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RPG Talk: Upcoming Game Books, Part 1
Mar. 12th, 2007 03:41 pmNow that I’ve gotten almost all of the already-published small press games on my list, I suppose it’s time for me to start looking forward to new ones. There are currently five projects that I’m pretty excited about, all in widely-varying states of progress. I’m going to split them up into different posts, in the interest of actually getting at least part of it done, since I’ve been having trouble finishing long single posts lately. So, here’s the first:
Beast Hunters - While I listed this in my previous post of games that I had recently purchased, it technically hasn’t had a full release yet. The game is currently available for preorder, which includes a hardcopy of the book when the first print run ships in early April, as well as a pdf copy of the book now. While I’m a big fan of buying games through my local shop in order to support small business owners, participating in these preorders also goes a very long way towards helping self-publishers make back some of the money they’ve invested in making a game like this. So, I plunked down my money and got my pdf.
So far, I’ve read most of the setting chapter and skimmed the rest, and it seems very cool. At a glance, the basic premise is that of a matriarchal society of hunters whose culture centers around conflicts with a variety of magical beasts; each beast that is killed results in the hunter getting a tattoo made from the creature's blood, which is both a status symbol and a source of power that makes the hunter able to take on stronger beasts. It’s designed for two people to play, but it has optional rules for adding additional Hunters beyond the first. From the bits I’ve processed so far, the mechanics have elements of both Polaris-style conflict negotiation and the GM budgeting of Primetime Adventures, but the dice mechanics (for when negotiations don’t cut it) are much more robust, as befits a game about hunting fell creatures.
I'm looking forward to digging into the game more fully, and if it captures my imagination as fully as I think it will, I'll probably expand on the review above a bit.
Beast Hunters - While I listed this in my previous post of games that I had recently purchased, it technically hasn’t had a full release yet. The game is currently available for preorder, which includes a hardcopy of the book when the first print run ships in early April, as well as a pdf copy of the book now. While I’m a big fan of buying games through my local shop in order to support small business owners, participating in these preorders also goes a very long way towards helping self-publishers make back some of the money they’ve invested in making a game like this. So, I plunked down my money and got my pdf.
So far, I’ve read most of the setting chapter and skimmed the rest, and it seems very cool. At a glance, the basic premise is that of a matriarchal society of hunters whose culture centers around conflicts with a variety of magical beasts; each beast that is killed results in the hunter getting a tattoo made from the creature's blood, which is both a status symbol and a source of power that makes the hunter able to take on stronger beasts. It’s designed for two people to play, but it has optional rules for adding additional Hunters beyond the first. From the bits I’ve processed so far, the mechanics have elements of both Polaris-style conflict negotiation and the GM budgeting of Primetime Adventures, but the dice mechanics (for when negotiations don’t cut it) are much more robust, as befits a game about hunting fell creatures.
I'm looking forward to digging into the game more fully, and if it captures my imagination as fully as I think it will, I'll probably expand on the review above a bit.
