Horror Show: Zero

Oh boy... Yeah, we're back to Horror Shows. And do I have a good one for you...

Some time ago, a friend of mine stumbled across a small treasure trove of old and rare gaming books at a used book store. We then proceeded to loot the absolute hell out of it. One of the books I found was a game simply titled “Zero” published by Archangel Entertainment. Not long before, I'd come across a copy of Extreme Vengeance published by the same company and I'd enjoyed it. I flipped through Zero, saw the art was “technofetish” looking (which is something I can enjoy), and saw it was only a buck. I thought “Why the hell not?” and picked it up. I mean, it was a buck. Even if it wasn't something I enjoyed, it was no great loss. Much better than the original $25 price tag. 

This is a more recent picture but you can see the elements are still there

 If I had taken the time to take a closer look before I bought it, we wouldn't be here now.

A few weeks ago, I was looking for something to read, and picked up the book as something to flip through if I finished the novel I was reading on the way to work. When I did, I cracked the book open and started reading. It wasn't bad. Not at first. The setting is that humanity has started living underground in a telepathic hive ruled by Queen Zero, due to some kind of apocalypse. Humans are created using in-vitro fertilization and given cybernetic parts to help them preform their tasks better. The members of the hive are sorted into five different castes: Archivist, Breeder (cue cringe), Drone, Solider, and Technician. As soon as I saw “Breeder,” I winced. I've read enough post apocalyptic fiction to make some assumptions about what kind of character that is. Thankfully, I was wrong. They're more medical techs than... Walking wombs.

As I kept reading, I started seeing some red flags. The first one was that they mentioned that the main metaplot would be explored in future supplements. That's a red flag because you shouldn't say you're going to release expansions when you don't even know if the game is going to be popular enough to support any further books.

The next red flag was the talking about how “different” the game was to the others that were out there. Sure, there's a fair point to be made that it isn't a fantasy game, a traditional science fiction, and Monster Of The Week. A post apocalypse setting isn't going to follow the same conventions. But, there was a bit too much of it. Excluded the glossy art pages, there's 78 pages for rules and setting. They waste a lot on going on about how different they are, advice to the GM, and then how to create motivations for adventures. If you wanted to save something for a supplement, that would be it. I support having Player's Guides and Game Master's Guides to expand the game for players and GM alike. Wasting space in such a small book was not a good choice.

The next red flag was the lack of world information for the GM. As I mentioned above, they were planning on putting out more books, but they didn't (a quick check reveals that they were able to put on an adventure book and that's it). So, you have NO IDEA what Zero is planning, what happened to the rest of the world, or why people are suddenly being cast out the hive mind. That's not helpful. They didn't have to go too in depth, I understand the space concerns, but leaving that a big old hole is a waste.

The final red flag for me was the “what is role playing” stuff. I understand that not everyone has been playing D&D and RPGs since the 90's like me. No, I get it. But, given how few pages you have... Why are you wasting them? I can't remember how long it takes, but I feel like it was at least a page or two. That's far too much. Which makes me think, what was the target market for this book? Art people? Typical role players? Both? Neither? I honestly can't tell. Since there's so little to go on, I'm guessing it was suppose to be an introduction to role playing for “darker, edgy” people. That's just from the art and something I read on the last page of the book. I'll fill you in on that later.

After reading through the setting information, I decided to take a look at the rules. If the setting information (such as it is) wasn't enough to earn Zero a place in this series, the rules did easily.

When you make your character, you can choose up to ten “primary” skills, some “secondary” skills, and even more “tertiary” skills. And your level in your “primary” skills is based on the number of skills you have. I'm not joking. No point buy. Not even random rolling. And how to do you make your rolls? Well, it's 1d6 x 1d6. Yes, a d6 TIMES another d6. That means that you have a range of 2 to 36 you can roll. Oh, but it gets worse. When you roll your “primary” skills you need to “meet or beat” your skill level. Not too hard, given how you roll. However, to make a “secondary” skill, you need to roll your level or below. With your “tertiary” skill you have to roll BELOW the skill. And those seem to be really low... I guess they didn't want you to actually make your rolls? I don't know. The system just doesn't make sense. Why not just roll 2d6 and do “meet or beat?” Or roll below, like BESM or GURPS. I get that they were trying to do something unique and different, but why the complexity? To make matters worse, they don't even mention any tips to make sure you know what each die is. Unless you can pick which one is which? Like... Why not something like “get two different colored d6s. Multiply the blue one by the red one?” Why was that so hard? Or “roll one die then multiply that results by the second die you roll?” Maybe they did. I was so done with this book, I gave up. I had hoped it would be something like the system in Extreme Vengence but I was way off base.

I think the worst thing about this book is the wasted potential. The ideas aren't bad. I don't know why, but the late 1990's seems to have had this concern about technology and humanity and wondering what reality was. Not only is this the era of The Matrix, but Dark City as well (I strongly suggest watching both of them if you haven't already). Even eXistenZe dealt with the issue of reality, humanity, and technology. And this setting has a similar feel. Humanity (or some part of it) has reached a way to peacefully coexist by connecting the minds of everyone in one happy being. In a lot of ways, you can see parallels to the Borg from Star Trek (another 90's creation) in how the hive and Queen Zero and everything fits together. The seeds are there. But, perhaps they weren't placed in the best soil. Or, maybe, the idea wasn't ready yet.

Looking over the book, I had ideas. You could take this setting, expand it or change it as you want, and ditch the system. Then, you could easily port it over to a character/player/story driven system like FATE or even Savage Worlds. As the game was copyrighted and published in 1997 (remember, it was $25), I don't know if the copyright is still active. If it is, I'd love to see the rights holder give it another shot with a modern system. I might even run a game of my own, using the ideas in the game, in a different system. I have plenty of those laying around.

Now, here's the kicker. I was reading that last page, as I mentioned above. The story of how this game was created was the guy who ended up creating the game met an artist he liked (Steve Stone) at GenCon 1996 and told him he'd love to do a game based on said art. Which isn't a bad idea, I've definitely been inspired to create games, characters, and etc based on the work of artists I enjoy. But, look at those dates. That means the game was developed, play tested, proof read, and then published in about a year. One year. That doesn't feel like enough time. Now, it could be that the gamer guy had a system laying around that he had developed and just ported things over, but the world and rules and setting were all based on stuff from the artist. So, there had to have been communication and ideas tossed back and forth and so on. Even in the early days of internet communications, that doesn't bode well.

When you get down to it, I don't regret buying this book. There's at least a dozen pages of really nice and interesting art. If nothing else, I can view this is as very slim art book. And the ideas, even if incomplete and a bit uncomfortable, will probably provide me with some fodder for my own stuff. But, I don't think I could be talked into ever playing or running this game. No way. Not going to happen. The system makes my head hurt and seeing all the unfinished ideas just makes me sad.

Of course, if I had paid $25 for this book in 1997, I'd probably be singing a different tune. 100 something pages and what feels like an incomplete product? Not okay. But, for $1 in 2019? Not bad.

Mastering The Game: Character Balance VS Party Balance

Once again, we're talking about running RPGs and how to get started. Today, we're going to talk about party balance versus character balance.

 So, what's party balance and character balance? Glad you asked. What it really boils down to is focus. To start off, we're going to start with character balance.

What is character balance?

There's a few different definitions for this but, I subscribe to the philosophy that it's about making a well balanced characters. That means giving up on min/maxing. What's that? Sorry to keep throwing all of these terms at you, if you’ve never heard them before. Min/maxing is about making a character so powerful in ONE THING to the exclusion of all else. I've also seen Min/maxing called power gaming, but that might be a matter of opinion. When I think of power gaming, I think of people who aren’t coming up with a character so much as a bunch of numbers and stats that have been pushed to the limit just to get the most possible, usually with a focus around combat.

When you maximize one thing, it leaves you off balance or useless when things don't go your way. For example, most games have ranged combat and close combat. If you're maxed out on close combat, that usually means you're the worst in ranged combat. And then you have a battle when you get pinned down by long range weapons and can't do anything. Now, you're useless. You could be even worse than useless, by getting wounded and then someone has to move off the firing line to make sure you don't bleed out. You see what I mean?

Now, I'm not saying you can't good at one thing. You totally can, and should, have something your character is focused on. Ranged combat, melee combat, magic, healing, piloting, and the like, depending on the game. However, just because you're good at shooting doesn't mean that you have exclude all sorts of other stuff. Think of it like having a Major and several Minors in college/university. If you've read the Ferner Five stuff, you've seen that Dr. Penwood is, well, a doctor. But, he's also a fair gunman and knows a bit about the occult. However, he's terrible in a fist fight. Seriously. That does make sense for a refined Englishman to not be great at the fisticuffs. And he does make for a balanced character but his defects make sense for the character, and the setting, because it’s not just a matter of numbers.

The long and the short of it is don't make a character focused on one thing to the exclusion of everything else. Make a real character and have a reason for why they are and aren’t good at something.

We've all been there...

 What is party balance?

This is where it's a good idea to have a conversation with the group before everyone makes characters. Some people do “Session Zero” to do this, but I prefer to have one on one conversations with everyone instead (yes, a “Session Zero” article is on my list).

As I discussed above, you don't want to have a character focused on something too much. However, in a balanced party, everyone needs to have a focus or a role to play in the party. For example, if you're playing D&D, you have the classic line up of Healer, Tank, Caster, Rogue/skill monkey, with one of these doubling as the “Party Face.” And that pattern is there for a reason. You need to have a character who can take damage, someone who can heal damage, someone who can deal damage, and someone who can deal with traps. How you fill these roles is entirely up to the party. Your caster could be a wizard, warlock, or sorcerer. Your tank could be a barbarian, fighter, or paladin. And so on and so forth.

In a modern or sci-fi setting, you have to adjust that template up a little bit. Personally, I use the A-Team. You need your mechanic, your charismatic type, your pilot, and your shooter (or leader).

Of course neither of these examples are perfect. You need to have to have some other things. Your D&D party needs a “face” as well, as I mentioned. Your sci-fi team needs a “medic,” too. What usually happens is someone doubles up on a role or the skills/requirements are spread through out the party. Of course, if you have more players than the standard four, you can have everyone be focused on something and double up on important things, like healing and blasting.

When you're sitting down to look over your game, before you run it, take a look at the rules. If they spend a lot of time talking about magic, it's going to be a big part of it. If they spend a lot of time talking about healing, that means it's not quick and easy. If you're looking at a sci-fi game with space ships and lasers and loads of rules for surviving in the vacuum of space, you know you're going to need a pilot and a medic and someone who knows their way around a blaster. If they have any example characters, pay attention to them. Their example party is based around what the designers want the game to be about. However, you can skip to the parts of the game you, or your party, wants to be about. If they, or you, don't want to deal with piloting and ship to ship combat, don't force someone into the role. I'll talk more about this in my Session Zero article.

So, what is all this about? When you get into party balance, you want to make sure that each character has a place to shine and supports the rest of the party. The party needs to be able to handle each challenge that comes up. And that means it has to be balanced. In short, everyone needs to have that role to fill, so the party can survive and thrive.

Let's take the Ferner Five as an example of party balance:

Dr. Penwood was a healer (a very critical thing in that game) and had money. He was a good shot, because a lot of combat in Deadlands is shooting.
Dr. Heinrich was a real “skill monkey” with a load of skills relating to knowledge, science, and even artillery (which the player gripped about and we never did it to use it). He was also a decent shot and had some medical knowledge. He also had gobs of cash.
Deiter was a real gunman and could intimidate anything. While he didn't have much more going beyond that, he did a lot of the heavy lifting in gunfights, which was very important.
Ming was the close combat fighter, but even he had a few ranks in shooting shotguns. After leveling, he ended up being a bit of a ninja with some stealth. Even with the minimal character stuff he had, he always had something to do, even if it was carrying Penwood’s bags or being a bodyguard for Heinrich when the group split up.
Now, as great as this party was, they did have some gaps. No real Arcane Backgrounds (just Mad Scientist and Martial Artist, which don't really count in my book) and no Tracking skills. This is why, when I was going to start being a player, I made Nona “Cookie” Calhoon. She was a Huckster, a Shootist (magical gun stuff), and had ranks in Tracking and some social skills. It was about filling gaps. When I made Phil, I had him be a close combat monster because of a line in the Deadlands Player's Guide: “You don't bring a knife to a gun fight, but bringing a gun to a knife fight isn't much better.” Or something to that effect.

So, when you're getting ready to get a group together, look at what you need to make a balanced party. Look at any adventures you want to run, enemies you're going to set against the party, and etc. If you're seeing a lot of stuff that requires spells or is immune to physical damage, make sure that you let the party know what they might want.

Don't ever try to make a player make a character they don't want to play. If you have someone who wants to play D&D for the first time, and they're dead set on playing a Warlock, don't force them to play a cleric because you're short on the divine smack-down. Talk to them and explain to them what the group needs. If they still want to play the warlock, let them. Maybe talk with the rest of the party and see if anyone else is willing to take up the holy roller. If that doesn't work, change things. Switch monsters around, maybe give them more healing items, or create a DMPC cleric to keep everyone alive. You get ready to run a deep political thriller in Cyberpunk 2020 and everyone ends up making a Solo? Well, looks like you've got a perfect special forces team. Role-Playing is a cooperative game and you need to be able to adapt to what's going on. If the players want to play a game that you don't want to run, talk with them about it. However, I don't think that it's really going to happen.

And that, folks, is how you make a balanced party. At least in my opinion. What do you think?

Setting Showcase: Star Trek - Prime Directive

Name: Star Trek: Prime Directive
Produced By: Amarillo Design Bureau, Inc/Steve Jackson Games

System: GURPS (3^rd edition)
Genre(s): Science Fiction, Action and Adventure

Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of early Star Trek tabletop gaming.

Alright enough of that, I've had my fun.

Today, we're going to talk about a very old Star Trek setting. That's right, this is slightly different universe than the Star Trek you've seen on the screen. To explain, I'm going to have to talk about the history of Star Trek and licensing, gaming, as well as canon. If you're familiar with this topic, please bare with me.

 

Set phasers to kill 'em all!

Way back in the 60's, what we know as “tabletop gaming” really didn't exist. If you want the full history lesson, I'm sure you can find better teachers than me. As such, it wasn't until the 1970s and 1980s that there was any attempt to create a game based around the property. Before 1979, there were only two Star Trek series that had aired: The Original Series and the Animated Series. And in these series, canon was a hell of a lot looser than what we have now. Hell, the Federation wasn't introduced into Star Trek canon for several episodes. As such, the people who were developing the games didn't have much to go on. They did, however, have an interesting Technical Manual (which I own) and a bunch of novels. These “beta canon” sources, as they're known in the ST community, contradict themselves, the shows, and so on. In a way, the people working of Star Fleet Battles had both lot stuff to work with and not a lot to work with.

The interesting thing about these old sources was the militarization of the Federation and Star Fleet. The Enterprise is referred to as a “heavy cruiser.” Given the military experience of people behind the scenes of the show, as well as the naval ranks and military organization of Star Fleet on screen, it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that people were easily able to come up with a wargame using Star Fleet, the Klingons, the Romulans, and so on. And this is where there's something of a conflict in the fandom. You see, Star Trek presented a happy, hopeful, very “woke” Federation and characters. The producers, writers, and actors worked to show us the best that humanity could be. While some of that is very dated and offensive now, you have to understand the times and give credit where its due.

Which is why a lot of fans of the show were less than pleased that there was a wargame with carriers, fighters, mines, and all that stuff in it. That schism gave this new game its name: Star Fleet Battles.

James Doohan was a WW2 veteran and Canadian

Now we're ready to start talking about the game itself and the setting. I'm sorry if you already knew all of that but I had to make sure that others were up to speed. And, yes, I will try to do a write up of whole SFB (Star Fleet Battles) setting game when I get around to it.

The galaxy of SFB is much more violent and contains much more combat than the one we've seen on screen, there's people who would like to play a roleplaying game in it. Much like what happened with so many games before, SFB ended up making an offshoot of their wargame setting into an RPG setting called “Prime Directive.” Using the history and lore of the SFB universe instead of the regular Star Trek setting (which I believe had already been explored by the FASA Corporation), the main idea behind PD (Prime Directive) was that you were playing Federation Prime Teams, something akin to a Special Forces/Commando team, with a priority towards ensuring the Prime Directive is obeyed. If you're unaware, the Prime Directive (or General Order #1) states that members of the Federation and Star Fleet cannot interfere with the development of pre-warp drive cultures except in the most dire of circumstances and they must avoid discovery by the people. This means that a Prime Team would have to disguise themselves among a population, figure what's going on, and then retrieve a bit of lost technology, stop the Klingons from causing problems, or whatever the mission regulars. In modern terminology, they're “big damn heroes.” Of course, if you've got a team that skilled and well trained, you're going to use them for other situations when you need them. Your team could be fighting Klingons one day, rescuing crash landed Federation science teams from primitive worlds the next, and then end your week on a zero-G fight on the outside of a ship while trying to dislodge an unknown alien from the warp nacelles. Such is the life of a Prime Team.

Now, there's suggestions in the book for other types of games but, this leads to one of our first big problems with this version of the game. That said, we'll get into that...

Before I do, I do need to point out that there's several different versions of this game. Aside from the GURPS version (the 3^rd edition, because there is a 4^th edition versions) I'm reviewing today, there's an original system from the 80's (which I don't know if I want to own), a D20/3.5 D&D transfer, and a D20 Modern version of it. I don't know how any of the others would work (although I might have a PDF of the D20 Modern version on my computer), I'm not sure if any of the systems are any better than what we're going to get into.

Let's talk about GURPS. I haven't played GURPS since 4^th edition first landed. And I had very limited experience with it before that. This version of the game is one of the “Powered By GURPS” games that Steve Jackson Games has used for licensed produced. I'm pretty sure that's because they don't have to worry about dealing with updates and the like if they lose the license.

Meet M'Ress

Of course, you'd assume that a book labeled “Powered By GURPS” would have enough of the rules to handle most everything you'd need to play a game and maybe need the core book and a few source books if you're getting into some really detailed stuff. Not with this game. Oh no. This one is a wild one, so you'd better buckle up.

This book is about the size of a normal GURPS source book, meaning it's less than 200 pages. And that's the first bad news. While the book does have the basic rules for the system, the history of the SFB setting, and all the stuff you'll need to make characters of just about every race in the setting. But, there's a lot, and I mean A LOT, missing stuff you'll want. If you want to do space combat, you've got two choices: Buy GURPS Space or the SFB boxed set. Because they don't have the rules for it the core book. Yeah. No joke. You'll need High Tech for a lot of the technology and... You get the point. You'll also want the core book for a bunch of stuff. This isn't “Powered By GURPS,” it's “you'd be better off doing your own version.” However, there is enough here to do most things out of the box, except space combat. Which you can do using SFB, so… Yeah.

Guacamole Girls are some of the best girls

When it comes to making characters, there are templates for the major Federation races seen in the original show (Vulcans, Andorians, Tellerites), as well as some from the “expanded canon” from the animated series and early novels (Alpha-Centaurans and Rigelians), plus some from the SFB setting (Cygnans, Brecon, and the space elf Arcturians, to name a few). Outside the Federation there’s stuff for Gorn, Kzinti, Tholians, Lyrans, and a whole host of others, including tons made up for the game. When it comes to Klingons, it’s the TOS smooth heads, with their slave races. These are based on the original Klingons, who were known for being much more violent and duplicitous than the ones we’ve seen since The Motion Picture. And the Romulans are also a complete 180 from what we saw in the TNG era, presented as the more “honorable” of the two major races beyond the Federation. Since the SFB universe has years of history behind it, the book can only give you an overview of what direction they went in. The nice thing about giving you all of these races is that you can make the alien equivalent of a Prime Team to have your players play or use as enemies for them to face.

Now, here’s the next part of making characters, trying to figure out what kind of campaign to run. The game is very much centered around making Prime Teams but there’s a ton of Disadvantages you can’t take, as it would disqualify you for military service. Which means you could end up with a group of very bland characters. However, there are other types of campaigns they talk about. You could make the bridge crew of a ship, a group of fighter pilots that move from war zone to war zone, a group of “trouble shooters” that take random assignments that come up or perhaps are a group of lawmen traveling around to set things right, or you can jettison the military style game and play a group of freebooters that does what they want. What kind of game you play is really up to your group but I think the best option for most would be freebooters or free traders. You could have a human, an Orion, a renegade Klingon, a roguish Prellarian, all under the command of a Romulan who pretends to be a Vulcan. It’s really up to you. And there’s plenty of of stuff to be done in this setting. If there’s an interest, I could do a Campaign Briefing on a game like this.

"Wait, is this Kosher?"

When you get right down to it, this game isn’t ready to go out of the gate. There’s so much missing for some types of play and a whole different universe than the one most people know when they think of Star Trek. That said, I do think it’s an interesting one. It’s got the “fists and phasers” feeling of classic Trek, with the imaginative imagery from the Animated Series, mixed together with tons of stuff that you wouldn’t imagine combined with Trek. Would I recommend it? Probably not. Would I run it (again)? Maybe. If I had the right group and the right campaign idea in mind, sure. Great, now I’m thinking about trying to use it for Mirror Universe campaign, switching the setting around and… Anyway. If you like your Trek with a rougher texture, maybe check out the Star Fleet Universe and see what you think. Maybe this is something you’ve been waiting to see and haven’t before.