As I have, at least for now, settled on the Vortex system, I have been looking at all the games use the system. Not too many. Dr Who, Pulp Fantastic, Rocket Age, and Primeval. There is also Victoriana 3rd ed but have not looked at it yet. Primeval was a nice find as it does talk about rifts, and has some alternate history and time travel. Rocket age inspires me to include some Buck Rogers style of action.
As I said before, the system is pretty straight forward. Six attributes, and 12 to 13 skills are the base of the game. Traits are what can further define the characters. So I have used Pulp Fantastic as the base, and then combed through the other games to add additional traits not found in Pulp Fantastic. It does create quite a long list of traits, something for everyone! If somehow someone cannot find a trait they want, well depending on what it is we can certainly devise one to fit.
The Timewatch game is very big, and attempts to cover the most common styles of play. It is actually very comprehensive, and very informative. I have a personal dislike of mission style time travel games. The whole travel back in time to stop, or cause something to happen wears thin. The time patrol that seeks to keep time flowing properly is kind of one note. It also feels to much like I am controlling the narrative, 'forcing' the players to do things, rather than allowing more free range gaming.
Well, Timewatch does have that style, but it also has maybe 10 other styles, from horror to cynical time patrol, where the patrol is up to something, quantum leap style, alternate reality etc. Hence the great source for games of this style. I have only just cracked the book open, I look forward to seeing what else is in this book.
No comments:
Post a Comment