Noticed a while back that Catalyst released Cosmic Patrol, and was wondering what folks might think of it, or if anyone had a chance to play it.
http://www.catalystgamelabs.com/cosmic-patrol/
Thanks!
Cosmic Patrol: Thoughts?
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Not a fan of the genre, so I probably won't check it out. I am curious, though.
For a minute, I used to be "a guy" in the TTRPG "industry". Now I'm just a nobody. For the most part, it's a relief.
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Allow me to smirk in a childish manner:
This post concerns me. Especially this:cosmic patrol website wrote:For More Information
More information about Leviathans and its development is available at cosmicpatrol.com.
The Basic Mechanic for Challenges and Tests, then, is: D12 + Stat Die + Modifiers vs. D20.
King Francis I's Mother said wrote:The love between the kings was not just of the beard, but of the heart
Actually, that looks like a slight modification of the Alternity rules, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.Blasted wrote: This post concerns me. Especially this:The Basic Mechanic for Challenges and Tests, then, is: D12 + Stat Die + Modifiers vs. D20.
That said, I'm not much of a fan of using different dice for different levels of stats, so if that's the core mechanic, then that's a bit of a turn-off.
Just got the book on a lark yesterday while I was in NYC, so here's a quick-n-dirty review of my own.
Judging Its Cover
The print quality of the book is stellar (pun very intended). It feels like they found my post on this forum from years ago when I described my perfect RPG book and copied it. The footprint is small & black and white interior with art quality high enough to not feel chintzy. Even the cover itself is simple and direct. I knew exactly what kind of game this thing is about. Even the formatting is to my taste.
Yes, it is made by Catalyst Game Labs, and I honestly forgot the name; I had just mentally filed the embezzlement shenanigans under "Shadowrun." In retrospect, I feel a little shame supporting them from paying the $25 at the store.
I noticed this next bit when I opened to the Contents & Credits section. Frank's mentioned the significance of this in his Eclipse Phase review, which I shall repost here
The cover is a retro-rocketship outline with part of a circle behind and the title below it, and that tells you everything on what kind of story you're going to tell. X Minus One is seriously one of the chapter titles, humans are discovered to already be living on Venus and Mars, and the closest thing to a nod to scientific realism is that space isn't conducive to a long life. Everyone plays Patrolmen going out on missions to maintain peace in the Union, and there are established sources of conflict; so the whole thing maintains coherency, which is needed in this system.
Core Rules
They call the acting DM the Lead Narrator (LN), which I'm unsure would be a term used in an actual game. Their heart is in the right place by having the role of LN rotated around the table, and it outright acknowledges that there will be groups that prefer a designated/permanent DM; in which case you readily change the rules so it's not rotated.
The whole thing is rules-light to an extreme, and largely describes the whole thing as closer to improvisational theatre; which it seems is how they handled the rules design.
Similar to Savage Worlds, each player has a range of d4 to d12 amongst the stats. There's not even a guideline for difficulty in the resolution system; you just roll your d12+[stat die] against a d20, for every challenge other than opposed rolls (in which case it's [stat die] vs [stat die]). The modifiers seriously don't go beyond 3 points in either direction (-3 for using an axe at ten paces in a very strange duel). While knowing your exact chance for success isn't as simple as with the d20 system, the lack of modifiers or even variance in difficulty means objective comparisons are simple (d4 stat die < d8 stat die).
Character Creation
There are pre-made characters, all evocative and nicely drawn, for quick starts. The guidelines for making a character are essentially "see what we did with all of those pre-mades? Yeah, you get the idea." Fortunately, they do not spend 200 pages telling you that like they do at Evil Hat. The mechanical parts are problematic.
The Luck Stat is essentially your critical number. If your [stat die] ever rolls that specific number, you automatically succeed at whatever you're rolling for. This really skews with probabilities. The real problem is that you can seriously have a luck stat of 11 or 12 and not have a single stat higher than d10, or you could win the character creation lottery and get a luck stat low enough that it could be hit with a d4; meaning any roll can get a free auto-win.
There are five stats - Brawn, Brains, Charisma, Combat, & Special. If you're rolling, then you choose an appropriate stat and roll the die for it. Special is decided upon with character creation, and is generally something specific like 'Phasic Whip' or 'Rocketship Mechanics', but can be as broad as 'Manipulation'. It's a little frustrating to see several characters have their Special Stat be the exact same size as the stat you'd use otherwise; or worse in the situation of the d10 Manipulation character with a d12 Charisma.
Gear is about the same as your 'aspects' (Disposition & Cue), you use their names as guidelines for what your character can do.
A major concern is the whole 'cue' system. There is no difference between Disposition & Cue other than where they're written on your character sheet. Mechanically, they do nothing, and are explicitly just there to remind you of what your character is like; so they're 'like' aspects, without any incentive.
Gameplay
Like every damn rules-light system ever, non-combat is a vague hand-wavey affair of success based on whether it sounds cool and/or you beat the d20. The game's analogue to FATE points is Plot Points, and there are essentially no guidelines to how you earn them other than whenever the LN feels like you deserve one each round; DM Favoritism is mitigated by the rotating DM, but you could very easily wind up with LN being a permanent title for the adventure and in which case it's even more severe than FATE.
Combat endurance ranges from effectively 33 to 20 'hit points', healing is either only through MTP or plot points, and damage ranges from d4 to 6.
Adventures
Because of its design and guidelines for scene structure, the adventures in the back are pretty good for the game and lend themselves to very readily created by the internet.
Overview
It feels like someone looked at Spirit of the Century and decided it was too rules-heavy. They could honestly shove the core FATE point and Aspect mechanics back into it and probably not even increase the page count, which would've been awesome; FATE's books have all been way too big for being rules-lite systems, and I have to give credit for Cosmic Patrol not falling into that trap.
It will serve its purpose for being a hotbed of retro-scifi ideas collected & processed in a format suited for RPGs. The fact the system is crap just means it's going to be a setting book rather than a game book, which is a shame.
Judging Its Cover
The print quality of the book is stellar (pun very intended). It feels like they found my post on this forum from years ago when I described my perfect RPG book and copied it. The footprint is small & black and white interior with art quality high enough to not feel chintzy. Even the cover itself is simple and direct. I knew exactly what kind of game this thing is about. Even the formatting is to my taste.
Yes, it is made by Catalyst Game Labs, and I honestly forgot the name; I had just mentally filed the embezzlement shenanigans under "Shadowrun." In retrospect, I feel a little shame supporting them from paying the $25 at the store.
I noticed this next bit when I opened to the Contents & Credits section. Frank's mentioned the significance of this in his Eclipse Phase review, which I shall repost here
SettingFrankTrollman wrote:The License: Holy shit, Creative Commons License. I think everyone should buy a copy of the game just for this. This is the license that everyone knows RPGs should have. It's totally legal to post your characters and your game aids to the internet. It's not a legal gray area or anything, non-profit game additions are explicitly allowed. Finally, an end to legal harassment of fans is in sight.
The cover is a retro-rocketship outline with part of a circle behind and the title below it, and that tells you everything on what kind of story you're going to tell. X Minus One is seriously one of the chapter titles, humans are discovered to already be living on Venus and Mars, and the closest thing to a nod to scientific realism is that space isn't conducive to a long life. Everyone plays Patrolmen going out on missions to maintain peace in the Union, and there are established sources of conflict; so the whole thing maintains coherency, which is needed in this system.
Core Rules
They call the acting DM the Lead Narrator (LN), which I'm unsure would be a term used in an actual game. Their heart is in the right place by having the role of LN rotated around the table, and it outright acknowledges that there will be groups that prefer a designated/permanent DM; in which case you readily change the rules so it's not rotated.
The whole thing is rules-light to an extreme, and largely describes the whole thing as closer to improvisational theatre; which it seems is how they handled the rules design.
Similar to Savage Worlds, each player has a range of d4 to d12 amongst the stats. There's not even a guideline for difficulty in the resolution system; you just roll your d12+[stat die] against a d20, for every challenge other than opposed rolls (in which case it's [stat die] vs [stat die]). The modifiers seriously don't go beyond 3 points in either direction (-3 for using an axe at ten paces in a very strange duel). While knowing your exact chance for success isn't as simple as with the d20 system, the lack of modifiers or even variance in difficulty means objective comparisons are simple (d4 stat die < d8 stat die).
Character Creation
There are pre-made characters, all evocative and nicely drawn, for quick starts. The guidelines for making a character are essentially "see what we did with all of those pre-mades? Yeah, you get the idea." Fortunately, they do not spend 200 pages telling you that like they do at Evil Hat. The mechanical parts are problematic.
The Luck Stat is essentially your critical number. If your [stat die] ever rolls that specific number, you automatically succeed at whatever you're rolling for. This really skews with probabilities. The real problem is that you can seriously have a luck stat of 11 or 12 and not have a single stat higher than d10, or you could win the character creation lottery and get a luck stat low enough that it could be hit with a d4; meaning any roll can get a free auto-win.
There are five stats - Brawn, Brains, Charisma, Combat, & Special. If you're rolling, then you choose an appropriate stat and roll the die for it. Special is decided upon with character creation, and is generally something specific like 'Phasic Whip' or 'Rocketship Mechanics', but can be as broad as 'Manipulation'. It's a little frustrating to see several characters have their Special Stat be the exact same size as the stat you'd use otherwise; or worse in the situation of the d10 Manipulation character with a d12 Charisma.
Gear is about the same as your 'aspects' (Disposition & Cue), you use their names as guidelines for what your character can do.
A major concern is the whole 'cue' system. There is no difference between Disposition & Cue other than where they're written on your character sheet. Mechanically, they do nothing, and are explicitly just there to remind you of what your character is like; so they're 'like' aspects, without any incentive.
Gameplay
Like every damn rules-light system ever, non-combat is a vague hand-wavey affair of success based on whether it sounds cool and/or you beat the d20. The game's analogue to FATE points is Plot Points, and there are essentially no guidelines to how you earn them other than whenever the LN feels like you deserve one each round; DM Favoritism is mitigated by the rotating DM, but you could very easily wind up with LN being a permanent title for the adventure and in which case it's even more severe than FATE.
Combat endurance ranges from effectively 33 to 20 'hit points', healing is either only through MTP or plot points, and damage ranges from d4 to 6.
Adventures
Because of its design and guidelines for scene structure, the adventures in the back are pretty good for the game and lend themselves to very readily created by the internet.
Overview
It feels like someone looked at Spirit of the Century and decided it was too rules-heavy. They could honestly shove the core FATE point and Aspect mechanics back into it and probably not even increase the page count, which would've been awesome; FATE's books have all been way too big for being rules-lite systems, and I have to give credit for Cosmic Patrol not falling into that trap.
It will serve its purpose for being a hotbed of retro-scifi ideas collected & processed in a format suited for RPGs. The fact the system is crap just means it's going to be a setting book rather than a game book, which is a shame.
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How do you confuse a barbarian?
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How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
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