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Cat (Revised & Expanded) $5.99
Average Rating:4.0 / 5
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Cat (Revised & Expanded)
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Cat (Revised & Expanded)
Publisher: John Wick Presents
by Allan D. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 12/11/2015 12:19:43

Cat Revised is just exactly as it sounds. A simple and fun game with an interesting concept. All cats are the protector of humans from evil spirits called 'Boggins'. The system allows an extremely quick start-up and easy to follow. Includes the creation rules for dogs, humans, and boggins; which allow storytellers an extremely wide range of flexibility with the system and possible story-lines. It is AMAZING for getting kids excited about role-playing for the first time!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Cat (Revised & Expanded)
Publisher: John Wick Presents
by ash d. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/20/2014 20:07:08

Great concept, but...

I've been playing this occasionally with friends, and the idea is brilliant - playing as cats (with every stereotype from moggy to inbred pedigree) is brilliant fun. The problem is... Well, the rules kinda suck.

They just about hold together for general gameplay, but you quickly hit situations that make the rules seem unfinished - you can spend magic points, but there's no mention of how you recover them. You can give other characters traits as rewards, but can't gain them otherwise, and so on - there's a few typos as well. If this was a first draft, it'd be understandable, but billing it as 'revised' when there are both rules and basic formatting errors is a bit off.

The setting is great, and I'd love to give the author money for an Actually Really Revised edition, but as it stands you'd be better off nicking the campaign idea and using a rules-light generic system like Fate Accelerated.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
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Cat (Revised & Expanded)
Publisher: John Wick Presents
by Edit G. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/20/2013 16:36:46

I love cats, and RPG, mixing them sounds really good.

I have never played with Cat yet, because we didn't have any storyteller who knew the system, and some members of my rpg team criticized it harshly. I owned the previous edition too, and I have really wanted to try it (I had a character and his story).

Technical difficulties: I can't read it with Stanza on my iPod with "unknown format" error (it has problems with the DRM), so I haven't read it from beginning to the end, I just dipped into it on my pc. I know that the files are okay and the quality is good, because I can open them (also the epub with Calibre), and read them, just it isn't comfortable this way.

Positive changes: There was some question with the cat magic points and etc, I saw it is solved in this version (but it is funny, because when you sleep, you are in the dreamworld too)

Unchanged difficulties: A member of my rpg team first question was what if there are more than two participant in a fight? F.e. more cat against a bigger enemy (like in a bad horror movie. I think - but I only think and there is no changes in the gamerules - the side with more participants has some advantage - and with it some advantage dice.

Design: I loved the previous edition. The cover art was simple but suggestive. The inside graphic were childish or dreamlike, I liked them, as I liked the curly font.

The new cover art is... well, do you know the Cat - musical? Because that comes into my mind when I see a dark background with two cat eyes. I don't like the big book - little games text art either. It seems hollow to me.

The inside graphics are correct. The pictures are more uniform, that can be a good thing, but it is easier to find a good idea or feeling from the many different style pictures from the previous edition, some with lighter, dreamish mode, some with darker shades. But in the new edition there are only edited photos, and mostly dark and stern picture. Tl, dr: It became a more professional in design, but I think with this it lost from its playfulness.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Cat (Revised & Expanded)
Publisher: John Wick Presents
by Bryan I. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 03/12/2012 11:58:17

Cat is a 49 page PDF by John Wick in which players take on the roll of a cat in a dark fantasy setting that is based upon our own world but in which strange things are going on and humans can't see them. Cats are our protectors, set to the task of looking after humanity and protecting us from the dark forces that prey upon our fears and base emotions.

Okay so far.

To begin with, let me make it clear that I am a cat person. Very much so. As such, I was always going to want to give this game a try, however, conversely this also means I probably had reasonably high standards for any product relating to my favourite animal.

The rules are very light, with your cat defined by 6 traits rated from best to good and given 9 lives (as befits the folklore). Cats can also have reputation, which helps them with any action that involves the thing for which they are renowned. (Hmm, in which case my real world cats presumably have reputation in “devour cat treats at high speed” and “Avoid cat carrier when Vets appointment is due”).

Combat is quick and comes in two forms, cat-on-cat which is only ever for dominance and cat-on-non-cat which may be to the death, or may not. Damage is in the form of “scars” which impede a particular attribute unless and until they are healed, although your cat can sacrifice a life to avoid scars from a round of combat.

It is all remarkably efficient and rather charming, and I speak as some one who generally dislikes “light” systems. I tend to find they feel as if something has been sacrificed for speed of play. Cat, however, is not such a game. You instead feel the light rule system works perfectly, serves it's purpose (or should that be purr-pose – sorry, sorry, I'll stop now) and actually enhances play, not to mention it is such that it is hard to think of a situation it won't handle well indeed. If I have any criticism of the system it would have to be that I didn't think of it first!

Towards the end is a section on cat magic, which is also both simple and very flexible, a similar system could work well in just about any RPG of any setting, yet this particular interpretation conjures up (excuse the pun), exactly the right feel for the subject matter.

As I read the rules my own cats were in the room. One was trying to eat my pen whilst the other was falling off the desk in my studio whilst trying to get to her favourite sleeping spot. As a consequence the fantasy element of the game – in which cats are highly intelligent masters of creation was very much highlighted in my mind as fantasy, but the writing is such that even with real world examples staring me in the face I was still more or less able to suspend disbelief, now that has to be the mark of a good game!

In places one gets the feeling that the writing style is very much aimed at experienced RPG players, and may not be the easiest for new comers, some knowledge seems to be assumed on the part of the reader, by way of RPG conventions and tropes and so forth, but not so much that it matters greatly.

I bought this game as a beer and pretzels game to trot out now and again when we needed to fill and because... well... cats! However, now I'm really looking forward to trotting this one out and running it. It can be by turns dark and humours, sort of like a cat.

Now if I can just stop my two from batting my dice under the couch long enough, I'll run a few games.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Cat (Revised & Expanded)
Publisher: John Wick Presents
by William H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/24/2011 21:11:09

Revised? Expanded? Uhm... only kinda. It's not really all that revised (several obvious typos survived), and the expansions are recovery of magic points, how to run it for kids, and some advice on setting it in other settings. The new layout is not as good as the old (but the fancy font is more relevant, and less used), has almost exclusively silhouette art that gives LESS sense of the theme, and does not even answer questions that have been raised over the years. The examples are no longer readily set off, there's a sidebar of good info that got lost, and in general, 1E looks better (but required me doing brutality inside the file to make it print as a booklet), and given only one short paragraph of rules difference... Recommend: Pass. The only GOOD point is the inclusion of an ePup.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
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