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One of the thing I like about this game is its modern day setting, with no superpowers, psychic abilities, or supernatural critters.
The characters are all assassins, and play consists in trying to eliminate marks, normally for pay. The setting is not very detailed, but it seems to be in a modern large city, and the players are encouraged to set it near to where they live.
The system involves different types of dice, which are all rolled together, and added (there are dice for skills, equipment, focuse, etc...) Every roll is opposed by another , and the highest roll wins.
The system seems like it could get a bit confusing, especially as the amounts of dice grow.
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Unisystem is one of my favourite RP systems, due to its simplicity and robustness. The basic premise is simple: Roll a d10, add attribute ability, and try to beat 10. This version uses the cinematic unisystem, as seen in the Buffy RPG. It is pretty much the same system as used in the other cinematic games.
The setting is interesting, based on the original writings of Lovercraft, but extending them into the future, resulting in a Lovercraftian Space Opera setting. The emphasis of the game is more on exploration and discovery, rather than getting driven insane by gibbering monstrosities (although there are plenty of those, should you be more inclined that way).
While I really like the game, the presentation is far from perfect, with the kindle format making the tables hard to read. The system is not table-intensive, but there are several of them, and they could have been optimised for the kindle screen.
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Creator Reply: |
Thank you so much for your review, and I appreciate your honesty. We will see what we can do about fixing those tables as soon as we can. I very much appreciate the feedback. It helps make this game better. |
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This is a very light miniatures wargame, in a parody superhero setting.
As a wargame, it is solid if unremarkable, although I do like the authors opinion that using any miniatures is just fine. I get tired of the miniatures wargames that tell you "unless you are using the recommended minatures, fully painted and pre-approved, you are doing it wrong!"
As a parody, the book fails, it is not very funny, and the setting has nothing more to offer than so many other superhero settings.
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Creator Reply: |
Thanks for the feedback. I think you have a point about the humour that most of it rather relies on knowing the in jokes of the comic book world (both in the storyworlds and behind the scenes.) Perhaps I should have employed my usual sledgehammer approach to satire rather than the more subtle and insidious one ;) |
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This is actually the third ORE game that I have purchased (the first two being Wild Talents and Nemesis). The system is an interesting take on rolling dice, and I like its uniqueness, and efficiency. The background is well written, and provides a lot if insight into world war 2, with talents. I did find the American angle a tad annoying, since the majority of the war took place in Europe and Asia.
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I have always been a fan of hard science fiction, and Diaspora fits the bill. There is a very light setting, with no faster-than-light travel, although there are slip-points connecting the various system in a cluster.
A big part of the game allows the players to define their own cluster, giving a nicely built structure to do so, allowing them to define the setting for the game.
The system itself is fairly standard FATE, as found in Spirit of the Century and Dresden Files, with some minor variations. The characters are designed to be created cooperatively, and the character design process ensures that they are all well-connected to each other.
There are four detailed combat systems (or mini-games, since each one is actually playable as a wargame on its own). They include personal, platoon, starship and social combat.
The first three are fairly standard, and well executed. I was really surprised by the quality of the social combat chapter, and I honestly feel it is the best implementation of social combat that I have seen in any system, since it uses zones not to model the physical space, but rather levels of intimacy and points of view. Even if you use nothing else in the book, the social combat is worth the price of admission.
The book is then rounded out with an equipment generation chapter, allowing the players to create the various technologies to round out the setting.
Overall, Diaspora is a brilliant game, and perfect for lovers of science fiction and FATE. Diaspora is an excellent hard-science space opera game.
The Kindle edition itself suffers from some problems, and the tables in the book are a bit hard to read on a Kindle, so I would recommend getting the PDF version if you really want the game.
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This is a very well designed book, with some very evocative art.
The manual starts off with an overview of the SDLF, before going into the break down of the various armies that compose it, giving a lot of background information, although I am not sure how you would use it in a game
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This is a very good adventure for a group of low level characters. The NPCs are nicely detailed, and the whole adventure hangs together well, giving the players a couple of interesting choices without overwhelming them with possibilities.
I am not very impressed by the use of canned text, and I think an outline of what the DM should say would work better, allowing them to put it in their own words.
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A very short 6-page PDF, it focuses mainly on growth/shrinking powers and how to use them, with some ideas of how else to use size and mass alteration. Useful if these play a large part in your game, but a bit lacking in content.
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I have never really used terrain in my RPGs, except purely as scenery. For those of you wanting terrain to play a bigger part in your encounters, Terrain Toolbox, from Sneak Attack Press, gives a lot of options.
Terrain Toolbox is a 32 page PDF, with the first part taken up with an introduction, and an overview of how to use terrain in encounters, and a specific set of rules. Each terrain is considered a level, which measures the effect of it. There are some mathematical oddities in the rules , for example, a terrain can do low, medium or high damage, but a terrain with low damage at level 1 does 1d8 2, while a terrain with high damage does only 1d6. At higher levels the damage numbers start becoming what you would expect.
The bulk of the book is taken with terrain examples. They are extensive, and useful to almost any game, with plenty of variety, and suggestions on how they could make an encounter more interesting. The emphasis is firmly on their use in a combat encounter, and a discussion of other ways to use terrain would have been very interesting... Perhaps in a future supplement?
The layout of the book is very good, and it is easy to find the relevant terrain. It does not use any PDF features, but with its short length it does not really need any.
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