This is cross posted as a comment at Grognardia. As its more an opinion piece than anything that would help improve the game I am not posting at Goodman's boards.
So far the game seems well thought out and designed but there are a ton of things that make me go meh,
The tone of the game is too "agro" as if it was trying to be edgy and dark and invoke Slatanic Panik or something. Not my style. The L0 rules tone was also flat odious reminding me a satire of High Gygaxian. Yuck.
The spell system is too complex and JMO the roll for each spell defeats the entire simplicity of the older system where what you do with it is the decision, not how much stat damage should I take or can I risk a 40% failure rate. If I wanted that I'd play something else
As for the art, no offense to any of the excellent artists , its good but its also something I could care less about. I buy games for mechanics not art or stories. A nice cover and a piece or two if needed is fine. Its well done buts its too "stoner" and dark for my taste.
I did kind of like the idea of just adding L0 stuff to L1 as a kicker. That was a DOH! idea I just never thought off. The deeds were pretty cool as well.
Lastly the Zocchihedrons, just no. Its a clever mechanic and all but I am not going to buy a set of specialty dice made by just one company to play a game. And yes I eventually had to buy some back in the day but that was than and this is now.
However the game does have a few ideas worth stealing and I suspect some will like it. I'd even try it, yes even L0 mode and so thats something.
Good Luck to Goodman on this one. I won't be a booster but I have to say, y'all did a good job.
Trail of Cthulhu 2e and Broken Empires
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I try not to back funding projects (on Kickstarter and the like) that often
these days. This is because I backed a few in recent years that I now kind
of r...
4 weeks ago
"Lastly the Zocchihedrons, just no. Its a clever mechanic and all but I am not going to buy a set of specialty dice made by just one company to play a game."
ReplyDeleteI may be more down for the rest of the subsystems, but "amen" for this one. It feels really gimmicky--and annoying--to have to buy a whole other set of dice just to play the game.
I've skimmed the PDF myself, but I just can't get into it. I think I would have been all over this if it had just come out two or three years ago, but I'm so overfed on retro-clones and semi-clones that I'm starting to see no point to new ones. I understand that probably makes me a stick in the mud 'round these parts, but eh... I just feel like we've seen this before.
ReplyDeleteIts a well done game but I actively dislike the tone, some of the design decisions and the art.
ReplyDeleteAnd Ryan, amen I am retro-cloned out too.
There are a couple that still interest me, the 2e clones yet unreleased and Amazing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea but beyond that, it had better be amazing.