Graph Paper Games

This will be a pretty short review, since I only made one afternoon session for this year's KantCon, a locally organized gaming convention in Kansas City. One thing I like about KantCon is that you get a chance to meet some local gaming designers and some little-known games like the year I met the guys from Silver Gryphon Games and bought Ingenium and Aether .  This year I managed to get a spot at a table where two guys from Paragon Notion were running a demo of their game, The Ultimate Hero . By the games' own description it "combines aspects of comic book heroes and science fiction."  On the comic book side it has mutations, psionics, and even magic.  On the science fiction side you have space travel, power armor, and cybernetics.  The PC's work for an organization called DOSHI (Department of Super Human Investigations), a para-military agency dedicated to policing superhuman threats. The rules are pretty straightforward, generally a contested 2d6 r...

A friend of mine (not part of my gaming group) recently purchased the relatively-new Firefly RPG, which I've talked about here and even run a few sessions of with my group.  Her response on Facebook? Wow. I thought the Serenity RPG book was bad. The Firefly RPG book is far, far, far, far worse. Did I mention it was worse? When I asked her why she thought that, this was her response. They mixed the rules for the game (which I don't use but still) in with the 'Episode Guides' so there's no actual rule section, ability/skill charts, equipment lists, etc. It then goes into how to write your adventures as episodes - just like the TV show. They finally give system maps but they don't give an over 'Verse map so you have no idea how the systems relate in terms of distance and position. Overall it's a poorly designed book for anyone who wants to play the game. I'm with her on how the writers used the "episode guide" portion of the licensed RP...