Rulebook Ruminations: Ronin - Skirmish Wargames in the Age of the Samurai

As many of you know, we've been looking for a good system to base our Clan Strife mod upon.  We have been working for about two years and have several working systems, but we never actually carried out the plan to fruition.  Something about the published rulesets hindered the design process as we cleaved to various conventions that made those rulesets unique.  For most of that development time, there were no games based in the Sengoku-Jidai that had enough production value for us to consider.  By the end of 2013, several games were released into the game-o-sphere that were the answer to our prayers.

In the end, we chose Ronin, by Craig Woodfield and published by Osprey Publishing.  This is a small skirmish game that focuses on about a dozen models or so.  This ruleset not only addresses most of the basic Japanese-flavored rules you'l need, but also has a unique and interesting mechanic to set it apart from other games.  We have had the basic book for a while now and have been making modifications for Clan Strife, so today we'll talk about the rules themselves.

First of all, this book is small.  Weighing in at 64 pages, it's smaller than most publications you'll pick up unless they are small dungeon modules.  However, it packs a lot of bang for it's small size.

The production level is high, with awesome paintings by Wayne Reynolds, courtesy of Osprey's sizable library of historical military books.  There aren't a lot of glaring errors, and the text is easy to read and not muddled with a lot of background (the paintings do that well enough).  Besides, there's always plenty of stuff to read about medieval Japan.

The rules themselves are very easy to grasp.  Functionally, it's very similar in many ways to The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game, which was one of the rulesets we had intended to modify for Clan Strife.  There's a priority step, followed by Move, Combat, Action and End phases.  All that's pretty self explanatory, as they are pretty standard wargames fare.  The Action phase is used for stuff like cutting off heads, and you can shoot in both the Move and Action phases.  However, the real gem of the system is the combat system.

The game uses counters, drawn in secret, to form Attack and Defense pools.  Each model gets a certain Combat Pool, and must decide how many points from his pool he will allocate to attack or defense.  Each player reveals their counters at the same time, and then the counters are spent during the ensuing combat.  For instance, for each Attack Counter, you can make an attack.  Defense counters help your warrior avoid damage.  It's an interesting mechanic that adds a certain flavor to the proceedings that really puts you into the cut and thrust of swinging katanas and chopping off necks.

Also included are various lists for factions.  Almost everything conceivable has been covered, and it has drastically reduced the amount of overhead material needed for Clan Strife.  Rules for ashigaru, samurai, ninja, sohei and even Koreans and Ming Chinese have been covered, including many weapons and special abilities your soldiers can select.  All in all, the tome is small but very complete.

Osprey has been offering some very interesting alternatives for wargamers.  Ronin is the first one we've picked up, largely because it was relevant for our ongoing project.  It retails for $17.95 USD, and even if samurai hack and slash isn't your thing, they probably have something that is.  Check out their webstore for more cool stuff, and get your Clan Strife buntai ready!

Rulebook Ruminations - Mage: The Awakening

Previously, several of my Rulebook Ruminations have involved World of Darkness books.  I hesitate to call it "new", simply to differentiate it from the "old".  It's not new anymore, and the "old" books are ancient history.  So why do I ruminate on these books more than some others?

First of all, it's not secret that I enjoy the World of Darkness line over the "old" line.  It's just better.  I know there are a lot of folks who will gnash and growl at that statement, but for me it's not only true - it's a hands down win for the "new" line.  There is no contest.  I'm not even going to go into all that, as we've already done that before...I just wanted to clarify that bit for anyone who was just joining us.  I believe that almost every aspect of the new line is better...that is, production standards are higher.  The books look nicer, and reading through various titles you get the idea that this was all designed before it was broken into sale pieces such as this volume.  We'll get back to this later.

We've played a couple of chronicles with the new system...but this is the first supernatural chronicle we have embarked upon.  The others were explorations of the system as normal mortals (for the most part), and certainly no one had a supernatural template in Hunting Humans or The Rough Edge of Night.  All that malarkey about vampires or werewolves back in the day is out - and mages are in.  This will definitely color the scope of the system for us in the years to come, and I think this was the best decision.  Nobody really has been into vampires since the 90's, and werewolves went out when Twilight came in.

The new system lends itself well to this sort of play.  Some names are turned around from Mage: The Ascension and the "old" World of Darkness in general, such as Gnosis being a mage trait and the ten different arcanas names and functions.  Yet everything is very familiar if you've come from that older world, and once you have a bit of the newer lexicon committed to memory you'll be flinging spells left and right.  Virtual Adepts?  No sir, we have the Free Council instead.

The biggest part of the book are the descriptions of the actual spells you can do with the various arcana.  However, it's a huge step forward for this type of system.  There's still improvisational magic, and the system for that is beefed up as well.  Yet there are a multitude of "common" spells for each arcana, including all the ones new players might be looking for.  Even masters for whom Ascension is old hat will find these training wheels very helpful in the beginning.

It seems that a lot of the old Mage game was based on having much of the source material outside the main volume, and this line assumes much the same.  There's just too much material for one volume, so it's spread out over the line.  Tome of the Watchtowers and Sanctum & Sigil are necessary reads if you want your game to resemble the "default" World of Darkness game world.

That being said, the new world isn't as couched in metaplot as the old.  I was very excited to get my copy of Ascension back in what must have been 1996.  Yet when I began to read it, I had no idea what was going on.  I couldn't make heads or tails of what it was talking about, and as a result I never ran a game with that volume.  I wanted to, but after reading the book I was so confounded as to what was supposed to be an adventure in that system that I simply went back to being a Dungeon Master.  Which brings me to my real point.

Though the ease of approach to and the general playability of Mage: The Awakening is much higher than its predecessor, the game itself is very different from some other games we play.  Adventure design, awards and penalties, etc. are all very different from the standard "dungeon-delve" paradigm we're used to.  Yes, this is a roleplaying game, but you have to remember there are different genres of rpg.

For instance, there's the staples of Swords & Sorcery, Epic Fantasy, Space Opera, Western and all the rest.  You'll have to learn to look at the system for guidance.  What about Horror games?  I still think of the World of Darkness as a horror system, and obviously it thinks of itself that way as well.  Horror, mystery and suspense are the hallmarks of this system...even though you're wizards, Epic Fantasy Dungeon Murder this is not.

We usually play World of Darkness games, old and new, as the cliche "supers with fangs" or "supers with claws" style game.  Yet I will give you this warning, Gatekeepers:  I do not design World of Darkness games as a dungeon.  Neither do the publishers.  Don't get me wrong, I like dungeon hacking as much as the next guy, and probably more.  World of Darkness is different, and presents much different opportunities for scenario writers like myself.  Much like Dark Heresy and Call of Cthulhu, these games should be about mystery, suspense and horror.

The scenarios you face will have to be resolved without the sort of end that most barking mad dungeon murder-hobos come to.  They aren't designed for that, and the world isn't either.  Too many bloodbaths and your campaigns will come to a screaming halt - unless of course, your Storyteller is doing a "supers with magic" chronicle.

For myself, I'll take my cue from the system.  Players need to be reminded what sort of game you're running, however.  Make sure you're all on the same page before all the mages pull out guns and everyone ends up dead.

Rulebook Ruminations: The World of Darkness

We change systems a lot here at the Wargate, and it can be kind of hard to keep the rules about which games apply where all straight in the noggin. So, rather than present a tired review about a game book, Rulebook Ruminations plans to examine individual or sets of gaming books when and if they become relevant our community here.

In keeping with that maxim, today I'll be talking about The World of Darkness, White Wolf's core rulebook for the NEW World of Darkness, hereafter referred to as nWoD to differentiate it from the old line of books. The line was launched in 2004 with this rulebook, but it would take a long time before the nWoD really earned a place at our table. A lot of that was simply all the stigmata from the OLD World of Darkness (oWoD), like being emo or sucking in general.

Last year, some of you may recall the Wargate community went through the end of the oWoD, years after it had been published. Soon after, interest in the nWoD began to simmer and a lot of the new books were bought - now there are a ton floating around here! I think it's safe to say that the nWoD, due to a great many factors, is here to stay for quite some time.

First of all, the book itself is quite nice. The only thing that is a bother is actually using the manual in the game - how does a reference manual not have an index?? That said, the rules that this game uses are a HUGE improvement over the last iterations comprising the oWoD. It's still the Storyteller system, but man is it much meatier now.

This manual is sort of a generic horror game, with very little in the way of setting. Actually, there is nil for setting - the vignettes posed in the fiction portions of the manual are actually quite, well, generic...and I mean that in the best of ways. It is this quality of genericness that truly drew me to the nWoD, that the manual and rules can be extended to almost any genre or setting you can think of: Modern, Western, Apocalyptic, Fantasy...whatever. Just use your imagination to fill in the gaps and this engine will do whatever you want it to do.

The other supernaturals from the oWoD are presented in their own manuals. Vampires, werewolves, mages, the created, geists, changelings, and what not. The line that White Wolf has propagated was an intense draw as well - there is a plethora of fantastic sourcebooks for each of the supernaturals (as one would expect), but White Wolf really went the distance with the basic generic line that is simply The World of Darkness. Titles like Tales from the 13th Precinct, Armory, Second Sight, and the Book of Spirits make up the core line, and almost all of them are at least fascinating if not incredibly useful.

The rules themselves are not as ambiguous, and this is a definite plus for the mighty warriors here at the Wargate. The core mechanic has remained the same (dots in attributes equal dice in a pool) but getting results is actually a lot easier to understand. That's something you really have to think about if you regularly host different games all the time - the audience should be able to remember how to play it, if not the details.

Target number and number of successes needed have been fixed. On most actions a single success will work, but if you score five or more for an "exceptional success" the Storyteller may increase the magnitude of your reward. Likewise, "botches" aren't as much of a plague - the new system says any time you are sufficiently impaired by circumstance to have no dice in your pool, you may still roll a single die - but the chances of success are only 1 in 10. Likewise, there is a 1 in 10 chance of a "dramatic failure" - what we recall as "botches". Thus, the amount of terminal stupidity is quite minimized. In the oWoD it seemed like if you rolled more dice you were more likely to botch. Crazy.

This manual is quite cheap, also. It's a nice hardcover, and provides the basic rules for what are sure to be many campaigns here at the Wargate. If you want your own Wargate manuals, this is definitely one to pick up, and you can usually get them for $10 or $15 easy. Definitely recommended.