The Frozen Reaches

Last night we completed The Frozen Reaches, the first book of the Warpstorm Trilogy for the Rogue Trader RPG.  It took us 9 sessions, and while I don’t think we ever entirely came to terms with the system ‘crunch’, it was overall a fun time.  What follows are my reflections on this scenario and do contain some spoilers. 

The setup for this scenario is set out pretty clearly in the blurb:

“The Frozen Reaches throws the Explorers before an impending Ork invasion as they work to save the planet of Damaris... Use all your charm and influence to prepare a planet’s defences as the Ork fleets close in on Damaris. Fight the xenos in space aboard the bridge of your starship, or meet the bloody Orks in brutal hand-to-hand combat on the ground! The choices you make ensure success, or guarantee defeat. Choose wisely, and reap the rewards of your victory.”

So the explorers have a job in three acts, organise and prepare the planet, fight the siege, then take the fight to the Orks to end the threat once and for all.  It’s a nice idea - to have the characters directly involved in a massive global siege, able to spread their influence to different parts of the fight to tip the balance.  This is achieved through a series of structured missions, and a bespoke system for resolving each aspect of the siege, modified by the actions of the characters.  That seems pretty cool, and a different approach to the Star Trek style episodes of Lure of the Expanse, promising to really invest the characters in the richness and complexity of a planet.  However, in my opinion the book fails to adequately deliver on its potential.

This set-up becomes a victim of its own ambition.  The authors clearly wanted to have the explorer’s ship, and crew, have a major impact on the scenario – so a planet with a population of 3 Billion is described as having a military strength of something in the order of 150,000 including some tanks, a moon defence base, several system ships.  That means the explorers crew can make a meaningful impact if deployed to man the city walls, but it does stretch credulity a little far (at least for my group).  The moon defence base, in orbit around the planet, also seems to have some fairly obvious drawbacks in terms of being a meaningful obstacle to preventing invasion to a specific part of the planet.

In addition several other Rogue Traders are described as having responded to the planet’s distress call, and as their ships are reasonably powerful, it does seem unlikely that the explorers would actually be anything but bit players in the forthcoming events.  However, the characters are expected to discover the motives of the other Traders, and merge them into an impromptu coalition. So the scenario seeks to make the planet worth saving in terms of future profit for the explorers, but at the same time arranges events so that a Rogue Trader and their ship could significantly influence the outcome of the battle, and this comes at the expense of some in-game realism.

This could have been addressed if further details were provided – perhaps the Imperial Levy has recently been particularly heavy and stripped the planet of soldiers (picking up on the thread of simmering ambitions for independence presented elsewhere in the scenario)?  Perhaps there is an evacuation already underway, and the Imperial fleet is en-route, but the Explorers have a critical role to play in the interim.  Unfortunately there is simply not enough detail provided to facilitate this, and the GM is left to find their own meaning in the void.

In short; Frozen Reaches feels like a rushed product.  It weighs in at just 70 pages, and would have been so much stronger if it had spent more time detailing the city, the major players in it, and what happens within the city as the invasion rages (providing an additional suite of social challenges for the explorers).  A layered approach like this would have allowed a GM to run each part in as much, or as little, depth as appropriate for their group.  Nowhere is the rushed nature of this product more clearly evidenced than in the mysterious relic contained in a stasis casket, which the Bishop begs the characters to safeguard as the siege reaches its zenith.  The nature of the Relic is also apparently a secret from the GM:

“Just what really resides in the stasis casket will be revealed in future instalments of the Warpstorm trilogy…”

To conclude; The Frozen Reaches provides a fairly innovative and interesting set-up for the characters, allowing them to engage with a specific planet, and play a significant role in an epic Ork siege.  However, the GM is not furnished with enough detail to really bring any particular aspect of the scenario to life outside a narrow railroad of expected PC actions, and accordingly a large creative load is put on the GM to help this scenario deliver on its vision.  We had fun playing this scenario, but some characters (like the Navigator) were significantly disadvantaged in their potential to be useful, and the final conclusion, with outside aid coming from the Eldar, feels like an unrewarding way to repay the efforts of the characters, and their persistence with the relentlessness of the Ork attack.

Games within Games

As we make our way through The Frozen Reaches for Rogue Trader we have used the starship combat rules a little more frequently than in our last outing with this system.  These rules are interesting, as they exist as a completely separate subset to the core rules governing characters and their actions, and even the rules governing life on a starship not involved in combat.  To play these rules in the way the designers intended you need to use a grid and tokens or models to reflect the ships.  Characters then take specific roles – either direct (moving the ship through piloting rolls, and firing the weapons) or indirect – (boosting crew morale, making repairs etc.).  All of this is intended to combine into a dramatic and balanced battle which plays out like a movie, with each character getting a cut-shot of their activities during the action.

 

So does it work?  I’m a big believer in having a system which reflects the core function of the game – and for me Rogue Trader is a game about exploration and commerce, with a little diplomacy and action thrown in for good measure.  Accordingly I think that the system should reflect this, and to its credit, it does in many places by providing abstract rules for things like crew population and morale, establishing a colony, determining your cargo etc.  Shifting from this activity to a game of grid squares and tables - effectively a mini-wargame -  seems to jar with the rest of what this game is trying to achieve, not to mention being extremely time consuming.

 

My real gripe with these rules, however, is how difficult they are to reference.  A tabletop wargame (or boardgame for that matter) needs to have rules that are extremely easy to reference, unambiguous, and will ideally include examples which reference all the key activities of that game.  The Rogue Trader rules by contrast are written into the long paragraphs of text that are typical of the rest of the book.  This makes finding key rules time consuming, and even then, some of the wording is ambiguous.

 

Perhaps the greatest irony of this is that Games Workshop (whose IP is licensed in Rogue trader) are established market leaders in wargaming, and Fantasy Flight Games (who published Rogue Trader) are established market leaders in boardgaming.  So if ever there was a product which should have robust and well considered rules which optimise space combat, it should be a marriage between these formidable companies – like Rogue Trader.

 

Instead it feels like the space combat rules for Rogue Trader were hastily bolted onto the core book, as were the combat rules, and equipment – all taken from an assembly line of 40k RPG components.  A feeling reinforced by the GM screen (which for Rogue Trader includes only combat rule summaries – no skill summaries, exploration or space combat rules are in evidence).  You might argue that this situation was the result of the speed to bring this product to market – the core rules are a sizable product after all.  But Fantasy Flight has subsequently published many expansion books for Rogue Trader over several years, and had ample opportunity to revise and improve these rules (in publications like Battlefleet Koronus for example). Instead they use additional books to layer yet more complexity to an already ill-fitting system.

 

In fairness, we have enjoyed the game to this point, and the space combat rules certainly add a high level of interest to proceedings, forcing the characters to agree a joint course of action under some degree of pressure.   But as with many aspects of this game, it leaves me to wonder what might have been...

 

Can you think of any other examples of games within roleplaying games?

EPOCH in Spaaace

Yesterday I released Frontier of Fear, a collection of 4 science fiction scenarios for the survival horror roleplaying game EPOCH.   It is the first of what I hope will be several scenario collections, and it’s been an interesting, and thoroughly rewarding experience.

For me, science fiction and horror movies have a natural synergy.  The central theme of many of these films is an exploration of the unknown, leading to the discovery of an otherness which may prove hostile, or simply ambivalent to the plight of those who encounter it.  Yet in both cases it is the very human nature of the protagonists which ultimately condemns and, upon occasion saves, the characters.  In these films the characters, their strengths and weaknesses, and their relationship with one another, adds the all-important context for an encounter with the unknown.

For me, the elegance of Frontier of Fear is that while, as a player, you will likely recognise very familiar and classic science fiction tropes present in these scenarios – the act of creating a character and developing and exploring relationships with the other characters, while also trying to ensure your character’s survival with an interesting back-story, will keep the experience fresh and enjoyable.  At least, that was my experience in the scenarios I playtested for this collection.

I’m very grateful to everyone who contributed to Frontier.  Igor Divjak, Liam Jones and Andrew Millar have crafted some fantastic EPOCH scenarios, applying their very considerable creative talents to create an experience which I think will deliver some very satisfying gaming.  Andrew Smith did some remarkable, and invaluable work editing on a tight timeframe, while Doug Royson breathed some real life into the collection, providing a series of fantastic and evocative pieces of art.

I’m also grateful to all the playtesters, who spent some time and energy helping us take the rough edges off these scenarios.  The final product, I think, speaks for itself.

If you'd like a copy to review, please drop me a line.

What's Cooking?

I've been fairly busy of late, doing layouts, formatting cards, writing and editing text and a variety of other small jobs in the service of my horror roleplaying game, EPOCH.  Other people have been busy too - folks have been contributing scenarios, editing, producing art and layout at an almost alarming rate!  My sincere thanks to everyone who's taking this journey along with me.

Below is a list of what's currently in the works for EPOCH (cross-posted from the EPOCH blog).  All dates are still fairly tentative:

• Revised EPOCH PDF including all new card art (Q1, 2013)
• Print on Demand EPOCH softcover book (Q1, 2013)
• Print on Demand EPOCH card deck (Q1, 2013)
• Frontier of Fear, a collection of 4 EPOCH sci-fi scenarios (Q1, 2013)
• EPOCH treatment of The Cold Shore a scenario of 19^th century shipwreck (Q1, 2013)
• As yet unnamed World War 2 EPOCH scenario collection (Q2, 2013)
• As yet unnamed collection of Boston Crime scenarios for EPOCH (Q2 or Q3, 2013)
• As yet unnamed collection of Haunted House scenarios for EPOCH (Q2 or Q3, 2013)
• EPOCH: The Experiment Continues, an EPOCH companion containing optional rules, scenario writing advice, mini-series rules, new cards and more scenarios (Q2 or Q3, 2013) 

Questions or comments welcome as always.

Fear is Contagious

I am extremely pleased to note that Liam has added another EPOCH scenario to the Kapcon lineup.  This means that scenarios using EPOCH now number around 10% of the unique ‘con games at Kapcon 22 and account for roughly 8% of the total sessions run at the ‘con (excluding Day of Games).  It’s now possible to play an EPOCH scenario in every session of the ‘con except round 6.  That’s a pretty decent effort all things considered, and I think it shows how much fun folks have had playing EPOCH in recent months.

In fairness, EPOCH is specifically designed for ‘con outings, so if there was anywhere that the game would get play - this would be patient zero.  The game works to shape player expectations and allow for cooperative play between players and GM while preserving a largely traditional format.  However, I think it’s fair to say that it’s hard to visualise the way the game works just by reading the rules.    

There are lots of moving parts (Audience Ballots, Flashbacks Outcome and Hero/Zero cards etc.) in EPOCH which mean, I think, that it’s hard to get a sense of the overall picture of game-play.  I guess what I really need is a sound recording or a you-tube video of an actual play, or something similar… is this a good idea?

In either event, the Kapcon EPOCH line-up looks like this: 

Round 1: Red Gold 
Round 2: Fever Pitch, Pleasures of the Flesh 
Round 3: Space Station Icarus 
Round 3.5: EPOCH After Dark 
Round 4: Death in the Streets 
Round 5: Price Slash, Red Gold, Space Station Icarus

 
I hope you’ll come along and play a session.