I was in my FLGS today, and as I browsed halfheartedly through the RPG shelf (as I always do), I noticed two titles I was not familiar with - OVERLIGHT and CAVALIERS OF MARS. Initial Googling says these are each Kickstartered projects that came out in the last two years or so.
OVERLIGHT claims to be a "fantasy roleplaying game of kaleidoscopic journeys." There is an emphasis on color that seems to be frankly unhealthy in a non-visual medium, but it's got enough crazy pulpy ideas in its capsule pitch that I'm at least curious. What I see of the dice mechanics seem bonkers - you roll seven dice of varying sizes, trying to get 6s on them, except one of them is a D4 and does different weird stuff when you roll a 4 and apparently nothing the rest of the time. I'm going to watch the YouTube video where they say they can explain this, but I'm not confident it will help much.
The title of CAVALIERS OF MARS just hits me right in the John Carter-shaped hole in my soul, but it's an Onyx Path game and that's never a good sign.
Anybody heard of, or better yet, played, these games and want to voice their opinion?
Anybody heard of OVERLIGHT or CAVALIERS OF MARS?
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CaptainComics
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Overloght is made by the guys who own my flgs. They are real big Roleplayer, not roll players and really into apocalypse world and similar rules light games. Super nice but we disagree about what makes a good rpg a lot. That said the Art, and a desire to support local guys got me to buy it. Its dice mechanics seemed interesting, and i didnt immediatley dislike it. Parts of their setting vary from really neat to really dumb. It seems pretty hard to divorce setting and mechanics, which is a con to me. Ive never found anyone interested in playing it.
You roll a collection of dice, but sometimes can upgrade some of the collection from d6 to d8, or 10s. The gm in this video is one of the creators. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jTse_oFN4 ... uYZ6fI5eH5
You roll a collection of dice, but sometimes can upgrade some of the collection from d6 to d8, or 10s. The gm in this video is one of the creators. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jTse_oFN4 ... uYZ6fI5eH5
If you want some Mars/John Carter style RPG gaming, then I'd recommend
Hollow Earth Expedition - Revelations of Mars. I suppose would probably want/need the core book too.
Hollow Earth Expedition - Revelations of Mars. I suppose would probably want/need the core book too.
Last edited by erik on Mon Jan 21, 2019 4:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
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OgreBattle
- King
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It sounds like a good game to introduce RPG's to board game enthusiastsKrusk wrote:Overloght is made by the guys who own my flgs. They are real big Roleplayer, not roll players and really into apocalypse world and similar rules light games. Super nice but we disagree about what makes a good rpg a lot. That said the Art, and a desire to support local guys got me to buy it. Its dice mechanics seemed interesting, and i didnt immediatley dislike it. Parts of their setting vary from really neat to really dumb. It seems pretty hard to divorce setting and mechanics, which is a con to me. Ive never found anyone interested in playing it.
You roll a collection of dice, but sometimes can upgrade some of the collection from d6 to d8, or 10s. The gm in this video is one of the creators. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jTse_oFN4 ... uYZ6fI5eH5
Overlight is interesting. It looks like it was built primarily for genre smearing. You have seven shards mapped to different colors of light and each shard is a different flavor of adventure. So you've got purple wuxia monks, red mad max raiders, orange is basically orlais from dragon age, and blue is pulp adventure, and green is Pandora but with ewok/groot hybrids. Yellow is generic human because even in weird gonzo settings there always has to be generic human apparently.
The designers clearly were not concerned about balance at all. For example the orlesian not-elves have the background "merchant prince" which starts you off with a very hefty bonus to your wealth, items, and I think comes with a perk. It also has the background "slave" which grants the player literally nothing.
There are monks that soul bond with psychic spirit monkeys and the game insists if you want to play one someone else has to play the other. There are no rules in place for having an NPC be the bonded partner or allowing the player to play someone who has lost their former partner.
When casting a spell it is possible to "shatter" a chroma by rolling more points on the spirit die than you have spirit points left to spend. While this is easily avoided by just not rolling when you have less than 4 points (spirit die is 1d4) if you somehow manage to do it three times you burn out that chroma and can't use it again. In addition to this you suffer some sort of significant physical change which can be anything from "you develop insatiable bloodlust" to "you die roll a new character."
While the game has items there are no mechanics for items. Attacking and combat is handled through a set of PbtA esque basic moves some of which you can spend spirit points to activate and others which are free. There are no rules for weapon interactions, or mundane items. Owning a cartographer's set won't add more dice, increase die size, or count for extra hits on related tests, they're just ornamental. Though I suppose in true story game fashion a DM might rule a check simply can't be made without the requisite object in your inventory sheet.
Despite the intensely varied setting Overlight seems to be at a loss for what you would actually go do in it. Questing for artifacts is meaningless because there's no mechanical benefit to them, politicking places a huge burden on the DM to invent factions and goals and NPCs from whole cloth because the book rather unhelpfully neglects to mention any. I believe there is a supplement out that helps with this but I'm hard pressed to spend money on it when it's unlikely I'll ever find someone willing to play this system.
The designers clearly were not concerned about balance at all. For example the orlesian not-elves have the background "merchant prince" which starts you off with a very hefty bonus to your wealth, items, and I think comes with a perk. It also has the background "slave" which grants the player literally nothing.
There are monks that soul bond with psychic spirit monkeys and the game insists if you want to play one someone else has to play the other. There are no rules in place for having an NPC be the bonded partner or allowing the player to play someone who has lost their former partner.
When casting a spell it is possible to "shatter" a chroma by rolling more points on the spirit die than you have spirit points left to spend. While this is easily avoided by just not rolling when you have less than 4 points (spirit die is 1d4) if you somehow manage to do it three times you burn out that chroma and can't use it again. In addition to this you suffer some sort of significant physical change which can be anything from "you develop insatiable bloodlust" to "you die roll a new character."
While the game has items there are no mechanics for items. Attacking and combat is handled through a set of PbtA esque basic moves some of which you can spend spirit points to activate and others which are free. There are no rules for weapon interactions, or mundane items. Owning a cartographer's set won't add more dice, increase die size, or count for extra hits on related tests, they're just ornamental. Though I suppose in true story game fashion a DM might rule a check simply can't be made without the requisite object in your inventory sheet.
Despite the intensely varied setting Overlight seems to be at a loss for what you would actually go do in it. Questing for artifacts is meaningless because there's no mechanical benefit to them, politicking places a huge burden on the DM to invent factions and goals and NPCs from whole cloth because the book rather unhelpfully neglects to mention any. I believe there is a supplement out that helps with this but I'm hard pressed to spend money on it when it's unlikely I'll ever find someone willing to play this system.
Last edited by shinimasu on Mon Jan 21, 2019 7:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Avoraciopoctules
- Overlord
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I read about Overlight sometime last year on Adrian Tchaikovsky's blog. He seemed pretty hyped, but I didn't see anything that really caught my imagination. I was looking for a compelling "this is what you do", or even "here is what your crazy powers can do". I'm afraid I didn't see anything like that.
In the last year, I HAVE seen some engaging new RPGs, but Overlight felt like it didn't have any substance underneath its flashy presentation.
In the last year, I HAVE seen some engaging new RPGs, but Overlight felt like it didn't have any substance underneath its flashy presentation.
Which new RPGs have caught your eye?Avoraciopoctules wrote:I read about Overlight sometime last year on Adrian Tchaikovsky's blog. He seemed pretty hyped, but I didn't see anything that really caught my imagination. I was looking for a compelling "this is what you do", or even "here is what your crazy powers can do". I'm afraid I didn't see anything like that.
In the last year, I HAVE seen some engaging new RPGs, but Overlight felt like it didn't have any substance underneath its flashy presentation.
FrankTrollman wrote: Halfling women, as I'm sure you are aware, combine all the "fun" parts of pedophilia without any of the disturbing, illegal, or immoral parts.
K wrote:That being said, the usefulness of airships for society is still transporting cargo because it's an option that doesn't require a powerful wizard to show up for work on time instead of blowing the day in his harem of extraplanar sex demons/angels.
Chamomile wrote: See, it's because K's belief in leaving generation of individual monsters to GMs makes him Chaotic, whereas Frank's belief in the easier usability of monsters pre-generated by game designers makes him Lawful, and clearly these philosophies are so irreconcilable as to be best represented as fundamentally opposed metaphysical forces.
Whipstitch wrote:You're on a mad quest, dude. I'd sooner bet on Zeus getting bored and letting Sisyphus put down the fucking rock.
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Avoraciopoctules
- Overlord
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I saw a Kickstarter for some Spire splatbooks that looked seriously fun, though my order won’t show up for a while.
https://rowanrookanddecard.com/spire-rpg/
I like the idea of a campaign specifically oriented around revolution in an oppressed city, and the published adventures look seriously fun. Smashing up elf capitalist estates with freaky spider powers could be pretty sweet.
I was interested in the mech combat Lancer rpg, but it’s still in playtest and they errata’d out my 8 pistol robot build. A little less hyped these days.
https://mobile.twitter.com/lancer_rpg?lang=en
Some of Chamomile’s promised short RPGs in their kickstarter looked cool, but I haven’t gotten around to claiming any rewards yet.
I saw a game on Something Awful that’s supposed to be based around keeping tactical combat rigidly separate from RP abilities, and I’m pretty skeptical, but it looks like it’s at least going to have some decent ideas to mine when I get around to it. The game was called Strike, I think?
https://rowanrookanddecard.com/spire-rpg/
I like the idea of a campaign specifically oriented around revolution in an oppressed city, and the published adventures look seriously fun. Smashing up elf capitalist estates with freaky spider powers could be pretty sweet.
I was interested in the mech combat Lancer rpg, but it’s still in playtest and they errata’d out my 8 pistol robot build. A little less hyped these days.
https://mobile.twitter.com/lancer_rpg?lang=en
Some of Chamomile’s promised short RPGs in their kickstarter looked cool, but I haven’t gotten around to claiming any rewards yet.
I saw a game on Something Awful that’s supposed to be based around keeping tactical combat rigidly separate from RP abilities, and I’m pretty skeptical, but it looks like it’s at least going to have some decent ideas to mine when I get around to it. The game was called Strike, I think?
Last edited by Avoraciopoctules on Wed Jan 23, 2019 1:25 am, edited 4 times in total.
If it is Strike, I know that one. Helped playtest it back when it was called Sacred Cow BBQ. It's a D&D 4e heartbreaker and separated RP abilities from tactical combat pretty hard. The RP stuff it had was basically Magical Teaparty. Maybe they're making a Revised Edition since it's been out for a while?Avoraciopoctules wrote:I saw a Kickstarter for some Spire splatbooks that looked seriously fun, though my order won’t show up for a while.
https://rowanrookanddecard.com/spire-rpg/
I like the idea of a campaign specifically oriented around revolution in an oppressed city, and the published adventures look seriously fun. Smashing up elf capitalist estates with freaky spider powers could be pretty sweet.
I was interested in the mech combat Lancer rpg, but it’s still in playtest and they errata’d out my 8 pistol robot build. A little less hyped these days.
https://mobile.twitter.com/lancer_rpg?lang=en
Some of Chamomile’s promised short RPGs in their kickstarter looked cool, but I haven’t gotten around to claiming any rewards yet.
I saw a game on Something Awful that’s supposed to be based around keeping tactical combat rigidly separate from RP abilities, and I’m pretty skeptical, but it looks like it’s at least going to have some decent ideas to mine when I get around to it. The game was called Strike, I think?
Spire sounds pretty sick, I like mecha so Lancer has my attention and I'm interested in what Cham has up his sleeve. If he'd like to pitch, I'd be all ears.
Last edited by Mask_De_H on Thu Jan 24, 2019 3:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
FrankTrollman wrote: Halfling women, as I'm sure you are aware, combine all the "fun" parts of pedophilia without any of the disturbing, illegal, or immoral parts.
K wrote:That being said, the usefulness of airships for society is still transporting cargo because it's an option that doesn't require a powerful wizard to show up for work on time instead of blowing the day in his harem of extraplanar sex demons/angels.
Chamomile wrote: See, it's because K's belief in leaving generation of individual monsters to GMs makes him Chaotic, whereas Frank's belief in the easier usability of monsters pre-generated by game designers makes him Lawful, and clearly these philosophies are so irreconcilable as to be best represented as fundamentally opposed metaphysical forces.
Whipstitch wrote:You're on a mad quest, dude. I'd sooner bet on Zeus getting bored and letting Sisyphus put down the fucking rock.
Strike is alright. It was a okay to read, but I doubt I'd actually play it. There is no campaign hook, just a different generic system that looks familiar if you've read 4e, but without some of its pitfalls. Its best part is the combat mini-game, and the rest is mostly superfluous bulk.
There's a public preview from the strikerpg website available here, but it misses classes and char gen, which is a much pared down (welcomely so) version of 4e.
There's a public preview from the strikerpg website available here, but it misses classes and char gen, which is a much pared down (welcomely so) version of 4e.