Iron Kingdoms: Full Metal Fantasy Roleplaying Game

Iron Kingdoms is the setting for the Hordes and Warmachine games so it made sense that we would start playing in it.

As a role playing game it's nifty.  The two career systems gives direction but lets you create pretty much any character you could think of.  There's lots of variety and no one class seems to outshine the others.

The game itself seems more focused on combat than anything else (and miniatures of course).  It takes a good game master to remember that his or her players have skills outside of combat.

As a book it's very well laid out.  Things are easy to find, good descriptions and the art is appropriate and good to look at.  Everyone who saw me reading it had to ask about it.  It doesn't fall into the trap that so many first edition rulebooks do in assuming that the reader has never played a role playing game.  Unlike Call of Cthlulu I never felt that the authors looked down on other role playing experiences.

The economics could use a bit of an overhaul.  Pretty much everything is too expensive because, although copper and silver exist, only gold crowns are used.

It could have used a sample adventure here too.  A thread through the whole book, from character creation to adventure, would have added a unifying theme.

Call of Cthulhu

The role playing game, not the short story by Lovecraft.  Of course, this is inspired by the works of Lovecraft (and others) who created the Cthulhu Mythos.  It has the original short story as its intro which is great at setting the mood.  The rest is a bit of a slog.

I've read a lot of role playing game manuals, this one seems to have a tone that it's so much better than those other games because it's based on the Mythos.  It's written for people that are fans of Cthulhu more than people who are fans of horror roleplaying.

It's an interesting system.  Playing it we've discovered that it's always better to run away and let someone else look at the terribleness.  It's tough with skills only getting better if you succeed with something.  It makes character creation really, really important.

I find it odd that the text suggests that you want to steer clear of Cthulhu things as quickly as possible, but that all the in game examples have Harry confronting something he totally shouldn't see.

The Rage: Forsaken Player's Guide

I loved Werewolf the Apocalypse when White Wolf decided to change the World of Darkness and reboot things I hesitated. I still have trouble wrapping my mind around what's expected of characters as Forsaken rather than Garou but reading The Rage, I finally stopped trying to fit Forsaken into what I knew about the Apocalypse but actually read them as Forsaken.

The book is divided into three sections, Tribes, Rules and Setting. The setting was interesting, not sure if it's something I'd incorporate into a game but maybe taking portions of the ideas presented to add colour to NPCs would be fun. The rules sections suffers the problems of all attempts to add merits, flaws and gifts to the main rules. Some of them are too powerful and some try to take the place of something that already works. New Gifts I tend to just toss and new merits and flaws often need pretty good reasoning from my players to make their way into the campaign. The first section was the most useful.

The tribal section did a really good job of not only expanding the information on the tribes but of also filling out the roles of werewolves within the tribes. I could come up with ideas for every tribe and auspice available in the game. Before I was having trouble coming up with one character idea as none of the tribes were very appealing to me. If I were starting a new campaign I'd have my players read this section to just help them come up with ideas.

Unfortunately this book didn't answer some basic questions I had about the world. How does a werewolf choose a tribe? Are the tribes represented fairly equally in any given area? Do the tribes come together for grand conferences when a new werewolf is newly changed. Is a werewolf a Ghost Wolf automatically for a time before choosing a tribe or is there a "grace period" while he or she is initiated into the culture?

The book gave me better ideas on how the world worked, but it didn't give me quite what I expected so I'll give it a 3.