Tagline: The first game designed by Richard Garfield and released to the public, RoboRally shows the intriguing conceptual ideas and addictive game play which have since become Garfield’s stock in trade. Like so many games released by Wizards of the Coast I first picked this product up because the description just sounded too intriguing to miss. Like every product I have ever picked up from the Wizards, I was anything but disappointed.

“Like every product I have ever picked up from the Wizards, I was anything but disappointed.” Ah, 1998. How I miss ye. RoboRally remains one of my favorite games. Unfortunately, my original copy was lost in a move and later turned up in the bottom of a box that was being stored in a pole barn. Although sadly water-damaged, it is still tremendous fun. Anyone know what Richard Garfield is up to these days?

GAME CONCEPT

In the future the widget factories of the world are controlled by the mightiest artificial intelligences ever created by man. Capable of solving any problem which might arise and controlling the entire factory from top to bottom to compensate for any problems and keep production right on schedule, these mighty machines suffered from only a single problem: Boredom.

Then one day a processing robot fried a circuit and went careening onto a conveyor belt, which sent him spinning through the high-powered laser systems and dropped him off just in time for his broken and decaying programming databanks to send him plummeting down a bottomless disposal bit on the factory floor.

The computers were … amused.

Immediately they created the game of RoboRally – each computer controlled a single robot and, using a limited set of data registers, was required to send the robots through a specially converted section of the factory floor.

In the boardgame RoboRally you are the computer, programming your robot to cross the factory floor and reach a set of checkpoints in a specific sequence in order to win the game. In your way are conveyor belts, bottomless pits, gears, crushers, pushers, and laser beams… not to mention the robots of your fellow players.

RULES

The game comes with six gameboards which can be played individually or arranged in any combination you want. The checkpoints you must reach are represented by six counters numbered from 1 to 6 – you can place these counters anywhere on the gameboards you want and in any order you choose. The options are practically infinite.

On each turn you are dealt nine program cards. From these you must select five cards and “program” your robot by assigning one card to each of five programming registers. When all the players have completed programming their robots the turn begins – each register is considered in order and your robot moves.

This sounds simple, but in truth you’ll find yourself making bonehead mistakes – especially when you come in contact with the board elements. “Okay, first I’ll move forward, which will put me on the conveyor belt which will move me there, then I’ll turn left, and the conveyor belt will move me again, turning me as I go, so that when I move backwards on the next phase I’ll end up…” And, of course, you can always be pushed around by the other robots on the board so that your preciously planned sequence of movements will suddenly all be off by one square … and the results cascade through the rest of the turn.

Plus, your robot can take damage and be destroyed by various game elements on the board. Plus, your robot and the robots of the other players are all outfitted with lasers – allowing you to whittle away. What can be worse than getting blasted out of existence and having to start over from the beginning (there is also a way of “archiving” a copy of your robot at certain waypoints on the board)? Well, as you take damage the number of program cards you dealt to select from are decreased. If you take enough damage some of your robot’s programming registers may become locked – meaning that the cards you have assigned to those registers will have to stay the same until you can get your robot repaired.

Finally there are ways of retrofitting your robot with special abilities.

STRENGTHS

This game is a tremendous amount of fun. If you’ve ever played Paranoia and gotten great laughs out of watching your characters getting fried you’ll already understand the appeal this game carries with it – nothing is more hilarious then when one of your fellow players suddenly groans, “Oh nooooo…” and you know he’s made a mistake in his plans and his robot is about to go cascading off-course and into jeopardy.

The game is beautifully designed by Phil Foglio – the cover illustration of a ZIP 550 looking nervously over his shoulder as he enters the factory is absolutely perfect at setting the tone of the game. Foglio also designed the miniatures which come with the game.

WEAKNESSES

The learning curve is pretty simple, but there are some rules which could so with better explanation. Wizards of the Coast has posted the complete rules and a FAQ at their website, and from what I’ve seen they have not fixed these problems.

The confusion over these rules is quickly eliminated however by some practical familiarity with the game. Play your first game on a single board and establish up front that rule interpretations could fluctuate wildly during the course of the game as you figure out some of the nuances.

There are several handy reference sheets and the rulebook is laid out in such a fashion that information is easy to find when you need it. This is not an overwhelming problem, merely one of having to play the game first before you can see what some rules mean.

CONCLUSION

This game is great. The idea is great, the carry-through is great, the rules are great, the entertainment value is great. You simply can’t go wrong.

There are also several expansion sets for the game (Armed and Dangerous, Grand Prix, and (coming later in 1998) Radioactive). I hope to own and review both these and the second make of this game in the near future here on RPGNet.

Style: 5 (Excellent!)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Author: Richard Garfield
Company/Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Cost: $34.95
Page count: n/a
ISBN: 1-57530-088-5
Originally Published: 1998/06/19

[ This is a review of the first make of the RoboRally game. The second make of the game (which I do not yet own), slightly altered the lay-out of the rules and changed the design of the miniatures included with the game. However, to my knowledge, game play was not affected to any serious degree. The ISBN product code above refers to the second make of RoboRally, as that is the one which you can still order from Wizards of the Coast. ]

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

Tagline: Ghost Dancers details the Indian societies and tribal beliefs of the Weird West. An above-average supplement, it is highly recommended for any GM running a Deadlands game and will prove useful to anyone playing an Indian character.

If I recall correctly, Ghost Dancers was the first time I received a review copy of a book. (At the time, RPGNet maintained a Wish List function for people who had posted reviews on the site. They probably still do. Here’s a document somewhat contemporary to this review describing their review policy.) Getting that review copy was terribly exciting for me at the time. I kept meaning to go back and write a review of the core Deadlands game, but for one reason and another it never happened. The half-finished file still lurks on my hard drive as a poor derelict.

Ghost Dancers is the sourcebook for the Indians of the Weird West. It does it’s job well – giving a highly effective overview of Indian political, cultural, and religious life. Those of you familiar with the Deadlands game will know that many of the crucial events which lead to the development of the Weird West (instead of our historical Wild West) are the result of various Indian factions – as a result this book is a crucial key to understanding some of the background to the world itself. Since it also details the Hunting Grounds in great detail, this book is a must for any Deadlands GM.

I also suggest, but not quite so highly, this book for any player with an Indian character who feels that the main rulebook isn’t giving him enough flavor or options for his character. If you are generally unfamiliar with Indian belief and culture, this book will also give you a good one-point stopping place for learning more. (Of course you should beware of taking things in this book as absolute historical fact – the designer himself is careful to point out that not only is the book simplifying many things about Indian culture, the Weird West is not an historical place by any stretch of the imagination.)

The book follows the traditional (and extremely advantageous) breakdown of all Deadlands material: a section for the players (Posse Territory), material that the GM should know and reveal only to select players (No Man’s Land), and material for the GM’s eyes only (Marshal’s Handbook). In Ghost Dancers, however, this has been changed to The War Party, Sacred Grounds, and The Chief’s Words – because “those white guys at Pinnacle Entertainment mistitled the sections in the previous books.” (Any product with the ability to look at itself humorously earns high points with me.) This lay-out is very nice – too often source material is only useful for the GM or reveals world secrets to the players because it lumps all the information about organizations and locations together. Nor have I seen this lay-out lead to useless regurgitation of the same information in each section. Pinnacle always seems to be careful in giving the GM just the extra information, without restating what has been said 50 pages earlier.

STYLE AND LAYOUT

My one persistent problem with Deadlands products is that the graphical presentation of the books fails to do anything for me. It is clearly meant to be evocative, but it just sits like a lump of clay for me. The cover art of Ghost Dancers, like all Deadlands products I’ve seen is a high-quality, excellent piece of work. The interior art, on the other hand, varies wildly from just slightly above average to pathetically horrid. The special font they use for headings is supposed to be mood-setting I suppose, but I’m pretty much indifferent. They have, however, solved one of my big problems with the main Deadlands rulebook – the type font is a nicely readable size, as opposed to the unnecessarily huge size used earlier.

One last minor complaint. Deadlands products use a nice referencing system to take you from one section of the book to another (for example, if you’re reading a section on the Sioux Nations in the War Party section you might get a page reference indicating that more material on this subject can be found in the Chief’s Words section). For this referencing system they use three miniature pictures – a gun and hatchet for the War Party, a holy symbol for the Sacred Ground, and a chief’s head and headdress for the Chief’s Words. These three pictures are then repeated on the title pages of each of the three sections. The problem comes because they apparently created these images at the thumbnail size for the referencing system and then just blew them up for a full-page presentation on the title pages. Anyone who has done this will know that you end up with a fuzzy image at the larger scale – and that’s precisely what you get in Deadlands products. Suggestion: Compose the pictures at the larger scale and then shrink them down to the smaller scale.

None of these are serious problems in my opinion, they just don’t click with me properly. A quick flip-through of the book should be enough for you to judge whether or not you agree with me.

Indeed, these problems are inconsequential. The lay-out of the product is excellent. Material is laid out in an intuitive and consistent fashion and a detailed table of contents will make it easy to find what you’re looking for. You won’t find any weird placement of information – such as sticking a section on weapon damage in the equipment section rather than the combat section with the rest of the weapon damage information – that seems to be trendy with certain companies.

So, to sum up: Externally this product is visually fantastic. Internally, it is visually boring. The lay-out is useful, productive, and easy-to-use however – and that’s the most important thing. It is only my aesthetic sense which is offended.

THE WAR PARTY

The first section of the book serves both as a reference for players and as a general introduction to the book. The first chapter (“Welcome to the Lodge”), serves as that general introduction.

Chapter Two (“Indian Country”) gives a broad overview of Indian history, as well as comprehensive look at the major tribes and organization of Indian society. Chapter Three (“Making an Indian”) provides details on modifying the basic character creation rules found in the main rulebook for Indian characters – including your role in Indian society, the selection of your Guardian Spirit, and new aptitudes, edges, hindrances, knacks, and gear. The section of the book also contains new archetypes for use by the GM and players both.

Chapter Four (“Guardian Spirits”) details the workings of Guardian Spirits, while Chapter Five (“Strange Medicine”) expands and improves upon the medicine rules found in the main rulebook, providing more options and details.

SACRED GROUND

Chapter Six (“Objects Sacred and Profane”) detail the rules for creating and using ‘medicine objects’ (magical items). This is an exceptionally useful resource for the GM, as is the next chapter (Chapter Seven – “The Hunting Grounds”) which details the extradimensional realm of the Hunting Grounds.

If there is one reason above all others to buy this book it is the material found in Chapter Seven. With amazing grace the designers allow the Hunting Grounds to be not only something of significance and importance to Indians, but to all religious groups. In the Weird West the magical forces which have been interpreted through the faith and religion of humanity are all too real – and it was the release of those forces from what the Indians call the Hunting Grounds (and Christians would call Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell) during the Reckoning that created the alternate history which Deadlands details.

In my mind, therefore, understanding and being able to use the Hunting Grounds in a Deadlands campaign is extremely important – and this book is the key to allowing that. As a result, every Marshal/Chief/GM should own a copy of Ghost Dancers.

THE CHIEF’S WORDS

Chapter Eight (“The Chief’s Guide”) provides everything about the Indians of the Weird West that the players just aren’t supposed to know. I won’t go into details here, because there are probably several players reading this review, but some of the stuff you uncover here is truly exciting and made me want to go out and start writing adventures.

Chapter Nine (“Secret Societies”) details the Ghost Dance (from which the book gets its name) and the Raven Cult. The Ghost Dance is a ritual revealed to the Paiute tribe – it preaches of peace and tolerance, and foretells of a time when the white man will be driven from his lands and the red man shall return to power. A time which shall be prophesied in the birth of a pure white buffalo calf.

The Raven Cult — as anyone whose familiar with the Deadlands game knows – is responsible for the Reckoning. They, too, foretell a future where the white man has been driven from the lands of the Indians – but they see the way to this future as one paved in blood and violence.

The GM will learn everything he needs to know about these two secret societies. Once again this is important information and mandates buying this sourcebook. The information on the Raven Cult is important because of the role in the origins of the Weird West setting. The Ghost Dance is important because they are clearly going to become important in the future of the Weird West.

SUMMARY

This book is an excellent and required resource for the GM of a Deadlands game, but only of mild interest to a player (even if the player happens to have an Indian character). I suggest that only one copy is really necessary for any gaming group, but that one copy is necessary for any long-term campaigns set in the Weird West.

Style: 3
Substance: 4

Author: Paul Beakley
Company/Publisher: Pinnacle Entertainment Group
Cost: $20.00
Page count: 128
ISBN: 1-889546-20-8
Originally Posted: 1998/06/19

Tagline: Wizards of the Coast and the Bourbaki card game design team strike again in this surprisingly fascinating and addictive card game, the first in a line of non-collectible games meant to provide competition with games like Uno and Skip-Bo.

Thirteen years later, Twitch remains one of my favorite card games. My review speaks highly of it, but a game with that kind of staying power deserves special attention. Sadly, it is long out of print and virtually unattainable as I write this. If you get a chance, though, I recommend you grab a copy ASAP.

The premise of the game is simple: Someone plays a card. The cards tells you who goes next. If it’s you, you’ve got to play another card before someone challenges you and you have to take the entire stack of cards. If it’s not you, you’ve got to figure out who it is and challenge them before they can play. Be careful, if you play or challenge wrong you’ll end up taking those cards.

Simple, right? Right.

Until you start playing the game, that is. Then what seems so simple on the surface suddenly seems to be the most complicated thing you’ve ever done.

The basic game centers around eight different cards. The four basic cards are Left, Right, 2 Left and 2 Right. These cards tell you who goes next (the player to your left, your right, two seats to your left, and two seats to your right – respectively). In addition the card Ditto means that the last card’s effect is repeated, the card Back At Ya! sends the turn back to the last player to play a card. The last trick is that all players are given a color card, and a duplicate of this card is place in the play deck. When that color card is played the person to who it belongs must play next. Finally there are the challenge cards – these cards are keyed to the colors of the players. If a player is too slow or if they make a mistake, you can challenge them with the challenge card corresponding to their color.

The name of the game is speed, and once you’re into the heat of the chase you’re going to find that these simple rules are more than challenge enough.

Now let’s take another step, into the Advanced Game. At this point we add three more cards: Pick a Color, Rotate Colors, and Left to Right. These are called “Pause Cards”, when they are played gameplay temporarily stops while their results are gauged. Pick a Color means that the person who just played the card picks the color of another player, and then that player plays a card (resuming play). Rotate colors means that everyone takes their color card (indicating what color they are) and hand them to the player on their left – this causes confusion regarding what color to use to challenge which players and what color you are when the color cards come up during gameplay. Finally, Left to Right means that all cards referring to a particular direction mean exactly the opposite – left means right and right means left. Conveniently there are exactly two of these cards, meaning that once play is reversed, it will eventually turn back the other way.

Twitch is the first in a line of games Wizards of the Coast is producing in order to apparently attempt to compete with traditional family games. On the strength of this product I intend to go out of my way to also purchase Pivot, Alpha Blitz, and GoWild! — the other products in this line-up.

At seven bucks you can’t lose with this game. It won’t be put on the shelf next to your Magic cards or your Doomtown cards, but I think it more than amply deserves a place alongside such classic games as Uno and Skip-Bo.

Style: 4
Substance: 5

Author: Richard Garfield, Skaff Elias, Jim Lin, and Dave Pettey
Company/Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Cost: $6.95
Page count: n/a
ISBN: 1-57530-581-X
Originally Posted: 1998/05/30

Tagline: “Chess will never be the same!” This innocent looking pack of 80 cards completely alters the game of Chess – from a static strategic puzzle to a dynamic tactical conflict. Moody and evocative art by Rogerio Vilela. Translated from the original French.

I actually have quite vivid memories of writing this review. It was the first time I really became aware of how thoroughly I’d been bitten by the reviewing “bug” because I started thinking about how I would write the review of the game as I was playing the game.

The tagline of Knightmare Chess is, “Move a piece. Play a Card. Chess will never be the same…”

There you have the whole game. In the elegant box in which Knightmare Chess comes you will find 80 cards – each of which subtly alters the rules of Chess in different ways. These cards let you do all the things you always wish you could do in a tight moment during a game of Chess – resurrect a piece which has been captured, move a piece out of the way, take not one piece, but many on a single move. On each of your turns you can play one card.

When first approaching this game I was both anticipatory and doubtful. Anticipatory because it sounded like a fun thing to do once or twice. Doubtful because chess is an ancient game – its grace and its beauty come from the fact that its rules are carefully balanced, all the pieces are known, and the challenge comes from manipulating a known set of variables in a strategic way to overcome your opponent.

The premise of Knightmare Chess, while seemingly innocuous, actually radically alters the very basic appeal and structure of the game. The rules are no longer balanced, they are in constant flux. The pieces are not known, they can be altered and rearranged. There is no known set of variables, the variables are unknown and changing.

At first glance, therefore, Knightmare Chess has the potential to completely screw the only appeal chess has – its strategic component.

After playing the game awhile I realized I was wrong. Knightmare Chess transformed Chess into a radically different game, but it did not destroy it. Where Chess is a static strategic puzzle (with its elements known and the possible interactions between pieces completely proscribed), Knightmare Chess is a dynamic tactical conflict. Just because the rules are always changing, doesn’t mean that Knightmare Chess is an inferior game. It does mean, however, that it appeals to an entirely different aesthetic than Chess.

Chess has often been described as a wargame. Indeed, in some ways it is – if you are willing to accept a certain degree of abstraction. Nonetheless, it is an odd one – one in which you have only a certain number of troops, in which both sides are equal, and in which everything is ultimately predictable. If Knightmare Chess is similarly a wargame carried to an extreme degree of abstraction, then it presents a model of modern warfare – where the sides can quickly become unequal, where reinforcement is conceivable, and where combat is anything but predictable.

Knightmare Chess is a fascinating game. If you are a chess player, approach it with an open mind. If you have no taste for chess, then it is entirely conceivable that this game will appeal to you nonetheless.

It should be noted that I am using a copy of the Second Edition for the purposes of this review. The differences between the first and second editions are extremely subtle and largely inconsequential to the overall gameplay and assessment of this game. For a list of differences you can check Steve Jackson Game’s website.

Style: 4
Substance: 5

Author: Pierre Clequin and Bruno Faidutti
Company/Publisher: Steve Jackson Games
Cost: $14.95
Page count: n/a
ISBN: 1-55634-319-1
Originally Posted: 1998/05/30

Tagline: The Heavy Gear universe is perhaps the best in all of role-playing and tactical gaming – practically unmatched in depth, detail, texture, and life. This book is the key which opens this magical treasure trove of adventure.

My first review on RPGNet was of a Heavy Gear sourcebook and I would go on to post more reviews of Heavy Gear sourcebooks than of any other RPG. This is largely because I was more enthused about Heavy Gear than any other RPG of the time: I reviewed what I read; I read what I liked. This is one of the advantages of being an amateur reviewer: The professionals only get to review some of what they read and rarely get to read what they like.

When you delve into science fiction or fantasy you will often find yourself encountering worlds either entirely separated from our own or at least placed so far in the future that the extrapolations from our current time have rendered them almost wholly different from what we know. When you encounter these worlds you will find that they often break down into two broad categories – those worlds which might actually exist and those worlds which have clearly been created merely to suit the whims of the author’s story and couldn’t possibly exist.

In role-playing we have all encountered the latter many, many times. (“If this dungeon is so close to the town why hasn’t it been looted over the centuries?” “Because the locals are all frightened by the monsters.” “Yeah, speaking of those monsters – what are they eating down there?” “Look, do you want to play or don’t you?”) Fortunately those of the former have grown increasingly frequent in our hobby (although, frustratingly, we are often prohibited from playing certain characters by the rules of the game).

Sometimes, however, you come across a real jewel of a world. A world so intricately detailed, so deeply described, and so excellently constructed that you realize that not only can you tell “science fiction stories” in this setting, but any story in this setting. Terra Nova – the world of the Heavy Gear game – is such a world.

THE WORLD OF TERRA NOVA

For more details on the history of humanity (which is presented in great detail within this volume) in the 4000 years which separate its time and our own see my review of the second edition of Heavy Gear elsewhere on RPGNet the Alexandrian.

Terra Nova is a world divided into two lush polar regions by the great deserts referred to collectively as the Badlands around its equator. Following a period of chaos in Terra Nova’s past the two polar regions coalesced into a series of leagues. Those leagues eventually allied with themselves to form the two great polar alliances – the Allied Southern Territories (AST) and the Confederated Northern City-States (CNCS). The Badlands have a few centers of power in the forms of city-states, but are largely settled only by isolated villages which are focused around “oasis towers”. Because the Badlands generally lacks the political power of the two polar alliances, it is easily exploited as a “neutral” battleground between the two. A little over a decade ago all of Terra Nova came together in order to beat back aggressive conquerors from Earth who had returned to reclaim their colony.

To begin in the south, the AST is composed of four leagues – the Southern Republic, the Humanist Alliance, the Mekong Dominion, and the Eastern Sun Emirates. The Humanist Alliance was, in fact, the first league to form on Terra Nova. Based on the teaching of Yuri Gropius it is a realized utopia similar to the teachings of the ancient Greek philosophers (most notably Plato) – the only price of this utopian existence is freedom. The Mekong Dominion is a society based entirely upon the corporate structure. It is the economic and production center of the entire South. The Eastern Sun Emirates is a feudal society which formed around the power garnered from the distribution of supplies from the space freighter the Eastern Sun during the time of chaos which plagued Terra Nova centuries ago. Finally, the Southern Republic is supposedly a free democratic society – in truth the people have bargained away their power as voters in exchange for a comfortable and luxurious lifestyle. Further, the Southern Republic rules the AST – having been responsible for its formation in their wars of aggression.

In the North the CNCS is composed of three leagues – the Northern Lights Confederacy, the United Mercantile Federation, and the Western Frontier Protectorates. Similar to the Mekong Dominion the UMF is focused upon production. Unlike the Dominion, however, the UMF focuses more heavily upon the work ethic than upon the philosophy of “business is war”. The society of the WFP is focused upon its military forces. Like the society detailed by Heinlein in Starship Troopers (the book, not the movie) only citizens who have served in the military for a certain amount of time are allowed the right to vote – not out of fascist beliefs, but out of the belief that only those who are willing to die for their country should be allowed to control the destiny of their country. The NLC is a democratic society which is increasingly dominated by religious fundamentalism – although it, like the Southern Republic, is both the most powerful league of its alliance and has fought wars of aggression in the past it did not – like the Republic – force the formation of its league, and does not rule it with an iron glove.

There are two important city-states in the Badlands – Peace River and Port Arthur.  Peace River is ruled by a company known as Paxton Arms, and most of its citizens are employees of the corporation. Peace River and Paxton Arms have recently come into conflict with Port Arthur (a city-state established by Earth troops abandoned after the recent invasion, but which has since become a haven for Badlanders in need) because both city-states see it as their duty to protect the Badlands – and have different ideologies about how that protection is to take place.

This, in brief, is a broad picture of the world. Unfortunately I cannot go into the details of this world – unfortunate because it is in the details that this world truly shines. Every league (and the Badlands as a whole)  is a hotbed of activity. Besides the main conflict between the CNCS and AST (and, indirectly, the NLC and Southern Republic), there are numerous other conflicts at large. The Badlands are torn apart by the Badlands Revolutionary Front, the Saragossa People’s Front for Independence fights the oppressive government of the Southern Republic, revolutions dot the Eastern Sun Emirates, the Humanist Alliance is attempting to secretly prepare for a break from the Southern Republic, and the entire globe is plummeting towards war.

Beyond simple conflict, this world is exquisitely detailed. Not only do you learn of the “big picture”, but you learn the little details which can be so important while roleplaying. What foods do people eat in a given location? What drives the local economy? What do people wear? What music is popular right now?

You will be hard put to find a campaign setting – particularly a science fiction campaign setting – on the market today that allows you so many options and provides you with so much detail.

CONCLUSION

Although not a direct part of this product, it is important to remember that the story of Terra Nova is not only evolving – it is evolving in a very deliberate, easy to understand, easy to follow method that is alien to nearly every other game system I have ever encountered. (See my review of the second edition rulebook for more details on this.)

As a result in buying into this world you not only buy into a world of incredible depth and detail – but a world where that depth and detail is evolving and progression.

In short, not only should you buy Life on Terra Nova because of the incredible strength of the product itself, but due to the incredible strength of supplementary products which the purchase of this book will open up for you.

Style: 5
Substance: 5

Author: Gene Marcil and others
Company/Publisher: Dream Pod 9
Cost: $19.95
Page count: 160
ISBN: 1-896-776-00-0
Originally Posted: 1998/05/16