1999: Brave New World

1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles—and so on, as the anniversaries come up. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.

—oOo—

It is 1999. As the end of the millennium approaches, President John F. Kennedy has been in office for almost four decades. On November 22nd, 1963, he survived the assassination attempt on his life by a team of powersuit-wearing Dreadnauts sent by the supervillain Devastator, but his wife did not. In response, Congress enacted The Delta Registration Act, which made it a federal offence for any Delta—as those with superpowers are known—not to register themselves with the government within seven days of manifesting them. Delta civil rights were curtailed and they could be conscripted into government service of any kind. In order to control Delta activity, Delta Prime was set up as a super-powered law enforcement agency to control unregistered Deltas. A confrontation in New York in 1966 between Devastator and Delta Prime would result in the destruction of his headquarters and the surrounding four city blocks in New York, and following his escape, the declaration of martial law. It is still in force today.

The situation was compounded by a second confrontation, ‘The Bicentennial Battle’, between Devastator and Delta Prime which took place atop the Sears Tower in Chicago on July 4th, 1976. It too, would end in tragedy. The detonation of Devastator’s doomsday disintegrated everything in a twenty-five mile radius, killing millions and creating a perfectly spherical extension to Lake Michigan known as Chicago Bay. It also killed Superior, the Alpha-class Delta who had lead the attack, whilst at the same time every free Alpha-class Delta on the planet suddenly vanished. They have not been seen since.

The first Alpha, Superior had been the defender of America since World War II, transforming from a Delta to an Alpha following a traumatic near death experience, following which he flew to Berlin, killed Adolf Hitler and ended the war in 1943. He would end both the Korean and Vietnam wars early as well. Without the Alphas to keep the balance of power, battles between Deltas are not uncommon, tensions escalated between the USA and the Soviet Union. This would culminate in a limited nuclear exchange, following the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl, sabotaged by American Deltas, which would leave the cities of Atlanta and San Francisco and Kiev and Minsk destroyed. 

In 1999, and at eighty two years of age, President Kennedy is effectively President For Life. The ‘Witch Hunts’ that followed the implementation of both The Delta Registration Act and Martial Law against anyone who might be a Delta continue to this day. Yet some were not prepared to simply give in and lose their freedom and civil rights. They set up a loosely organised resistance network called ‘Defiance’, its members ‘Defiants’. Although deemed a domestic terrorist organisation by the government—and there are Defiants who would advocate such actions—its primary aim is to help those Deltas who do not want to register and to spread the truth. By the end of the century, with the birth of the Internet, this is done via a website known as DeltaTimes.com.

This is the set up—known as the ‘Ravaged Planet’—for Brave New World: A Roleplaying Game. Published by Pinnacle Entertainment Group in 1999 and then by Alderac Entertainment Group from 2000, it is a superhero roleplaying game of protest and resistance in an American fascist nightmare, inspired by comics such as Kingdom Come and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, storylines from the X-Men series, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and more. It is a grim, dark setting—definitely more Modern Age than Bronze or Silver Age—in which the players take the role of Deltas, those with limited superpowers who have defied the government in deciding not to sign The Delta Registration Act. Operating behind the secrecy of a mask—as much because they need to protect their civil rights as they do their identities and their families—they undertake a number of different tasks. They might be vigilantes dealing with traditional small time crime, helping find and protect other Deltas and get them out of the USA, and if they gain its trust, undertaking missions for Defiance.

As a superhero roleplaying game with a setting, Brave New World is different to most of the superhero roleplaying games which had come before it. With a very few exceptions, most had been rules sets first, with settings detailed in subsequent supplements. This though, is not the only significant difference between Brave New World and other traditional superhero roleplaying games, such as Champions, GURPS Supers, Golden Heroes, or Villains & Vigilantes. As already mentioned, such superhero roleplaying games possess rules sets—rules sets which enabled a player to create superheroes of their own design. Not so in Brave New World. Instead, heroes are built around a template or Power Package, which provides a standard set of powers. There are ten Power Packages in Brave New World—Bargainer, Blaster, Bouncer, Flyer, Gadgeteer, Goliath, Gunner, Healer, Scrapper, and Speedstar. 

Of the ten Power Packages, it is not immediately obvious what some of them are. So the Blaster, Flyer, Gadgeteer, Healer, and Speedster are obvious, but the Bouncer is the acrobatic superhero, the Goliath is the equivalent of the Brick, the Gunner is a marksman, and the Scrapper is the Brawler or Martial Artist. The Bargainer summons and binds demons into totems, which can be used to either temporarily replicate the powers of other Deltas or permanently replicate them. The Bargainer is also different in another way, as is the Gadgeteer. Heroes with the Power Packages Blaster, Bouncer, Flyer, Goliath, Gunner, Healer, Scrapper, and Speedster can all do one thing. So a Flyer is a Hero who flies and does nothing else in terms of his powers, rather than a Flyer who can zap an enemy with his energy blasts, a Scrapper is a brawler or martial artist, not a brawler or martial artist who bounces off the walls and roofs. In comparison, the Bargainer’s ability to bind and replicate powers gives him potential access to a wide array of powers, but it should be made clear that the Bargainer needs to be attuned to the totems and he can only use one at a time. Of all of the ten in Brave New World, the Bargainer is arguably the roleplaying game’s signature character archetype. Similarly, the Gadgeteer can design and build pieces of technology, for example, an armoured battle suit, but they require daily maintenance and make it time consuming to really have more than one or two running at any one time.

Besides his Power Package, each Hero is defined by their Traits, Skills, Quirks, Powers, and Tricks. There are four Traits—Smarts, Speed, Spirit, and Strength, which are rated by a number of six-sided dice plus a modifier, like 2d6+1 or 4d6. A typical Human has two dice in each Trait. Skills are divided between the four Traits and add a bonus to dice rolls of the Trait when appropriate. Initially, both Traits and Skills are rated between one and five. Quirks are the equivalent of advantages and disadvantages, whilst Tricks provide a Hero with the capability to do special things, some related to his Power Package, some not. To create a Hero, a player can simply select one of the archetypes given in the rulebook, there being one for each Power Package. Alternatively, he can divide twelve points between his Hero’s four Traits, and then for every point assigned to a Trait, he receives three points to assign to Skills associated with that Trait. This means that the higher a Trait is, the more likely a Hero is going to be better with its skills and that it is probably better to build a specialised Hero rather than a generalist. Points from skills can also be spent on Quirks, but a player can instead choose negative Quirks to gain more Skill points, possibly for positive Quirks. Then the player selects a Power Package followed by three Tricks. There are two each of these for each Power Package, for example ‘Rock Your World’ and ‘Superjump’ for the Goliath Power Package, plus a selection of General Tricks, like ‘Grapple’, ‘Make an Impression’, and ‘Ricochet’. A Hero does receive some free Skills and several skills are suggested that every Hero possesses, such as Bravery, Fighting: Barehanded, Perception, and so on.

Our sample Hero is Orlando Esposito, an art historian at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Crescent City and the arts critic for the Crescent City Tribune. He is never not seen immaculately dressed and as well as writing about various arts events, consults with the police matters to do with paintings and forgeries. He recently survived a car crash in which he suffered a heart attack. Since his recovery, he has discovered that he can run, really run, and fast. So far he has kept his identity secret and has no intention of revealing his new found abilities.

Orlando Esposito

Smarts 4d – Academia (History) 3, Area Knowledge (Crescent City) 2, Criminology 1, Etiquette 3, Forgery 3, Language (English) 2, Language (Italian) 2 

Speed 2d – Dodging 4, Driving (Personal Vehicle) 2

Spirit 4d – Arts (Painting) 3, Bravery 1, Perception 2, Persuasion (Bluff) 1 (Charm) 3, Scrutinise 3, Search 2

Strength 2d – Climbing 2, Fighting: Barehanded 2, Running 3

Speed: 7
Size: 5

Quirks
Delta Reg ±0, Secret Identity ±0, Unregistered ±0; Addicted (Coffee) -1, Cautious -3, Pacifist -3, Snobby -1; Photographic Memory +5, Self-Confident +2, Voice +1

Power Package
Speedster
Fast Runner: +100 Pace
Lighting Reflexes: +5 to Speed rolls for Initiative and Dodging

Tricks: New Friend, Afterimages, Burst of Speed
Delta Points: 3

Mechanically, Brave New World uses pools of six-sided dice. To undertake an action, a Hero’s player rolls dice equal to the value of the Trait. From these the highest result is selected and if appropriate, a Skill value is added to get a total. If sixes are rolled, these explode and can be rolled again and added to the total as long as the player keeps rolling sixes. Target Numbers from five (Easy) and ten (Challenging) all the way up to twenty-five (Incredible) and thirty (Phenomenal). Matching or beating the Target Number counts as a success, but for every five points over the Target Number, an extra success is attained. These extra successes can then be used to do tricks, such as knocking an opponent down or having an attack ricochet off a wall,  do a ‘Blast Punch’ if the Hero is a Blaster, and so on. A Hero also has a number of Delta Points per session, which can be used to roll another die and add it to the current total, or to save a Hero’s life.

For example, Orlando Esposito is being interviewed by Lieutenant Gregory of Delta Prime because he was seen near some Delta activity. Orlando wants to persuade the Delta Prime officer that he saw nothing. This will be an opposed roll of Orlando’s Persuasion (Charm) versus Lieutenant Gregory’s Scrutinise which is 2d6+2. This means that the Guide—as the Game Master is known in Brave New World—will roll two dice and add two to one of the results. This will set the Target Number which Orlando’s player will roll against. He will be rolling Orlando’s Spirit and adding his Persuasion to one result.

The Guide rolls 2 and 2. She adds Lieutenant Gregory’s Scrutinise of two to get a total of 4. This sets the Target Number for Orlando’s player. He rolls He rolls 3, 5, 6, and 6. The two results of 6 mean that he can roll and add to their totals, This gives him 2 and 6, which means that he can roll again. The final result is 5. So the total result is 6, 6, and 5, which adds up to 17, to which Orlando’s Persuasion of 3 is added for a final of 20. This not only succeeds, but grants three extra successes. Now normally, this is enough to persuade the target to whatever the persuader wants within reason, but Orlando has the ‘New Friend’ Trick, which enables him to make friends really easily. For every Extra Success, he gains a +2 bonus to future Persuasion checks against Lieutenant Gregory, so +6 then!

Combat uses the same mechanics. Initiative rolls are made against an Easy Target Number with Extra Successes generating extra actions, which gives Speedsters an advantage, although this is offset by the fact that the extra actions beyond those of everyone else in the combat come after everyone has acted. It does give them an advantage in that their extra actions from the next rounded can be expended to dodge attacks though. All attack rolls are made against an Easy Target Number, although this can be modified by any number of factors, most notably for hand-to-hand combat, the defender’s Fighting bonus. Damage again uses the dice pool mechanics with the highest die result used to determine the actual damage inflicted. In the main, apart from Blasters and the power armour suits built by Gadgeteers, Heroes are going to be attacking with more mundane means—guns, melee weapons, and fists.

Brave New World handles its superpowers as an extension of various aspects of each Hero. Typically, a superpower adds a bonus to Trait or Skill roll. For example, the Gunner Power Package has Crack Shot and Quick. The first adds +5 to the Gunner’s Shooting attacks, whilst the latter adds +5 to Speed rolls for initiative. These are static bonuses, but variable bonuses are offered through Tricks. Thus for the Gunner Power Package, the ‘Mercy’ Trick enables a Gunner to reduce the amount of damage he inflicts with his shots, even stunning a target, whilst the ‘Pierce Armour’ Trick enables the Gunner to fire bullets through the weak spots in a target’s armour if the Gunner’s player rolls two extra successes.

In terms of support, Brave New World there is some advice on playing the roleplaying game for players, focusing on life as a Delta and the role of a Delta, and on running the roleplaying game for the Guide. Decent enough, with an emphasis on getting the players to the table. In terms of support for the game, the Guide is given a set of seven foes to pitch against the Heroes. They include the Aquarians, a community of amphibian Deltas who live in Chicago Bay; Evil Unlimited, a support network for villainous Deltas; Deaders, corpses brought back to life by the insertion of a chipset invented by a gadgeteers, which simulates their dead brain; Armageddon Pilots of the Delta Prime who wear battlesuits maintained by Gadgeteers; the Police and the Mafia; and lastly, Vampires! Now unlike the Deaders, this adds an element of the occult which is really not present earlier in the rulebook.

Now one of the things that Brave New World: A Roleplaying Game does—and this a feature of the game line—is provide a number of secrets to the ‘Ravaged Planet’ setting. The most obvious of these is the fact that John F. Kennedy died in 1963 and has been impersonated by another Delta since, a Delta who engineered the death of Superior and other Alphas. It also identifies the editor of DeltaTimes.com, but only speculates on where exactly Deltas come from. Similarly, it speculates as the nature of Alphas before suggesting that should any Hero die, then their character sheets should not be destroyed...

Physically, Brave New World opens with a full colour comic—‘Patriot’s Last Stand!’—which depicts the last moments of Patriot, a reformed ex-member of Delta Prima turned Defiant, attempting to save the life of a newly discovered Delta. It is okay, perhaps a little stilted, but it works as a serviceable introduction. It is followed by a lengthy excerpt from DeltaTimes.com which explains the background of the Ravaged Planet. Again in full colour, as are the ten ready-to-play Power Packages archetypes. The book itself is well written and decently illustrated, a lot of the artwork having a certain angst to it.

As a roleplaying game, Brave New World is a low-powered superpower roleplaying game, which by the very nature of its Ravaged Planet setting, is fairly grim. It mechanics are quick and easy, being far more serviceable than those of Deadlands: The Weird West Roleplaying Game and Hell on Earth: The Wasted West Roleplaying Game from which they are derived. There should be no doubt that a session of Brave New World could be run today as much as it was twenty years ago and it would be fine, but just as it would be for the Guide today as it was twenty years ago, running a game of Brave New World would be a frustrating experience. Not because the mechanics are poor or the setting bad, but because Brave New World: A Roleplaying Game is extremely limited in its scope.

Now one of the criticisms made of Brave New World is that the number of Power Packages are limited, providing a limited choice for the players, but as much as that is a valid complaint, there is another fundamental problem with Brave New World as a superhero roleplaying game. It does not really explain how a Delta gets his superpowers, it being hinted that he survived a near death experience, which if so, should really be put to the player as a fundamental part of character creation. As in, “What was the near death experience your Delta experienced prior to gaining superpowers?” Now as to the limited number of Power Packages and the limited options within them, it cannot be denied that it limits player choice and once a Hero dies, a player’s choice in terms of a replacement Hero is further limited because so many of the other choices will have been taken and it will be difficult not to replicate another Hero.

In the designer’s defence , he has made it clear that this was done for both ease and speed of set-up and play, rather than opting for a complex build system. In the ‘Choices’ column of March 31st, 2000 on RPG.net, he states, “In other superhero games, balancing out hero powers has often led to character creation systems in which you need several hours and a calculator to build yourself a hero. With the power packages, even a novice player can come up with a hero in under a half hour. An experienced player can do so in about five minutes.” Which is a laudable aim, but it not only limits player choice, it also limits choice for the Guide in terms of the range of NPCs she can confront the Heroes with. Now there are a few standard foes given too, but again, they are limited in number. Further, if the roleplaying games is designed with both ease and speed of set-up and play in mind, why is this only done for the players and not the Guide? Why is there advice on getting the players together and ready to play, but nothing for them to play in the form of a scenario that the Guide can run?

As to the Power Packages, two pose problems. Bargainers and Gadgeteers essentially replicate the superpowers of other Power Packages. Now there are limitations on both—Bargainers can only use one totem at a time and Gadgeteers can only maintain a limited number of devices, but both possess a flexibility that other Power Packages lack. And with that flexibility comes complexity. Even, Bargainers are easier to use since their superpowers replicate the powers of others, but Gadgeteers can build power suits, scanners, space vehicles, teleporters, and so on. They cannot maintain all of them at the same time, but they can build them. Of course, since Brave New World is not a complex point-buy superhero system, the only advice for the Guide is that gadgets bend the laws of physics, not break them, and if a device is too powerful, dial it back down. This still gives the Gadgeteer a lot of freedom and flexibility. Something that the other Power Packages lack, and consequently, just like the Bargainer Power Package, it feels too powerful in comparison. That said, it is particularly frustrating that only gadget given as a sample device is a suit of power armour. This is indicative of the economical approach to information in Brave New World: A Roleplaying Game.

Then there is the big secret revealed in the ‘Brave New Secrets’ chapter, that President Kennedy is actually dead. It is an amazing secret. Its revelation will have a profound effect upon the USA of the Ravaged Planet’, but it has no relevance upon Brave New World: A Roleplaying Game whatsoever. Oh it is relevant to the Brave New World line, but the ‘Brave New Secrets’ chapter ends with the following:

“Of course, the heroes (and the players) don’t know any of this stuff. It’s up to you to make sure it stays that way—at least until we say otherwise.
The Information in Brave New World is released on a need-to-know basis.
We’ll tell you when you need to know.”

This is one of the features of Brave New World, each book in a line revealing the deeper aspects of the setting bit by bit. Yet this is information on a macro scale, rather than a micro scale. Essentially, the problem with Brave New World is the lack of specificity. The world and its background is really only drawn in broad details and there is a lack of detail to the world that would highlight the differences of the ‘Ravaged Planet’ in comparison to ours. What is the media like? Have the efforts of Gadgeteers changed science and technology? What businesses have benefited or suffered from the appearance of Deltas? Of course, in comparison to the overall story, these are small details, but they help paint a world and in the case of Brave New World they would contrast with our world. An example of this lack of specificity is the absence of a timeline. Various dates are mentioned in the background, but at the point when Brave New World is set, the last given date is 1989–ten years before! Similarly, no individuals—normal people or Deltas—are named beyond those in background. Nor is any place described or mapped, not even Crescent City, the city that grew up along the new shoreline of Chicago Bay in the wake of the Bicentennial Battle. Information like this would make it easier for the Guide to create scenarios given the lack of one in the rulebook.

Now some of these issues are addressed in Ravaged Planet: The Brave New World Player’s Guide, the first supplement released for Brave New World. There is a great deal of background in the supplement, in particular on Crescent City and the USA, as well as ten new Power Packages—and of course, more secrets. There can be no doubt that some of this information could be of use to the Guide in running her Brave New World campaign from the outset and arguably, some of it could have been included in Brave New World: A Roleplaying Game. If not that, then at least a scenario that the Guide could run to get her game started and help her players and their Heroes engage with the setting of Ravaged Planet. And support the easy-to-play, quick-to-play intent of using Power Packages rather than character design.

Ultimately, what undermines Brave New World: A Roleplaying Game as a roleplaying game is that it is not complete. It simply does not have enough information or the right information for the Guide to run a game or campaign in a setting that it only gives the broadest of overviews of. The Guide is left needing to purchase another supplement—Ravaged Planet: The Brave New World Player’s Guide—rather than wanting to purchase it to find out more information. In other words, it should be a choice, not a necessity. Which leaves Brave New World: A Roleplaying Game as a roleplaying game with very little for the Guide to work with, but some potential to work with, but only with further supplements. Thankfully, there are relatively few of them.

The Dominion of Trains

Let go on record and simply state that I do not like Dominion. This does not mean that it is a bad game. The 2009 Spiel des Jahres winner from Rio Grande Games is an innovative design, being one the the first deck-building card games, but I find it too mechanical and lacking in theme. So I do not own a copy and rarely play it although I know that it is a popular game. I do though, own and like Trains, a deck-building board game from Hisashi Hayashi, the designer of Sail to India and String Railway, and arguably that is very much like Dominion, both in terms of its design and the fact that each has won an Origins award—Dominion for Best Traditional Card Game in 2008 and Trains for Best Board game in 2013. Fortunately, Trains has a number of features that make it more interesting than Dominion.

Trains is not just a deck-building card game. It is a deck-building board game. The difference being that the players are building their decks to take actions on a board all of which consist of creating their railway networks—laying track and building stations. For in fact, Trains is also an area control game. Designed for two to four players, aged twelve and up, Trains sees the players compete to build the most valuable railway networks in the area surrounding the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Osaka. What this means is that there is direct competition between the players rather than just a race to acquire the most Victory Points.

In terms of set-up, each player receives an identical ten-card deck consisting of three types of card—Normal Trains, which generate money for a player; Lay Rails, used to expand a player’s network and to connect to features on the board that will score him Victory Points; and Station Expansion, which let a player build the Stations in the towns and cities to score Victory Points. On his turn, a player uses a hand of five cards drawn from the deck to carry out actions—generate income, purchase new cards, and use the actions on the cards to do various things, but primarily building his network on the board. Where possible, a player’s cards are used to generate both income and actions and a player is free to make as many purchases as he can afford and take as many actions as he can. Once done, a player’s hand of cards goes into the discard pile. Lastly he then draws a new hand of five cards and thinks about what he will do on his next turn. The latter action—thinking about what he will do on his next turn—is explicitly stated in the rules. As part of the game, it is a welcome addition counter to players prone to ‘analysis paralysis’.

Another aspect of the set-up is that the range of cards available to purchase varies from one game to the next. Every game has the eight default cards available to purchase—Express Train, Limited Express Train, Lay Rails, Station Expansion, Apartment, Tower, Skyscraper, and Waste cards, but the remaining eight are randomly determined from the thirty available. This not only makes play different each time, it also allows the game to be tinkered in terms of options. Want an easier game? Then for example, make sure that the Landfill card is available so that players can use it to get rid of Waste.

The cards are categorised into five colours. Purple cards allow a Station Expansion, whilst green cards are construction cards that either Lay Rails or nullify the extra cost of construction, such as Collaboration, which cuts the cost of building track where another player already has track. It also prevents a player gaining Waste from any construction that turn. Blue cards are train cards. The standard Train cards simply generate a player income, but others grant an action or bonus. For example, a Tourist Train grants a Victory Point every time it is played, whilst an Early Train lets a player put purchased cards on the top of his deck. Yellow cards, like the Tower and the Skyscraper grant Victory Point at game’s end, but do clog up a deck. Red cards are action cards that grant various benefits. For example, the Ironworks generates income for each track laying green card played that turn, whilst Station Crew gives a player the choice drawing another card, gaining income, or returning Waste to the Waste stack.

Most deck-building games have an aspect of their design that clogs up each player's’ deck. Usually, this consists of two types of cards. The first type consist of cards that are less effective as the game progresses, typically being replaced by better and more effective cards. The second type consists of Victory Point cards, purchased towards winning the game, but doing nothing else. Trains has both of these, but takes the concept further with Waste. Every time a player lays track, builds a station, or constructs a building, he earns a Waste card—and a Waste card does nothing except clog up a player’s deck and when drawn, his hand. 

What does Waste mean? Its effect forces a player to balance his hand and deck. It also curbs a player from expanding too quickly. Yet Waste cards do not wholly impede a player—one or two Waste cards in his hand from one turn to the next will not prevent his making purchases, laying track, expanding stations, and taking actions, but any more Waste cards  than that and a player may find himself unable to act. Fortunately, a player can forgo his turn in order to divest his hand of all Waste and there are certain cards that will let him get rid of Waste, such as Landfill.

The obvious aim of the cards is to lay track, but this is primarily a means to an end rather than a means to scoring Victory Points. The main means of scoring Victory Points is by laying track into a city and then building stations. Cities can have between one and three stations, the extra stations after the first being more expensive to build, but scoring a player more  Victory Points. The second means of scoring Victory Points is to lay track to a Remote Location on the edge of the map—typically this involves building through expensive terrain like mountains. The third method is by buying Yellow cards, though this is also expensive.

Once a player has built into an area, it does not mean that another player cannot build  into the same space. It does make it more expensive though, and whilst this serves as a barrier, a player can lay track into an area held by another player to cancel out any potential Victory Points he might gain by building a station there or by laying track into a Remote Location.

Play continues until a player places his last rail cube as track or places the last station, or four piles of the cards available to purchase have been exhausted. Once one of these conditions has been met the game ends and the player with the most Victory Points wins.

Trains is a nicely presented. Both the rules booklet and the cards are easy to read, the double-sided board is clear and functional. The cards themselves are nicely illustrated and do feel good in the hand.

The question is, is Trains really like Dominion? The answer to that would be both ‘yes’ and ‘no’. There are many cards that look and feel familiar—such that one gamer I know refuses to play it because it is too alike—but the gameplay is different. It is more streamlined, there is less emphasis on setting up your deck as an ‘engine’ that runs perfectly, and a player needs to balance both his deck and his hand as the game progresses. Trains is easier to learn, both because it is more streamlined and because the theme is more accessible. That theme is nicely implemented both through the cards and the maps, though the latter do offer little in the way of variation between the pair of them. The range of cards available and their random determination each game means that every game is different—and that adds to the replayability.

Trains is not quite an introductory deck-building game—Star Realms might be better at that—but it is not a difficult game to learn by any means. It is a medium-light Euro game, just a step or three on from Ticket to Ride in terms of complexity. Overall, Trains is a very accessible, likeable deck-building that makes much of its theme.

Whither the Indies?

What is remarkable about Sail to India is that it packs an incredibly big game in tiny box, both in terms of its theme and its sometimes harshly efficient Euro style game play. From the designer of String Railways and the Origins award winning Trains, Hisashi Hayashi, and published by Alderac Entertainment Group as part of its Big in Japan line, it is a game of mercantile exploration and adventurism. Designed for three to four players, aged twelve up, it is a game of resource management and worker placement, that sees the participants attempt to sail to the orient in search of glory and riches.

Sail to India is set during the Age of Discovery. The Mediterranean is under Osman Turk control and the great empire of Portugal seeks trade routes to the East. To do so, its merchants and nobles are dispatching explorers to sail south along the coast of Africa and round the Cabo da Boa Esperança in search of a route to India. Each player must manage his resources, and know when to invest in his ships and technological advances, when to discover new ports and establish facilities, and when to reap the riches and the glory.

Thus Sail to India has big themes, but where a classic board game might come with a big board and counters to represent the ships and various goods and buildings. The little box that is Sail to India does it all with just twenty-eight large cards plus thirteen wooden cubes per player. Of these cards, three are given to each player. These are a Domain card, used to track a player’s wealth, the speed of his ships, and his technology; a Historian card, used to track a player’s Victory Points; and a Reference card. He also receives three cubes to invest in technology, one to track his ships’ speed (initially one, but can be bought up to three), and starting wealth (varies upon starting order). This leaves eight cubes, which essentially represent investments that a player can make as ships, goods, buildings, wealth, and glory (Victory Points).

Of the remaining cards, they form the route to India, consisting of coastal towns along the coast of Africa. Each Coastal Town consists of two buildings—churches, markets, and strongholds—which grant Victory Points when built, trade goods that can be sold for wealth, potential Victory Points at game's end, and the sea. They are laid out in a line, with Lisboa at one end, followed by the coastal towns, of which three start face-up. They are known destinations. The others will be revealed as ships sail further and further round the coast of Africa and beyond until the last, India, is reached. At game's start each player also places one of his cubes as a ship on Lisboa.

On his turn, a player has several options, but can only do two of them. These include employing markers, moving ships, selling trade goods, constructing buildings, acquiring technology, and increasing ship speed. Employing ships means taking a cube from a player’s stock and paying one wealth to turn it into a ship in Lisboa. Moving ships involves a player moving any or all of his ships in any direction, up to his ships’ speed. If he moves his ships into a new coastal town, it is turned over and he earns Victory Points. To sell trade goods, a player moves his ships from the sea into the trade good spaces on the coastal towns. These are sold for wealth and Victory Points, the greater the number of types of good, the greater the reward. The markers for the trade goods are returned to Lisboa. For two wealth, a player can turn a ship into a building which now belongs to that player—churches give two Victory Points; markets only give one, but serve as a permanent trade good; and strongholds also only give one, but also serve as a starting point instead of Lisboa. To acquire technology, a player pays the coast and places a technology marker on the correct space on the technology cards. There are three of these cards, giving a total of twelve technologies. They have various effects, such as Printing Press giving a Victory Point when a technology is acquired, the Factory giving extra wealth when trade goods are sold, or Mission Church giving extra Victory Points for churches built. A technology can only be purchased once. Lastly, a player can increase his ships’ speed, first to two, and then three.

Play lasts an hour. It ends when the last coastal town is turned over and India is discovered, or when two players have run out of cubes. After that, everyone gets another turn and the game ends.

What makes Sail to India challenging is three factors. First, a player only has eight cubes to use as ships, trade goods, buildings, and so on. Second, they are interchangeable—ships can become trade goods which become ships, ships become buildings, and so. Third, a player needs to use some of these cubes to track his wealth and Victory Points, and since the tracks for both only go up to five, if a player earns enough to have six or more wealth or Victory Points, then he needs extra cubes—which have to come from those in play and not from those in stock. If a player has no cubes in play available, then he cannot track this extra wealth or Victory Points. Essentially, keeping track of his wealth and his glory (Victory Points) takes effort as reflected by the need for the extra cubes.

Sail to India is nicely presented. The cards are easy to use, the reference cards are very handy, and the rules clearly written. The artwork is in keeping with the game’s enjoyable theme, which is elegantly implemented in the game play. Similarly elegant is the balance between taking actions and using cubes and using cubes to keep track of a player’s wealth and Victory Points. Above all, Sail to India packs a lot gameplay and choices in quite a small box.

Honour within the Moment

Most games about Japan focus upon that most familiar aspect of its history—the samurai. From FGU’s Bushido and AEG’s Legend of the Five Rings to Avalon Hill’s Samurai and dV Giochi’s Samurai Sword, the focus is upon the role and position of the military nobility that dominated Japan for eight centuries. Although the samurai have a role in the latest RPG to be set in historical Japan, they are not its focus. That RPG is World of Dew: A Blood & Honor Sequel, a Samurai Noir role-playing game in which the samurai and the samurai clans are in decline. It is set during the Tokugawa shogunate—a time of great change despite the order imposed by the new regime. Into their stead come vivacious geisha, ill-mannered gaijin, honourable yet-crooked yakuza, nosy police detectives, great sumo, greedy merchants, unfortunate ronin, and more. Inspired by the great Chambara movies like Seven Samurai  and Laura Joh Rowland’s Sano Ichiro novels, it is their stories—stories of corruption, greed, betrayal, lust, murder, cynicism, love, loss, and more—that will be told in the rain-soaked great cities of Japan in A World of Dew.

Launched via Kickstarter and published by Woerner’s Wunderwerks, as its subtitle suggests, a World of Dew is a sequel to John Wick’s Blood and Honor, the RPG that dealt specifically with tragedy and failure of the great clans during their height. It is a storytelling RPG in which the players take the roles of characters other than the samurai seen in Chambara movies—though it is possible to play samurai in the game. They will not only create their characters, but the city itself, populating it with places, people, and threats, before playing out mysteries and intrigues from one season to the next.

Although set during the Tokugawa shogunate, there is some flexibility as to when a game can be set. Suggestions include the period following the defeat of its clan enemies when Dutch and English Protestants feud against the Spanish and Portuguese Catholics for economic and spiritual influence; during the heights of the Shogunate’s power when Japan was completely closed; and at its nadir, when the West has forced it to open up to its merchants and its innovative technologies, bringing with it social conflict between ancient traditions and radical reform. Although there are no mechanical differences in terms of storytelling between these time periods, they nevertheless determine some of the outré character options available as well as the technology.

Each character is defined by his Giri, his Virtues and Aspects, and an Advantage, plus his Glory, Honour Points, and Ninjo Points. The Giri is his occupation or duty, which can be Artist, Doctor, Gambler, Geisha, Holy Person, Merchant, Police Inspector, Ronin, Servant, Soldier, Sumo Wrestler, or Yakuza, and which grants a character bonus dice, an ability, and a benefit. For example, Yakuza gains bonus dice equal to his Giri Rank when undertaking a criminal action condoned by his gang; the ability to gain Honour Points when protecting his gang and the locals of your district; and the benefit of help from his fellow gang members when given tasks by his oyabun. He has a reputation attached to his Glory Rank, such as “Fair Man” or “Skilled swordsman”.

His core attributes are his six Virtues—Beauty, Courage, Cunning, Prowess, Strength, and Wisdom. One of these is set Rank 4, two are set at Rank 3, two at Rank 2, while the last is a Weakness. He also has three Aspects, though he may have more depending on his age. There are only a few of these and they work as they do in Evil Hat Productions’ FATE Core rules. For example, a character has the Aspect, “Do not stand in the Melon Field” because he believes that face and honour are important. When a player ‘invokes’ it as “Do not stand in the Melon Field… under the Plum Tree”, he gains three dice in a difficult social situation to maintain his face and honour. When it is compelled, he tends towards over analysis and inaction. Lastly, he has an Advantage—it might be that he is a Prodigy at a sword or sumo school or he has gaijin gear or that he holds a Social Position. It is possible to take further Advantages, but at a cost of a Virtue Flaw for each one.

Our sample character is Sagara Kiosho. A former samurai, the dispossession of his clan and the death of his parents left him on the streets. Initially he had a little money, but this did not last long and within a few weeks he was penniless and alone. Worse, the weather turned and a chill turned worse.  The young boy was found and taken in by an Oyabun, Noboru, but by then it was too late—Kiosho was suffering from tuberculosis. He recovered, but has been weakened ever since, some days not having the strength to serve his adopted father. Kiosho tries to bring the honour upheld by the samurai despite the tasks that his adopted father assigns him. He wishes to know the circumstances that brought about the dispossession of his clan and has a dislike of authority of the shogunate. 

Sagara Kiosho
Rank 1 Ronin

VIRTUES
Beauty—Rank 2
Courage—Rank 4
Cunning—Rank 4
Prowess—Rank 3
Strength—Weakness
Wisdom—Rank 2

Glory Rank 1—“A fair man”
Honour Points 2, Ninjo Points 1
Desire: To discover how his clan was dispossessed

ASPECTS—“ Do Not Stand in the Melon Field”, “Luck Exists”, “Entering the Tiger’s Cave”
ADVANTAGE—“Prodigy”, “Blessed”
FLAW—Courage “Fear of Dishonour”
SWORD SCHOOL—Wind (2)

At the end of character creation, the players agree how their characters know each other and then dive into city creation. The GM may research a real city, but he should discuss with players what themes they want to explore, perhaps foreign trade, religious strife, smugglings, and so on. A city also begins with several locations, a stronghold and then a location for each of the player characters’ Giri—a gambling den for a Yakuza, a surgery for a Doctor, a sumo school for a Sumo Wrestler, for example. The players, now armed with five free City Points, work with the GM to add locations, threats, organisations, faces (NPCs), and other elements, each costing a City Point. When adding these elements, a player also assigns three True Things about each. Each of the locations not only forms the landscape for the adventures, but also places where Season actions can be spent. Further, each location provides a bonus. For example, bonus Beauty wagers and Rumours can be gained at the Geisha House.

Dice are rolled whenever a risk is involved and whenever the outcome of the action will influence the plot or characters. The aim of any roll is to gain narrative rights—if the player fails the roll, then either an opposing character gains the rights or the GM does. If appropriate, a player gains six-sided dice from one of his Virtues, an Aspect, his Giri, and even his name. Other dice might come from tags that can be attached to places and the character. The player never has to roll more than ten on the dice, no matter how many dice he has to roll. This is enough to gain him the privilege of narration rights, but if he wants more than that, he can set dice aside as wagers. If he rolls more than ten, then for each of his wagered dice, he can add another detail.

Kiosho has been sent by Oyabun to speak to Sugu, a fellow gang member who Noboru suspects is not paying the full amount of the tribute he is due. Kiosho arrives at Sugu’s hangout to find it on fire! From inside the building Kiosho can hear cries of pain. Being brave and foolish, Kiosho dives into the burning building to rescue whomever is inside… So Kiosho’s player grabs up four dice for his Courage Virtue; a die for his name—though not for family name as that would not impress Sugu; and lastly, he invokes his “Entering the Tiger’s Cave” Aspect for another three dice. That gives him a total of eight dice to roll. Kiosho’s player believes that four are enough and sets aside the other four as wagers. The results of the four dice are 2, 3, 3, and 6 for a result of 14—enough for Kiosho to gain privilege.

For his privilege, Kiosho’s player narrates that he rushes into the burning building and manages to find Sugu. He takes two of the wager dice and narrates the following…

As he hefts Sugu over his shoulder, Kiosho hears the cry of a woman coming from another room…

…and when he goes to the rescue of the woman, he discovers that she is holding a piece of a kimono in her hand. The mon on the kimono matches his own…

Of the other two wager dice, Kiosho’s player converts them into Glory and gains “Brave before fire” as a Rank 1 Reputation.

Combat in a World of Dew uses the same mechanics—the number of dice to be rolled are determined and then any wagers are set aside in secret. Whomever rolls highest gains privilege and his wagers to add narration. The defeated opponent loses half his wagers, but can still use the remainder to add narration. With just one dice roll to determine the outcome, combat itself is very fast. It gets slightly more complex depending on the nature of the fight, whether it is a Strike—a surprise attack in which a player yells “Strike!” to attack first in a brilliantly elegant mechanic, a Duel, or Mass Murder. It also gets increasingly deadly, especially when katanas or firearms are involved. Injuries themselves are ranked from 1 to 5, with Rank 1 injuries healing in a day, Rank 2 injuries taking a week to heal down to Rank 1 injuries, and so on up to Rank 5 injuries that take a whole year to go down to Rank 4! In the meantime, others can tag your injuries for bonus dice! The aid of a doctor in a World of Dew is almost mandatory if a character is to survive, but even then this is not a game in which you should rush into combat unless you are sure of the outcome.

For example, Kiosho has managed to get the girl out of the burning building and then gone back into get Sugu. At this point the GM intercedes with a Story Point and inflicts a Rank 2 injury on Kiosho due to weak Strength Virtue. Kiosho has a nasty burn on his leg, but he does get Sugu and the GM does reward him with an Honour Point. When he gets outside, Kiosho finds Junzō and Norio—Sugu’s lieutenants—ready to remonstrate with him. Norio is holding the girl, but Kioshio is wary of Junzō who looks like he might attack. Before the gangster can draw his sword, Kiosho’s player shouts “Strike!”

As he shouted “Strike!”, Kiosho gets two bonus dice. He also gets a die from his Giri because he is involved in violence; three dice come from his Prowess, a die for his name; another two dice come from his sword school training and as a Rank 1 Ronin he adds +2 to the final roll. This gives him a total of nine dice to roll. Kiosho’s player secretly sets aside five of these dice as wagers.

The GM rolls for Junzō and Norio together. They are relatively lowly Yakuza so only have Prowess 2 each—which the GM combines to give four dice. They also tag Kiosho’s Rank 2 injury for two more dice, which gets him the reward of a Ninjo Point. The GM knows that Kiosho will be a better opponent, but Junzō and Norio are loyal to Sugu and are desperate to stop the ronin. So he only sets aside two dice as wagers.

Kiosho rolls 2, 3, 6, and 6. Together with is Giri bonus, he has a total of 19. Junzō and Norio together roll 2, 3, 5, and 5 for a total of 15. Kiosho has Privilege and three wagers to spend whilst Junzō and Norio, successful in their attack, have to discard half of their wagers, leaving them with only one. Kiosho begins the narration…

…Kiosho unburdens Sugu directly at Junzō who is sent sprawling and suffers a Rank 1 injury.

…Then draws his katana and leaps to attack Norio. (His player expends another two wagers to raise the Rank 1 injury to a Rank 3 injury). Norio suffers a savage slash across the face and falls backwards dropping the girl in the process. (At this point, Kiosho’s player lets the GM spend his only wager).

…Struggling from under his boss’ body, Junzō discovers Sugu’s pistol which had hidden in his kimono. He draws and cocks it, and sitting up, fires it at Kiosho. The ronin is hit in the back with a shot that will kill him. (Firearms are that deadly and inflict a Rank 6 injury! Kiosho will need to expend an Honour Point to lower this to a survivable Rank 5 injury, but not yet. Kiosho’s injuries will not take effect just yet. He still has wagers to spend).

…Kisoho drags himself across to Junzō to land one last blow before he collapses. This and raising the attack to a Rank 2 injury uses up his last two wagers.

Mass Murder is even deadlier because all sides keep their wagers if they roll successfully. World of Dew is arguably one of the deadliest systems available! It is also possible to spend wagers to establish true facts about the game. In contested rolls, both players get to spend wagers—all of them by the winner of the contested roll, but half of his wagers by the defeated player.

At the heart of the game there is an economy involving Honour Points, Ninjo Points, and Story Points. Drawn from a communal pool, Honour Points are spent to gain bonus dice in a risk, to add details to the story, create a Scene Tag that everyone can activate, or to benefit from a Location effect. A character can add to the Honour Point pool by undertaking a risk that is honourable or to the benefit of others. If Honour Points represent a character acting in the interests of society rather than himself, then Ninjo Points represent his desire. They only grant two bonus dice and they can only be used to help the character—not others—and only towards his Desire. Whilst Ninjo Points can be used to add details and create tags just as Honour Points can, only the character who created them can see them. 

Whenever a character spends an Honour Point or a Ninjo Point, it goes into the Story Pool as a Story Point. These can be drawn by the GM to actually to add to, or change, the plot. Further this can actually contravene a truth already established in the game—the only way that this can be done once a truth has been established. Essentially this is a means to add uncertainty to the game, even down to the author suggesting that the GM almost threaten to draw from the Story Pool!

t should be noted that this economy is only one way. Spent Honour Points and Ninjo Points go into the Story Pool, but spent Story Points do not go back into the Honour Pool. The only way to gain more Honour Points is earning them.

The characters’ adventures, or rather stories, take place across Seasons during which the characters have actions that they can undertake in addition to their stories. Usually these are built around the locations developed during the act of creating the city, so might include time spent studying at a swordsmanship school, crafting a beautiful piece of poetry, or rooting out corruption at the Magistrate’s Court. Locations may also generate trouble during a Season and this may lead to new stories.

Another area where a World of Dew differs from the more traditional Japan-set RPG is in its treatment of the outre. Simply, there is none and the game does not provide rules for the inclusion of the supernatural. This is not to say that it could not exist within A World of Dew—and the example of city creation suggests that it could—but the GM would be on his own if he wanted to add it. Magic could also exist in a World of Dew, but the guidelines given draw very much of the beliefs of the characters rather than on a codified set of rules. This applies no matter what the faith—Buddhism, Christianity, or Shintoism.

As a game of Samurai Noir, World of Dew is fundamentally different to the Noir genre as we know it in the West. In traditional Noir, the hero—of which Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe are the perfect imperfect examples—goes out to solve a mystery or problem through pure self-determination and individualism, which is anathema to the Eastern hero. He instead subsumes his self-determination and individualism into the greater good, adhering to his duty rather than his desires in pursuit of a mystery or problem. Thus a World of Dew presents a roleplaying challenge—one of course seen in other Japan-set RPGs—that is further exacerbated by the social upheaval that Japan is undergoing throughout the period described in the game. A social upheaval that seems to favour desire over honour...

The primary way in which a World of Dew enforces its genre is by asking the player to have his character do one radical thing—fail. The player in a World of Dew has a great deal of control over the narrative. He can spend Honour Points to add to the game and he can narrate events and add true facts using his wagers. When he does so, he creates truths—truths that unless the GM spends a Story Point cannot be undone. So it would be easy for the player to simply narrate his success, but that would not be in keeping with the genre. Instead a World of Dew asks the player to ‘fail forward’, that is to drive the plot forward with his character’s failure. Not just ‘yes’, but ‘yes and..’ as well as ‘yes, but…’ It is asking a lot of the players, but in playing the game they should buying into it anyway. This is in addition of course, to the players having their characters conduct themselves honourably in support of the greater good order to gain Honour Points. Not only is this very in-keeping with the Japan-set RPG, it also fuels the Honour-Story Point economy.

Physically, a World of Dew is tidily presented with some beautifully vibrant art. Its main weakness is the lack of an index, but otherwise the book decently written with solid advice for player and GM alike. Some players though, may balk at being penalised with an Honour Point for causing a distraction!

As an RPG design, World of Dew is a very contemporary design, with mechanics that encourage a certain style of play, but still with the need for a narrator or GM. It is a storytelling game that takes its cue from a haiku, A World of Dew, and is about the struggle within a moment, one at a point of change, all caught within the dewdrop. World of Dew is beautifully immersive, drawing in the GM and player alike with the chance to tell stories in a fascinating period of history, one at a point of change. 

Courtly Missives

Turn the clock back thirty years and the ‘Microgame’ was a small board game packaged complete in a small box. Typically they were a type of wargame printed on paper stock and heavily themed. The first was Ogre*, published in 1977 by Metagaming Concepts, but over the course of the next decade, it would be joined by titles from notable publishers such as Steve Jackson Games, Task Force Games, and TSR, Inc. In modern gaming parlance, a Microgame is a little game, a game that can be played in fifteen minutes or less. The other change to the Microgame concept is that they are no longer wargames, but are instead mini-euro style games that emphasise competition rather than combat.

*The irony is of course that the most recent version of Ogre, published by Steve Jackson Games weighs close to 30 lbs. Some microgame…

Love Letter is typical of this new style of Microgame, although untypically, it is not a European game. Originally published in Japan, Love Letter has since been published in several English language editions by Alderac Entertainment Group, better known for the games Smash Up! and the Legend of the Five Rings RPG and the Collectible Card Game (CCG) it is based upon. The first is Love Letter – Tempest Edition, which is set in the City-State of Tempest and comes in a cute velvet bag; the second is Love Letter – Kanai Factory Limited Edition, which uses the art from the original Japanese version of the game; and Love Letter – Legend of the Five Rings Edition, which is set in Rokugan, the same setting as that of the RPG and the Collectible Card Game. It is this version of the game that is being reviewed today, suitably on St. Valentine’s Day.

The Imperial princess, Iweko Miaka, the youngest of Empress Iweko’s children is eligible for marriage. Her betrothal is set to be a great contest between the seven samurai clans of the Emerald Empire—for in winning her hand in marriage a samurai will bring great standing and glory to his clan. Of course, such an important marriage will be entirely political, but surely the only daughter of the Empress has her mother’s ear and so will have some say as to the man who will marry her? Thus what better way to influence the decision than by winning the heart of the princess herself? Unfortunately, Iweko Miaka is a shy young creature, one who hardly speaks at court and interacts rarely with the visiting courtiers. Thus she cannot be approached directly and another means of contacting her must be found—that of the courtly letter. Her suitors are thus trying to get a letter to the princess via one of her inner circle, from her guards and her courtiers to her hatamoto and her sensei, all the whilst fending off the suits of rival samurai.

Designed for between two and four players aged ten and up, Love Letter – Legend of the Five Rings Edition is card game that consists of just sixteen game cards, four reference cards, and thirteen Tokens of Affection as well as a tiny, thirty-two page rules booklet. The game altogether comes in an attractive velvet bag, this time green rather than the red of Love Letter – Tempest Edition. (Unlike the Love Letter – Kanai Factory Limited Edition, the Love Letter – Legend of the Five Rings Edition does not include any promotional cards). The game is played over a series of rounds in which the players attempt to press their suit. Their aim is have the card with the highest value at the end of each round—if they do, then that player is awarded a Token of Affection. Garner enough Tokens of Affection, the number depending on the number of players, then their suit has been successful and Princess Miaka’s hand has been won.

Each of the cards has a value of between one and eight, ranging from one for Seppun Tasuke, the Guard to the eight of the Princess herself, Iweko Miaka. Each card also has an ability that is triggered once it is discarded. Seppun Tasuke, the Guard, can select a player and ask him if he has that card, forcing him out of the round if he does. The Courtier, Shosuro Yamazaki, can examine another player’s cards, as can the Diplomat, Kaiu Akemi, but when the Diplomat does so, the two cards are compared and the suitor with the lower value hand must retire from the round. When discarded, the Shugenja, Isawa Tenkawa, prevents a suitor from being targeted for a whole turn while Matsu Misato, the Hatamoto, forces another player to discard his hand and draw a new hand. The Manipulator, Doji Takato, forces another player to trade hands with the suitor, while Togashi Gozato, the Sensei must be discarded if a player has either the Manipulator or the Hatamoto in his hand. Lastly, if the Princess is discarded, she has received the suitor’s letter and thrown onto the fire. That suitor—or player—is out of the round.

At the start of the game, the sixteen card deck is shuffled and one card discarded face down. This acts as a random element so that the players do not know ‘exactly’ what is in the deck. Then each player receives one card—this is his hand. On his turn, he draws another card and must discard one of the two cards he has. Each discarded card has an effect as described above, but is discarded face up so that every player can see what cards have been played. There only being fifteen cards in the deck, the players have some idea as what cards have been discarded and what still remains in play—essentially, Love Letter – Legend of the Five Rings Edition encourages the counting of cards—as do the other versions of the game! Play continues until the last card is drawn and its player discards one of his cards. Then each player reveals the single card he has in his hand and the player who has the card with the highest value has successfully pressed his suit and earns a Token of Affection from Princess Miaka.

Love Letter – Legend of the Five Rings Edition is a game of deduction and risk, one in which what a player can do on his turn is limited to just one of two actions. These will often force a player to do something to his disadvantage because it is the better of his two options. For example, Louise holds Princess Miaka in her hand. It has a value of eight and if she can hold it until the end of the round, then Louise will have managed to get her letter directly into the hands of the Princess and thus won a Token of Affection. On her turn she draws the Manipulator, Doji Takato. Her choice is to discard the Princess, but this would force her out of the round, or Doji Takato, which means that she has to trade hands with another player. She opts for the latter, trading hands with Dave, gaining Seppun Tasuke, the Guard. While the Guard only has a value of eight at the end of the round, it can be used to name another card and if successful, force a player out of the round. Louise has gained valuable information—she knows what card Dave has. Dave also knows this, but likewise cannot discard the Princess. Fortunately, on his turn Dave draws the Shugenja, Isawa Tenkawa, and goes to pray with him, preventing his being targeted until his next turn. Thus Louise cannot use her Guard to name the Princess—yet!

So is Love Letter – Legend of the Five Rings Edition a fitting Legends of the Five Rings game? Thematically, it is perfect fit. Not least in the fact that the bag it comes in has the symbols for Rukogan’s five elements—air, earth, fire, water, and void—embroidered on the back, and that the art used to illustrate the game is drawn from the publisher’s extensive back catalogue used to illustrate both the CCG and the RPG. The art also specifically illustrates characters within the setting of the Emerald Empire. Further, within the Emerald Empire, the sending of letters is a courtly art. In addition, the functions of the cards have been mapped onto particular figures. For example, the most common card type in Love Letter is the Guard, but here the same function is performed by Seppun Tasuke, a member of the imperial family tasked with protecting the Empress. Similarly, the ability of the Clown in Love Letter to examine another player’s hand is adopted by the Courtier Shosuro Yamazaki from the Scorpion Clan and the ability of the General in Love Letter to trade hands with another player has been given to Doji Takato of the Crane Clan who is described as a Manipulator.

The setting of the imperial court of the Emerald Empire is supported by the rulebook. It runs to thirty-two pages, much of which is devoted to detailing the characters on the cards, which if the players want, adds depth and feel to the game. Fans of Legend of the Five Rings, whether of the CCG or the RPG will appreciate this aspect of the game. Certainly there is enough background here that knowledgeable players could bring a degree of roleplaying to the game as they play.

With a playing time of some thirty minutes, Love Letter – Legend of the Five Rings Edition is perhaps a bit too long to really qualify as a Microgame. Although it is possible to play with two suitors, it is not as enjoyable a game to play—simply it plays better with three or four players. (It is disappointing that the game does not accommodate more players, but that should not be held against Love Letter). With three or four players then, it is a solidly designed filler game, one that combines the need for careful deduction and a little guess work with a fitting theme. Managing to be both charming and quick, Love Letter – Legend of the Five Rings Edition is a lovely game that fits nicely into any games collection.

Reviews from R'lyeh Christmas Dozen 2013

Since 2001, I have contributed to a series of lists in December at Ogrecave.com, suggesting not necessarily the best board and roleplaying games of the preceding year, but the titles that you might like to receive and give. Initiating a break with tradition – in that the following is just the one list and in that for reasons beyond its control, OgreCave.com is not running its own lists – Reviews from R’lyeh would once again like present its own list. Further, as is also traditional, Reviews from R’lyeh has not devolved into the need to cast about “Baleful Blandishments” to all concerned or otherwise based upon the arbitrary organisation of days. So as Reviews from R’lyeh presents the what is my dozenth’s Christmas List Dozen, I can only hope that the twelve below includes one of your favourites, or even better still, includes a game that you do not have and someone is happy to hide in gaudy paper and place under that dead tree for you.

Tales of the Sleepless City 
(Miskatonic River Press), $29.95/£21.99
It is sad news indeed that Tales of the Sleepless City, an anthology of scenarios set in New York during the Jazz Age, is Miskatonic River Press’ swansong for Call of Cthulhu. This beautifully presented book contains six scenarios that bring the Big Apple to life like no supplement for Call of Cthulhu before! Let your investigators discover how far reactionaries will go to preserve the fabric of New York, expose them to bloody horrors in the museum, or have them experience Harlem in mourning. Send them into Hell’s Kitchen to live in a slum tenement owned by the worst slum landlord possible, have them expose a dark future for one young child in Chinatown, or let them truly enjoy a night at the opera… Tales of the Sleepless City is the best Call of Cthulhu title of 2013 – it is such a pity that we shall not see its like again from Miskatonic River Press.

Hanabi (Cocktail Games), $11.99/£8.99
Remember how 7 Wonders made the Ogrecave.com Christmas list back in 2011 after not winning the ‘Spiel des Jahres’ (German ‘Game of the Year’), but winning its new bigger brother award, the ‘Kennerspiel des Jahres’ (roughly ‘Connoisseur-Enthusiast Game of the Year’)? Well this year we include an actual ‘Spiel des Jahres’ winner, one from the designer of 7 Wonders – Antoine Bauz. His award winning design is Hanabi, a clever game in which the players race to bring about the most impressive fireworks display. This requires that the players work together in order to launch the fireworks in the right order, which means everyone playing their cards in the right order. The twist in this co-operative card game is that everyone can see each other’s cards, but they cannot see their own! This is a clever little card game about communicating the right information with your other players in order to win the game.

13th Age (Pelgrane Press), $44.95/£39.99
What do you get when a designer of Dungeons & Dragons, Fourth Edition and a designer of Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition decide to create a fantasy RPG together? The result is Rob Heinsoo and Jonathon Tweet’s 13th Age, a furiously fun take upon playing Dungeons & Dragons. It still uses the d20 System, but streamlines the mechanics and play style for faster game, combining well-designed character Classes with story-telling aspects that both tie the heroes into the broadly drawn setting and make them stand out as potentially epic champions. With Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition not out until GenCon 2014, 13th Age is the freshest take upon Dungeons & Dragons-style roleplaying in years.

Ogre Designer’s Edition
(Steve Jackson Games), $100/£85
If in 2013 the gaming hobby, the elephant in the room that is Dungeons & Dragons was on holiday, then pound for pound, its spot was occupied by a 26 lbs. tank. Big enough and heavy enough to scare your game’s collection, the Ogre Designer’s Edition brings back Steve Jackson’s first game design in a very complete combination of the original classic Ogre and G.E.V. two-player game, plus more. Five maps, hundreds of counters, and over seventy 3D Ogres and buildings, all in a big box! What’s an ‘Ogre’ you ask? A big tank, a big damned tank under the command of an A.I. and bristling with big guns, big rockets, and big nukes, all rumbling towards you… Can you stop it before it stops the units under your command…?

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords - Base Set 
(Paizo Publishing), $59.99/£49.99
Remember the original Adventure Path campaign for Rise of the Runelords and how we liked it last year enough to include Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path Anniversary Edition on the 2012 Ogrecave.com Christmas List? This year, you get to play it all over again with the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords, a game that distils the essence of both the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and Rise of the Runelords into an elegant and quick playing deck-building card game that plays equally well for four players as it does for the single player. The game pitches a party of adventurers in a series of scenarios against various villains and their henchmen who are hidden – find the henchmen and the heroes have a chance of finding and defeating the villain. The adventurers need to have the right skills, right spells, and right equipment all at the right time – and if they succeed they get better. All represented on the cards, which makes for both slick game play and extended game play over the course of the Rise of the Runelords campaign.

Firefly: The Game
(Gale Force Nine), $50/£44.99 
If there is one RPG that we are looking forward to in 2014, it is Margaret Weis Productions’ Firefly Role-Playing Game – of which you can find a taster here – but that is coming in 2014. In the meantime, you can fly the ‘friendly’ ‘Verse in search of a profit aboard your own Firefly Class transport in this well-appointed boardgame from Gale Force Nine. Some jobs will be legal, some jobs will be illegal, and some may bring the attention of the Alliance or worse, Reavers! All you need is the right ship, the right crew, and the right job – maybe it’s a job for Badger, maybe for Niska, but it just needs to go shiny. The game does not always go smooth, but if you are a fan of the television series, then is exactly what you want. Find a crew. Find a job. Keep flying…

Fate Core System (Evil Hat Productions), $25/£16.99
In most RPGs you sit down, create a character and start playing a world of the GM’s creation (or purchase). In Fate Core System, the new edition of the Fate System first seen in Spirit of the Century, you sit down and work with your fellow players and the GM to decide upon a world and the elements in it. This presents enormous flexibility in creating the game that everyone wants to play, whether that is protecting small town Texas from the scum of the universe in 1961, strapping on a jetpack to free the Solar System from the yoke of the Mongol Horde, or wielding the arcane arts against the greatest of Napoleon Bonaparte’s sorcerers! It means that right from the start, the players have narrative control of who their characters are and what their place in the world is, the GM taking his cue from these characters and the narrative that they demand. This is a game about dramatic characters and their adventures and the means to build and run them. (Two supplements – Fate Worlds: Worlds on Fire and Fate Worlds: Worlds in Shadow each come with six ready-to-play settings should the GM and his players not have the time to create worlds of their own, or just want to cut to the chase).

Love Letter (Alderac Entertainment Group), $11.99/£7.99
Princess Annette is unhappy and has locked herself away in the castle; as a suitor can you make her happy once again? To do that you need to get a love letter to her, but between you and the Princess stands the palace bureaucracy – from the lowly guards and priests up through the barons, handmaidens, the King, and the Prince to the Countess and the Princess herself. Each and every one of these august – and not august personages – has a special ability that will advance or block your path to the Princess, but no suitor knows whose favours his rivals currently possess. This is a quick-playing game of bluff and deduction that plays perfectly between other games.

Adventures in Kaphornia 01 – Draconian Rhapsody: A Fantasy Movie For Your Game Table (Chronicle City), $19.99/£13.99
Sadly, roleplaying takes time and there are times when it would be great to have something that you can pick and play with a minimum of preparation. Originally published in German by Ulisses Spiele GmbH, Draconian Rhapsody is just one solution. It is not an RPG as such, but rather a scenario that comes with everything necessary to play – except dice of course! It includes ready-to-play characters, simple rules, and of course an adventure that everyone can jump straight into. Arriving in Kaphornia, through circumstances beyond their control the adventurers discover that Countess Esmeralda of Belzheim needs a dragon, alive and inside of a week. Can they capture the dragon for her in this definitely cinematic, if slightly humorous adventure? Draconian Rhapsody is at its heart a fantasy action movie that you can play through in an evening.

Numenera (Monte Cook Games), $59.99/£39.99
Were the people of the Ninth Age ignorant of the past, then perhaps Clarke’s Law, that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” might be true. In the very far future of the Ninth Age, humanity is surrounded by the fragments and remains of the previous ages – swirls of nanotechnology, impossibly manicured buildings and landscapes, creatures and peoples bio-engineered to some unknown ends, data streams from still-orbiting satellites, and devices and objects weird and wondrous. Such devices, known as the ‘numenera’, can often be used by the peoples of the Ninth Age, or if not, adapted to a new purpose – perhaps by the Amber Priests. With Numenera, the author’s first RPG of his own design, Monte Cook lets us explore a world of fantastical science to build a bright new future.

Eternal Lies (Pelgrane Press), $49.95/£32.95 
In the 1920s, doughty and stalwart men and women banded together to investigate and thwart the menace presented by threats beyond mankind’s understanding and sanity. We have played out such attempts in Masks of Nyarlathotep, Shadows of Yog-Sothoth, and The Day of the Beast, each in their own way classic campaigns for Call of Cthulhu, but there is one question that has never been asked. What if they failed? This is the set-up for Eternal Lies, the first full campaign for Trail of Cthulhu, Pelgrane Press’ RPG of clue-orientated Lovecraftian investigative horror. In this globe-spanning campaign, the investigators must follow in the footsteps of their predecessors, uncovering clues old and new, not just to reveal the nature of the menace, but to determine where their predecessors went wrong. This is superb interpretation of a classic format that promises month after month of sanity searing play around the world.

Star Wars: Edge of the Empire Roleplaying Game (Fantasy Flight Games), $59.95/£39.99
The gaming hobby feels all the better for having an RPG based in the Star Wars universe on its shelves and in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, Fantasy Flight Games gives us the first of a trilogy of new Star Wars RPGs. In the one you play Bounty Hunters, Colonists, Explorers, Hired Guns, Smugglers, and Technicians attempting to get by on the Outer Rim, far from the centre of the galaxy, but not so far that the Empire is no longer a threat. The new mechanics use a set of dice particular to the game whose results drive the adventure onwards with results that might ensure a hero’s successes whilst upping the threat or giving him an advantage, all in support of the game’s cinematic style of play. Already supported with several supplements, the Star Wars: Edge of the Empire – Beginner Game is also available to help you get started.

Against the Slave Lords
(Wizards of the Coast), $49.95/£34.99 
With no new official Dungeons & Dragons titles of note this year, perhaps the best were the nostalgia titles repackaged and re-released by Wizards of the Coast. Against the Slave Lords collates four scenarios – A1: Slave Pits of the Undercity, A2: Secret of the Slavers Stockade, A3: Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords, and A4: In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons First Edition. Previously released as the collection, Scourge of the Slave Lords (A1–4) which was voted the twentieth greatest Dungeons & Dragons scenario of all time, Against the Slave Lords is a campaign for characters of fourth through seventh levels set in the World of Greyhawk that pitches them against an insidious gang of slavers. Presented as a pleasing hardback that not contains the original four scenarios, but also adds a fifth scenario designed to introduce player characters to the campaign, which means that Against the Slave Lords can not only be played by us old nostalgic players, but new ones too.