This is a review of Neoclassical Geek Revival
This game can be purchased in pdf
from
Drive Thru RPG. It is about to become
available in a printed version that can be obtained by contacting the
author at the blog listed above.
This review is of the PDF
version, which I received as a review copy from the author.
First: The structure and layout of the
game
A caveat before I begin, I work as a
graphic designer for a printing company, so some of the things I note
are things that most people most likely wouldn't consider an issue
and none of them were overwhelmingly annoying things.
The pdf is laid out in two column style
with nice, comfortable margins and an easily read font style. The
gutter (the space between the two columns) was a little tight for my
taste, but please bear in mind the caveat above.
100 pages total, that's it. This is a
good size for a game manual. I only noticed a handful of spelling
errors as I read, but they were easily 'fixed' by context as I read,
and none of them being major.
Artwork was minimal, but appropriate
for the book and appeared to be all from the same source, as the art
style was quite consistent. There are no credits in the pdf version,
but from the style of the art, I'm assuming that they are from a
public domain source, which is not a criticism, merely an
observation. As I said, the art is quite appropriate and the author
made the effort to find qood quality illustrations to use.
There is a table of contents, which
serves it's purpose. I would have liked to see an index, but I know
from experience that building an index can be a royal pain in the
rear and may or may not be used, so I understand the lack of one.
My score for the Structure and Layout
of the document: 4½ out of 5 stars.
The Game itself:
The author tells you in the
introduction that this game assumes you understand roleplaying games
and that it is laid out in the order required to play. I like this,
as I had no difficulties following the flow of the rules and was not
constantly 'flipping' back and forth, which I find myself doing quite
a bit with games put out by larger and more established companies.
This game uses elements that will be
familiar to anyone who has ever been exposed to roleplaying games,
and can be used as a complete game, being 'old school' in it's
design, by which I mean that the GM may have to make rulings as play
progresses, which I consider to be a positive feature. Every
potential situation you may encounter during a campaign is not
covered, so if you are uncomfortable with GM fiat, you may want to
use this as a toolkit, a use for which it has great potential.
One rule that jumped out at me right
from the beginning was the one where on a non-d20 roll, the total
modifiers may not exceed the value rolled on the dice. This means
that if you have a +4 damage modifier and roll a 3 on your dice, you
only do 6 points of damage, not 7.
I like that, wish I had thought of it.
Nice, clean and simple.
Attributes are similar to other games
that use a 20 sider, with two more attributes than most, and a few
renamed. . .
Strength, Agility, Health, Awareness,
Intelligence, Social, Luck and Spirit.
Luck is very useful to everyone, as it
can be spent to offset damage (social and physical) and to 'avoid
suspicion' (useful in covert actions). The other attributes affect
things pretty much as you might suspect if you are familiar with this
type of game.
There are character classes, but yet,
there aren't. Each character gets a number of slices of the 'class
pie' and may choose to put all of his slices as one class type, or he
may spread them out a bit. Putting all of your slices as one type
gains you additional abilities and a special ability only available
if you have the whole pie. Spreading them out, of course, gives you
a bit more versatility. Overall, a nice way to customize your
characters.
There are such things as the Group
Template, which gives you connections to other characters (at least
two) and some minor benefits and gives you a bit more reason to be
together other than 'you are disparate strangers who meet in a tavern
and decide to go risk life and limb together.'
Instead of Alignment, the characters
are further defined by their Morality, which does not restrict them
in actions, but may cause them some personal guilt or recriminations
(kind of like real life).
In terms of races, Humans, Elves,
Dwarves and Wee Folk are listed. Elves and Dwarves have some
specifics listed such as Elves are fae folk and take double damage
from iron based weapons, and Dwarves age when exposed to sunlight
(there are other things as well, but you should buy the pdf or book
to see the whole of it).
Using Counterspells in magic is very
nice. If you know the same spell as that being cast, you can
automatically counter it, otherwise you roll your dice and spend 1d6
mana to attempt to counter the spell. Another good, and simple
mechanic, and it is used to explain why spellcasters aren't big on
sharing their techniques with others who may one day be at odds with
them.
There are a number of really cool ideas
in this game, such as the Lucky Number, Luck, Fate and Destiny
points, but I'm not going to describe all of them here, suffice it to
say, even if you weren't going to use this book to run a game with
the rules as written, there are any number of ideas that can be mined
from it.
A few other cool bits that I'll touch
upon briefly. . .
Scaling Damage. You multiply the
damage you do by your size (humans = 1, dragons = 8, for instance),
or divide how much you take.
Encumbrance System . . . you get a
number of dots equal to your strength score, items are ranked by
dots. Containers give you more dots, for instance, a backpack will
use up 4 dots, but can hold 8 dots of gear (maximum 2 dot sized
items) and takes 1d4 rounds to search through to find that item you
packed in there.
These are only a few of the many very
nice ideas spelled out in this 100 page document. I doubt that I'll
run it as written, but I seldom run anything as written, just ask my
poor players. I will, however, be taking my 7 dwarves and their
picks and shovels into this for some serious mining.
My rating for Substance of the Game
itself: 5 out of 5 stars.
Overall rating: 9½ out of 10 stars.
