Review Originally Published January 15th, 2001

The Vemora is a short module for Forge: Out of Chaos supposedly designed not only for beginning adventurers, but beginning players – containing “explanations and guidelines through the text for the first-time Referee to follow.” I have yet to figure out what these “explanations and guidelines” are supposed to be, because the entire module looks exactly like an old-style D&D module.

The “plot” goes something like this: The PCs arrive in a small town. They are told that the town guard has been blinded by an attacking group of monsters. In order to heal the guards, the town needs to find the Vemora – a great healing artifact which was lost many years ago when the underground Thornburg Keep was devastated by a plague. The PCs go into the keep/dungeon, beat up on some monsters, find the Vemora behind a secret door, and go away happy with a bunch of treasure and a rather nice reward.

This is a village, mind you, which is described in four sections: The Blacksmith, The Supply Store, The Temple of Shalmar, and The Drunken Dragon (bar).

In short, the cliches run thick on the ground, the pre-written dialogue would make your players’ ears bleed if you ever dared to utter its stilted clauses, and the artwork will make your eyes bleed (having dipped from the rulebook’s mediocre quality into the truly pathetic).

Writers: Mark Kibbe
Publisher: Basement Games Unlimited, LLC
Price: $7.95
Page Count: 26
ISBN: 1-892294-01-X
Product Code: BGU1002

Tales That Dead Men Tell is, at face value, a far more substantial value than The Vemora: Background information is given on the Kingdom of Hamsburg and the Province of Lyvanna, along with some regional political history – and the adventure does a fairly sophisticated job of hooking the local events which make up the adventure into the larger political affairs of the world.

The plot, in brief: A decade ago the Kamon family was charged with high crimes against the Province of Lyvanna. When the soldiers came to arrest them, however, something went wrong – the household guard became agitated, and the evening ended in disaster: Kamon was executed, his wife arrested, his children missing or dead. Kamon Manor was left abandoned.

But then, years later, the bells of the Manor begin to ring again. Graves are found opened. And the guardsmen sent to investigate never return.

Enter the PCs.

Unfortunately, what is set up as a really top-notch horror adventure degenerates rapidly into a standard dungeon crawl: The PCs move into the manor/dungeon and commit a mop-up operation on a group of necromancers who have moved in to search for some sort of hidden treasure on the property.

Some products have a really good setup, but then don’t quite manage to get the dots connected just right. Tales That Dead Men Tell has a really good set up… but manages to miss the target by the length of a battlefield.

Writers: Mark Kibbe
Publisher: Basement Games Unlimited, LLC
Price: $9.95
Page Count: 44
ISBN: 1-892294-02-8
Product Code: BGU1003

Past me was definitely unimpressed with these adventures, which I received as review copies alongside the core rulebook for Forge: Out of Chaos. If you’d like to see a more positive review of The Vemora, you can find one here (including notes on converting the adventure to other systems and some light remixing).

Review Originally Published January 3rd, 2001

What I think I like best about Forge: Out of Chaos is the fact that it manages – while avoiding the common pitfall of market ignorance in assuming that D&D is the only game which has ever existed – to unabashedly bask in the glory of “Old School” gaming. Dungeon crawls, monster bashing, ornate pantheons of gods – all the fun stuff that used to fill you with awe and pulled you into gaming in the first place.

And maybe its just nostalgia overcoming me at the grand ol’ age of twenty, but I love this stuff.

So when I opened this game up and found, immediately within its cover, a twelve-page retrospective on the gods and creation of the world of Juravia, my inner child did a little dance, scampered around for a bit, and then kicked up its heels for a really fun ride.

It’s just too bad that the next two hundred pages failed at every single level.

It’s just too bad that the designers, for reasons beyond the comprehension of man, decided to randomly generate attributes by rolling 2d6 + .1d10. (Yes, you read that right: You generate decimals.)

It’s just too bad that this skill-based system utterly fails to describe the rules for resolving any sort of non-combat action. (Yes, you read that right: If it doesn’t involve swinging a weapon or casting a spell, there aren’t any rules for it in Forge: Out of Chaos.)

It’s just too bad that, after those twelve pages of creation myth, not a single scrap of information about the world of Juravia is contained in this book.

It’s just too bad that the art in this book is not only consistently mediocre, but regularly ripped off from other sources. (I don’t care – adding wings to the giant serpent does not disguise the fact that you ripped off Michael Whelan‘s cover for Conan the Usurper.)

It’s just too bad that Basement Games, like so many other would-be game publishers, not only felt a need to reinvent the wheel – but make it in the shape of a square.

Forge: Out of Chaos tries to move beyond D&D and embrace the larger tool-set of game design tools available today, but somewhere along the way it all went horribly, horribly wrong.

Writers: Mike Kibbe, Paul Kibbe, Mark Kibbe, Jim Childs, Scott Hawkey, Blair Hughes, and Loraine Sivoy
Publisher: Basement Games Unlimited, LLC
Price: $19.95
Page Count: 202
ISBN: 1-892294-00-1
Product Code: BGU1001

As described in my review of Enchanted Worlds, during 2000 I was trying to diversify the markets for my RPG reviews. This included seeking paying gigs from outlets like Games Unplugged and Pyramid Magazine, but also from websites like the long-defunct and, as far as I can tell, almost completely forgotten Gaming Outpost. At the time, though, the Gaming Outpost actually a pretty big deal in the online RPG community, and publishers would send them review copies.

I was kind of a sucker for weird, obscure, and unusual games, so I think Graveyard Greg, who ran the site, would send me the stuff that nobody else was willing to take.

I was looking for diamonds in the rough. Unfortunately, I didn’t find one here.

If there is one place where the would-be RPG publisher goes wrong, it is when they think like an amateur instead of a professional.

The amateur is giddy and excited: A labor of love is finally going into print. You’ll see their inability to cope with the realities of publishing in a thousand different ways: Even though it took them two years to finish writing their core rulebook (and they have nothing else ready to go), they’ll include announcements in the back of the book for a new product every month until the end of the year. They’ll start under-capitalized so that, even if they did have material ready to go, they won’t have the money to print it until their print run for the core rulebook sells out. They’ll alienate their customer base by making extravagant claims about their game which only confirm their ignorance of the game market. They’ll publish something with low production values… but then charge the consumer the same price as a product with higher production values.

But there is one mistake that they will make which will put the final kiss of death upon their product: They will fail to take their competition into account.

For example, let’s say you want to create a Tolkienesque fantasy game – elves, dwarves, the whole nine yards. What’s the first thing that should come up on your radar screen?

D&D.

What’s the second thing that should come up on your radar screen?

Earthdawn, Ironclaw, Shards, Ars Magica, Sovereign Stone, Warhammer FRP, Hero Wars, and a dozen other games – major and minor – that fall within the classic fantasy marketplace to one degree or another.

And at that point you should be asking yourself a simple question: Can I offer something that these other games don’t?

For example: Ars Magica (arguably) does magic better than any other game system around. Legend of the Five Rings was an Eastern Fantasy game at a time when there wasn’t any serious competition. Ironclaw is anthropomorphic. Hero Wars has Glorantha. And so forth…

And if Enchanted Worlds possesses a flaw, then this would be it: It’s a game without purpose. Without a niche. Without a role to fulfill.

The boxed set, as a whole, comes across as a slightly amateurish effort, but with a certain amount of quality within those boundaries: A ring-bound booklet, a short introductory adventure, two eight-sided dice, a full-color map, a reference card, and a handful of character sheets.

The main booklet presents both rules and setting information. The rules are difficult to learn and reference because almost every single system is split up – with one half of the system described on an overview page and the other half of the system located later on in the book. Once you get past this odd fact (and the lay-out, which routinely leaves major sub-sections completely unlabeled, mixing dissimilar concepts together into one big lump of text) the system is fairly clean: Point-based character creation, a simple Attribute + Skill incarnation using a 2d8 die roll, and casting spells from a list.

The setting for the game is squeezed into about a dozen pages, and looks the worse for wear: It’s a standard Tolkienesque fantasy settings (elves, dwarves, humans, and the humanoid minions of evil), and the limited information which is provided does little to nothing in helping it stand out from the dozens of other settings out there that look just like it.

There’s a persistent problem with everything in this box: What’s there is fine for as far as it goes… but it doesn’t actually go anywhere in particular. There are at least a half dozen games on the market which do almost exactly what this one does – and do it better.

So I’m left searching for some reason you should buy this game, and I’m afraid I just don’t have one. I’ve seen this game before… only it was in full color and about 200 pages longer.

Ultimately, that’s a problem Enchanted Worlds just can’t live down.

Writers: Matthew Rodgers and Daniel Price
Publisher: New Worlds Gaming
Price: $14.95
Page Count: 40
Product Code: EWRSK1

Originally Posted: 2000/09/05

If I had written this review a couple of years later, I could probably have gotten away with just writing IT’S A FANTASY HEARTBREAKER! in blazing capital letters.

By the time this review rolled around, I was receiving RPG review copies from a number of different sources, including RPGNet, Games Unplugged, and the defunct Gaming Outpost website. Graveyard Greg over at Gaming Outpost contacted me about this Enchanted Worlds Starter Kit, complaining that he couldn’t find anybody who wanted to look at. Could I help him out? I said sure.

About a week later I got a copy of the game in the mail, but it wasn’t from Greg. Instead, Games Unplugged had decided to also throw me a review copy. A week after that I got a second copy, but this one ALSO wasn’t from Greg: New Worlds Gaming had somehow gotten my snail mail address and had sent me a copy directly with a request that I produce a review. (I never actually figured out where they got my address from.) The Gaming Outpost copy showed up shortly thereafter.

So now I had three copies of this shitty game.

I also had an obligation to both Gaming Outpost and Games Unplugged to produce a review of it. Which, after some deliberation, I did: I wrote two completely different reviews (albeit with the same basic conclusion) for two different outlets. You’ve just read the Gaming Outpost review (which actually appeared second). I’ll be posting the Games Unplugged version next week.