New games for a new year

I’ve been lucky enough to land a few freelance jobs this year. Naturally, I used the money earned from those jobs to buy more gaming goodies. I decided to pick up a few new RPGs too, including:

ICONS

My 2010 Twitter timeline and feedreader was filled with praise for Adamant Entertainment’s ICONS, including this review from Greywulf’s Lair. I am a huge fan of the superhero genre, but, to date, have not played a superhero RPG. Described as fast and easy to learn and play, ICONS may be the game to convince my group to try out the superhero genre.

ICONS features an intriguing core mechanic: players roll two differently coloured d6s, one for positive and one for negative. Subtracting the negative die from the positive die gives a final result ranging between -5 and +5. A result of zero or greater is a success (0 – 2 is a moderate success). Alternatively, players can simply roll 2d6 – 7. However, there’s more to it than that. The players roll all the dice! Excellent! For example, when a PC attacks a NPC, the player rolls an attack roll. On the other hand, when a NPC attacks a PC, the player rolls a defense roll.

Cthulhutech

Some readers may remember that I wanted to use Cthulhutech’s quickstart rules (PDF) for a game day back in Durban. Unfortunately, that game day was cancelled by the venue. Since then, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to try the game out. In the end, I decided that the core campaign setting of the game warranted a purchase. I still hope to try the game out on a group of unsuspecting players.

Cthulhutech also features an interesting core mechanic, which they call FRAMEWERK (you may notice a trend in my purchasing habits – interesting core mechanics play a huge role during my purchase decision-making tree). Tests are made by adding the base value of an attribute to the result of (level of expertise in skill)d10. For example, an expert researcher (level 4 researcher) with 7 intelligence would use 7 + the result of 4d10. That sounds simple enough, right? Well, here comes the interesting bit: you do not simply use the sum of the 4d10 to determine the result. Players can choose to take the single highest die value amongst all four dice, the sum of the highest set of multiples, or (if you roll 3 or more dice) the sum of the largest straight. It may sound complicated, but I think that some of my players may enjoy discovering the optimal result for each roll of the dice.

Dragon Age

Those following Cassey (one of my players) on Twitter, might have noted that I’ve started running a Dragon Age game (and continually butcher the PCs – remember, I played Dragon Age: Origins on Nightmare Mode). I’ve already written a bit about trying out the AGE system here, so I won’t go into too much detail here. However, it is worth noting that all my players love the stunt system. In fact, they seem to like it so much, that I’m revisiting Kobold Quartely 17 for tips on using stunts in other systems. For those that don’t know, the AGE system core mechanic works as follows:

The AGE system uses 3d6 – one of the d6s must be of a different colour from the other two. This differently coloured die is the dragon die. The dragon die is used throughout the game, but for stunts, it is used like this: if there are any doubles amongst the 3d6 of a successful roll, the player gets a number of stunt points equal to the result on the dragon die. Stunt points are used to activate stunts (or added bonuses), such as rolling an extra d6 for damage, getting a second attack, or even stunning a crowd into silence with a magnificent speech (coupled with some good role playing).

- Jerall