Hot War
And the winner is…
The ENnie awards were announced last week and I was pretty pleased to see that a game I’ve talked rather a lot about here, A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplay picked up a Silver for Best Rules as well as the Gold for Best Free Product for the Quickstart rules. Coming second place to a game like Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition is a pretty good feat and Green Ronin Publishing must be very pleased.
I’m hoping that off the back of this positive response to the game that Green Ronin firms up the plans for further products as well as officially announcing when the Campaign Guide will be released. According to a report from Gen Con on the Green Ronin boards, the hold up is not that they are waiting on approvals from George R.R. Martin. Though this of course should be taken with a grain of salt until there is some sort word from Green Ronin.
Most of the other award winners covered off DnD 4th ed, Dark Heresy and Paizo Publishing, though it was great to see that some of the smaller publishers and games had a good showing like Mouse Guard (which I own, but have never actually played) and Evil Hat Productions with both Don’t Rest Your Head and Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies. Unfortunately my friend Malcolm’s Hot War didn’t pick up awards in the two categories (Best Setting and Best Writing) it was nominated.
A full list of winners can be found over at the ENnie Awards site.
A Day of Games
Despite the recent lull in blogging things have been pretty busy on the geeking front, not least of which was my desicion to run a small, one day RPG con a couple of months ago. The reasons for this were two fold.
- There are heaps of fantastic small print games out there that I wanted to have an oppertunity to play.
- I thought that the Wellington gaming scene would respond well to an event mid year.
So I stole an idea from New Zealand’s biggest RPG con, KapCon (which is held every January), and based my Day of Games on the Games on Demand room. The deal here is that there are a group of facilitators who each agree to run certain games that they’re really excited about and then people come, vote on which games seem cool and go play. Sounds easy right?
Well as I found out this supposidly easy concept needs (not surprisingly) more organisation that I thought it would. Choosing a date in mid-May which was roughly half way between KapCon and the one of the other main RPG events in Wellington, ConFusion which is held in August was easy. As was picking the old faithful, Turnbull House for a venue. I pimped my idea on the NZRag boards to get people to come and run games and even made fliers to go into the FLGS. I kind of forgot to set up a Facebook event until a few days before but dispite that lapse the day arrived an we had a pretty good turn out, even a guy who was from the US and travelling around NZ. After some discussion I decided to do a slightly different time table. Rather than the traditional 3 hour slot I split the day into two 4 hour slots and four 2 hour slots. This way if you wanted to play in a game that required more set up you’d still get time to play.
This was kind of where my grand idea fell down a little. I had a big white board and session times/lengths all worked out, but I felt there was too much standing around waiting and discussing what would happen next. Also a number of the GMs didn’t get to play in games that they wanted to due to having to run games. So I’ve been thinking about how to smooth out those waits and give everyone the oppertunity to play if they wanted to. So here is what I’m going to do next year, assuming there is interest:
- Get a clear list of games from each GM so other GMs can indicate what they’d also like to play in.
- Set up the whole day’s timetable to begin with so if people finish their session they know where to go next and time isn’t eaten up in the short sessions with arranging things.
In terms of my own Day of Games experience it was good. I ran an awesome game of 3: 16 for three Americans who really got into their roles as Space Marines. Then I “ran” an utterly terrible session of Capes (a game I’d never read, played in or even come across before) which I thought would be an easy supers pick game but confused me and all of the players with it’s unusual conflict mechanic. However I did really like the way characters were generated. Finally I brought out Hot War and actually got to run through game creation. This was my most satisfying game of the day and made me want to play in a multi-session game of this even more.
All in all it was a good day and the comments from others made me think that it could continue to grow in the furture. So I’m thinking that Day of Games will be around for another year yet.
Project Breather gets coverage!
I’m stoked that Project Breather has been hosted by the friendly guys over at Contested Ground Studios. Thanks for the support!
Edit: You can either get it from the Hot War downloads page or by going to the Scenarios section.
2008′s Best RPGs
Over on NZRaG there has been a post about this years best RPGs. My two are:
3: 16 – as a game of kick arse space marines doing what they do best, it is excellent. As a game of moral conundrums and difficult calls it forces the player to do more than just kill aliens. The system is simple, elegant and ultimately easy to learn and use. I also love the fact that character gen really only takes 5 minutes.
Hot War – I’ve talked a lot about this game and a large part of what appeals to me is the alt history setting that is much a character as any of the PCs. It is dark and difficult and allows the telling of stories that don’t always go the way you think. The collaborative nature of the game play means that as a GM unexpected things happen which just adds to the richness. Also the use of traits and relationships instead of skills makes for really well rounded and complex characters.
However since I wrote this I have actually brought another game which I think I’d like to add. Mongoose Publishing has gained the licence for the classic Sci Fi RPG, Traveller and I think have done a damn fine job. I’ve never read any of the other versions of this game but I’ve found this version excellent. I’ll be writing up a full review soon.
Actual Play – Project Breather @ Fright Night ’08
Tonight was Wellington’s Horror Con, Fright Night. I ran a Hot War game I like to call Project Breather.
Hot War – Thoughts and a bit of a review
Almost a year ago I met this interesting Scot named Malc. We played a game of My Life With Master at KapCon and got to talking. It turned out that he was a game designer and the game he was about to release was called Hot War.
The premise of the setting is an alternate future. In 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis actually happened and the world is plunged into a terrible war. The book starts out a year later, with all of the players in London being part of a task force called the Special Situations Group. However the nuclear winter isn’t the only thing they have to deal with. Other ‘twisted’ technologies were also used, creatures from nightmare and out of crazy experiments. These are the real destructive force at play, not the run of the mill nuclear weapons.