But moving on to this surprising inventory:

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition (my own fantasy system of choice)

Character creation.

For a so-called “classless” game, there is a gob-load of “careers” to slog through. For new players, I can only imagine this would be overwhelming, as it still can be to me, and I’ve ran it a number of times. Say what I will about D&D, Fighter, Thief, Cleric, Wizard has a certain simplicity, and even the more current 10 or so class framework with Paladins and such is still a good mix of manageability and variety. Warhammer’s Rat-Catcher and Toll-Keeper, while surely historically accurate, are completely irrelevant and definitely not worthy of being actual significant player career choices, set apart by themselves. There should be maybe a Peasant class (which there is in a later bit) and sub-types given and broken down into things like this if a player wants, but it would still use the same template). This would severely curb the authors’ fetish for careerizing everything under the sun into an adventuring motif, and cut the career part of character creation in half, at LEAST. You could still buy a Small But Vicious Dog as a pet or a special ability or something.

Stats.

Oh boy, a max of 2D10 + 20 for all my stats if I’m a human. Out of 100. So up to 40%. So not quite half. Neat… You know, “gritty” is one thing, but incompetent is another. Combat is already still potentially deadly at any level of achievement, proficiency, experience or armament, so why give me less than a 50/50 shot to hit the broad side of a barn? And don’t say that the enemies and other citizens also have that, that doesn’t help, that just means EVERYBODY will be rolling dice a LOT and saying “Damn I missed AGAIN too, your turn”. I think this was a horrible, HORRIBLE mis-calculation and mistake on the part of the creators. It takes SO long to up stats significantly, and they’re split into either your main stats or your secondary stats. You also have to choose to do that instead of buy abilities.

Those secondary stats, which are the tens digit of your main stats (Toughness Bonus, which reduces damage, is taken from your Toughness) are also superflous. Just ALWAYS use the tens column and you won’t even have to have this on the sheet, just look half an inch up and see that your toughness is 32 and know your TB is 3. Presto! But no, you can increase these, which begs the question – what the f*k is Toughness for?!

Percentiles.

Yeah it’s 100% but I don’t like it. It’s not a roll and sum system, it’s not even a count successes. It’s roll two dice and read them, it’s essentially purely random, more random than random, if you know what I mean, and if you don’t, I’m not going to go into the math. It’s not bad, and if you have a 72% Weapon Skill, you’re still going to hit a lot of the time, but it feels so cold and spartan, there’s no dominance like 5D6 in Weapon Skill, where you just know you’re gonna roll a shitload at some point and be like “Oh yah, that’s 52, out of 19, suck it!” Their critical hit system is a mess, you reverse the dice for hit locations or use doubles or – it’s complicated and steps over its own feet and my group tends to use the old BRP system of 10 or less is a critical hit, or 10% of your skill is, depending which is better or more dramatic at the time and/or the old Warhammer every time you roll a 6 (well 10 now that is uses D10 for damage) it “explodes” and you roll an extra die – Ulric’s Fury I think it’s called now. But the system isn’t consistent, to make skill checks, you don’t roll percentile, it’s a roll and add skill bonus setup – way to keep a mechanic simple and intuitive for us, jerkwads.

Is this another hatchet job? Yes. Why? Because I can. Because it’s true. Because I’m playing in two play-by-post AD&D 3.5 games right now on what I call “The Mormon Forums”, actually International Discussions RPG/Member Wars section, and my half-orc rogue just lost all 6 HP in two turns and went down, in one game.  Because I participated in a realtime virtual tabletop session a few weeks ago, and spent an hour and a half AFTER COMBAT trying to figure out how to get our dwarf cleric out of the dead giant’s mouth and THEN how to extract the giant’s teeth from him, causing him damage every time we did – BEFORE we even got to the “looting”.

“But, JP,” you may say, “that sounds like shitty GM’ing!”, and you’d be right and then I’d tell one of your parents or legal guardians that you’re using naughty words. But I’ve had worse GM’s (though not by much), but he couldn’t DO half that shitty GM’ing if he didn’t have an abortion of a gaming monstrosity that encouraged that kind of ridiculous fiddly pixelbitching. Can you blame a game system for the user misusing it? Yes, if it is made badly enough. Some would say you can’t blame someone for misusing a tool. You couldn’t blame a hammer’s manufacturer for someone using it to kill someone else – that’s true, but you could blame the maker of a frisbee with deadly razor blades that squirt acid and shoot laser beams for killing a crowd of ten people.  God, that’s awesome – where was I going with this? Oh, yes…

So What is Wrong with D20?

Needlessly overcomplicated, intimately inter-dependent to the point where it almost gets to the point one rule refers to another rule that relies on the rule you’re referring to in the first place.  “Help! I’m at the corner of First and First, how did I get here?!”

Everything needs a Feat or you get a massive penalty to do something most other games foolishly think heroes or even normal people do can without tripping over their own feet and impaling themselves with a plastic ice cream spoon. Where did you get that anyway, cheater? You only start with 3D6 gold pieces, which is actually enough to feed 3 medieval families for a year each, but in D20 land can only buy half a cow. Need to sneeze? Better have the Sneeze Feat  or you’re out of luck and your head will just implode for 10D12 damage. How do you get them? You level up and get them arbitrarily, even though you did nothing during all the intervening time to work toward getting them.

Sorry you can’t use a sword, you’re a wizard. It’s against wizards’ religion to use weapons that can provide effective self defense and don’t make them look like weenies. You memorize a certain number of spells per day and have to sleep to get them back, or read them off a scroll, which usually disintegrates – just like all the famous stories and movies! Oh wait… You can’t read or detect magic until you cast a spell that lets you read or detect magic – since you cast a spell, isn’t IT magic? Shouldn’t it be glowing and detecting itself?

Clerics have actually improved somewhat from how they used to be treated but they’re not in any better positions than wizards, really.

Weapons in D20 systems have more stats than ACTUAL real-life weapons. That’s too many.  Why do weapons do less damage to larger creatures? It’s almost like they feel it less, or they have more Hit Points. Oh wait… THEY ALREADY DO.

Attacks of Opportunity! Everything you do gets them! Whisper to your friend? ZAP! Move 10′ and attack? POW! Backstab? GANK! Breathe? AoO!  If you don’t happen to have a micrometer on you, just assume that your character can move one foot in any direction, then cut that in half to be safe, and now you can perform any single action, knowing you won’t draw any AoO. Probably.

Critical Hits are awesome – except when they’re not! Except when it looks like a critical hit but NO it wasn’t after all. You have to make TWO successful hit rolls in a ROW, with one having to be 19 or better. That seems very realistic, seeing as how this is being done on one twenty sided die, which generates a purely random non-bell-curve distribution comparable to the size of the Gulf of Mexico – thank goodness they’re all about realism.

McMagic Items. Sunrods. Thundersticks. Gluebobs, Taffyjerks. Why go adventuring to find cool magic items when you can buy them off the shelf at your local general store like you’re stocking up on batteries or ramen noodles?

You’re good at what I say you’re good at.  Level up, here’s your new stats! Wait, what? No, I’d like to up these things over here. What – those – oh no, I don’t think so. You’re going to take Improved Extreme Ballroom Dancing and like it.

WFRP3 Character Sheet

Well, it’s February of 2010 now, and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition has been out since about November of 2009, so roughly three to four months – so how has it been received?

Rodney Thompson, an actual game designer over at WFRP’s (and everyone else’s) main competitor for dominant fantasy RPG, Wizards of the Coast (D&D), wrote up quite a comprehensive WFRP3 review and his thoughts on running the new release, and in a surprise twist, most of it was quite a glowing endorsement.

the Altdorfer Correspondent does an interesting “unboxing”, for those interested in approaching the system from a step-by-step “I am opening the box.  I am looking inside the box…” method.

Although a bit late in my posting, Fantasy Flight Games in January, announced the Game Master’s Toolkit, which cost the, I guess not outrageous sum of $30.00, and which looks pretty slick, like the rest of their line, and promises more cards and other such things, which I guess if you’re a fan of the new system, is good news.  Also check out this Amazon.Com offering for WFRP2′s super rare Career Compendium – $80 to $132? Are you joking?!

The iN8sWoRld owner, apparently Nate (n8) Berry, wrote a brief blurb on WFRP3 (and linked to ZS, thanks Nate!), similar to mine, relating disappointment and even going so far as to rate it as a “FAIL”.  I’m actually not sure I fully agree with this, as I’ve been rethinking my position and getting used to the idea of the new format for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.  If you’re talking about the total rewrite of system and play style and outrageous price, then yes I totally echo Nate’s view.

From what I can see around the net, at the various communities, big and small, and publishers and reviewers, it is still a split, but not an even one, as Third Edition WFRP seems to be gaining acceptance, albeit grudging in some cases, plus the new supporters and customers they’ve gained from their glossy new marketing and simplistic approach to play, so while we can complain about “betrayal” (as I did), I guess I can’t argue with their motives from a commercial point-of-view, as they’ve gained new fans and converted some old ones, which was exactly their intent.

Thinking back over what I’ve read about WFRP3, although I would never pay what is being charged, I have to admit that WFRP2 books sold for about $30 on average, and if they put 4 books in this boxed core set, that would be $120, and they sell it for $99, so I guess it actually even gives a slight, very slight, discount – but it’s all in one lump, rather than one supplement or resource at a time, which is just so prohibitive, I don’t know how they sold any.

That said, I understand the concept of modularizing everything into cards, easily accessible, even photocopyable for multiple games and players – keep your spells and weapons and such in your own little Player/Character notebook/pouch so you have all the pertinent rules for that particular feature (whatever it may be) right there at the table in front of you so you don’t have to flip through game tomes.  I just wish there was some other way to have done this, because no matter how convenient it is AT the time, it doesn’t change the fact you’ve taken something that takes, at the minimum, some dice, a piece of paper or two, and a pencil, and magically transformed it into the equivalent of Monopoly, or worse, Axis and Allies or Risk, component-wise.

So I applaud the risky repackaging and format for the rules and how the players access them, but just can’t behind a lot of the other aspects of WFRP3, and although they’re no longer the majority, a lot of other people can’t either.

I have to qualify my D20 “hate” a little or else I’ll seem really closed-minded. I don’t mind the BASIC system itself, the essential mechanics, a D20 as the usual task success/attack roll, with some percentile thrown in for some skills (I think). That part of it is really almost no different than Redbox D&D, which was the first RPG I bought or played and really is a pretty solid if simplistic system. I do prefer, for the most part, systems with more of a bell curve in their dice mechanic, as any number is as likely to come up as another on a D20, most hits are pure, independent luck, not centered or weighted toward any sort of basic competency.

AD&D 2^nd Edition was pretty good and very similar, but with the addition of weapon and non-weapon proficiencies and extra, but usually optional, more detailed rules, most of which I doubt ever got used by most people, definitely not me.  I was harshly disappointed and averse to D&D 3 and 3.5 when I saw them – WAY, way too complicated. Skills, Feats, Class Skills, Epic Levels, the list goes on. My main problem with skills and feats is their sheer number and style of minutia, requiring  “Tumbling” in order to “tumble”, or else you get outrageous penalties, sometimes for more than one part of the action. I hate that kind of infinitesimally specific breakdown or division of things which common sense should be able to cover in most cases.

I just find that absolutely ridiculous and needlessly complex and missing the point of HIGH FANTASY, which I feel is (or at least was) D&D’s default “mode”.  I always hated the checking for traps every ten feet, especially REQUIRING the thief player to specifically state that each time. That sort of thing complicates and draws out the length of the game but adds nothing to it and in fact detracts from the exciting and adventurous parts.  So when 3.5 came out and focused strongly on all these new miniscule but vital rules, AND put the spotlight back on tactical movement and what I’m pretty sure is referred to as “pixelbitching” (“Sorry, you didn’t say specifically you were searching the third row of stones”), I threw up my hands and said “Nope.”

4^th Edition I’m not sure about – I haven’t seen it played, but have looked through it and it looks similarly complicated but with seemingly less character options, and even more focus, if that is even possible, on tactical movement and such, making it seem one step down from a complicated board game.  I had Heroquest and Dark World and Dragon Strike, and they weren’t perfect, and were too simple, but I’d still prefer them to this kind of thing.

There is a renaissance of sorts going on in RPGs the past few years, as you might know, with retro and oldschool games being quite popular, more or less being “improved” version of original or Redbox D&D, to the point where they look nearly identical, intentionally, even down to the character sheet with the shield on it for AC, and the art and design style and layout of the book and module covers. Castles and Crusades, Labyrinth Lord, Hackmaster (from the Knights of the Dinner Table comic I think) and a few others are all variations of original D&D, and have met with some success by people who yearn for simpler systems, or just use them as one shot nostalgia sessions.  On the upside, with most of these, all the old scenarios for D&D and even AD&D (and 3E too I guess) are all closely compatible with these retro systems, so there already exists a huge amount of pre-written material, including supplements.

If I had to sum up Wushu in one example, it would be: Think of movies with Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Jason Statham, and to a lesser extent (because they’re a bit more gritty and not as high-flying), Steven Seagal, Chuck Norris, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Jean Claude Van Damme.  Fast-paced, not exactly bogged down in plot, not all that realistic, but full of exhilarating stunts and action.

Wushu takes an interesting approach to gaming, using a novel dice mechanic tied in with what the author calls The Principle of Narrative Truth, which says that whatever the players describe, happens – there’s no roll to determine if it did or not, it just is. This is usually very counterintuitive to gamers who are used to saying their characters are trying to do something, then rolling dice to see if they succeed. This PoNT switches up the order of these steps, to an extent.

Combat is a big part of Wushu, in fact one could say the whole thing is based on it, being an action movie game, so I’ll use it for the following example. On a player’s turn, he announces what he wants his character to do, in relation to the current “scene” and enemies. Instead of “I attack” or even “I attack the bad guy with my sword”, players are encouraged to come up with simplistically detailed, over-the-top, cinematic action – the more embellishments you include, the more dice you get to add to your dice pool for your action, as adjudicated by the GM. You always get 1 die just for performing an action.

The boring old “I attack the crook” gives you one normal six-sided die (the whole system is D6 dice pool based), while “I take a running dive and slide across the hood of the car, firing both pistols the entire time, and do a roll off the vehicle, landing on my feet, dropping both empty clips.” This gives you dice for every “segment” or “detail” of the action, as follows (even if a detail isn’t directly an “active” one):

I take a running dive = 1 die
and slide across the hood of the car = +1 die
firing both pistols the entire time = +1 die
and do a roll off the vehicle, landing on my feet= +1 die
dropping both clips = +1 die

The challenging part is that, if you remember, this is designed as a tabletop face-to-face game, and your full action is allowed to be only be as long as it takes you to narrate it without having to stop or pause for a couple of seconds. If you have to say “Um”, stop and take a breath or hit a “period” in the sentence, your action is cut and complete where it is, encouraging players to come up with short, succinct and exciting actions that can all fit into one brief bit of narration.

The above action nets the player 5 dice to roll. The roll is against your relevant stat, so if you have a 4 (stats only go to 5), every one of your dice that come up 4 or less is a “success” or degree of effect. If you have no successful rolls, the action still happens just the way the player narrated, including the reaction of the enemies, but it has no appreciable or significant effect on the scene or the enemies’ Threat Rating, which is a collective measure of how much enemy resistance the player faces.

Threat Rating is an abstract stat to represent an also abstract number of “mooks” (nameless, faceless henchman that tend to die or get knocked out in droves by heroes) – you don’t generally fight “12 kobolds”, but the quantity-non-specific “a gang”, “a large group” or some other wording.

In the same way, multiple enemies may be specified in an action, with no penalty, because they are just part of the general mass and don’t have individual stats, so it is all for color. In general, in a scene, there is no concrete “distance” or relative spatial location for anything – you don’t have to get “closer” to one enemy unless specifically stated, and you can target anyone in the scene, and include whatever items are the whole scene into your actions.

Mooks also don’t get their own attack turns. In general, each player has 1 automatic attack against them on their turn, which determines how the player wants to divide their action dice pool up between Yin (attack) and Yang (defense), because if you fail to defend yourself, you take 1 Wound, and when you reach 3, you’re knocked out/killed.

Scenes can also have Threat Ratings or their equivalents for things besides Mooks, such as dangers with time limits or some other requirement; for example, a ticking time bomb may have an Explosion Rating, that requires a player to get a success to reduce the Explosion Rating, until it gets to 0. But this explosive also has a Countdown counter, which ticks off 1 point per turn, and when it reaches 0, it explodes, so the players need to reduce the Explosion Rating to 0 before the Countdown reaches 0. You can also have an Info or some other Rating, where players may have to get enough good rolls to find relevant information in a library, again possibly with a Countdown rating to beat before some horrible event happens.

Named Villains in Wushu stand apart from mooks in that they are more like Player Characters with their own stats and attacks, and the GM narrates their stunts for them, against the players. This is the more involved aspect of Wushu, in that in general, PC vs. Named Villain fights involve alternating details by each side, so a player that starts off “I make a leaping elbow strike to Brazz Brazz Bearclaw’s head”, then the GM responds with “But the steel plate in his skull absorbs most of the impact, and he grabs Johnny Cool and slides him down the bar”, etc. once each side has generated about 4 or 5 dice, they then divide them up into their respective attack/defense pools, and then roll, and apply the effects.  To me, PC vs. Named is the least intuitive and most requiring narrative cooperation and compromise, which some players might have trouble with (I know I do).

There are no predefined stats in Wushu – no Strength or Vitality or Intelligence. Players are given a certain amount of points to spread between however many very broad stats they want, usually about 4, with no stat exceeding 5, and named whatever they want. In general, they need one attack stat of some kind, whether it’s called “Guns”, “Fisticuffs”, “Ko-Thraxian Martian Kickboxing” or “Ninja Buttkicking”, and the other stats should be whatever the player feels defines their character and could be of use, such as “Nimble as a Cat”, “Genius Scientist”, “Consulting Detective” or “Studmuffin”. As you can see, stats are pretty freeform and take some thinking and decisions on the part of the players and GM, though the player may argue his case for using a stat to perform a seemingly unrelated action, and if he can come up with good or entertaining reasoning, the GM usually allows it. “Of course my Cake Decorating skill will come in handy in this fight in the warehouse! Here’s how…”

If you think this treatment of attributes and stats, that most people assume are a hard-and-fast rule in a roleplaying game, is strange, Wushu also handwaves something else always assumed to be hard-coded: money and gear. There is absolutely no equipment list, no weapons, armor, or anything else. Characters are equipped with whatever logic and cinematic license (and the GM) dictates – in general, unless it comes down to something very specific that can make or break a vital scene or action, it’s generally available, within reason. No writing down “wallet, belt, clothing, pocket knife, .357 Magnum”, etc. unless you want to, of course, and that can be fun, but isn’t usually necessary. Unless singled out, equipment is abstracted, to the point where even your weapons are mere details used for color – want twin katanas? Combat shotgun? Claw gauntlet? Bare hands? They all do the same, so players can concentrate on their character and gameplay instead of quibbling over buying boxes of ammo or a notepad and paper.

Lastly, there is the Player Veto (the GM has his own also but is encouraged not to use it unless absolutely necessary), which is simply, if the majority of players don’t like another player’s narrated action, it is overruled and he must come up with something else, period. “I kill all the enemies, hack the mainframe and take all the money for myself” is not likely to go over well, and the other players have the power to cut such a ridiculous action off at the knees. Like almost all RPGs, Wushu is a game of cooperation and equal “screen time” and fun for all players.

Wushu is available in PDF form, and there are a few supplements for it, allowing you to get a little different results in each, such as Wire-Fu (for styles like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Car-Fu (for modern car-chase action), etc. though from what I can tell, there isn’t all that much different in them for the most part, except a few genre-specific rules or mechanics have been added in. I bought original Wire-Fu for $5.00 and I’d say it was worth it, as I printed it out (not that long a document), but the best news is that there is an open-source free version that the author has made available, called Wushu Reloaded, which contains pretty much the whole system and rules, which is usable without having to buy anything, but which can help someone decide if they like the system if they do want to purchase a full version, which does have a few extras and tips.

Wushu is the game system I’ve used for about 95% of the forum roleplaying games I have GM’d, and it is nearly perfect for online play, and I’ve had lots of glowing reviews from the players, who really enjoyed it. Part of their enjoyment though, was the incorporating their narration (everybody is an aspiring writer it seems), directly into the game mechanics themselves. This is where I have the most trouble; people like to write three paragraphs of actions and details (I’ve even had some write in entire flashbacks and inner turmoil), which makes it extremely hard as a GM to just grab the relevant details or embellishments and reward them with the proper number of action dice.  The GM needs the players to write out simple but exciting actions with good details, as in the example I gave above, which the GM can easily pick apart to determine to determine the number of dice rolled. Online, the GM usually has to roll the dice for the players as well, because otherwise everybody would have to post their actions, then he’d post and announce how many dice each got, then they’d all have to post their rolls, then he’d finally be able to resolve and post all the results, which would really bog down the game.

All in all though, free or $5.00, I consider Wushu a total no-brainer for a great almost-zero-prep, pick-up-and-play game for when you’re not wanting to keep track of every iron ration or check for traps every ten feet, but just want to kick teeth in and blow things up!

http://www.examiner.com/x-6911-RPG-Examiner

RPG Examiner is actually a sub-site of Examiner.Com, which has a multitude of subsites and specialist authors for each section, similar to About.Com. But this doesn’t mean the quality of the RPG Examiner is sub-par, as this current author, Tresca, is a professional in the RPG industry, so his posts, reviews, suggestions and other writing can be considered to be very likely useful and relevant to the needs of GMs and Players – at least I have found them to be so.

His close to 300 posts are presented more or less in standard fashion, depending on the subject and approach or stance he’s taking, and whether it’s more for GM or Player, or overall industry view, but he has some interesting insights in some of his work, and at the very least, if some of his stuff isn’t unique, it generally can include some of the up and coming or current trends in gaming that we might not otherwise know about for months.

I also recommend checking out the author (at this time), Michael Tresca’s own blog, in the Bio section of RPGE, which has a few near-commercial quality freebie supplements he has written himself.

Seriously, does anyone remember when you had RPGHost bookmarked because it contained a massive amount of RPG related resources, the most I’ve ever seen in one place, especially if you include the links to other associated and just normal reference sites?

Why do I even still have it bookmarked, you can’t even submit or get files, RPGSheets 3.0 was supposed to “go live” a month ago.

I loved RPGHost, not the prettiest or most streamlined site but holy shoyte – the sheer amount of information, things written and shared for free by other RPG enthusiasts, would-be writers and just normal people with some solid ideas for adventures – and you yourself could be one of those people, and get feedback from others. Character sheets by the wheelbarow full, items and weapons, etc.

I can’t list everything RPGHost had, that made it one of the most valuable and legitimate RPG resources I had bookmarked. Now this RPGLife, with spam/hacker friendly website technology, the forums mostly consistently work and only give errors about 40% of the time.

The rest of the site, it’s a crap shoot – some links and pages will load just fine, like Blogs and some others – some links go to a blank page or are broken completely, and there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. Submit files is apparently frozen solid, nobody can upload anything because it was being overrun with spam and advertising somehow, so, unable to get proper filters in place, RPGLife just deactivated and removed all links to the Files sections, with no explanation or indication of when or even if that portion of the site wil be back.

I don’t have any idea what coding RPGLife is using but it is utterly worthless – don’t try to be clever or unique, just get a solid Content Management System like Drupal, Xoops, e107, Nuke, SOMETHING that is proven and has support and has some precautions already in place.

It is obvious RPGLife was constructed as an “income stream” style site, which is fine IF it provides proper resources and information, but if it doesn’t, it is simply ugly and pretentious. Somehow reviews and articles are still being written, in the midst of the castle falling into ruins around the writers’ ears. I stand amazed.

Source: http://www.rpglife.com

Rating: F

Thanks to the F.A.T.A.L. tabletop role-playing game, known alternately as either Fantasy Adventure to Adult Lechery, or From Another Time, Another Land. Neither one makes it a better game, sadly.

I wanted to see if it could be done, if a character could be made, without cutting a LOT of corners, and in fact, it can, and moreso, none of it was actually all that involved, it was just tedious and a long process (won’t get those hours of my life back)  – I do admit rolling 1D10,000,000 was beyond ridiculous, but luckily the online dice roller I found was able to do it – I have no idea how many D10 that would be to get that max.

Gromdar Ballparts
Male, Young Adult, Half-Orc, Age 18, 75″(6’3″), 214 lbs.

Physique 114.125
Physical Fitness 141.5
Strength 136
Bodily Attractiveness 72
Health 107

Charisma 100.25
Facial 129
Vocal 67.5
Kinetic 101.5
Rhetorical 103

Dexterity 101.375
Hand-Eye Coordination 40.5
Agility 133.5
Reaction Speed 90.5
Enunciation 141

Intelligence 108.875
Language 119
Math 98
Analytic 94
Spatial 124.5

Wisdom 102.625
Drive 88
Intuition 103
Common Sense 85.5
Reflection 134

Base Life Pts 22

Disposition Mods -25 Ethnicality and -50 Morality
Temperament Mods -50 Sanguine and -25 Melancholic
Disposition (Ethics/Morals) Neutral w Moral
Temperament: Sanguine 11
Choleric 73
Melancholic 41
Phlegmatic 18
Overall Temperament Choleric-Melancholic
Piety Points 9 (believes in a god but doesn’t care)

Birthday 12-24-5082
Birth Status illigitimate, bastard (-2 Soc Cls)
Birthplace village
Social Class peasant
Literacy Illiterate
Money 18 GP
Siblings 3 sisters, 3rd born
Marital Status unhappily married
Languages Black Speech

Offspring: single (out of 1d10,000,000: 9,074,942)
Offspring Gender: female
Family Occupation Hierophant, out of 146 occupations
Personal Occupation Level 1 Inititate
Skill Pts 46
Skills *handwaved*, out of 211 skills

Starting Items, 1 bookcase, 4′x1′x8′
-2 tent for two humans
-3 gloves, leather
-4 bracers, leather
-5 shirt
Beverage 1/2 gal bottle of wine
Food, 1 meat chunk: 1/2 lb, walnuts: 1 lb, 1 lb caviar

Animals: camel, adult male slave
Transport: chariot, barge (he owns quite a bit of stuff)
Weapons: polearm: poleax, broken bottle
Armor: none

Example Chant: 15 chars (. . . U D . M E . T O . W H I E)
Magic Item: ointment of magnetic attraction

Most Attractive Feature: Waist (what a … sexy waist?)
Most Repulsive: Crotch (considering its dimensions, I concur)
Skin: Greenish Tan
Hair color: dirty blonde
Hair Length: 23-30″ or lower back
Hair Thickness, Type: medium thickness, straight
Eye Color: brown
Vision: near-sighted, 600 feet (-20 Aim, Sight)
Characteristic: distinct eyebrows, prominent arch
And now the strange:

Sexuality: strongly heterosexual (94)
Debauchery: gives oral sex (oh how controversial!)

Areola Diameter: 2″
Areola Hue: difficult to identify (err…wha? why?)
Cup Size: A (if needing to dress up as a female half-orc I guess, no doubt that’s come up)
Nipple Length: 1/2″
Tongue: 1/2″ (Ol’ Tiny Tongue they called him)
Anal Circumference Potential: 5-6″
Manhood, Length: 8 1/2″
- Circumference: 8 1/4″ (! almost same around as long !)

Foot Size: 11-12″
Handedness: left
Head Circumference: 25.1″(important when looking for bitchin’ hats)

Since he’s not a female, I didn’t need to determine Hymen Resistance, Vaginal Depth Potential, etc. Pity.

And it only took two and a half hours – cheap at twice the price. Thank god for Excel and an excellent online die roller. And Pandora’s tunes. No way I was trying to figure out how to roll randomly for skills or spells or anything, half the charts have no dice roll prefixes. I added in a bunch of random items for him, just to see what he would wind up with, and so the camel, slave, bookcase, etc.

So there he is, in all his fantasy adventure lecherous glory. “It’s the best roleplaying game that I have seen”, in that this guy might *almost* be halfway interesting to play in pretty much any other system on the planet, at any time in history.

I cannot imagine even an attempt at spellcasting or combat.

Just one more reason why FATAL is something that should never have existed, but does, and it is brought up now and again at RPG.NET, and more people, thinking, “how bad can it be, all this being warned away is ridiculous”, come away with a little bit of their soul having died. It is truly a magical thing.

My FS character sheet thread in the official Feng Shui forums: http://forum.atlas-games.com/viewforum.php?f=5 and the popular character sheet itself: Jade Version (pictured left). Note it does take some time to print on some computers/printers.

Next, the general summary plot “cards” for the Baptism of Fire scenario (Eating Counter): http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B6bQD6P0YsOGZjQ3NDFiZTYtYjc5MS00YjAwLWFjZjctMTllMGRiMWYyNDg4&hl=en

Thisis the establishing setup “newspaper article” for BoF/the Eating Counter: http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B6bQD6P0YsOGZGFhNzUyYWYtMmQwMC00YzhhLWFiNWUtYmZlYzUyMjVmN2Mw&hl=en

My summary of two other groups’ games of this scenario: http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AabQD6P0YsOGZGZzOTZkM3RfN2YybmdwNGNz&hl=en

via Facebook | My Feng Shui Stuff.

PS: I updated the custom character sheet a little, basically tiny cosmetic changes including different stock backgrounds (not that these contribute much or matter, just variety): blank, papyrus, parchment, marble, jade (dark green marble).

Basic Blank White (low ink use)
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B6bQD6P0YsOGMmViYWY3ODAtYjU4ZS00YTg5LWIxZjktOWEwZTVjOGNhMWRj&hl=en

Deluxe – Parchment
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B6bQD6P0YsOGOGRiYjI0ZTItZDVhOS00NjZiLTgzYzgtZDg1MGM2YWM3ZmY3&hl=en

Deluxe – Papyrus
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B6bQD6P0YsOGMzgyOWEzOGYtN2UxMy00YTQ0LTk2MzItMDk1ZjM3ODA0Yjgz&hl=en

Deluxe – Marble
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B6bQD6P0YsOGNzU4YTJlM2QtODE3Ny00ZTI2LWJmYzgtMDFmZTc4YmFmM2I5&hl=en

Deluxe – Jade
http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B6bQD6P0YsOGYWMyZmFlNTUtNGEzZS00YzZhLTk0NWItOGNhNWI0YzRiNjhl&hl=en

To download all sheets in one .zip archive, click here: Feng Shui RPG Custom Character Sheet Archive (archive contains additional sheets not listed above)

I hope they prove useful! =)  -JP

This GURPS Update is, dated, to say the least, looks like 3rd Edition maybe? I never did wind up playing even one game of GURPS though I liked the modular and very open structure of the game.

Same with the FASA Star Trek game – I made a ton of characters, used their quite awesome tables to come up with entire solar systems and the planets in them… but I never managed to run it, nor play it.

Another one I inherited, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG, based on the comic books, before the cartoons and such – I and a friend stayed up til 5 in the morning, and I uttered the phrase “My monkey has a strength of 2″, at which point another friend woke up, threw a pillow at me and growled “GO.TO.BED!” Never got to play this one either.

Super Squadron I actually bought, new, from a gamestore in Tulsa. Reading through it, I remember attempting to convince myself that I liked the rules and could see how it made sense to roll up entirely random characters, including powers. I don’t think I believed me, as I never ran or played this.

Marvel Heroes I also didn’t ever run or play but the system was certainly more user-friendly than DC Heroes. I’ve got a buttload of little cardboard superhero counters though!

Car Wars I bought from a friend at a garage sale for $3.00. He and I tried a number of times to run just one simple car chase and combat but found the rules and recordkeeping just entirely too much work. I did enjoy, for some reason, building my own car and worrying about how many power plants it had.

The Chill Companion, presumably, really opened the door for 2nd edition Mayfair Chill by providing a number of new optional rules including Resolve Points and modified fear checks, new disciplines of the Art, etc. Sadly, I only got to run one very brief game of chill and it was before I got this book.

Oh look – DC Heroes! The most memorable thing about this game was how long I spent translating the Action Points of speed that Superman and the Flash had, and determining how fast each was, down to the miles per hour – I swear I was doing higher math. The second most memorable thing about this game was my attempt to run it, or rather, just to try it out, and set up a fight between a neighbor who played Superman, and Darkside. He said “I punch him”, which started close to a 30 minute search through the rules on what that meant, and how to do it, and all the details. It wound up with Superman doing enough damage to KO Darkside and enough knockback to put him in a wheelbarrow at a construction site, which Superman used to cart him off to Supervillain Jail. Neither of us were terribly impressed with the DC Heroes rules.

I am fairly proud of The Best of Dragon Magazine Games by TSR, a diverse compilation of mini-games, using chardboard counters and chits, for everything from boxing to food fights to building a fantasy empire and running races and even making your own RPG. My clearest memory of this game is that my mom kept beating me at the furry humanoid racing game. I probably managed to play each game at least once, though I honestly don’t know how people played games using only little lightweight cardboard chits like this game uses – they’re insanely hard to keep from blowing away or sliding all around and getting lost.

The Complete Guide to the World of Lone Wolf and Grey Star: The Magnamund Companion was a little like a holy grail I didn’t know existed. It was a couple years after I really stopped reading and keeping up with all the Lone Wolf Kai adventure books that I came across this on a shelf at B. Dalton or Waldenbooks in Tulsa, out of the blue – I had to have it and am glad I got it, though there really isn’t all that much to do in it – it’s more a reference book (duh) though it did come with its own mini tavern game. I treasure this one and have serious nostalgia moments involving picking my Kai powers and cheating on the “dice rolls”, when looking through it.

Sports Illustrated Pro Golf … is sort of a role-playing game, as it came with a number of tiny little glossy cards, sequentially numbered, each representing a particular golfer, and with each card also having a number of arcane stats and a D6% (hard to explain) dice roll and the results of each number. The game also included a “course” booklet, which had I think three different entire 18 hole courses in it, each of which changed the dynamics of the dice rolls and results of the cards, which I still have to admit is pretty clever. I did indeed play this more than a few times by myself, and a couple times with friends and family, though I eventually tired of it because even with all the statted cards, it still seemed a bit too vague and pure random chance based, which it was and in fact, it was weighted toward bad rolls, which usually wound up with me yoinking the ball into a sandtrap or the water.

And that is the end of this set of RPG reviews, though I feel myself almost trying to be inspired to go dig up a few more RPGs to put together one more RPG Gallery/Review post. We’ll see.