Jeremy Keller, author of the ENnie Award-winning http://chronicafeudalis.com/, is http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/847327173/technoir-high-tech-hard-boiled-roleplaying his new high-tech, hard-boiled roleplaying game http://technoirrpg.com/. He is also running a public beta of the game, so you can download the beta and see how it works.
I highly recommend at least reading this game to anyone who has any interest in Shadowrun at all, particularly if you like a more serious side to your games. Even in beta stage, it is quite wonderful. I guarantee you will see at least one thing in it that shows a different and better approach to something you've had a problem with in a Shadowrun game, perhaps without even realizing it.
The elevator pitch for the game:
Cool that it encourages "failure" or at least getting hurt, and rewards it. I have been thinking for a while that a noir setting needs that.
A similar RPG, this time purely Noir, not sci-fi, is http://www.gregstolze.com/adirtyworld/index.html. It has some really good ideas.
Ok, stream of conciousness review:
Hmm, nice pledge system there. Tempted to put a fat wadge of change there just to see a protaginist called Chet Awesomelaser. Or Hugh G. Rection. Or Amanda Hugankiss.
Could have linked it better....ok, reasonably clear, would have been nice to be able to grab a zip of the whole thing to tool about with.
Reading through - interesting concept, but gods, I wish he'd bothered to take 20 minutes to spellcheck/grammar check the PDF's.
(It's a small thing, I know, but it totally demeans the good things that they've put together and makes it look like he's typed it out via text-message on the train to work.)
Game- looking like a vampire/SR combo with a grouped hybrid mechanic.
Ohh!!
The "Verb" idea is very,very clever - rewards those with a decent knowledge of dramatic narrative with monster dice pools (Ok, "Push" pools). I expect to see this again in ~ 5 years when people revamp the old favourites.
Game setting literally reeks of Shadowrun with a hunk of WoD ansgt. Could have mentioned the dead oceans due to acidity, starvation amongst the supposedly-rich..ehh, it's beta.
I keep looking at the mechanics and wondering how to make a mage. It's not helping:)
Grrr... "Specks" - visual overlay AR...should be "Specs" or (Groan) "Spekz"
...Frankly, I think he's wasting his time making a pen-and-paper RPG. All this could be easily made into a quite addictive flash minigame. ie:
You are an Investivative/Courier/Soldier (Detect, Fight 2, Hack, Move 2, Prowl 2, Shoot -fast, tough, intuitive) that has the fleshing-out process of their contacts randomly generated or from an assigned "party" of players at that moment.
Spend the cash (Kreds....I'm whimpering here!) and bam, use the adventure-roller to make your play.
Survive a session, allocate your points, continue. God, it sounds like bloody mafia wars.
Shall dick about with this and see how it goes.
-Tir.
Yeah, sorry about the typos. A lot of it was written directly into InDesign which doesn't have auto-spellcheck. But the text has been extracted to text files now, better spellchecked, and gone to the capable hands of the editor.
Huh, I don't know why it's "specks" and not "specs." Thought I had a reason at the time, but I can't remember for the life of me what it was.
And if I could have a whole slew of "protagonists" named after the MST3K Space Mutiny names, I would be a very happy man.
-Jeremy
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