I recently posted on the Tavern about a bunch of Indie games I bought recently:

I've read Hero's Banner now, and it does what it says on the tin pretty well ('the fury of free will'). As a game it focuses on three motivators for your character - Blood (ties), Conscience and Hero (influences) - and then has a game mechanic where you are forced to use one of the influences to resolve conflicts.

The game engine is a percentile driven one that looks more complicated in the text than it is, thanks to the inclusion of histograms.(*) It inherently drives your character to having one of the three passions dominate. Connections can come into it too, potentially slowing the slide to the endgame. Once a passion hits 100%, you get to narrate what happens to your character until they die, as they have made their choice.

The cute thing about the game is that it then 'does a Pendragon' and the next generation of heroes have to choose a heroic influence based upon the previous generation of characters. It's a nice idea, and helps make a simple game stand-out.

(*)This is a classic case of a good explanation which threatens to put off by looking far more complicated than it is. I guess I should also mention that I found the authorial voice intrusive in this game, and far too florid for what is, in reality a set of rules mechanics with a single short chapter of background. However, as a whole it overcomes this.

I then read The Princes' Kingdom, which is basically Dogs in the Vineyard done with kids adventuring around their father's demesne, an Island Kingdom. It's a nice take, and I'd quite like to try it some time. Like DitV, it uses a bidding and fallout system based on dice, which looks quite fun in itself. You could play it with older kids, or you could play it with adults equally successfully.

Faery's Tale was next. This is a lovely game, with a d6 dice pool mechanic (evens are successes, 6 gives an extra roll) set in the classic fairy tale literature. The layout is a bit of a mess; it almost gets there but manages to look to busy and disordered. This is a real shame as the artwork is some of the best B&W work I've seen since Pendragon 1st Ed.

The whole game engine is really simple, and it focusses nicely on the narrative. It'd definitely work for younger kids and adults who'd like a whimsical and traditional feeling take on the Fairy Tale worlds.

(If I'm seeming critical on layout and tone, it's because I'm taking note at the moment as Wordplay heads towards layout!)

As I mentioned on the main blog, I've been reading through Qin: The Warring States, which is a superb Ancient Chinese Wuxia style RPG. I've been really impressed with this, even though in some places the English suffers from being translated. This isn't to the games' detriment though, being more of a stylistic issue as the structure shows its French roots, reading more like a text-book. However, the content is excellent, in both the context of the game engine and the context of the background. Reading the book made me want to play it, which is always a good sign. I think I'd take this over some of the Japanese style games any day.

I recommend this wholeheartedly, and the PDF version is a steal at $10 on RPG Now.

I've just added a quick and dirty planetary web for Burning Empires on the downloads page.

On the downloads page I have added a PDF crib-sheet to help run through the combat sequence of Contested Ground Studio's excellent A|State RPG. Enjoy - it's a great compliment to their PDF download screen.

I've just finished reading Ex Machina and very nice it is too. Tri-stat implementation seems good (although I need to do some char-gen and combat to get a feel for the system).

Settings are interesting;

Heaven over Mountain is a biotech closed world orbital beanstalk game. Nicely written but didn't float my boat too much.

Underworld is a dark dystopian future American Empire game that reminds me of a number of B Movie SF films in the late 80s and early 90s. The idea is that the US has large work complexes in occupied territories where civil rights have been removed. Lots of potential. I loved the idea that the corporation which sells neural interface chips also sell surplus cycle time on them for processing exercises.

IOSHI is a very different setting - value is based on skills and talents which are developed by people in a virtual state ('Sparta'). There are dark edges to this which could be interesting, but I couldn't think of an 'in' to run this.

Daedalus is a beauty of a setting. Imagine a world where the government decided to implement a universal ID by implementation of a future development of RFID chips. This is implanted and trackable. Later generations of the chip can administer drugs and further keep people happy. Society is tweaked and increasingly controlled in the ongoing fight against terrorism, and the people in it slowly see it as more and more of a utopia. Emotional responses are moderated to drive society towards someone else's ideal of 2.4 kids and a job for life...

What if one day you woke up in this Utopia to find your chip didn't work anymore and you were an outsider.? Surgery to fix it doesn't work, you loose your citizenship rights, and can only hold a menial job because you have no valid ID that is trusted properly? You become an outsider. What if you find out the truth?

Ever since it came out, I've been a big fan of the a|state RPG by Contested Ground Studios. It is a unique game, which reminds me very much of (amongst other things) China Mieville's excellent 'Perdido Street Station'. The system is very like the Chaosium BRP engine, but very rules light. I knocked together a quick reference sheet for the combat rules using OmniGraffle, and sent the PDF to Malc at CGS so they can put it on the website. To my surprise they said that they'd like to use it in their forthcoming GM Screen! So I agreed.

Anyway, if you want to see what all the fuss about a|state is, go to their website and download the free PDF file of the 'lite' rules. In reality, it's all you need to try a game out. Fantastic stuff.