during play? Most certainly. I love little in-game referee tools like this, and I wish D&D and Pathfinder were simple and organized enough they could do useful referee's aids like this for their games. I know Pathfinder has equipment and other card add-ons, but that game feels so voluminous and large the cards don't feel like they do the game justice.

Right now there are only three decks, and after reading and sorting through these, I went to the store looking for more in the series. There aren't any more packs beyond the original three, so I am hoping these decks take off and we have a greater selection in the future. I want more of these, and I would love to see these expanded upon.

Like a second set of Star Wars RPG Dice, these are must-haves for running the game, and they are a great tool to prevent a referee from 'winging NPC stats' and playing fast-and-loose with the rules. While I can wing it in a pinch, I prefer to play by the rules in order to get the full game experience, and this includes NPC stats. A great resource, fun, imaginative, and with pictures of citizens of the galaxy that inspire and give you ideas for adventures in this universe. Recommended.

Playtest Report: Star Wars Age of Rebellion

Let's play Star Wars RPG: Age of Rebellion Beginner Game!

So we sat down to play this, put on the Star Wars music, and started to fulfill our fantasies about Rebels and Imperials blasting each other in the far reaches of space. Yes, this is the last of the intro sets we are playing for the Star Wars RPG from Fantasy Flight, and we had a great experience with the smuggler one, so we wanted to check this one out.

It also came with an extra set of dice, so we needed those too.

These are tutorial adventures meant to teach you the game and get you started, so you have to take that into consideration. The second beginner's set we tried had some major issues with the story line, but it ended better than it started, so we had our doubts about the rebel-themed boxed set.

Right off the transport shuttle we hit several major issues. Nobody plans an attack like that. The players just walked in! The first scenario assumed a plan for the characters and didn't let them really have a say in how things worked out. We felt railroaded, and the players wanted a little more freedom in how they attacked the problem of capturing the base.

Okay, referee intervention time.

I took the adventure off the rails at that point, ditched the rest of the encounters, and let the players run with the rest of the module. We lost the cool AT-ST and speeder bike fight at the end, and DarkgarX expressed some remorse at losing that fight, but overall things went well. Our diplomat did a fun disguise thing and talked with the base commander, posing as an Imperial spy. Our technicians wrecked havoc with the computer and security systems while sneaking around the base. Our soldier and pilot worked on capturing that shuttle. It was a cool Mission Impossible style take down and switcheroo, and the group had fun playing through the mission.

Did it come out better than the module? I feel it did, though we lament missing the vehicle battle. I don't think in any of these starter sets we ever got to a real vehicle or starship battle, so our knowledge of that system is probably lacking. Still, we had more fun than I feel the module would have let us have, and I don't regret calling for an intervention and taking the beginner's set off the rails and running it as a sandbox.

It struck us as an odd ending to put players in a lousy situation such as this, and force them to hold a base that is known to the Empire. The entire epilogue felt really weak for us, and given a choice, my players felt abandoning the base was the best bet. Even if the Empire itself can't acknowledge the base, someone in the Empire knows about it, and we expected retribution and the hammer of the Empire to be rapidly dropped on this place with just a handful of rebels to protect it.

It didn't feel like a great start to a long running game, so our group abandoned the base, silly rebel orders be damned. Once the main rulebook gets here we want to restart our game with a fresh situation and planet, and run these groups through a classic set of situations that we are cooking up.

Some of the characters also had little to do, most notably the pilot, and other characters felt like they didn't have a great role or clear skills to contribute (the commander web supplement character, and the tech and spy also being medics). The soldier also felt one-dimensional with the kill choices, and of all the beginner sets, this one felt like it had the most issues with the character designs not living up to the things our group wanted to try.

A high point in the game came when one of the players infiltrated the comm room, slayed one of the techs, and the base's robot walked in. The player tried to reason with the robot, and rolled a despair die on the social interaction. I sat there and had the robot give the player a speech about how humans are always like this, how they love war, and how they think violence solves every problem. The damn robot went on and on moralizing like a ham-filled actor in a Shakespeare play, and the players laughed and groaned with delight as the robot went on and on moralizing and giving a speech about how droids are so reasoned and superior.

"You. You. Humans. How typical. You think violence solves anything? You think these the actions of a civilized member of the galactic community? I think not." 

See that dwarf meeple in the picture above? That is the robot, and the group adopted the droid as a reluctant but hilarious mascot after that masterpiece performance dramatae. Yeah, expect more of his moralizing guys, you bought him.

Sometimes the dice just take you places in this game, and you have to go along for the ride. That is what I enjoy about the dice, sometimes they make something so cool or hilarious happen that the game takes a life of its own.

Overall, we enjoyed this one more than the Jedi boxed set, and till the smuggler set holds the top spot on all three of these for us. The decision to go off-rails helped a great deal, but still the setup for this campaign felt wrong, and the character designs lacked polish and utility.

We like the characters in these sets, but we wanted more. We will probably be redesigning them when the full books come, and making them our own. I also want to come up with my own 'tutorial' adventures based on our new campaign, and restart these heroes in an entirely new situation. I also would love to see some cross over between the groups, have them meet each other, and thrust them into the grand campaign of a classic game.

More on this soon. It is kinda fun to be excited about a game and planning adventures in one again. Also, this RPG has lived up to the hype, and we great about getting excited for the game and playing it. This is a rare treat for us, and one we want to savor and enjoy for quite a while.

New Traveller PDF Beta

So over at DriveThru RPG, Mongoose is putting up a new Traveller beta-test buy in ($20 witha $20 voucher off POD or PDF). The most-famous misspelling of pen-and-paper sci-fi returns yet again to grace our gaming tables, and I have a couple thoughts on this.

Now, this is an interesting development. This is supposedly like the current black-book editions of Traveller Mongoose prints, but a cleaned-up, streamlined, and bug-fixed edition of the rules. I like this approach, printing the game as PDF-only during the beta while continuing to improve the rules, and also supporting the game via an early buy-in. It admits the faults of the RPG development model while minimizing the 'dead book' syndrome most all v1.0 pen-and-paper games have.

It feel so easy to put out a pen-and-paper game today that a lot of what we get are untested and beta versions of the game, and the next edition is really the one you want to play. I am not really a fan of fixing rules in later expansion books (Pathfinder's Unchained and D&D 5's Unearthed Arcana), as this just forces me to buy another book and support that at my table as well. It has gotten to the point where the pedigree of the company has to be really stellar or I will just buy the PDF and skip the printed book. Or we will play older games or community-supported retro-clones that just work.

So, new Traveller? I have so many editions of this game that we don't play I am hesitant to jump in, honestly. This feels like a Shadowrun situation for me where I bought into an older version (4.0) and don't play it enough to warrant going out and getting a whole new edition to learn and play.

There is also Fantasy Flight's Star Wars looming over my group's play time like a small moon. And that's no small moon.

Still, I feel Traveller is worthy of our support. Mongoose supports open gaming (I don't know on the OGL status of this game, but it would surprise me if they pulled back), and open gaming with build-your own licensing is pro-community and  pro-indie, and that is a good thing worthy of praise and buying in. Perhaps this version will be built with a more mod-able and open rules structure that more games can be built from. I will probably eventually pick this up, but I don't want to buy-in just yet, let my group blast through Star Wars first, then this game looks like a fun change-of-pace to run next year when things shake out and settle down.

So I am cautiously positive about this one and looking forward to seeing how this comes out.