When the door opens - Storytime Part 3

*click*

Falken smiled, the door opened, and a massive wooden log shaped as a battering ram swung down straight into Falken’chest.

The kid flew back and hit the wall with a loud crack and hit the floor with a sickening thud. He felt his ribs shifting in places they shouldn’t, his lungs heaving and hurting with every single breath. The all too familiar taste of copper started sliding through his teeth after a painful cough showed him his own blood, now spattered on the floor.

Falken tried to get up, but the pain was too much. Lying face down in a pool of his own blood was not new to him. The streets of Waterdeep were ruthless and unforgiving if you didn’t know how to take care of yourself. Thugs, guards, people bigger and stronger than you in general, always found a way to remind you of your place. More often than not, your place was between the sole of their boot and the ground. He had learned to avoid these situations, to sneak away from people bigger than him, usually taking something of theirs with him as well.

This time he had messed up. He ran through all the reasons why the trap, the annoyingly simple trap, had sprung; however, as much as he thought about it, he couldn’t change the fact the trap had sprung, and now he was losing blood, fast.

His arms and legs were responding but the pain in his chest was too much to get up and move, so he started crawling towards the corridor’s wall, scraping across the stone floor. With some effort he sat upright against the wall and looked left and right, trying to weigh his options. His friends were still waiting for him downstairs, he could try and crawl his way down the stairs, it was just 4 stories down until he reached the Rookery. He wasn’t sure he would not kill himself going down those stairs, but it was the best chance at he had.

That’s when he heard footsteps.

For a second he thought there was only one set of footsteps, then he heard two, three, a whole group of people were getting up from their barracks and clattering around, probably alerted by the loud sound of the battering ram that had hit him. The trap was probably rigged to sound off some sort of alarm in a separate room in the tower as well.

Falken closed his eyes and held in a painful groan. That was it… the trap was made to seem simple so whoever looked at it would think it was easy enough to disarm, when in fact the trap was a more complex mechanism, made to disable whoever was picking the lock and to alert any nearby guards. Now he could barely move, was bleeding internally and externally, and would be a very easy mark to track down.

“If I wasn’t sturdy enough I could be a very nice wall decoration by now”

Falken closed his eyes, let out a small painful chuckle, coughed up some more blood and tilted his head back against the wall. He clutched one of the daggers he was using to pick the lock, held it against his chest and gritted his teeth. If this was it… he might as well go down fighting.

The footsteps got closer, Falken tightened his grip on the dagger and his breathing got faster. His eyesight was failing him now, he felt dizzy, and his eyes were getting foggy, everything looked white and just as suddenly as the battering ram hit him, he felt himself slip away into a cold sleep.

The fog surrounded Falken’s body and obscured the whole corridor, as Lauren entered and almost tripped over the boy’s body. She had heard the boy’s grunts as she was going up the stairs, but she also caught the sound of footsteps coming from above. Thinking fast she concentrated on the air’s moisture and added some of her own body’s water to it, creating a thick cold fog in the corridor where she presumed Falken would be. If the guards would come in she would at least have a few extra seconds to try and help the kid before they were spotted.

She had to fight her urge to audibly gasp when she finally saw Falken bloodied on the floor. She checked for a pulse and placed her cheek next to his mouth to see if he was breathing. After a second that seemed like an eternity she could feel the warm wisp of his breath on her face. Choking back her tears she placed her hand on his chest and spoke to the water spirits in the fog, and within herself to channel enough energy to bring the boy back from the brink of death. His bones started to realign themselves and the internal wounds slowly began to close. The loud footsteps startled her for a moment and broke her concentration. They were heavy, unusually thick and loud.

The Goliath stood behind her squinting through the fog

“Lauren? Is Damian with you?”

Edge of The Empire - Dice head Review

“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side kid…”

When you think “Star Wars” most people think about, Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Yoda, Obi Wan Kenobi… You know, the guys who have lightsabers and gtheir mastery of the force could, in theory, kill anyone with a mere thought.

However, there’s also Han Solo, Chewie, Lando Calrissian, The Millenium Falcon, Bobba Fett, the scum of the galaxy, the Hutts, the Black Sun syndicate, Mos Eisley, Ryloth, the lower levels of Coruscant. The dark gritty side of the Star Wars Galaxy is just as big as the more flashy force-wielding side of it, and there are so many ways in which one could run an RPG adventure in a setting like that.

So a long time ago, in a Galaxy far far away (In the 2000s), Wizards of the Coast owned the license for all Star Wars Collectible card and roleplaying games. Their license expired in 2010, and they declined to renew it. In comes Fantasy Flight games, doing what they do best, and pick up the Star Wars License from Lucasfilm Ltd. 2 years, a card game and a miniature game later, Fantasy Flight releases the first Game in the three part series of games that would comprise the Fantasy Flight Star Wars roleplaying game, Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. Since then, another two games have been released, “Age of rebellion”, and “Force and Destiny”, to complete the “Trilogy” of Star Wars roleplaying games.

These three games, although separate from each other, are designed to be able to play using the rules from all 3 books. Today, we’ll be looking at the first and, for now, my favorite one:

CONTENTS:

I have the Beginners’ game and the Core Rulebook for Edge of the Empire [EoTE]. The Beginner’s guide includes a set of Roleplaying dice (I’ll talk more about those later) 4 character folios, a quick introductory adventure, a summarized rulebook and some adventure supplements like a two-sided map, and some placeholders for your characters and the other NPCs

The Core Rulebook has a much more complete and detailed version of the rules of the game. It gives you a brief overview on what it means to play on the Edge of the Empire, and the tone and feel of the adventures played with this system. It has a very extensive character creation chapter, then a chapter about the equipment, the ships you will be using, and other very important aspects of running the game, such as a description of the most prominent worlds on the outer rim of the Galaxy.

In addition to that, there is a whole chapter dedicated to the different factions of the Galaxy, such as the Hutt cartel, the Black Sun Syndicate, and obviously the Empire and the Rebel alliance. Since you're playing people who are the thugs, smugglers, hot-shot pilots and bounty hunters of the galaxy, it's pretty cool to see all of the oportunities you might have by working for or against any of these factions.

The last chapters of the book include a chapter on the Force Exile, a class that has a minor connection to the force and somehow survived the great Jedi purge. And a short adventure with everything you need to run it as a GM.

GAMEPLAY

Edge of the Empire, just like all of the other Star Wars RPGs by Fantasy Flight, is a heavily narrative game. It uses "Narrative dice" to let you know whether you succeed or not in doing an action, and whether doing said action gave you an advantage or disadvantage in play.

When you decide you want to do an action you start by assembling your dice pool. Let's assume you're making a computers check in order to slice (*Hack* in Star Wars lingo) the security system and open a door. Your character is very Intelligent (her intellect is 3) and has invested some exp in her computers skill. First you take three positive green ability dice to go with her intellect score (3), then you replace two of those with the 2 yellow dice since she has 2 ranks in Computers. These are your positive dice.

Now let's say that the security system is average, not too easy, but not too hard to crack. This would be a medium difficulty roll, so we add 2 setback dice (the purple ones). We end up with something like this:

Basically, you roll the dice, and compare how many success and advantage symbols you have, versus how many failure and disadvantage symbols you have, these cancel each other out, and if in the end you have more success symbols left, that means you succeeded!

Now, the GM could say in this case, that you succeed opening the door, and you did it in such a way that prevents the security system from raising the alarm (that's how you count the advantage symbol). However, it is also possible to succeed with disadvantage though, in which case you would open the door and raise the alarm, giving you less time to move in and do what you need to do.

This is the core mechanic of the game, it makes everything move very smoothly and give the GM a lot of opportunities to add twists and turns to the game's narrative.

Final Thoughts:

I LOVE the Star Wars Universe. Ever since I started playing tabletop RPGs I've wanted to give a Star Wars RPG a try. I was aware of the existence of the Star Wars d20 books, but once I found out they were already out of print, the number of books and supplements was absurdly high, and most important of all, I didn't have a the money to buy all of that :). 

Fantasy Flight has done a great job translating the feel of a Star Wars story into the basic rules of the game. I feel like the game plays very smoothly, even though learning the rules of the game may take a bit of reading. Also if you've never seen the movies, or are not familiar with the terminology, then it might be a bit difficult to get into the mood of the game. However, if you like Sci-fi settings and Space battles, and laser pistols and big starships, then you will have a good time regardless.

All in all, I think this game is really good. As a Dungeon Master you get TONS of tools to build great stories in the Star Wars Galaxy. You want your characters to go hunting for bounties and compete against the likes of Boba Fett? Make deals with Jabba the Hutt? Explore the lower levels of Coruscant? Steal valuable information from the Empire? mess up the communications array of the Rebel Alliance? 

You can, and it'll be a blast. But don't take it from me, here's what some friends who got to play with me as a GM have to say about Edge of the Empire.

"Ever wanted to shoot first? this is your game"
Samuel the Wookie - 2015

"From the start of the game you immerse yourself in familiar places of the Star Wars Universe, the adventure gets you hooked right from the beginning. The force guides you to complete your objectives and overcome challenges. I recommend it for everyone, even non-star Wars fans"
Ludwig the smuggler - 2015

"The setting is very easy to explain, I liked the starter set with the character folios. It's a very complete game. Although, if you don't know anything about Star Wars you might need a bit of help from your friends who are familiar with the terminologies. But this doesn't stop you from having fun!"
Krystle, the Medical Droid - 2015

And well, this one from my friend Fernando is so well written I'm just going to put it here in Spanish, and hope I don't butcher it when I translate it into English.

"Muy pocos juegos tratan de enfatizar, realmente, el aspecto de roleplay de los juegos de rol. Ignorando conceptos pre establecidos por juegos como D&D o pathfinder, Edge of the Empire y sus sucesores de enfocan de lleno en los mismos con un juego altamente narrativo, dispuesto para los narradores aventureros que mas que preparar una historia en su mente le permiten a sus jugadores decidir de que manera seguirá la narrativa. Los dados y sus símbolos tomaran un rato en aprenderse, pero una vez todo es explicado se nota una poderosa elegancia y sencillez que deja a muchos otros "juegos de rol" en vergüenza. Con esta generación de juegos de rol con énfasis en narrativas mas aya de donde las espadas golpean las escamas de los enemigos, no esta de mas decir que la fuerza esta al borde del imperio."

Now, in english:

"Very few games try to really emphasize the roleplaying aspect in a roleplaying game. Ignoring concepts pre-established by games like D&D or Pathfinder, Edge of the Empire and its successors focus fully on roleplaying with a highly narrative-centric game that gives adventurous narrators the opportunity to not just prepare a story in their minds, but also let their players decide how the narrative will progress. The dice and their symbols will take a while to get used to, but once everything has been explained you will see a very powerful elegance and simplicity in the gameplay, which leaves other "Roleplaying" games in shame. With this new generation of roleplaying games, which emphasize narrative beyond swords hitting the scales of our enemies, it's not too much to say that the force, is on the edge of the empire."

Fernando - Bounty Hunter


Beautiful, isn't it?


Thanks for reading!

Legend of the 5 Rings - DICE HEAD REVIEW!

A few months ago a friend of mine convinced me to give this game a try. Basically, as he said, it’s a game where you roleplay as Samurai. And that was pretty much all I needed to give it a try.

Legend of the Five Rings (often abbreviated L5R) is a fictional setting created by John Zinser, Dave Seay, Dave Williams, and John Wick and published by Alderac Entertainment Group in 1995. The setting primarily involves the fictional empire of Rokugan, though some additional areas and cultures have been discussed. Rokugan is based roughly on feudal Japan with influences from other East Asian cultures such as China, Mongolia and Korea.

Now that we’ve got the Wikipedia part of the review out of the way, let’s get into what the game has, how it plays and my general thoughts about it.

"If you see the "half-persons" -as you call them- like posessions, you should take care of them properly. Will you leave your wonderful yukata dirty with mud, or would you clean it and make sure it is anything but perfect?"
-Daidoji Natsuki

CONTENTS!

The core rulebook is pretty thick. It has 404 pages and it’s divided by books titled after the rings referenced in the name of the game. First there’s an introduction, then there’s the Book of Air, which has about 60 pages full of Lore dealing with How the world was created, how Rokugan (the name of the setting, like “Greyhawk” or “Faerun”) came to be, the social classes, everyday rituals, religion, philosophy, Honor, Politics, Economics, and a very thorough description of the 8 Great Clans of Rokugan.

It has a METRIC ASS-TON of Lore.

“I think L5R is a rich role-play game. It is quite fantastic how simple is to understand it, and though it is fictional, you can make realistic characters with it.”

-Elii Mascarin – Player and Game Master

The Book of Earth deals with Game mechanics, how to roll dice, how to read the dice, how combat works, how skill checks are made and how to deal with certain situations in the game. Even though it’s mostly about mechanics, this book also has a few lore entries that help the reader to get immersed into the world of Rokugan.

“Good game, if you like manners and went to finishing school! “ 

-Priscilla Shirley - Player

The book of Fire is all about character creation. In here you’ll find tools to create your character, like a set of 20 questions to help you flesh out your character’s background story. Here’s where you choose which clan your Samurai will belong to, wether he will be a Bushi (warrior) a Shugenja (Magic user) Courtier (Politician) or a Monk or Ninja. As always, you should ask your Dungeon Master which one of these fit better in the story. This chapter goes on to explain how skills work, how spells work, and it gives you the stats for armor and weapons. It also has lore.

“Perfect family game, if you want to GET KILLED FOR DRINKING SAKE, like why, are we kids?  And the turning down gifts three times thing is pretty annoying too. Just give me my damn gift bruh. The shadowland prowlin' oni slayin' part makes it kind of worth it, though.”

-Daidouji Takeru, half-crab half-crane full awesome.

The Book of Water Talks about advanced mechanics. It has information on minor clans, Imperial Families, Ronin options, optional systems like massive battle rules. The Lore in this chapter is also very heavy.

Then the last chapter: The book of Void, focuses on tips for Dungeon Masters and gives them a lot of tools to run a game, like different types of campaigns, how to award experience points to the players, stats for monsters and nonhuman races. It also has a complete 30 page adventure that’s ready to run. And of course:  LORE LORE LORE LORE LORE LORE!!!

“We all want to play as a Samurai in some RPG in some moment of our lives. It doesnt matter which one we're playing at the moment there is always that need to wield a Katana. What surprised me about L5R is that the way the convey the setting to you makes you want to do more than just become Battousai and slash people. You do cool thinks. For example, my character, a Crane Clan Courtier by the name of Daidoji Daichi, would speak in code whenever he wanted...and it was awesome.

Daichi: It would be most imperative to suggest that the Monkey will soon land upon the branches where the Crane is taking a rest. 

Which means, basically, that Monkey reinforcements are arriving to the Crane clan's camp.

Or something like:

Daichi: It is known that when choosing between poisonous enemies, nothing goes past the webs of the Spider...or survive the venom of the scorpion.

Which can mean multiple things. So, speaking in code is pretty great. Get this game if you want to go all cryptic on other players and have them laugh/roll their eyes”

-Moises Montero – Player and Dungeon Master

GAMEPLAY!

Legend of the 5 rings has very simple gameplay mechanics. If you want to do something, you determine your level of success by rolling d10s. You take a bunch of d10s, you throw them, keep the highest number of the roll and add them up. If your result reaches the Target number (determined by your DM) you succeed in doing what you want to do.

Now, what determines the amount of d10s you roll? And what determines the amount of high rolls you get to keep? That’s the not-so-simple part. Let’s try to give you an example.

Rolls are described as xky

X is the number of dice you roll, and Y is the number of dice you keep from that roll. So a roll where you roll 8 and keep 3 would be read as 8k3 or “8 keep 3”

So… You want to hit something with a sword.

The skill required to do so is “Kenjutsu”

You have bought 5 skill points in Kenjutsu, which is tied to your Agility trait. Until now you’ve spent some experience points to raise your Agility to 3.

You would add you 5 skill points in Kenjutsu, to the 3 in Agility, for a total of 8 and you would keep the 3 (from your Agility) highest dice from your roll.

8k3

If one or any of your dice land on 0 (meaning you rolled a 10) they “explode”. So you can add 10 to your roll and roll that dice again, keeping whatever number it lands on. If the dice lands on 0 again, you keep adding 10 to the roll and rerolling until you stop exploding dice.

That is the basic mechanic, but this is pretty much the same for all types of checks, you take a number of dice, you roll them and keep a number of dice out of that roll.

Simple right?

Eh… no…. I would be lying to you if I said this system felt simple or in any way intuitive to me. But, as any other game, you learn to roll your skills a lot faster and more naturally the more you play.

FINAL THOUGHTS!

Legend of the Five Rings is an RPG setting with a load of customization options that will make you look at Role Playing Games in a very different way. As any other setting you can always adapt some of the gameplay options to fit the type of game you want to run. Do you want a game full of political intrigue, moral backstabbing (also: literal backstabbing) and sword duels to the death? L5R has got it. Do you want a game where you slice you enemies down with your katana, fighting for the honor of your house? L5R has got that too. Is it the first time you play an RPG, and want to take a swing at roleplaying with a couple of friends for the first time? Stop right there.

“SHAMEFUL DISPLAY!”

-Samuel Gonzalez - Player

This game might work for you if you have never PLAYED an RPG before, as long as your Game Master is familiar with the setting. A GM that knows the intricacies of how the 8 houses interact with each other, and who has also familiarized him or herself with the oriental cultural aspects that have been integrated into this setting, is your best bet at running a really awesome adventure in Rokugan.

If you’re a Game Master that has never run a Roleplaying Game, then you might want to steer away from this one. I would suggest that you get the Core Rulebook (4^th Edition) and read it. Then read it again, and again, and again. Then when you’ve finally learned the details of this game, read it again. THEN you can run a game in Rokugan. Trust me, it’s in your best interests to get REALLY immersed in the setting before you run it. It will make it a lot more fun for you, and most importantly, for your players.

“If you like Intrigue and strategy, Legend of the 5 rings will be an enormously satisfying experience for you.”
-Fernando Dolande – Game Master and player

Here’s my absolutely honest opinion, this game is awesome. If you’re looking for a game that draws inspiration from Oriental culture, and lets you play as Samurai. Then look no further than Legend of the 5 Rings.

Also did you know they have a Collectible Card game?!?!? Time for a SEQUEL REVIEW!!!

Thanks for reading