Chris

Vampire the Masquerade’s 5th edition takes some of the crunchier and more complex rules from earlier editions and makes them much more manageable. With the dice determining the effects and costs of your abilities, players are able to focus more on the narration of the story and to face the consequences that come from it. This makes for a game that can be run at a faster pace then other versions while keeping up the cool factor of playing a vampire in a modern (or not) setting. The system utilizes d10s and the better you are at something, the more dice you get to roll. Skills combine with attributes and can be bolstered by abilities and the sacrifice of some of your stored blood to accomplish just about anything. Characters are differentiated by Clans, Disciplines, and Organizations that offer their own unique boons and carry with them some drama and preconceptions among other vampires. The plotline and explanation of how vampire society came into being, what different groups are working towards, the hierarchy of the society, and so much more are included, and expanded upon in supplemental books. Campaign books give exciting but relatively short campaign adventures, and City centric books give deeper insight and hooks to make a city feel alive. For Game Masters, this is a game that can go any number of directions. Political intrigue and spy focused games are great for characters that can hide in plain sight, influence the thoughts and emotions of others, and can even invoke unimaginable terror. At the same time, a game of brutes that wish to make a name for themselves are given the same chance to make their body a weapon, increase their strength, send bullets flying in extraordinary numbers or with deadly precision, or call the creatures of the night to do their dirty work for them. The game shines best when using a combination of these things as well as any other themes you wished to utilize when telling a story that is focused around the place of the players in their city and vampiric society. I would suggest this to anyone that enjoys the idea of playing a vampire. I know that’s vague, but I feel like simply saying that will invoke ideas to just about anyone. This game promotes storytelling and character progression above all else without sacrificing the mechanics that bring people back to TTRPGs.

Call of Cthulhu is a game that encourages a mindset that is different to so many other systems out there. In this game, you are investigators, journalists, every day people experiencing things that threaten to unravel the mind. Unlike fantasy games like Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder, however, your characters put themselves at terrible risk for simply witnessing these events. Trying to face the horrors and the creatures that you see very easily could lead to your untimely demise. Even if you survive, there’s no guarantee your mind will escape unchanged. The system uses percentile dice (D100s) to determine success and failure. The game is focused pretty much entirely on yours skills, and there are a lot of skills for players to choose from. This can feel overwhelming for newer players as they try to figure out which skills should be focused on, how much they should put into each skill, and any other number of factors. However, the book does provide sample choices and ranks to help ease this burden. Much of the game is about investigating mysteries, gathering clues and hints, and unearthing the terrible truths of our world. Monsters that are encountered typically prove beyond human capacity to do real harm to, and any harm a player suffers isn’t so easily repaired. For Game Masters, this game lets you create a mystery across a variety of times and settings. There are adventures premade if you are new, and these do a good job of introducing the mechanics and themes of the game while also giving you a story to reel players in and ratchet up the tension. Sanity is just as much of a resource to track as Health, and neither one of these is very easy to get back after it is lost forcing characters to think carefully about how brave they want to be. I would suggest this to anyone that enjoys thinking deeper into legends and stories. Creating the reason for things being the way they are, the true purpose of secret societies, and the horrors of what watch us from beyond our own reality create an experience that few other systems can replicate.

Blades in the Dark focuses on a narrative game system that encourages bold choices, creative solutions, and collaborative storytelling between players and game master. The game focuses on the players as part of a crew usually acting in the seedier and more disreputable side of society. Characters are made utilizing playbooks to determine the sort of skills that they have and where their talents lie. This game’s setting is focused in a time where technology is wondrous and dangerous and where the supernatural can influence the everyday lives of the residents. Traveling outside the city is dangerous and nearly impossible to do for any extended period of time meaning that the heat that a crew gains from their heists and jobs will have a long lasting effect on how they can operate in the future. The system uses the d6 to determine levels of failure and success allowing one to critically fail, fail, succeed with consequences, and fully succeed during any number of scores. The Game Master typically isn’t responsible for rolling dice, but instead focuses on providing consequences for the results of what a player is doing. Blades in the Dark utilizes tools like Flashback Mechanics, Amount of Equipment (rather than specific equipment), and a small set of questions to create a game of heists that doesn’t turn into simply sitting around a table and making plans for the whole time. A player can use some of their ‘Loadout’ to announce that their character brought along the tool required for a situation, another can ask to use a ‘Flashback’ to talk about the escape plan they had set up in case things went to hell, and another could ‘Push Themselves’ beyond their normal limits to increase their chance of success in a particularly important situation. I’ve personally used a lot of these mechanics in other systems that I’ve run because I think that they speed up players and encourage them to plan along with the heist rather than wasting entire sessions making plans that fall apart within minutes. For Game Masters, this game is a blast when it comes to setting up situations. The game can be as serious as you need it to be while leaving plenty of opportunity to shift things towards the ridiculous or comical. Few games make creating and participating in a heist as fun as this system, and as a GM, the system does a great job explaining how to set up a session while encouraging you to prep less and allow your players to shape the direction of the story. It makes for an interesting change in mindset, but once you get used to it, you have a game that lets you be as surprised as your players at times. I would suggest this to anyone that wants a good heist adventure or a game that focuses on the darker side of society and the people that have to do whatever it takes just to survive until the next day.

Scum and Villainy is a variant of the Blades in the Dark system utilizing many of the same rules, but adding options to shift the game towards a science fiction style. This game utilizes shows like Firefly, Stargate, Star Trek, and Star Wars as bits of inspiration. With players able to pick playbooks to determine their specialties, they’ll be able to cover a number of different roles. The playbooks are made to feel special in what they do, and each usually contains examples of characters or styles that would fit what they do. This makes it much easier to visualize the kind of character you want to play. Introducing ‘The Way’ as a cosmic force that is present throughout the people and places of this setting allows you to play around with other forces that exist in science fiction if you wanted to shift the game to a different setting than the one provided. This game lives up to its name encouraging a Players vs the Galaxy style that blends the lines of right, wrong, convenient, and dangerous. The system uses the d6 to determine levels of failure and success allowing one to critically fail, fail, succeed with consequences, and fully succeed during any number of scores. The Game Master typically isn’t responsible for rolling dice, but instead focuses on providing consequences for the results of what a player is doing. One of the best ways to separate this system from others as well as to set up what sort of game you are running is the ship. Every crew chooses a ship as part of character creation. The style of ship grants mechanical benefits to the party and levels up the same way as characters would. Whether you pick a ship focused on exploring new worlds, running blockades, or infiltrating off limit facilities, you will find a number of options and abilities to keep your crew flying… at least until the next score. For Game Masters, this game allows you to flex your narrative muscles. Like many other games utilizing this style of dice rolling, your job becomes describing consequences rather than having to determine the specific actions of the world around them. The lore of the system is actually pretty solid, and it gives hooks for the planets and locations creating a mechanic for wanted levels depending on which area your crew are currently present. The factions also add to the potential of inspiration for the creation of your own stories with information about their outlooks, goals, and secrets to determine which ones might interest the players to help or might be interested in permanently taking your players out of the sky. I would suggest this to anyone that enjoys story heavy science fiction stories that have the players forming strong connections with each other and allies in a story that encourages bold choices and morally questionable characters.

Building on a style of system similar to Powered by the Apocalypse, Avatar’s RPG system does a lot of fun things to pull in fans of the show and comics. Players are given the chance to pick the style of their character and the sort of spectrum of emotions and destiny that influence them. They are able to pick a variety of abilities that can be built upon as a character progresses, and they are encouraged to explain bonds between themselves and other player characters in the group, after this, they can also figure out the style of bending they utilize (if any because there’s great options for nonbenders as well!), and the character that comes out as a result feels ready to jump into the world. Characters grow with their experience points, and these points can be used to pursue the sort of character that a player is imagining. The game has sourcebooks for many of its different era’s using the Avatar of that era as an indication to the time frame. You can deal with the fractured earth kingdom and the bandit gangs present in the Kyoshi era, you can deal with the approaching war and political turmoil of the Roku era, you can attempt to recover from the hundred years war and face off against the fire nation with the Aang era, and you can experience the growing shifts in the balance of power as technology grows to become more powerful and prevalent in the Korra era. Each of these timelines introduce new bending styles, stories, and locations to make for an adventure that feels unique no matter when the game is set. For Game Masters, the rules can feel a bit complex compared to other games using the Powered by the Apocalypse style. Trackers to determine the emotions and balance of characters can impact the game, and creating scenarios where these things can be shifted is strongly encouraged as the journey of the character seems to be the greatest focus of this system. There are adventure books that exist, but many of them are single session in style leaving you to create the ties to the adventures or to create your own story how you see fit. I would suggest Avatar to anyone that is in love with the series and the setting and that wants a game that is focused more on the character’s journey rather than the fights that they get into.