I just read this article on a movie based on the Hitman games. Meh.

First thing wrong with the movie: Vin Diesel. About the only thing he has in common with 47 is that they’re both bald, and neither is a particularly good actor.

Second thing wrong: Apparently it’s a “testosterone laced action packed thriller while being faithful to its video game origins”. I’m not even sure how this is possible. The Hitman games were never about being action-packed; they were about methodical pacing, being patient, killing as few people as possible, and getting out without being caught. The two paradigms don’t seem to jive.

Anyway, I’m still waiting for the announcement of Thief: The Movie starring Keanu Reeves.

I’m not calling this out specifically as a review, mainly because I haven’t actually played the game yet, just read the core book. However, I did want to offer my impressions of Shadowrun, 4th Edition by Fanpro and WKGames.

Setting
The world of Shadowrun is cool (read: really damn cool). For those of you who are new to the hobby, or have been living under a rock, or have otherwise not heard of Shadowrun for some bizarre reason, allow me to explain why it is so cool. Strictly speaking, Shadowrun is a cyberpunk game. There’s full VR, rogue AIs, megacorporations, privatized law enforcement, coffin hotels, flechette guns, and any number of other things ripped directly out of a William Gibson novel. For cyberpunk fans like me, that’s great, and it’s generally enough. Shadowrun doesn’t stop there, though. For those who like to mix a little fantasy with their sci-fi, Shadowrun also includes a number of magical elements. It’s got dwarves, elves, orks, and trolls. It’s got dragons. It’s got vampires and ghouls. It’s got spellcasting, sprit summoning, astral travel, and all kinds of mystic wierdness. The great this is, these two distinct genres don’t seem to be in opposition within the framework fo the world. On the contrary, they make sense together and create a cohesive whole that is more than the sum of its parts. It’s an original, intriguing, and above-all, fun-seeming world to play in.

The book, itself, is teeming with flavor. It starts off with a seven-page fictional vignette, and each chapter is preceeded by a similar, half-page fiction. The artwork does a great job of reinforcing the flavor of the setting, and even the prose of the book seems to be written “in character”. It’s great stuff, it’s well-presented for the most part, and it really makes me want to play the game. One of the best things about the setting, though, is how natural and logical it all seems, despite the cyberpunk craziness and magical oddness. It’s believable. The Matrix seems to be a logical extension of our World-Wide Web, and the various commercial uses for things like wireless transmitting and RFID tags, combined with Augmented Reality accessories, create something that is very much like spam email, telemarketing, and billboards, all rolled into one obnoxious and overbearing package. It’s great.

The Mechanics
The mechanics of Shadowrun are, I think, the book’s greatest weakness. Not that they’re bad; they aren’t. They seem to be perfectly playable. However, the rules seem to suffer from a case of too much complexity. The basic dice pool mechanic is easy enough, and works fine for most rolls. However, it’s when you start getting into the specifics that things get a little hairy. There are so many specific modifiers for various circumstances, equipment, et al, that it seems like a GM who wanted to do things the way they’re meant to be done would be referring to the book a lot, which would bog down gameplay. However, that said, it would be possible for a GM to do things in a more off-the-cuff format, implementing a lot of modifier estimation and GM fiat into the equation to save time and effort. However, to do so makes 40% of the rules content in the book fairly useless. There’s also the problem of too much math. I’m a firm believer that the most complex math that should be in a role-playing game is basic addition and subtraction, with maybe a little light, single-digit multiplication. Shadowrun’s designers, however, decided to include calculations like, “An explosive’s Damage Value is calculated as (modified) rating x the square root of the kilograms used.” Huh? You mean I either have to calculate a square root in my head, or a calculator is required for using explosives? Not good, in my opinion.

There’s also the issue of some rules that are unclear, in a strange location, or apparently missing entirely. For example, you can buy a pair of AR gloves that provide tactile feedback when you’re using Augmented Reality. Sounds cool, but what does it do in game terms? The book doesn’t say. Then there’s the case of DV versus DV. In most instantces, DV stands for Damage Value. However, when you’re talking about magic, DV stands for Drain Value. There are a couple of places where Drain Value is referred to as Drain Code (an oversight, I imagine), which would have been less confusing if it had been used throughout; sadly, however, it wasn’t.

The main problem with the rules, I think, is that they’re a little schizophrenic. For the most part, the game is a rules-heavy system (not unlike the d20 System) that tries to have a rule to handle every situation. In some cases, though, the rules are vague and open to GM interpretation. Now, either method would have been fine with me, if it had been used throughout, but that’s not the case. Instead, there seems to be an overall lack of internal consistancy when it comes to rules philosophy.

What I Liked
The setting is just frickin’ awesome. The rules are good for the most part, even with the rough edges. I’d love to play a cyber-elf ninja-hacker, which this book allows me to do. The artwork and graphic design is also, for the most part, very good.

What I Didn’t Like
The rules are sometimes too complex and detailed, and sometimes too vague. It’s pretty clear that lots of attention was given to the setting, and significantly less to the rules. The book also has more than its fair share of typos throughout.

The Bottom Line
Despite its problems, I have no problem recommending this book. If you’re a role-player, and you’re at all a fan of cyberpunk, this game is worth the price of admission. Heck, I may never actually get a chance to play the game, but I’m glad to have been able to read it. It’s full of ideas, many of which you could easily steal and trasnplant into another system or game if you don’t want to use the core Shadowrun rules.

My second installment of “5 Things” is up.

Yesterday, I downloaded the demo for Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, and I played it yesterday and today. I have a few bullet-point impressions, in no particular order.

• The game has some very cool visual effects. The idle effects for spells are pretty darned cool, as are the underwater effects.
• Body awareness is in the game, meaning that you can look down and see your body. This has a direct effect on movement in the game; your hero moves a bit more slowly and a lot less smoothly than in most first-person games. I think this particular feature tends to either really turn people off or on, with not a lot of in-between. I tend to like body awareness a lot, for some reason that I haven’t yet pinpointed.
• The loading times are really, really slow. I mean, you’re sitting there for a minute to a minute and a half, just waiting for the next level to load.
• The combat is wicked cool. It reminds me a lot of the philosophy behind Iron Heroes, with a heavy emphasis on using your surroundings to your advantage. In any given combat, you’re generally going to be able to throw things or kick enemies into things (or off of things) in order to gain the upper hand in the fight. It’s really a lot of fun. In one particular situation, I used a well-placed ice spell to send an orc sprawling, then kicked him off a ledge to finish him off. Great use of physics and surroundings in conjunction.
• Some bugs. I noticed a few visual glitches, and one bug repeatedly kept me from finishing the demo by crashing the game just before the big fight with the cyclops (now, I gather from the Internet that you’re not actually supposed to fight the cyclops, that that’s the end of the demo. That’s fine, but having to shut my computer down because the game locked it up at the end of the demo is kind of a bummer). This stuff will, hopefully, be ironed out in the final version of the game.

All in all, I was pretty impressed with the demo. I really like the gameplay and the skills you get to learn, and the combat is lots of fun and pretty challenging. I’m looking forward to the game now, I just hope some of the rough edges are ironed out before its release.

Yes, that’s right, TableStar Games has sent me another review copy, this time of HeroCard: Champion of New Olympia, as well as the Talon and Ferrion expansions. I’ve read the rulebook, looked through the cards, and checked out the bits, though I haven’t actually played the game yet. It looks like fun, and the heroes look like they each pack quite a punch (or a few, I suppose). Also, one thing to note about Champion is that, unlike Galaxy, these heroes are easy to relate too, being actual human beings (or, super-human beings, perhaps) rather than huge space mutants. At any rate, expect a review sometime next week or next weekend, as I’ll be somewhat busy until then.

Also, for the record, I’d like to note that I have submitted my next installment of “5 Things” to TTR Online for posting, but it has not yet been posted. I suspect that this has something to do with the fact that the proprieter is on his honeymoon, so I’ll forgive him this time, and I urge you all to do the same.

The Sci-Fi Channel apparently has doubts as to whether or not Mike Mignola’s The Amazing Screw-On Head should see airtime. Having just watched the pilot, I’m going to go tell them to pick up the series. You should too.