This is a fun little dice game I recently re-discovered in one of my desk drawers. I picked it up a couple of years back, so its probably still kicking around. It actually predates the collectible dice games (such as Dragon Dice) which followed in the wake of Magic the Gathering, and instead descends from older traditions.

Cosmic Wimpout comes in a small plastic tube containing five dice, a sheet of instructions, and a “Cosmic Wimpout” sticker. Four of the dice are white and the fifth is black. The four white dice are printed with a 5, a 10, and four symbols. The black die comes repeats the 5 and the four symbols, but replaces the 10 with the “Flaming Sun” symbol.

At the beginning of the game you decide on the game goal (usually 300 or 500 points) and the first player roles the dice.

Three matching faces (on the same throw) are known as a flash, and score various numbers of points depending which symbols or numerals you’ve matched up. Five matching faces (at any time) is known as a Freight Train and, naturally, scores far more points. Unless you roll five 10’s, in which case you’ve scored Too Many Points (a Supernova) and you automatically lose the game. (There’s also a Freight Train combination which automatically wins the game.)

The Flaming Sun is a wild card. The Flaming Sun Rules states that you must use the Flaming Sun to complete a flash if it is at all possible.

A “5” or a “10” by itself scores 5 or 10 points (respectively). A Flaming Sun can also be used to simulate these, unless (of course) the Flaming Sun Rule is in effect.

If you don’t score any points on a role that’s a Wimpout. Your turn is over and you’ve lost all the points accumulated in that turn. Wimping out with all five dice is called a Train Wreck. Unless you Wimpout you can continue rolling any non-scoring dice.

You can stop rolling at any time, scoring the points you’ve accumulated, unless:

1. You haven’t rolled yet.

2. You May Not Want To But You Must — if you’ve scored with all five dice you must roll all five dice again before stopping (risking a Train Wreck).

3. The Futtless Rule states that all flashes have to be cleared – meaning that if you’ve just scored a flash you must score additional points by rolling the non-scoring cubes. The Reroll Clause states that you cannot clear a flash while matching any one of the flash faces when clearing. (So if you roll three fives you’d flash; at which point you’d have to reroll the remaining dice and score additional points… but if one of the dice comes up a five you’d have to roll all the remaining dice again.)

Finally, once a player has reached the game goal everybody else gets one last chance to catch up and surpass their score.

It’s a fun little game. It fits easily in a lapel pocket I’ve found and is easy to teach to your friends quickly. Any number of people can play and it’s appropriate for just about any social gathering.

I don’t know how available this game is any more, so I’m going to include the address found on the instruction sheet:

Cosmic Wimpout
P.O. Box 3199
Greenfield, MA 03012

That’s current as of 1993 – which is, of course, an eternity in this industry. I hope you have luck finding it.

Style: 4
Substance: 4

Company/Publisher: C3, Inc.
Cost: $4.95
Page count: n/a
ISBN: n/a

Originally Posted: 1999/05/28

In the years since this review appeared, Cosmic Wimpout has appeared on the web!  You can find it here. Apparently the game has been around since the 1970’s.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

I remember a time when dice were far more important than they are today. It used to be that a “true gamer” attempted to find as many different types of dice as he possibly could. You started your collection by getting the essentials – the d4, the d6, the d8, the d10, the d12, and the d20. You usually got these in the boxed set along with your rulebook. These were generally cheap. You’d later upgrade these cheapies so that you had marbled or gem dice. Then you’d begin to add on the more exotic types. My first exotic die was the fabled d100… which, if you rolled it in 1988, would probably still be going if it hadn’t gone off the end of the table and hit the wall. My second was a purple d30. I once knew a guy who had a d12 printed with the digits 1-6 and 95-00. I never did figure out what the hell that thing was for. But it was cool.

Of course, then again, perhaps it’s only in my circle of gaming friends that this slow deemphasization has taken place. Perhaps other groups are still possessed of massive dice infatuations. Perhaps. I think it far more likely that the maddened collectors in this industry have all turned to CCGs for their fix. Certainly roleplaying games themselves seem to have retreated to a “single type of die” philosophy over the past decade. It’s no longer common to see a discussion of the differences between d6s, d4s, d8s, d10s, d12s, and d20s comfortably squeezed in between “An Example of Play” and “What is a Roleplaying Game?” in the first section of your rulebook.

All of this palpable nostalgia I have summoned up is only for the purpose of explaining where this “product of time” came from. DeathDice from Flying Buffalo, Inc. is a plastic tube of five six-sided dice – three of which have one side printed with a skull, two of which have one side printed with Grimtooth’s head (Grimtooth, of course, being their semi-cute trollish creature made famous by the Grimtooth Traps volumes… which, of course, you youngsters probably don’t know either… sigh…). The small sheet which comes with the dice is printed with advertisements for other Flying Buffalo products on one side and the rules for a simple dice game called Skulls on the other (which only requires two skull dice – no rules are given which explain why you’d need three… let alone two Grimtooth dice). The rules for Skulls basically consist of rolling the dice over and over again until you either decide to  stop or roll a Skull on one of the dice (which causes you to lose all your points for that round).

The skull prints on the dice are blurry and don’t seem to be based on particularly good drawings to begin with. On the other hand, Grimtooth looks as handsome as ever.

I can’t recommend this product to you… unless of course you’re looking for some truly unique dice to add to your collection. (And don’t deny it: You’ve still got it, even if you don’t use it all that much any more.)

Style: 3
Substance: 2

Company/Publisher: Flying Buffalo, Inc.
Cost: $4.50
Page count: n/a
ISBN: n/a

Originally Posted: 1999/05/28

About a year after I wrote this review, I had a backpack stolen which contained my entire collection of WEG Star Wars sourcebooks and my dice bag. I had built the collection of Star Wars supplements up because I was playing in a really great Star Wars campaign run by my friend Dave Blackmer. In the years since then, I’ve only replaced the core rulebooks.

My collection of dice, on the other hand, had been built up from the very first day I bought the BECMI Basic Set. It included the dice that came with the Basic Set (including a truly ugly pink-and-black d12), but it also included a complete set of waxed dice from the original Basic Set, the d100 and d30 talked about in this review, and countless others that represented an eclectic adolescence of gaming. And the dice bag was actually one that I had inherited from father. It was literally irreplaceable.

These days I own a lot of dice, but I don’t collect them: I own several varied sets, but they’ve all been purchased for explicitly utilitarian purposes. The exceptions are a hodge-podge of d10s which I received as a donation from my brother-in-law and a set of three d6’s which were wedding favors at my brother’s wedding. (I keep those in my bag to breed good luck… which is ironic, because my dice are frequently being used to kill the characters of my brother and sister-in-law.)

On a similar note, one last dice-related anecdote: The first dice I bought to replace my stolen dice bag was a set of black dice with red numbers. To supplement this set, I purchased additional, matching d6’s (’cause D6 Star Wars). Within only a few weeks of purchase, one of these d6’s shattered in my dice bag — leaving one big chunk and a number of shards. I still keep this entire d6 (in pieces) in my dice bag to soak up all the bad luck.

I may not be a collector, but I wouldn’t be a gamer if I didn’t have dice superstitions, right?

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

I had mixed feelings coming to Big Eyes, Small Mouth: A Universal, Japanese Anime Role-Playing Game. First off, I’m a huge fan of anime. But having seen Ranma 1/2, Slayers, 3×3 Eyes, Kamui, and Mai (among many others) I know that if you’ve got a universal anime game what you’ve really got is a universal game, period. If you strip the affectation of the animation away from anime you’ve stripped away the only common element which binds all of it together – and since I don’t spend my game sessions madly sketching animation cels…

On the other hand I had heard nothing but unreserved praise for the game (except for a handful of people who had never laid eyes upon it declaring that they “don’t do anime” – the loss is theirs, of course). So, like I said, I came to BESM with mixed feelings.

I’m happy to say that not only were “they” right, but I was right, and Mark MacKinnon was right when he said that the game was “easy to learn, fun to play, and in the spirit of anime”.

To understand how all these contradictions resolve themselves you first have to understand how I feel about “universal games”. Many have said that a “truly universal” roleplaying game is impossible. When some people say that they mean that no single game engine can satisfy everybody. This is true. When some other people say that they mean that no single game engine can model at multiple levels simultaneously – a simple engine cannot adequately model ultra-realism; a complex engine cannot adequately perform when asked to run fast and furious action. This is also true.

But when some other people say that a “truly universal” roleplaying game is impossible what they mean is that no game engine can model all possible genres.

This is false.

(Actually all of these statements except the first are false if you expand them to include meta-systems in addition to systems proper. A meta-system such as FUDGE, for example, which gives you systems to modify the system itself can easily modulate itself to handle multiple levels simultaneously.)

It is false because it has been done quite successfully several times. GURPS and Hero, for starters, are both very successful at being universal engines – they just suck at being simple systems.

Which brings us back to BESM, which succeeds quite handily at being a universal anime game by giving us a set of rules which is quite adept at modeling the type of reality postulated by about 95% of the anime out there (it can model the other stuff, too, it just won’t be quite as good at it). You end up with fast, furious combat. You end up with simple, but richly developed characters. You end up, in short, with a very good game which is capable of not only handling your favorite anime – but just about any other story you care to throw at it. Sure it’ll handle some things better than others (the same way that GURPS handles modern day realism better than it will ever handle super-heroes or Hong Kong action flicks), but it will handle it.

THE BASIC SYSTEM

BESM is simple. Dead simple. Character creation:

1. Assign Stats. Roll 2d6, add 10 and distribute the points between your Body, Mind, and Soul stats.

2. Character Attributes. Take 10, 15, or 20 points (depending on the level of campaign your GM wants to run) and assign them to your attributes. These are things like “Extra Attacks” and “Own Big Robot (OBR)”; the more points you assign to each one, the more signficant that attribute is.

3. Character Defects. Take up to 3 defects (each worth either 1 or 2 bonus points, depending on their severity, which can be spent on other things).

4. Derived Values. Calculate your Combat Value, Health, and Energy Points from your basic stats and attributes.

(There are actually eight steps to character creation outlined in the book – I’ve omitted the ones that are purely conceptual in basis.)

Taking actions? Make a stat check by rolling 2d6 under your stat (modified by the difficulty of the situation). Combat? Initiative is determined through a die roll compared to your Combat Value. You can take one offensive and one defensive action in a round. To attack you roll 2d6 under your Combat Value. To defend you roll 2d6 under your Combat Value (negating damage). Damage equals your Combat Value plus the Weapon Damage Value. Mental combat is essentially identical with a couple of twists.

That’s basically it, folks. It don’t get much easier than this.

ANALYSIS

Before going any further, let’s get the bad stuff out of the way. First, while the art in the book is good, it is not great. Considering that the game is entirely built upon the precepts of a visual medium this was a little disappointing, but not heartbreaking. It’s clean line art and, like I said, is good. It just ain’t Takahashi.

Second, I consider the summary of all physical characteristics into the Body stat to be a mistake. I can name quite a few anime titles off the top of my head (Ranma 1/2 and Project A-ko for example) in which a massive, physically powerful character is laid waste by the quicker, faster main character. This is moderated somewhat by some elements of the attribute system (such as “Extra Attacks”), so it isn’t a complete killer.

Speaking of “Extra Attacks”, however, brings me to my next objection. Each point you put into “Extra Attacks” only gives you one extra attack and defense in a combat round. Since you can only put five points into an attribute this means you can’t get more than six attacks in one round. Considering that Ranma can throw a couple hundred punches in the blink of an eye I found this tough to swallow. Sure this can be moderated, once again, if you begin to bring some other attributes into play (such as “Massive Damage”) and fudge around the edges – but now we’re edging more towards the power meta-system of Hero, and that’s painfully out of place in a game this simple.

And as long as we’re obsessing over the attribute system, let me point out the final injustice of all. Most of these attributes are very loose in describing what their actual effects are. This is understandable considering the breadth which must be covered by fairly simple categories. (“Item of Power”, for example, describes the Level 3 as being “item offers a good advantage to the character.” This is differentiated from Level 4, which “offers a great advantage to the character”.) My objection, as noted, is not this level of abstraction – rather it is the last attribute listed in the book: Unique Character Attribute. This is “covers” anything “not detailed above an anime character might possess”. While an understandable kludge (you can’t be expected to list everything) the insult is rubbed in when a list of twenty or so examples are then given. Considering how vague some of the preceding attributes were (others were quite concrete – like “Extra Attacks”) what was the point of this list?

Another minor quibble would be the partial randomization of attributes. As a general rule I dislike this. In specific I find it rather bizarre in this system, which is designed with open-ended interpretation in mind (note the vague, guideline-like nature of the attributes) to suddenly tie itself into the need for randomization. You trust your players to know the difference between a “good” item of power and a “great” item of power, but not enough to responsibly handle the point totals for character creation? On the plus side, there’s an optional rule that fixes all this.

Alright, that’s all the bad stuff out of the way. It makes quite a list, but you can ignore most of that because the system’s too simple for you to be sweating the small stuff. The cool things about this game far outweigh the bad.

First, as I’ve mentioned before this is a simple, elegant system. If you’re looking for a simple system which is also fairly rigid and objectively consistent you don’t want to look here (although you might want to take a look over at Unknown Armies, which has done that very well). This is a simple system which provides you with a very rough guide to how things should go – it is a framework on which stories are draped. It is just enough removed from cops and robbers that you’re not going to get into arguments over whether or not you were shot, but it also hasn’t become so formalized that the rules seriously bind you into much of anything. Sometimes that’s just the type of balance you need. And BESM finds that balance very, very well.

Second, this is a very well put together manual. It is very short and undersized, but that’s okay considering how simple the rules are (and the price – you aren’t being overcharged for the material). MacKinnon has done a simply brilliant job of organizing the material in a logical order and then, for added goodness, isolating the important information into two flow-charts (one for character creation and one for action resolution) and a single table (of weapon damage values). You can run the game from those three single-page references and never have to look at the rules. On top of it all a readable, clear font was used.

Third, there’s a lot of good stuff crammed in there besides the game. You’ve got an introduction to anime and roleplaying; plus a section on advice for players and GMs; a nice summation of anime adventure settings and adventure themes set in each of those settings; a bibliography of major anime series; a list of anime resources; a few optional rules; biographies of the creators; and (perhaps the most important test of all) a thorough, complete index.

All in all, Guardians of Order should be very proud of its first foray into publishing a roleplaying game. The game itself is good and well worth the money, but by including an extensive index and demonstrating more than competent organizational skills they’ve proven that they are capable of turning out high quality product in the future. I look forward to taking a look at their Sailor Moon game as soon as I get a chance.

CONCLUSION

What I think BESM would really excel at is as a introductory roleplaying game. The subject matter (capable of covering everything from Pokemon to Sailor Moon) is something which easily captures the attention of young children. The rules are simple and easy to learn, plus a strong emphasis is put on character over hack ‘n slash play (this is one of the few books that includes a section on player advice, instead of just GM advice). The book itself is cheap enough that you can easily afford to buy multiple copies for a group you’re interested in converting.

Beyond that, though, BESM is simply a very good game. It is far too simplistic, in my opinion, to successfully support a long-term campaign, but I will definitely be giving it consideration the next time I sit down to design a one-shot or short series. At fourteen bucks I don’t think you can go wrong here – whether you like anime or not. (And if you don’t you’re not hurting anyone but yourself through your sad negligence of an amazing medium. “Time spent watching anime,” as MacKinnon says, “Is time well spent.”)

Style: 4
Substance: 4

Author: Mark C. MacKinnon
Company/Publisher: Guardians of Order
Cost: $13.95
Page count: 96
ISBN: 0-9682431-0-X

Originally Posted: 1999/04/26

It’s strange looking back at the earliest days of Guardians of Order, as we all began to figure out that this plucky little upstart was bringing something really special to the industry. Sadly, we also couldn’t foresee their eventual downfall. They came close to nailing something really special… but somehow they just missed it.

The second edition of Big Eyes, Small Mouth remains one of my “generic triumvirate”: If I’m looking for a generic system to run something, the first games I look to are BESM2, Hero, and D20. (It used to be BESM2, Hero, and Silhouette. But I haven’t run anything using the Silhouette system in over a decade.)

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

In my last review of a Field Report — Psi Laws — I pointed out that the great strength of the format was that it allowed Andrew Bates (Trinity’s creator and line developer) to explore themes and concepts which would otherwise be difficult to do in a standard roleplaying sourcebook. Psi Laws was an excellent example of this. So is the Media report.

Rick Jones takes a very good look at one possible course of evolution from the modern media of today to the future media of tomorrow – blending film, television, and the internet (along with a number of others) into a future of a fragmented OpNet and “the miracle of holovision”. The use of the Field Report motif of the product being a “real” Aeon Trinity field report to its field agents allows Jones to take a very subtle approach to what is far too often treated in a cavalier manner. As a result you end up truly believing that the pastiche of media forces he describes could actually exist.

If nothing else this product is a useful addition to your Trinity collection because it helps you make greater sense out of other Trinity products. That seems a little odd at first, but you need to realize that significant portions of most Trinity products consists of media excerpts of one variety or another (artifact storytelling is the technical term for this) – hence the Media field report serves as a guide to those excerpts.

The one major drawback of the Media field report, however, is that it pulls a Verhoeven. Paul Verhoeven is the director of Robocop, Total Recall, and Starship Troopers (among others). Anyone who has seen these films know that they hold a single trait in common: They all use fictional commercials and television programs as means of advancing a story or introducing a setting. The thing all of these fictional programs have in common is that they’re all cheesy – looking more like paraodies of television commercials rather than actual television commercials. Although some of the visual elements of programs covered in the Media field report are actually quite good (Retrospective with Warren Shaw — a news program whose dead host was replaced with a sim of himself — is a good example), others are quite pathetic (Tuna Sandwich and Jake Danger: Aberrant Hunter). This is a prime example of how poor visual presentation can spoil an otherwise decent product. Since the book deals with the media of the twenty-third century the fact that that media comes off looking hokey cheapens the whole thing.

In any case, although this Field Report doesn’t quite live up to the reputation of the others so far due to its poor visual performance, it is still worth $5 – particularly for Jones’ excellent work. It would take a lot more than this type of minor foul-up to make these products worth less than their dollar value.

(For those of you who are following the developing meta-story for Trinity check out the sidebar on pg. 15. It kinda ruins the mystique of this being an “actual” field report – but that’s a pretty juicy tidbit they’ve decided to give us.)

Style: 4
Substance: 5

Author: Rick Jones
Company/Publisher: White Wolf
Cost: $4.95
Page count: 25
ISBN: 1-56504-771-0

Originally Posted: 1999/04/26

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Tagline: The Trinity Field Reports continue to be one of the best elements of the Trinity line.

Since Dungeons & Dragons first appeared on the market over twenty-five years ago the vast majority of roleplaying games have shared a standard motif in which the roles that the player’s assume are always (and I mean always) individuals who spend 99% of their time together in what is essentially a gang, wandering around, and engaging in thinly rationalized acts of violence. It has been interesting to watch over the past few years as the seemingly inevitable backlash against this ideology has slowly materialized. The backlash, in fact, has almost reached the point where it is fashionable to include it as a disclaimer – even when doing so is patently absurd. (For example Unknown Armies includes the disclaimer that people who “follow this type of logic” usually end up in insane asylums… just before describing a game in which the players take on the role of people who believe that they can perform magic. Violence, I guess, gets you locked up a in a nuthouse. Thinking that you get magical powers through self-mutilation is perfectly normal.)

That being said, it’s not that bad a trend. Even if you aren’t looking to get your games completely bogged down in real world causalities (what fun would a Feng Shui campaign be, for example, if your PCs were always worrying about civil suits?), such things can occasionally be used to add an original twist to an old story. Take the storyline in the Flash comic books a couple years back, for example, in which the Flash is put on trial for failing to save someone from a fire. That’s clever. Or take the brilliancy of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. Normally you just quietly ignore the fact that Batman is an unlicensed vigilante; Miller explores the concept (along with others) and creates something fresh and creative. (Costumed superheroes make an excellent example of this because so many realities are quietly put on hold in the genre; bring one or all of those realities back into play and you have a whole new playing field to explore.)

All of which brings us around to Trinity Field Report: Psi Laws. This is a product which probably never would have existed fifteen years ago, because the only question it asks is: If your main characters use their psionic abilities, what are the legal ramifications?

I’ve commented before on the greatness of the Field Report concept. It allows Andrew Bates to deal with concepts, fill holes, and correct sizable mistakes which just couldn’t be handled any other way. These are things which could not be expanded effectively to fill a full-sized sourcebook, but of such a nature that they cannot be incorporated into another product in a convenient matter (or, in one case, something which should have been included in a product but was not – letting them correct the mistake in as clean a manner as possible). Their unique, cheap nature means that the Trinity universe can be fleshed out in ways other universes cannot.

Psi Laws is an excellent example of this. Giving both the GM and the player (due to their format as field reports to Aeon Trinity agents) a general overview of the way psions are treated by laws in all the major areas of the Trinity setting – and, through inference, the way law functions in general two centuries in the future — Psi Laws gives Trinity something no other science fiction setting has: Laws. Most games simply assume (or rather, let you assume) that the laws of their future realities will be, for all intents and purposes, identical to those of 20th century America. It’s an interesting oversight considering that the laws of today are substantially different from the laws of twenty years ago… let alone a hundred or two hundred years ago. Often these future settings have new technologies and new societies, but no conceptual base for how the law has changed over the years. This is a particular oversight in settings where the PCs end up being law enforcers of one variety or another.

Taking all of that into consideration I can give Psi Laws the same high recommendation I’ve given the other Field Guides — this is $5 well spent.

(Psi Laws does contain one serious mistake where a block of text was apparently pasted into the wrong place (it appears in its correct place as well father down the page). I also have reservations about the cover – a blow up of an interior image which is severely pixellated. These are minor concerns, however.)

Style: 5
Substance: 5

Author: Bryant Durrell
Company/Publisher: White Wolf
Cost: $4.95
Page count: 25
ISBN: 1-56504-769-9

Originally Posted: 1999/04/26

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.