Your WOIN Starter

The What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay System Starter Box is different to almost any other start set that you can imagine. This is because most other starter sets, such as the Pendragon Starter Set, the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Starter Set, or the Alien Starter Set, all typically introduce both a setting and a set of rules. Together with their dice, their adventures, their maps, and their characters sheets, they are designed to introduce a particular setting and the rules to roleplay within that setting. The What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay System Starter Box does some of that, but it does it a bit differently and it does a bit more. The What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay System Starter Box is designed to introduce the What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay System—also known as WOIN—but where the other starter sets introduce setting specific rules, What’s OLD is NEW is generic. And where other starter sets introduce the one setting, the What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay System Starter Box introduces three, and not only that, in doing so, introduces three different genres. Medieval fantasy, modern action, and Science Fiction. Published by EN Publishing following a successful Kickstarter campaign, the What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay System Starter Box contains a sixty-eight page ‘What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay System Starter Box Rulebook’, three twenty-page adventures—one each for the starter set’s three genres, three double-sided battle maps, over sixty tokens for the eighteen characters the monsters encountered in the three scenarios, eighteen pre-generated character sheets—six each for the three scenarios, and a set of eight six-sided dice.

The first book in the What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay System Starter Box is the ‘What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay System Starter Box Rulebook’. It opens in breezy fashion, introducing the game, roleplaying, and the various genres supported for What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay by the publisher, in particular, the three genres supported by this starter set. It explains the core mechanics and supports it all with an example of play. A Player Character in What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay System has ten attributes: Strength, Agility, Endurance, Intuition, Logic, Willpower, Charisma, Luck, Reputation, and Power. These and skills are defined by the number of dice assigned to them. Thus, a Character might have an Agility of three and Lockpicking of two, plus an Exploit or item of equipment which grants a bonus die each. Thus, on most occasions, when the character wants to break open a safe or unlock a cell door, his player rolls six dice. The aim is to roll equal to, or higher than, a Target Number. This is ten for Easy, fifteen for Hard, twenty for Difficult, and so on. Bonus or penalty dice can be added depending upon the circumstances. In the What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay System Starter Box rules, Luck dice can be spent on a one-for-one basis to reduce damage suffered, whereas there are more uses for Luck in the WOIN core rules.

Combat uses the same mechanics, but the Target Numbers are determined by the opponent’s Melee Defence, Ranged Defence, Mental Defence, and Vital Defence, depending upon the form of attack. Combatants get to actions per turn, which can any combination of movement, attacks, or other action, including repeating them. Some actions, such as emergency healing or picking a lock take two actions. The rules cover aiming, overwatch, and suppressive fire as well as area of effect attacks and called shots. The latter imposes a two dice penalty on attacks, but the creatures listed in the latter half of the ‘What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay System Starter Box Rulebook’ do have ‘Called Shot’ location entries if a Player Character is successful in targeting them. Damage is determined by the weapon or attack type and the result deducted from the defendant’s Health. If reduced to zero, this will destroy objects and incapacitate or kill defendants. The number of dice rolled to attack can be reduced on a one-for-one basis to increase the number of damage dice rolled. For larger creatures, such as dragons, damage suffered is reduced by their Soak value, and armour worn by Player Characters and NPCs does the same.

The rules in the ‘What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay System Starter Box Rulebook’ also cover scanning, searching, and tracking, countdowns, and supernatural powers. Depending on the genre and theme, this encompasses magic, psionics, and chi. All three use Power Points, derived from the Power attribute. Magic is designed to be freeform, so that a spellcaster can enhance a spell’s range, area of effect, duration, damage or healing done, protection provided, and number of creatures summoned, all depending upon the type of spell and the number of Power Points spent. The roll to cast the spell is based on the Player Character’s Power attribute and skill value in the type of magic. Psionics is not as flexible, the various disciplines, such as Clairvoyance, Telekinesis, or Teleportation, being treated as exploits, whilst Chi requires a Player Character to enter a Stance, which is a free action and costs a Power Point to enter and then a Power Point per turn to maintain. In comparison to magic, the descriptions of Psionics and Chi do feel underwritten and rely much more upon the character sheets for the respective scenarios.

Penultimately, ‘What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay System Starter Box Rulebook’ gives a list of equipment, which gives some surprisingly fantastical items such as a mithril shirt, laser watch, and telekinetic gauntlets, along with their prices. (In case you are wondering what a mithril shirt goes for in the What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay System, it is 10,500 gold crowns.) Lastly, over half of the book is a bestiary, from Bandit, Battlepsyche, and Bear to Woodland Creature, Xenomorph, and Zombie, for a total of forty creatures.

The What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay System Starter Box comes with three separate scenarios. The fantasy scenario is ‘Dilemma & Decay’. The Player Characters accidentally end up in the town of Farrington in the Vale of Two Ridges which has been beset by the spread of a foul blight from a nearby swamp. The warlord, Overlord Steelheart persuades the Player Characters to investigate and doing so, encounter refugees and evidence of the bog blight everywhere, all before facing the source. ‘Habits and Happenstance’ is the modern-set scenario. It is an exciting tale of city power-politics set in Boston where there is a fight to redevelop and stop the redevelopment of the city’s old underground network of tunnels into a modern transport system, whilst attacks on innocent people are on the rise across the city. This is an action-packed, cinematic affair involving nuns on motorbikes and nests of vampires with some exciting chases thrown into the mix.

The Science Fiction scenario is ‘The Silence of Zephdon Station’. The crew of the Murphy answer a distress call from the station and are then offered a generous reward from a corporate A.I. to answer the call and investigate. Once aboard the station, there are signs of a fight and when the Murphy is sabotaged, the Player Characters will have to investigate further to discover who is responsible and why. There is more to the mission than at first sight, and there is also a lot of ways in which it can play out, such that its climax is highly player dependant and lot more flexible than the other two scenarios. All three scenarios can be played through in a session or two, or lengthened with the included optional scenes, and all involve a good mix of action and roleplaying. One issue with the scenarios is that possible motivations for the Player Characters to get involved are printed in the scenario booklets rather than on the characters sheets. Of the three scenarios, ‘Habits and Happenstance’ is the most fun and likely the easiest to run because of its cinematic styling.

To support the three scenarios, the What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay System Starter Box includes set of eight six-sided dice in bright red, eighty counters to represent the Player Characters, NPCs, creatures, and monsters, three double-sided map sheets, and eighteen character sheets, six each for the three scenarios included in the box. In turn, they depict the region around the settle of Farrington and a set of ruins, a railway depot and a train station, and a research complex and an open area. The character sheets are single-sided and presented in landscape format.

For ‘Dilemma & Decay’, there is a Dwarven thief, an Elven musketeer with an actual musket, a pyrokinetic wizard, a knight in shining armour, a herbalist and cleric with a hatred of the undead, and an Orc berserker. For ‘Habits and Happenstance’, there is a British ex-spy, a thief with a cybernetic arm, a retired soldier cloned from Theodore Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart, a martial artist monk, a mutant leaper, and a crooked ex-cop turned private eye. For ‘The Silence of Zephdon Station’, there is a Russian smuggler and pilot, an Ogron mercenary, an android medica and science officer, a star knight complete with laser sword, a feline cat-burglar, and a drunken psychic.

Physically, the What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay System Starter Box is well presented and easy to read. The artwork is at least decent throughout, if not excellent, though it does need an edit in places. ‘Dilemma & Decay’ suffers from a lack of proofreading in particular.

The What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay System Starter Box is a better introduction to the What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay System than it is to roleplaying in general, because it races through first principles to really introduce roleplaying effectively. Nevertheless, what it offers is an introduction to not just the mechanics of What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay System, but three different settings with its three scenarios each of which neatly showcases what the system can do. Thus, What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay System Starter Box is a solid introduction to the What’s OLD is NEW Roleplay System that experienced roleplayers will pick up with ease and get playing very quickly.