Magazine Madness 16: Parallel Worlds Issue #03

The gaming magazine is dead. After all, when was the last time that you were able to purchase a gaming magazine at your nearest newsagent? Games Workshop’s White Dwarf is of course the exception, but it has been over a decade since Dragon appeared in print. However, in more recent times, the hobby has found other means to bring the magazine format to the market. Digitally, of course, but publishers have also created their own in-house titles and sold them direct or through distribution. Another vehicle has been Kickstarter.com, which has allowed amateurs to write, create, fund, and publish titles of their own, much like the fanzines of Kickstarter’s ZineQuest. The resulting titles are not fanzines though, being longer, tackling broader subject matters, and more professional in terms of their layout and design.

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The third issue of Parallel Worlds magazine was published in September 2020. Like with previous issues, bringing with the the inaugural issue, Parallel Worlds Issue #01 published in 2019, it contains no gaming content as such, but rather discusses and aspects of not just the hobby, but different hobbies—board games, roleplaying games, computer games, films, and more. Much like later issues, for example, Parallel Worlds Issue #21 and Parallel Worlds Issue #22, this third issue is fairly balanced issue, with relatively little, direct gaming content. Further, the standard of writing is better, which when combined with its selection of interesting articles and brevity serves to make it overall an engaging, even sometimes thoughtful read. Of course, Parallel Worlds Issue #03 is readily available in print, but all of the issues of Parallel Worlds, published by Parallel Publishing can also be purchased in digital format, because it is very much not back in the day of classic White Dwarf, but here and now. 

Parallel Worlds Issue #03 opens with its editorial from Tom Grundy, making the point that the value of Science Fiction, horror, and fantasy lies in its ideas and that in addressing and discussing these ideas, suggesting that in doing so, this is actually the highest form of conversation. It is an interesting stance, especially given the dismissive way in which genre content is often treated. Grundy does not take the idea any further, which is a pity. The issue then introduces a new addition, ‘Feedback’. This is the magazine’s letters page, the replies either complimentary or discussing the ‘Thinkpiece’ article ‘Ruling the World 20 – The sci-fi assumption of ‘Government Earth’’, in Parallel Worlds Issue #02, which examined the notion of the ‘global’ or civilisation-wide government. This opens up the magazine a little, making feel less like it exists in a vacuum.

The issue’s interview is with Carsten Damm, previously the developer of the fantasy roleplaying game Earthdawn—now thirty years old in 2023—and now the founder of the German publisher, Vagrant Workshop. This is quite a lengthy piece, exploring the interviewee’s beginnings as both a roleplayer and a designer, how he moved from writing in German and then English for Earthdawn, and then back again for his own content. In addition to learning a little about the publisher’s roleplaying game, Equinox, and more about growing up as a gamer in Germany. One issue with the hobby is that for obvious reasons it is dominated by the English-speaking market, so it is always interesting to hear from another gaming market and culture. The interview is a good start to Parallel Worlds Issue #03, although it is the roleplaying content in the issue.

Parallel Worlds Issue #03 has two articles devoted to wargaming. The second is the ‘Mini of the Month’ by Thomas Turbull-Ross and is definitely the less useful of the two, and probably the least interesting of the two. The figure is the Isharann Soulrender figure from Games Workshop’s range of aquatic elves and it is easy to see why the loves the figure with its lantern hanging from its helmet like an angler fish to be able to see under the sea, its man-catching polearm, and swordfish companion, but difficult to see why it warranted a double-page spread devoted to a single figure and some fiction. The first and infinitely more useful is a discussion on how to get into the miniatures hobby by ‘Wargaming on a Budget’. Written by Allen Stroud and Connor Eddies, this suggests ways and options in which a prospective player can begin wargaming with limited funds, tracking the money spent as they suggest the rules to choose, where to buy models on the cheap, what tools are needed, and so on. The budget is £70—and that includes choosing a free set of rules and opting for the skirmish level of wargaming, that is, twenty or so figures to a side. The article does gloss over the various options in terms of rules, and it might have been useful to look at the relative benefits of each, especially since there is some money left from the budget at the end of the exercise. After all, why include photographs of the Frostgrave line if it is really only going to be mentioned in passing in the text? Overall, a good guide and the most useful article in the issue.

The miniatures and wargames articles are divided by a review by Christopher Jarvis of the board game, Space Base, which at four pages feels too long. The issue is not the words, but the photographs which do not much to the review. Anyway, had the review been cut in half, there could have been room for another review or more content. For the Events article, Jane Clewett takes the reader to ‘FrightFest – Twenty Bloody Years’, to celebrate the longevity of the biggest horror film festival in the United Kingdom. This is an enjoyable piece, which not only tells us what the event is all about, but also what it is like to attend. It sounds like a fantastic event to attend if you are a fan of the horror genre, but Frightfest also showcases thrillers and other genre films too, so it may well be work checking out to what is being shown at the next event.

The two computer game-themed articles suffer from the same issue as the miniatures articles—one good, one not so good. The first, ‘Homeworld’, by Allen Stroud, explores the history and the story of the Homeworld real-time strategy computer game with its combination Star Wars-like space opera and Battlestar Galactica-like story. It places the series in context of the computer games of the late nineties and its genre and game type, which thankfully in the modern age is made all the more interesting because its three entries and extra content are readily available. Further and with the benefit of time, the article is also useful as a primer for Homeworld: Revelations, the roleplaying game from Modiphius Entertainment. Either way, it is a solid introduction to the series. ‘Terraria – The Success of Simplicity in Modern Gaming’ by Richard Watson is the not as interesting counterpart to ‘Homeworld’. Terraria is a two-dimensional, side-scrolling sandbox which is hugely popular given its relative price and despite there being any number of multi-million dollar titles which a player could choose to play instead. A relatively short article, it nevertheless takes too long to get to what the game is about, concentrating instead on updates and what the game is not. So it never fully sells the game and the fact that it is fun to play.

In comparison, the articles on books are uniformly good. Allen Stroud’s ‘Diamonds in the Rough: Read Adventurous!’ examines the joys and dangers of reading self-published books. It highlights the difficulty of picking your way through the innumerable genre titles available today to find the proverbial diamond in the rough, providing some pointers as to what to look for—reviews, blurbs, cover designs, price, and more. It is backed up with quintet of recommendations as a starting point. They include dystopian future, tales of epic fantasy, space opera, and others, all useful pointers. This is followed by a trilogy of book reviews—Tade Thompson’s Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning Rosewater, Beyond Kidding by Lynda Clark, and Duchamp Versus Einstein—by Allen Stroud, Louis Calvert, and Tom Grundy. These three reviews are surprisingly succinct and to the point, with little in the way of wasted space—not always the case with other articles in the issue.

Penultimately, ‘TV & Film’ completes a two-part article dedicated to Star Trek begun on the previous issue. In the first part of ‘Keeping Trek’ by Ben Potts looked at the origins and history of the franchise, all the way up the earliest films. Here he picks up with Star Trek: The Next Generation and explores the franchise over the course of numerous series, Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Star Trek: Voyager, and Enterprise, and to a lesser extent, the films of the nineties and noughties. It comes up to date for for the first two seasons of Star Trek Discovery, but does not give them more than a passing mention. Essentially, this continues the solid introduction begun in the first part, turning the two-part series into an overview primarily intended for the casual or uninitiated would be fan of Star Trek as there is nothing here that the dedicated fan will not already know. As with the first part, it highlights some of the issues of the various series as well as some of the issues too. It pays particular praise to Star Trek: Deep Space 9, especially in its capacity to tell more interesting and often longer stories, whilst acknowledging the parallels with Babylon 5.

The other ‘TV & Film’ article in Parallel Worlds Issue #03 is ‘Let’s Talk About... The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance’, which is a noted departure in format for the magazine. Together, Tom Grundy, Allen Stroud, and Beth Faulds discuss and give their opinions. There is room here for the trio to agree and disagree, the discussion good-natured and everyone has room to give their opinion. This is a solid format with little wasted space here, and hopefully, future issues will return to it to discuss other genre television or film. Lastly, the issue is rounded out with a short piece of horror fiction. ‘Erden Foe’ by Mehzeb R. Chowdhury is a short piece of Lovecraftian military fiction which nicely rounds the article off.

Physically, Parallel Worlds #03 is printed in full colour, on very sturdy paper, which gives it a high-quality feel. As with both Parallel Worlds #01 and Parallel Worlds #02, it does suffer from a lot of empty space and just too many of the articles do feel stretched out. More concision when it comes to the layout and perhaps there might have been room for more content. 

Parallel Worlds Issue #03 swings widely in tone and content. Once again roleplaying does come off a poor third in comparison to other types of gaming, too many articles feel stretched, and it does not yet escape the feeling that there should be more to it. One board game and one miniature review does not feel as if it is enough in comparison to several books. Yet there are good articles to be found in the pages of the issue. ‘Wargaming on a Budget’ is useful and informative, as are ‘FrightFest – Twenty Bloody Years’ and ‘Diamonds in the Rough: Read Adventurous!’ because they help the reader do things, whilst  ‘Let’s Talk About... The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance’ is spirited and engaging. All four articles are ones that might bring the reader back to the issue to follow up on that help or read again, whereas the others, less so. Overall, Parallel Worlds Issue #03 is still just a bit too light, but there are sections worth reading.

[Free RPG Day 2022] Homeworld: Revelations – A Tabletop Roleplaying Odyssey Quick-Start

Now in its fifteenth year, Free RPG Day in 2022, was celebrated not once, but twice. First on Saturday, 25th June in the USA, and then on Saturday, 23rd July internationally. This was to prevent problem with past events when certain books did not arrive in time to be shipped internationally and so were not available outside of the USA. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. Thanks to the generosity of David Salisbury of Fan Boy 3, Reviews from R’lyeh was get hold of many of the titles released for Free RPG Day, both in the USA and elsewhere.

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Homeworld: Revelations – A Tabletop Roleplaying Odyssey Quick-Start is the release from Modiphius Entertainment for Free RPG Day 2022. It is the quick-start for Homeworld: Revelations, the roleplaying based on the real-time strategy video game series Homeworld, which includes Homeworld, Homeworld: Cataclysm, Homeworld 2, and Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak, as well as the forthcoming Homeworld 3. The series tells the story of the  Kushan, a people lost in space after the destruction of their home planet, Kharak, and their attempt to find Hiigara, a new homeworld, journeying in fleet lead by a massive mothership. In Homeworld: Revelations – A Tabletop Roleplaying Odyssey Quick-Start, the players take the roles of members of The Dreamlands team, archaeologists brought together to gather historical records and artefacts from the wreckage of the great ship, the Khar-Toba, on the planet Kharak. Unfortunately, they are not the only ones interested the Khar-Toba. Others want to stop anyone from discovering the knowledge and technology which lies within the bowels of the great ship, and will do anything to prevent that from happening.

Homeworld: Revelations – A Tabletop Roleplaying Odyssey Quick-Start is designed for play by five players and come with five pre-generated Player Characters, printed separately. It contains all the rules necessary to play, including skills, action, combat, and interaction, all the way up to ship-to-ship combat. The five pre-generated characters include a security officer, a researcher, a medical officer, a technological operations manager, and pilot. All five are simply and clearly laid out and easy to read and use. Each also comes with a good illustration as well as a little background.

A Player Character in Homeworld: Revelations – A Tabletop Roleplaying Odyssey Quick-Start and thus Homeworld: Revelations is defined by Attributes, Disciplines, Focuses, Values, Traits, Talents, and Truths. The six Attributes—Agility, Brawn, Coordination, Insight, Reason, and Will—represent ways of or approaches to doing things as well as intrinsic capabilities. They are rated between seven and twelve. There are six skills—Combat, Command, Engineering, Exploration, Flight, and Medical—which are fairly broad and rated between one and five, whilst Focuses represent narrow areas of study or skill specialities, for example, Expert Pilot, Jury Rigging, Field Surgery, Unfamiliar Technology, and Chain of Command. Truths are single words or short phrases, which describe a significant fact or aspect about its subject, whether that is a scene, person, place, environment, or object. A Truth can make an action easier or more difficult, or even simply make it possible or impossible.

To undertake an action in the 2d20 System in Homeworld: Revelations, a character’s player rolls two twenty-sided dice, aiming to have both roll under the total of an Attribute and a Skill. Each roll under this total counts as a success, an average task requiring two successes. Rolls of one count as two successes and if a Player Character has an appropriate Focus, rolls under the value of the Skill also count as two successes. In the main, because a typical difficulty will only be a Target Number of one, players will find themselves rolling excess Successes which becomes Momentum. This is a resource shared between all of the players which can be spent to create an Opportunity and so add more dice to a roll—typically needed because more than two successes are required to succeed, to create an advantage in a situation or remove a complication, create a problem for the opposition, and to obtain information. It is a finite ever-decreasing resource, so the players need to roll well and keep generating it, especially if they want to save some for the big scene or climatic battle in an adventure.

Now where the players generate Momentum to spend on their characters, the Game Master has Threat which can be spent on similar things for the NPCs as well as to trigger their special abilities. She begins each session with a pool of Threat, but can gain more through various circumstances. These include a player purchasing extra dice to roll on a test, a player rolling a natural twenty and so adding two Threat (instead of the usual Complication), the situation itself being threatening, or NPCs rolling well and generating Momentum and so adding that to Threat pool. In return, the Game Master can spend it on minor inconveniences, complications, and serious complications to inflict upon the player characters, as well as triggering NPC special abilities, having NPCs seize the initiative, and bringing the environment dramatically into play.

Combat uses the same mechanics, but offers more options in terms of what Momentum can be spent on. This includes doing extra damage, disarming an opponent, keeping the initiative—initiative works by alternating between the player characters and the NPCs and keeping it allows two player characters to act before an NPC does, avoid an injury, and so on. Damage in combat is rolled on the Challenge dice, the number of ‘Homeworld: Revelations’ symbols rolled determining how much damage is inflicted. A similar roll is made to resist the damage, and any leftover is deducted from a character’s Stress. If a character’s Stress is reduced to zero or five or more damage is inflicted, then a character is injured. Any ‘Homeworld: Revelations’ symbols rolled indicate an effect as well as the damage. In keeping with the tone of the various series, weapon damage can be deadly (and nearly every character—Player Character or NPC, is armed with a firearm of some kind), melee or hand-to-hand, less so.

Lastly, the Player Characters all begin play with several points of Fortune, which can be used to pull off extraordinary actions, perform exciting stunts, make one-in-a-million shots, or provide an edge during life-or-death situations. These can be spent to gain a Critical Success on any roll, reroll any dice, gain an additional action in a round, to avoid imminent defeat, and to add new element to the current scene. More can be earned through play, such as accepting a Complication, changing a Defining Aspect about a character, or good roleplaying.

The rules themselves in the Homeworld: Revelations – A Tabletop Roleplaying Odyssey Quick-Start take up almost two thirds of its pages. The rest is taken up by the scenario. This starts in the outer desert region known as The Dreamlands where the wreck of the Khar-Toba can be found. The Player Characters are part of a team lead buy by the archaeologist Mevath Sagald, sent to investigate the wreck and glean what historical records and artefacts they can from it. However, the wreck is guarded by the Gaalsien, a kiith or clan religiously opposed to all thoughts of discovery and exploration, fearing that the Kushan took part in a great evil long ago and were punished by being exiled. The Player Characters will need to find a way into the wreck and avoid detection, exploring the ships and recover archaeological artefacts, and then escape both the ship and any attempts by the Gaalsien to stop them. Divided into five scenes, the scenario primarily involves stealth and exploration, although there is scope for combat and interaction depending upon what the players decide to do. There are moments throughout for each Player Character to shine and the scenario builds to an exciting climax chased by Gaalsien spacecraft. Overall, it is good adventure, and it should provide a good two sessions’ worth of play or so.

Physically, Homeworld: Revelations – A Tabletop Roleplaying Odyssey Quick-Start is a good looking affair with excellent artwork and decent layout. Unfortunately, the whole affair does feel rushed and needs another good edit. On the plus side though, it is well written, and there are lots and lots of examples of play and sections of advice for the Game Master. There is no cartography and thus no deckplans of the Khar-Toba. The scenario is not difficult to run without them, but their inclusion would have helped.

Ultimately, Homeworld: Revelations – A Tabletop Roleplaying Odyssey Quick-Start is let down by one factor and one factor alone. It has rules, it has pre-generated Player Characters, and it has a scenario. What it entirely lacks is background. There is no explanation of what Homeworld is or what the setting of Homeworld: Revelations is like, so leaves the Game Master to do her own research and prepare it for her players. This is disappointing as a quick-start is designed to both introduce a setting and a roleplaying game to players unaware of the setting and introduce a roleplaying game to those who know the setting. Homeworld: Revelations – A Tabletop Roleplaying Odyssey Quick-Start does a better job of doing the latter than the former and so does not fully succeed as a quick-start.