Audio Demo: Carry

Jeff and Judd (of the Sons of Kryos, natch) recorded a demo of carry with me at Gen Con. Here’s the mp3 file. Check it out.

Thanks guys!

Spiel x Press Review of Timestream

German gaming mag Spiel x Press has published a short review of Timestream. Many thanks to them, and to Christian and Harald for the translation help. The review in the original german can be found here in PDF form; below is the translation.

The stream of time is unchangeable. Or maybe it isn’t? In the roleplaying game “Timestream” the protagonists can influence the stream of time immensely. Time travels are possible, time can be slowed down, and different situations can be lived through over and over again.

The details are left to one’s own imagination in “Timestream.”

“Timestream” is not a highly professional product of a large company. Accordingly, the focus of the Timestream rule book does not lie in impressive illustrations and the optical design, but in simple rules provided in a way as to be understandable. Timestream does not commit itself to a specific world or specific mechanics that are needed to time travel, but leaves these parts to the individual play groups. In this way, each roleplaying group can play time travel adventures according to its own preferences.

For this reason the rule book of Timestream is kept simple and general. Characters are created quickly, there are only three rough classes of characters and few attributes, which leads to not getting lost in rules but focusing on on the playing-out of the story.

Timestream is a roleplaying game that has its strenghts–such as flexibility and simplicity–but also its weaknesses. For example, an evening of Timestream means quite a bit of work for the game master. To pull an adventure out of nothing without a lot of background is tedious, and that in a roleplaying game about time travels almost any unforeseeable event can happen doesn’t make the whole thing any easier.

Anyone who wants to play a time travel and time manipulation game without fighting their way through endless constructions of rules and theoretical foundations will be in the right place with Timestream. The whole game is kept very simple, and while it’s not an optically professional product, it’s thought through very well and piques one’s interest.

So I think I’m going to get working on some situation generation tools for the game. Seems like that would be good thing.

Vesna Thaw Reviews

The first:

Playability

This is a fairly complex game. There’s lots of fiddly bits to it. Not necessarily unfun fiddly bits, but there’s still a lot of contact. To be fair, the character sheet also has quite a few fiddly bits, so it’s not unreasonable.

Character generation looks like it should be fun, but I still have the faint feeling that the players might be having fun in spite of the system, rather than because of it.

I’m giving it a 5 here. Not necessarily a well-informed 5, but there we go.

Integration of the Character Sheet

The author had a handful with this sheet, I’m sure. But he handled it well. A few bits felt a bit forced, but not unforgivably so.

A good solid 8.

General Cool Factor

Giant Soviet robots in post-apocalyptic battles. That spells COOL in my books.

However, I’m going to ding him a point here because of the terrible font. I’m sure it was some sort of artistic design decision or whatnot, but that doesn’t make my eyes feel any better.

Another solid 8.

Total: 21.

And the second:

Vesna Thaw, by Nathan Paoletta

Vesna Thaw is a game about post-Soviet, post-apocalypse, robot pilots. Players play these brave pilots that use their robots to help their small isolated community survive and grow until they go down in one final blaze of glory.

Playability: 8/10
As I read this game, I could definitely imagine myself playing it. The mechanics didn’t seem to have any trip up points. My biggest problem came in the Robot Scenes section. The section describes how a player’s opponent applies their robot’s Element dice to the conflict, but the text never specifies how the player uses those dice. Fortunately, the play example seems to illustrate the proper use of the dice.

Usefulness of the character sheet: 6/10
I think that Nathan put a lot of effort into using every element of the character sheet, but many of the elements found on the sheet are mapped to new names in the game. The most extreme example of this are the Community boxes in the upper left corner of the sheet. The Community dice names in the game text are Technology Level, Leadership, Population, and Stability. I think that this leads to a dissonance between the sheet and the game.

Wow, that’s cool factor: 10/10
Post-soviet, post-apocalypse, robot pilots. As if that wasn’t enough you get to collaboratively draw your robot with the other players, and then give it mechanical weight. This game seems like it would be tons of fun to play.

Total: 24/30

Thanks Roger! Thanks Dave!

Thats 45/60 - it’s no Architects of Aztlan, but pretty respectable.

I’m not sure I have much to say about the game right now. It’s really, really weird. I have no idea if it’ll play like I want it too. It seems to communicate fairly well, and the premise is cool, but is it fun? I suppose I’ll need to, like, play it, or something.