Oi Reg! The Australian Political Simulator

Oi Reg! came about when I ran into Sea Dracula and liked the idea, but wasn't so sure about the whole competitive dance-off rule mechanic. Anyway, it got me thinking about making a game with a similar theme, only set in parliament rather than a courtroom. Since Australian politics is notoriously volatile. Well, it was in the glory days of the late 80s and early 90s when the politicians more closely resembled stereotypical Aussies, and the PM held several beer drinking records.
To recapture those glorious days, Oi Reg is set in a fictionalised version of Australia.

OI REG!

THE CAMBIMBI PARLIAMENT SIMULATOR

So there’s this town in Australia called Cambimbi, right. And here’s the thing, for some insane reason it’s also its own country and not part of Australia. So it has its own parliament. Which is even madder than the ACTUAL Australian parliament.

You’re politicians in the Cambimbi Parliament. Don’t worry if you know nothing about Australian politics, it’s basically like feeding time at the zoo meets prejudice. Cambimbi politics is worse because EVERYONE is an awful stereotypical Australian. Just imaging Crocodile Dundee in a really shoddy suit he bought at K-Mart, on special, twenty years ago, shouting at the top of his lungs about boat people. You get the idea.

Stuff you need:

• Some paper and pencils
• Several packs of Tim Tams (Australia’s finest chocolate coated biscuit. They come in packs of EXACTLY eleven. And they are the bomb.)
• A bag of Allen’s Snakes (these are sort of gummi snake things made by Allen’s and commemorate a range of Australian things which will kill you)
• A name plate with ‘Reg’ written on it
• A bunch of gallahs you can persuade to play this ludicrous excuse for a game

What you do: 

First up, everyone writes down a law they want to see passed by the Cambimbi Parliament. These could be anything from “banning dingoes from Primary school” to “spend the entire federal budget on scratchies.” They should all be pretty stupid things which no right-minded democracy would even consider debating. Cambimbi is a wrong minded democracy. When everyone’s gotten stupid laws, you can start playing. 

Step one: Elect the speaker. 

The first speaker should be whatever nong suggested playing this crazy game in the first place. They get to take the name plate with ‘Reg’ written on it. (All speakers in the Cambimbi Parliament change their name to Reg. It’s cheaper than printing up new name plates.) Every round there’s a new speaker, who is traditionally the person sitting to the left of the old speaker. But you could play like real Aussies and decide the next speaker with a fist fight or a beer swilling contest or something. 

Step two: Propose a law. 

The speaker chooses a player to propose a law. That player then explains exactly what the new law is and why it’s so important that it get passed. They can use anything they like to convince people to vote for them - rhetoric, loud voices, visual aids, bribery… just so long as they follow correct parliamentary procedure (see below) 

Step three: The Debate. 

After the player has finished extolling the virtues of their proposed law, the Speaker opens the floor for debate. During the debate, any player can raise their hand. The speaker will choose someone with their hand up, and that player can argue about why they should or shouldn’t vote for the proposed law. Again, they can use anything they like to convince people, although even the Cambimbi Parliament frowns on things like shoving live crocodiles up and opponent’s shirt. Players can ALSO propose amendments to the law. That basically means you can tack extra stuff on the law, like changing it to “banning Dingoes from Primary Schools between the hours of two and three AM on Tuesdays.” If a player proposes an amendment and the player who proposed the law doesn’t want to add it to the law, both that player and the one who proposed the law in the first place grab hold of one end of the same Allen’s Snake. And they pull until it snaps. When it snaps, the one with the longer bit of snake wins, and the law is changed to suit them. They both get to eat their bits of snake. The Cambimbi Parliament is traditionally held in Big Steve-o’s Shearing Shed, and there are ALWAYS snakes under it, so there’s never a shortage of snakes. If you run out during a particularly gruelling all night session, you can always do something boring like toss a coin or roll a die. The speaker keeps track of all the changes to the law. 

Step Four: The Vote. 

When the speaker is sick of debating, he can call for a vote. Everyone but the speaker can vote ‘Yeah’ or ‘Nah’ on the proposed law. If there are more ‘Yeahs’ than ‘Nahs,’ then the law is passed. If it’s a tie, pull snakes for it. Whoever proposed the law in the first place gets a Tim Tam. Anyone who managed to add an amendment onto it also gets a Tim Tam for every amendment they managed to add.

Step Five: Rinse and Repeat. 

This keeps on going until all the players have proposed a law and they’ve all been voted on.

Step Six: Moving on. 

When everyone’s proposed a law and they’ve been voted on, switch to the next speaker, come up with some new laws, and keep going. 

Ending the game: 

The game ends when either you run out of laws to vote on, you run out of Tim Tams to award, or you get sick of it. Whoever has the most Tim Tams wins. This is really important - DON’T EAT THE TIM TAMS UNTIL THE GAME ENDS! Sure, they’re amazing and you’re hungry. For chrissakes, just propose an amendment so you can rip a snake in half and eat that if you get peckish - those tim tams are your score! If there’s a draw, settle it by either using the snake pull method or a bare-chested, bare-knuckled fight to the death in crocodile infested waters like a real man. 

Parliamentary Procedure: 

Listen up, cause this is important.When you talk to the speaker, ALWAYS call them ‘Mr. Speaker’ EVEN if they’re not male. Or you can call them ‘Reg’ if you like. The Cambimbi Parliament is pretty strict on two things - all speakers must be called Reg, and they must be able to go three rounds with national mascot Shagga the Pissed Roo. If someone else is talking you’re not allowed to say anything apart from ‘Shame,’ ‘Here! Here!’ and ‘Shuddup ya nong!’ - if you say anything else and the speaker’s not happy about it, he can tell you to shut up, and steal one of your Tim Tams. If you don’t have Tim Tams, he can tell you to shut up and not let you propose any laws or amendments this round.

Highlights of playing Oi Reg! at Gippsland Gamers have included:

• Passing laws requiring people to wrestle crocodiles in order to get licenses to open pubs
• Passing laws requiring all households to have a native animal as a pet - but NOT a crocodile so no one can practice wrestling them and get an unfair advantage
• Abolishing all working days but Friday, and moving all public holidays to Fridays
• Passing a law to prevent school shooting by arming all students BUT only supplying ammunition to teachers, who then give it out as rewards for good behaviour
• Passing a law to protect the brewing industry by supplying all primary school children with free beer
• Giving dogs the vote
• Invading New Zealand to annex their film industry and thus prop up our own
• A 400% Hipster Tax
• Replacing the entire Olympics team with members of the opposition

and the list goes on...
Like Australian Politics, this is not a game for the faint of heart, or to be taken at all seriously.

Super Micro RPGs: Poor Clone Bastards 200 word edition

After Poor Clone Bastards had been written for a while, I found out about the 200 word RPG challenge and decided to have a shot at writing a 200 word version of the game. This is not the game I've entered in the challenge - this was more of a warm up, just to see what was possible in the space provided. It ended up playing very differently from the one-page version; there's no GM any more, and no dice. It's more of a collaborative story telling game now.

Poor Clone Bastards

You telepathically control Problem Correction Bioroids, popularly called Poor Clone Bastards. You send them into super hazardous situations. They are expendable.

Everyone takes four jelly babies. These are your squad of PCBs.
Everyone takes a sheet of paper and writes down a piece of equipment their squad has, such as ‘Mk. IX Gibblet-O-Matic disembowling saws.’ Also write down a weakness, such as ‘scared of blood.’
The group agrees on the basic mission they are being sent on, such as recovering cryopods from a shipwreck.
Everyone takes four scraps of paper and writes problems and hazards on them which you will encounter on the mission, such as radiation leaks. Put these in a hat.

On your turn, pull a problem from the hat.

Describe how one of your PCB’s is sacrificed to solve the problem, and eat a jelly baby.

If it is a problem your squad is weak against eat two jelly babies.

If you have equipment that helps you, you don’t eat a jelly baby.
Other players can help. If they do, eat one less jelly baby but they eat a jelly baby.

Micro RPGs: Poor Clone Bastards

A while ago I got rather excited about the idea of micro RPGs - whole games that fit into less than a few pages. After playing Lasers and Feelings, Everyone is John and All Outta Bubblegum a few times (plus Swords and Scrolls and probably a few I've forgotten), I decided to have a go at my own micro system. I wanted to do something really brutal where PCs would regularly die in spectacular and amusing fashion. Thus was born Poor Clone Bastards, a game about the titular mind-controlled clones being sent to fix really REALLY dangerous problems, mostly via self-sacrifice.

POOR CLONE BASTARDS

Thanks to cheap, reliable rapid cloning, important skilled heroic operatives need no longer risk their life. Comfortably ensconced in distant command centres, they can remotely control armies of disposable Problem Correction Bioroids (PCBs, also known as Poor Clone Bastards) rather than risk their own necks.

Stuff you need:
A bunch of jelly babies
Some D12s
Some scrap paper and pencils
Absolutely no compassion for clones

Character Generation:
Each player writes down one special item of equipment that their clone squad are carrying.

For example:
Experimental Jetpacks
Mk.5 ‘Giblet Vaporiser’ Heavy Blaster Rays
Fake Groucho Marx moustaches

Clones:

Each player controls ten clones via a remote link. These clones do all of the fighting and dying. Individually, they are not much good, but in a group they can be quite effective - especially since no one cares if they die. In the game, clones are represented by jelly babies.

Doing things:
Whenever a player orders their clones to do anything hazardous, dangerous, tricky or more difficult than, say, walking, they must roll to see if their clones succeed. Roll a D12, and compare it to the number of clones the player controls. If the number is lower than the number of clones, then they succeed in their task (yay!) If the number is equal to or higher than the number of clones the player controls, they fail and one of the clones dies in some sort of needlessly elaborate and gruesome way. Plus the player gets to eat one of the clone jelly babies.

Special equipment:
If the player’s clones are carrying a piece of special equipment which could conceivably help them with the task at hand, instead of rolling a single D12, roll two and choose the lower result.

Sacrificing clones:
If a player really, REALLY wants to make sure they succeed on a test, they can choose to sacrifice a clone to automatically pass the test. This means they get to eat a jelly baby, so it’s also a viable tactic if they’re a bit hungry.

Running out of clones:
If a player runs out of clones, they are out of the game, but on the plus side, they have been allowed to eat ten delicious jelly babies.

The GMs bit:
So you want to run a game of Poor Clone Bastards? First you need some sort of terrible problem the poor clone bastards need to overcome. Then you need a sick sense of humour. Make things as hard as possible on the players, springing devilish traps and cunning complications which will mow down their clones in droves. Of course, it should be possible to overcome whatever problem they face by throwing enough clones at it, but that doesn’t mean it should be easy!

I also put together a list of suggestions for special equipment and locations.

SPECIAL EQUIPMENT:

Experimental Jetpacks
Mk.5 ‘Giblet Vaporiser’ Heavy Blaster Rays
Fake Groucho Marx moustaches
Frappacino Machine
Feet-B-Stuk Magnetic Boots
Magnetic Grapnel Gun
Hyper-Holistic Freem Beam Cannon
Big Shiny Spanners
Portable Computer
ChillMiester Potable Refrigerator
Dr. Kamikaze’s Infernal Device for Throwing Flame Over a Great Distance To the Detriment of The Naughty Enemy
Volts-2-U Portable generator
Privacy Invading Scanner goggles
Stuff-Finder Mk.XV Hand Scanner
Leap-o-matic Pogo stick
Megaphone
Hologram projector
Hands-B-Stuk Magnetic gloves
Snooper XL Series Camera drone
Boxing gloves
Artificial Duck
MobiDoc Medkit
Combat drugs
Sweet motorbike
Power loader
Miner’s helmet
Monomolecular Cheese Knife
Goop-Flinger adhesive gun
Fishing net

LOCATIONS:

Derelict space ship
Orbital factory
Bunker complex
Shopping mall
Paradise planet
Luxury space liner
Casino Station
Deep sea mining rig
Oil rig
Asteroid mine
Space battleship
Slums
Underground lab
Volcano base
Intercontinental Maglev train
Space junkyard
Garbage world
Abandoned Spaced station
Palace
Polar outpost
Chemical Plant
Alien ruins
Red Light District

Topdog's Tome of Terrible Treasures (Part Two)

You thought the Apparatus of Kwalish was a bit odd?
Naive fool.

Welcome back to a second instalment in my series on ludicrous magic items.
Let us see what is available for your adventurers to plunder this week...

GNOME OF NAVIGATIONAL KNOWLEDGE

This plaster gnome knows the way…

Twice per day, you may ask this gnome a navigational question, and it will point the way for you.

HIGHLY IMPRACTICAL LEATHER CORSET OF MARTIAL ARTS

Exactly what it says on the tin.

+2 to all martial arts checks, only wearable by females, wearer always counts as -1CP for wounds, but can roll the full number of dice in checks.

(I've always found it bizare that, according to RPGs and the popular media, women are fully capable of complete mastery of the martial arts while wearing six-inch stilettos and the skimpiest possible costume. This is my answer to how it's done.
An explanation of the rules for non-DiceChucker players: You get a bonus on martial arts attacks, but always count as having taken one wound. In D&D terms, it would limit your maximum HP to about 1/5 less than normal)

IMPRESSED CAT

This wonderous feline always looks terribly impressed by anything you say or do.

So long as the cat is around, you gain a +2 bonus on any attempts to impress, convince or negotiate. The cat just looks SO impressed by all your suggestions.

(My cat was giving me more than usually pitying looks when I came up with this one, making me think about how wondrous an item a cat who actually looked impressed would be...)

TROMBONE OF INVISIBILTY

A mighty brass instrument with strange powers.
While the Trombone is being played, both it, and the player are invisible.

SCROLL OF MAKE COELIAC

Wheat is for chumps.

Contains a bound spell, which can be used once to turn it’s target into a Coeliac (a person who is allergic to wheat)

DUCK GUN

A blackened metal tube with a wooden grip at one end, and loud honking coming from within.


When fired, the Duck Gun shoots a duck at hypersonic speed towards it’s target. This is always fatal to the duck.

DL: 5, RNG: 10/15/20

(DL: 5 is a fairly hefty damage level. It's more than a crossbow, getting into the realms of +1 weapons.)

BOOK OF FACES

A strange tome, seemingly made from the flayed faces of people…

Each of the 100 pages of this book is a face. They can be removed and worn as masks, granting a +4 bonus to anything which would benefit from a mask.

WAND OF SHEEP

Apparently, this was a wand of sleep which got somewhat mis spelled…

Magic wand; TN:12 magic test to use. Target is either turned into a sheep for D3 hours, or put to sleep for D3 hours.

LIME LIGHT

Because wizards love bad puns.

This is a lime. You know, the fruit. When you poke it hard, it casts a powerful, greenish light for one hour. It is otherwise completely the same as any other lime.

GAUNTLET OF INVERSION

A mighty glove made from iron, studded with runes.

The Gauntlet must be worn at all times to function. It grants a +1 bonus to AL. Once per day, the wearer can point at something, and it will be immediately flipped upside down.

(Just imagine getting this one off during a boss battle... suddenyl Nagrath Z'zokk the Undead Lich of Unspeakable Evil is standing on his head... or even better, getting it off during a SEA battle - suddenly the Prince Arethustra is upside down, sending all her crew to a watery grave...)

ANIMATED TOWER SHIELD

This mighty shield comes complete with little legs…

AL: 2. Grants soft cover (-3 to hit with ranged attacks)
The Animated Tower Shield does not need to be carried. It will always move with it’s owner and position itself so as to give the best protection.

THE TINY RUNNING SHORTS OF SHEN TEE LAI

Cheating at fantasy athletic events is nothing new. Shen Tee Lai just did it in disturbingly small shorts…

+1 movement.
-4 penalty to persuasion, diplomacy etc. against members of the same gender. +4 bonus against members of the opposite gender.

(This is an in joke against one of my friends, well known for his habit of attending Warhammer Tournaments in the shortest of shorts as a way of distracting his opponents.)

What strange and arcane items await in the next installment? Only time will tell, dear readers, only time will tell!

Topdog's Tome of Terrible Treasures (Part One)

I have a taste for strange magic items and treasures. I like to see my players come up with uses for such totally useless items as the Hurtling Hedgehog of Hurculean Harm and The Bagpipes of Doom. I tend to pepper any RPG I am running with things like that, and so far, many of them have lead to memorable encounters and fond memories. So today sees the first instalment in Topdog's Tome of Terrible Treasures, a sporadically ongoing series in which I share with you, dear readers, a selection of the treasures and items I have used.
These items were all created for use with DiceChucker V.3, but they are mostly system agnostic enough that you could easily use them in any rules system. Not all of these were originally my idea, some come from friends, others come from the internet. All of them will help spice up your campaign by adding a little madness.

Potion of the Baboon (Cursed Item)

This potion appears to be a the most delicious thing the beholder can imagine, but once drunk, it turns him into an ape!

You are compelled to drink this potion, which transforms you into a Baboon. Reduce ALL attributes by 1. If any 6's are included in ANY draft the character makes while under the effect the potion wears off.
(this could easily become 'if any 20's are rolled, the potion wears off for use in DND or Pathfinder)

Smelly Fish of Sorcery

Certain rather pungent fish can increase the powers of magic users. No one knows why they can do this, or why they smell so foul.

While bearing the fish, add +1 to any Magic attributes, however, NO friendly figure may stand in a square next to you EVER.
(Again, you could change this to giving a +1 bonus on magic rolls)

Silent Hat

The strange magic which make the silent hat so useful also rob it's wearer of the powers of speech!
While wearing this hat you gain AL 1 AND a Luck Dice.
However, you may not talk to anyone (in real life!) If you speak at all, you lose the hat permanently.
(This item was created as a way to make a particularly loud player shut up. Unfortunately, he decided he was too awesome for the hat and never wore it. It DID lead to some wonderful moments of charades and creative writing.)

HORN OF BABOONS

An ancient, filthy and completely wrecked looking old cows horn, and yet, there is magic here…

Upon blowing the horn, D6 baboons are summoned and will do the blower’s bidding. The baboons last D6 turns or until slain.

TELESCOPIC POLE

Most of the time, this is a pole some 30cm long.
Pressing a cunningly concealed switch causes it to telescope to up to 3m long.

(I've always found the ubiquitous ten foot pole pretty funny. How to adventurers carry the damn things through dungeons? This is my answer...)

EX-BOX

This was a small, wooden box, but someone apparently sat on it…

(not a magic item... I have the rules for my magic items printed up on cards, so when someone discoevers and item, I can just give them a random card. It also helps them remember the item's rules and cuts down on writing. This is one of the 'get all excited and find out it's nothing' items. A while back, the PCs had utterly flattened a Gremlin cathedral with the Bagpipes of Doom, and the Gremlins were eagerly trying to bribe them into NOT blowing the things again. They offered the players gold and a magic item each. Out came the cards... one of the PCs drew the Ex-Box.)

SHACKLES OF TORLAK

A pair of black iron shackles, inscribed with deep and intricate runes.

The Shackles can be thrown 4/6/8, if they successfully hit an opponent, they lock around it’s wrists and will not open until commanded to do so by their owner.

(4/6/8 are short, medium and long range in meters - that's how DCV3 writes such things)

THE BOOTS OF ASCENSION

‘Not to perambulate the corridors in the hours of repose in the boots of ascension’ – ancient proverb.

These boots grant a +6 bonus to rolls for climbing, but DO NOT work indoors at night.
(Apparently, the inscription was originally to be found at a ski resort in Belgium. God bless poor english; these have been a recurring item ever since I saw the inscription in a book)

CURSED CRUMHORN OF COW CALLING

A bewildering musical instrument, which makes a sound almost beyond human comprehension. Cows seem to like it.

When blown, this horn summons D10 cows, which will immediately attack the blower.

BRASS BOTTLE OF BOTTOMLESS BEES

This brass bottle is shaped like a big bee.

Once opened, and held vertically, bees come out. Endlessly (or until plugged, or tilted)
(my friend Pete invented this one... it get's a bonus VS. Nicholas Cage.)

BEFOWLING ROD

A rod with a fork at one end, and a golden chicken at the other.

Touching any dead creature with this rod causes it to turn into a roast chicken.
(I saw this idea online, but cannot remember where. It proved very popular, turning dead foes into delicious meals. The Befowling Rod's greatest moment came when, at the climax of a camapaign set on a desert world, the heroes overcame the Water Guild's basilisk mounted guards, used the magical MacGuffins and made water flow into the temple again. Then they touched the basilisk corpse with the Befowling rod... resulting in them trying to drag several tons of giant roast chicken up through the rapidly flooding water guild shrine...)

PANTS OF THE HAPPY CANINE

These trousers make dogs very happy. No idea why, but it might be something to do with the bacon woven into the fabric.
Any attempts to command, befriend of influence dogs gain a +6 bonus.

MITRE OF FELINE GENEROSITY

Through a strange and wondrous (and slightly miscast) spell, this glorious headgear makes cats give you all they own.

Cats within 20M are compelled to give up all their worldly possessions.
(This came from a random item generator - it's hit the table, and resulted in the wearer being presented with rather a lot of cat's bowls and dead mice. One of the mice had swallowed a jewel, so he was fairly happy.)

CURSED GHOSTLY DOG OF DIGGING

It is the spirit of Fido, mightiest of the digging dogs, cursed to wander the lands for all time… digging.

Fido attaches himself to you and will not go away. He digs constantly, and howls loudly in his existential torment.

OIL OF STUDLINESS

Rubbing this oil upon your body turns you into a real stud.

Unfortunately, the wizard who created this was not up on slang, and took it literally. You become a farm for breeding horses for D6 days.

POT OF TENTACLES

It’s a small, red earthenware pot full of tentacles.

When thrown, this pot bursts open on impact and immobilizes everything within 2m.

Needles of Necromantic Knitting

Once owned by a dread liche, these needles create knitwear of terrible power.

When supplied with wool, and on making a TN 16 knitting check, you can create knitwear which raises the dead for D6 hours.
(TN 16 is REALLY hard. You'd need at least three levels in Knitting to even be able to throw enough dice at it to roll that high.)


Well, I think that's enough for now. I'll post some more sometime soon. If you use any of these in your own games, let me know how they go and what strange uses for PCs find for them...

Top Dog Reviews: Star Wars Edge of the Empire Beginner Box.

When I saw the Edge of the Empire beginner box, I got all excited. Four pre-generated characters, an adventure which teaches the rules, some nice maps, and lots of fancy dice. What's not to get excited about? So I picked up a copy a couple of weeks ago with some birthday money, and last night we gave it a spin.
Having read the adventure, I ran things with Matt and my brother Nik as players. Matt's done some role playing, and has plenty of game experience. Nik has not played anything since 2nd ed 40K, but held the rank of general in the old Tie Fighter computer game. So a good test of the game's teaching abilities and learning curve.
The adventure is really well thought out - each encounter takes up a few pages, and each of them teaches a new part of the rules. They each build on the one before so that everyone learns how things work as they go. Even the GM doesn't need to read the rules before hand, because it's all explained on the page. Having read things before helps, but you could grab the box, grab some mates, and jump right in.
The adventure itself is fairly short since you'll take longer than normal to play as you are all learning as you go. It took us two or so hours. That said, it's got plenty of action and there's even an interlude where you can level up and gain some experience. By the end of the session, we all knew what we were doing, and felt pretty confident with tackling more of the game. Except that Nik's wookie had been knocked out defeating the final bad guy...

Fantasy Flight's Star Wars games use special, fancy Star Wars dice instead of the more common numerical kind. They are covered in baffling symbols, but you quickly get used to the system. There are successes, failures, threats, advantages, triumphs and despairs. All of these interact to give a final result, and both players and GM can use the more exotic things (advantage, threat, triumph and despair) to do more interesting things, trigger special abilities, and generally make the game more cinematic. Half way through the adventure, the Fate pool is introduced. The players can spend light side fate tokens to improve their chances, and the GM can do the same with the dark side. Except whenever a point is spent, it gets flipped over and becomes the opposite! I really like this mechanic since it makes you think hard about using fate or not.

So, how does the Beginner Box stack up?
Well, it's about the most fun I've ever had learning a game system, it's probably the first time I've learnt a system by playing it without an experienced player, and it really does a great job of teaching the game. The down side is that you have to use the pre generated characters, and there's nothing in there about making your own. You can download two more free characters and an extra adventure from Fantasy Flight, and you can keep playing with the pre generated characters and make your own adventures, but you will be a little limited unless you invest in the full game.

Matt has a copy of the Beta release of the full book, which I have flicked through - it has some more mechanics and levels of detail, but apart from that the rules look basically the same, so the beginner box will get you started, but won't last you that long. Of course, it's pretty cheap, and you can use it to teach other players and get them to join in - I have some other friends who are interested in having a go, so I'll be running this again.

Over all, the Beginner Box is an excellent jumping off point for the hobby. It gets you up to speed quickly, and very enjoyably, and gives you the tools for your first steps. It doesn't give you the complete experience, but you could actually play a fairly long campaign using just the contents of the box and the free bonus adventures and characters online.

THE VERDICT:
Star Wars Edge of the Empire Beginner Box scores:

Clarity of Rules:
Excellent. The only thing I was a little confused by was how to generate your own dice pools - I was very tired when I first read it. On a second read when wide awake it made perfect sense.


Learning Curve:
The whole game is designed around the learning curve, and it's probably the best 'learn as you play' RPG set I've encountered. A great way to learn, and you're supported and assisted all the way.


Fun:
The starter adventure is quite enjoyable, and we got some good laughs and dramatic action. Especially the final epic fist fight between Trax and Nik's Wookie character in the corridors of the Krayt Fang.


Replay Value:
You can replay the same adventure as the GM, but once you've played it as a PC you know the secrets and know what to do, so it's not really worth playing again. That being said, you can then use the rules and stats included to create your own adventures.


Presentation:
Fantasy Flight have really got their presentation nailed. The art is great, especially rhe painting which has been slighlty photo-shopped to show Han and Chewie playing the game (Han's not doing well, Chewie obviously just rolled a critical hit...)

Gaslight Casebook

Well, the school year is drawing to a close, and I have lots of spare time over summer. Spare time which can be put to good use building terrain and landships, and of course, role playing. I've declared January Steampunk/Victorian Sci Fi month, and I am ready to (finally) run Gaslight Casebook.
Gaslight Casebook started off as an abortive attempt at a play-by-forum game. I say abortive because we never started. now it's time to run it conventionally. A number of the members of the Hampton Games Club (including TopDog Games co-author Matt) have indicated their inclination to participate, and we hope to run the first session soon.
As to the rules, we will be using Oversoul Games's DiceChucker system. I discovered this system a while ago now, and fell in love with it's flexibility and easy learning curve. It's also free. You can't go past that.
As the casebook progresses, I'll be publishing reports along with adventures. Obviously I'm not going to do this until after game sessions to avoid giving any clues! Allow me to post the following teaser however...

It is 1892. A hideous murder has taken place in Mayfair. A man has been throttled with such force that his head has almost been severed from his shoulders. As the dead man was highly placed at the war office, and had secret documents in his possession, a crack team has been formed to investigate...

Adventure Hooks: Orc Slave Mine

I've decided to publish an intermittent series of adventure hooks and adventure ideas. I'll be keeping things as generic as possible so that you can use them in any system you want. I do have a fair few ideas for adventures floating around (mostly fantasy), but some of them are being kept under wraps incase I want to run them myself!
Anyway, here's the first - the Orc Slave Mines. This formed the basis of a play-by-forum RPG I ran with the kids from my school wargames club for a few months. This one is a good starting adventure for a new party because it helps to explain how all the characters met up, but you can run it just as well with an established party. Anyways, on to the adventure!

The players have been captured by Orcs and thrown into the Slave Mines. I started it off with everyone regaining consciousness and finding out they were in the dungeons, but you can have some of the characters already there when the others turn up. Anyway, they start locked into a dungeon cave, deep under ground. They have had their equipment taken away, and each of them is wearing shackles. These shackles contain Null Stones - strange black stones which drain magical energy, thus preventing mages from casting while wearing them. Also in the dungeon with them is a wizzened and ancient kobold. Outside the dungeon they can hear what seems to be a battle going on between Orcs, and some other species with higher pitched voices.

Obviously the first order of business is to break out. Depending on your party there are a number of approaches - they can try to smash the door down, but without axes that'll be pretty hard. If they talk to the kobold, they'll find out something rather interesting and useful. The Kobold is Krt'K, leader of the Kobold Revolutionary Army. The noise they can hear outside is the Kobold slaves in open revolt against the orcs, and coming to bust him out.

That green stuff is luminous fungi. Not orc flatulence.

The KRA team are armed and armoured, but the slaves are just using what they can find - shovels and picks mostly. Their attack has caught the Orcs by surprise, and given time they will be able to get to the dungeon and bust out Krt'K. They'll probably be pretty happy to see a bunch of sturdy heroes with a grudge against Orcs locked in with him and bust them out as well.

So now it's a matter of escaping the maze-like mine itself. Do the players go it alone, or do they decide to side with the KRA? Do they try to use the KRA to their own ends in a bid to cause even greater havoc upon the Orcs? Do they try to stir up a revolt amongst the other races which the Orcs are lording it over? How do they find their weapons and gear (when I ran this, one of the players had a pet Dragon which the Orcs were keeping in a cage above ground - finding the dragon was one of his primary motivations)?

Of course, the Orcs will regroup soon enough and come back into the slave mines in force, so time is limited and the party will need to think fast.

I used this adventure as the starter for a whole campaign, so I also had some adventure hooks set up in the slave mines themselves. There was a second dungeon cave, which contained some NPC adventurers who had also been captured. They were on a quest of their own and would try to recruit the heroes. There was also a Dwarf cleric in a cage in the torture chamber (it's just not an Orc dungeon without one!) who was seeking a powerful artefact when he was captured and his companions slain. He was near death, but if the heroes healed him he would try to recruit them to his quest (of course, they didn't know he was actually a villain seeking to use the artefact against his people).

Okay, so that's the first instalment of Adventure Hooks. I have intentionally not gone into great detail about the quest since you'll probably want to change it around a bit to fit in your setting. I've used Orcs and Kobolds (with the odd Goblin and Troll thrown in) but you can use anything you like. You can make the slave mines as large or as small as you like to make the adventure last longer, and you can make it as easy or hard as you like for the heroes to find their stolen equipment (in my version they had to actually get out of the mines to find it - it was in a store hut above ground).

PERILOUS QUEST

Perilous Quest is my current project. It's a solo play dungeon crawl RPG.
It occurred to me that a lot of mythological heroes did their questing alone, not in groups like most RPGs support. So I took a leaf from Castle Ravenloft's book and started playing with the idea of a sort of 'artificial intelligence' system to run the bad guys. It's pretty easy to run the dungeon itself using cards to determine the rooms encountered (much as Warhammer Quest did back in the day) treassures accumulated and the enemies met.

I have been tinkering with the rule system for a while. Basically the core mechanic is this: each skill is associated with one of the character's stats. When you use the skill, you roll a number of D6s equal to the stat and try to roll over a particular score. You can earn bonuses to this roll by taking more ranks in a skill.

I plan to use my existing series of Fantasy Tiles to play the game - obviously I'll need to develop cards for the rooms. I'm also going to use the existing paper craft figures I've been designing for a few years for the various heroes and villains. I'll be doing up some new rooms and new figures as well. The intention is to get the system working and release a 'core game' which will then be supplemented by a range of adventure packs. The Core Game will include a starting adventure - The Underpants of the Orc Lord (no really) and it's easy to randomly create adventures as well.

I'm pretty excited about this one, but there's a lot of work involved so it'll be a while before you see much of it.