[Let's Study] Dark Harvest: Legacy of Frankenstein Starting Monday!

Hot on the heels of the Early Dark series, we’re moving on to the next game in our Let’s Study series of Alternate History games with Dark Harvest: Legacy of Frankenstein (DH:LoF).

When I first heard of the game I was admittedly intrigued. My last brush with the Frankenstein’s Monster was from White-Wolf’s Promethean: the Created, which while interesting and evocative, was a very hard game to run and play. Dark Harvest on the other hand promised a novel approach to what could have happened if Victor Frankenstein had turned his attentions towards the creation of his own perfect state.

What really seized my imagination was the abuse of Frankenstein’s discoveries to benefit the rich at the cost of the poor. Add the body horror of pillaging the poor for desirable body parts for wealthy patrons who never have to age or die because of their status is something that is utterly abhorent to think about. It makes for a perfect decadent society, drunk on immortality and vanity at the cost of their fellow man.

It’s a powerful hook, and nothing breeds the kind of hate for a villain than one that decided to murder your character’s sister for her beautiful blue eyes to wear for a party. Players will relish every victory and work desperately towards ending the establishment.

So let’s take this week to pick Dark Harvest: Legacy of Frankenstein apart and see what we find, and what kind of games we can run with it.

[Let's Study: Early Dark] Part 6: Conclusion and Review

When Anthropos Games said that they wanted to come out with something unique, they weren’t kidding.

Early Dark is one of those games that is very hard to describe. The setting is dark and gritty and thick with lots of flavor. Each of the civilizations presented is fully realized and the legends of each people is a joy to read. The game actively encourages playing heroes of myth as opposed to the usual wandering band of adventurers common to fantasy gaming.

Characters are built well within the context of their civilizations, coming out as fully realized members of this society rather than “some dude with a sword.” It’s different from most other systems, and I appreciate the effort that they took to try and integrate characters into the setting as much as possible. Many games tend to overlook this, and player characters have to be encouraged by the GM to come up with hooks that tie them with the setting.

The combat is on the higher end of the complexity spectrum, with a system that actively brings up the need to make decisions that work both within the context of the story, and the mechanics of a character’s strengths. While there aren’t any grids or tactical movement, Early Dark doesn’t skimp on the need to make relevant choices in a fight, and players are able to switch tactics based on what kind of opponent they’re fighting.

That said, the game isn’t the most accessible to new players. There’s the occasional bout of page flipping involved, and while the diagrams and examples helped, I took a bit of time to finally come to terms with the all the small nuances and terminology fo the system. I can imagine that teaching this might take a while, and I highly encourage a test skirmish or two to get players used to the game before running a campaign.

Early Dark is a very good first effort from Anthropos Games, and I feel that they’ve mostly hit all their objectives. It’s a solid, crunchy, fully-realized game that caters to a very specific sort of setting and playstyle and does it well. So for those who are looking to try something different, while sticking to the dark fantasy sword & sorcery genre, then you should definitely give Early Dark a shot.

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Early Dark is available on PDF from DriveThruRPG for $16.95 or roughly Php 731.00

[Review] Leagues of Adventure Core Rules by Triple Ace Games

There’s something about Victorian Adventure that tickles my fancy something fierce. I’ve always been a fan of Pulp, but there’s a certain romantic charm to the less informed and yet remarkably optimistic outlook of the adventurers of an earlier era that not too many games pay attention to.

Until this one came along.

Leagues of Adventure is the latest offering from Triple Ace Games. Written by Paul “Wiggy” Wade-Williams of the amazing All For One: Regime Diabolique, Leagues of Adventure uses the Ubiquity system and applies it to an earlier era of daring tales.

Greatly inspired by the trends and fiction of the late Victorian Age, Leagues of Adventure draws on the works of H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, Rudyard Kipling and H. Rider Haggard. If you’ve enjoyed anything from these writers, then you’ll definitely enjoy this game.

For those curious, there’s a strong difference in tone and style in stories of Victorian Age adventure as opposed to Pulp, so those who enjoyed Hollow Earth Expedition shoudln’t be worried about ending up with the same thing. In fact, one of the strongest impressions I got with the book is that the author spent a lot of time building the necessary groundwork in terms of the themes and mood of Victorian Adventure to differentiate it from Pulp.

The book starts off with a chapter devoted to giving a sketch of Victorian History and the conflicts of the era. I feel that this is a solid opening to a game of this sort as Victorian Adventure needs more than just the trappings of look and feel, but a solid foundation of facts and a sense of place and time to properly communicate the unique nature of League of Adventure’s setting. Some of the items included are fictional, of course, but are appropriate given the conceit that Leagues of Adventure is an alternate history where fictional characters in our world were actually quite real. A few callout boxes discuss other period-appropriate elements such as the Imperial System of measurement, proper phrases and even periods of mourning.

Character creation comes next, and anyone who is familiar with the Ubiquity system will find themselves right at home. The character creation is quick and easy, with a point buy system and a choice of Talents and Flaws by which to define your character. Another important choice is to pick which League your character has a membership in. While it might be interesting to have an entire team be part of a single League, this isn’t a requirement, and a mixed-league team might have a broader range of access to resources than a team belonging only to a single League of Adventure.

The Ubiquity system is a rules-medium set of mechanics, comparable to that of Savage Worlds or the World of Darkness. The basic mechanic involves gathering a pool of dice (any kind will do, as only odds and even values matter) and rolling against a set difficulty. Even-numbered results are counted as successes and if you matches or exceeds the difficulty, then you succeed. It’s an easy system to learn, and while the Ubiquity system itself isn’t revolutionary by any chance, it’s easy to learn and run.

The book goes on to detail hazards, weapons, gear and even stranger wonders like automatons and interesting vehicles like an ornithopter, all very appropriate to the games setting and with complete statistics. Each of these wonders could be a plot hook in itself, something that GMs will probably appreciate.

The book goes on to discuss GMing stories set in this era, with wiggle room for Gritty implementations all the way up to Cinematic ones such as the LXG movie. There’s also a wonderful section here on Creating villainous leagues (COBRA anyone?) as well as premade sample leagues to throw your stalwart heroes against.

But the best chapter of the book so far would be the atlas of the world complete with a massive list of interesting locations and plot hooks. There’s enough material here to fuel an entire campaign and still have something left over. As I’ve become increasingly busy as of late I’ve found that this sort of thing is a godsend, and while all of the plot hooks are completely usable, a cunning GM can use these to spin off even more adventures.

The last section of the book is monster manual of sorts, with builds for NPCs and villains, more than enough to get started. There’s a massive range of sample characters and monsters here from Tomb Robber, to Femme Fatale to Eunuch Guards and Dinosaurs.

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I’ve always held a lot of respect for Paul “Wiggy” Wade-Williams’ work, and Leagues of Adventure is him at the top of his game. As far as core books go, this is one of the most complete in terms of usefulness and inspirations for a GM to run a game in this exciting era of gaming.

The Steampunk genre is hitting a high point in its popularity as of late, but while a lot of the stuff out there is content to handwave a lot of stuff in exchange for mere style over substance, Leagues of Adventure shows off what a healthy serving of research can do to make a game feel grounded and believable while still retaining the fancy aesthetic.

For fans of the Steampunk genre, or anyone with an interest in heroics, I definitely recommend Leagues of Adventure.

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Leagues of Adventure is now available from RPGNow in PDF format for $29.99 or roughly Php 1,290

[Let's Study: Early Dark] Part 5: Manual of Artistry

Today we take a look at Early Dark’s Arts.

Arts is the catch-all term for Early Dark’s powers. Defined as bodies of knowledge possessed by the characters, I find it very interesting (and appropriate) that both mundane skills and magic involving the Arcane and the Loom all fall under this category. Considering the fact that these civilizations are are fairly young, and it was a time where transfer of knowledge was nowhere near the level it was during the Renaissance era, simply knowing the tricks of a given trade may seem at par with magic already.

As you can imagine, the Arts in Early Dark are segregated into three primary categories: Mundane, Arcane and Loom.

The Mundane arts range from cultural forms to early sciences and martial skills. Each of them allow for the practiced use of a given skill set bestowing associated perks as the hero grows in proficiency and granting access to special Talents and Masteries unique to the Art.

I’m glad to see that the Mundane Arts focus on noncombat as much as they do with combat skills. In the mythic setting of Early Dark, characters that are known to be cunning tricksters and wise sages definitely need to have a place and the game makes sure that there are Arts that reflect that.

The Arcane arts are one of two magick systems in Early Dark. Working on the basis of the game’s pre-history and metaphysics, the Arcane form of magic is the one that is inherently disruptive. It works against the Loom in the sense that it twists things into “unnatural” forms. That said, Arcane art aren’t inherently “evil” by any stretch. There are seven different Arcana in the game:

• Protagony – magic designed to assist allies
• Antagony – magic designed to deal damage
• Summoning – magic to call the spirits and beings of another world
• Manipulation – mastery of trickery and deceit
• Blood Magick – magic that twists and transforms the body
• Enchanting – blessing and blighting of objects
• Kinesis – levitation and movement of objects and/or people

Loom Magick on the other hand is the reverse of Arcane Arts. This is magick that works with the loom, following it’s currents and being able to enact changes without disrupting the flow of nature. It’s effects are at times more subtle while sometimes being more spectacular.

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While having a single magickal paradigm underneath everything is good for rules consistency, I feel that Early Dark missed a great opportunity here to tailor fit certain spells for certain Civilizations. Given that many of the historical cultures exhibit different belief systems when it comes to magic (Chinese alchemy vs western alchemy as a basic example) it would have been nice if the Arts were somehow either subdivided between the civilizations to show which peoples were more attuned to a given form of magick.

As is the magicks feel less flavorful as everyone (regardless of their civilization) can do the same things assuming they have the same Talents. After all the work in making the civilizations feel as real as possible in the setting, having this kind of treatment with the Magick section is a little bit of a disappointment. Still, there’s nothing wrong with the spells themselves, they’re functional and neat in any rpg, but it does feel like there was a missed opportunity for more flavor.