Recently one of my Twitter and Facebook friends Michael Wolf, lead writer for Stargazer’s World, released a roleplaying game for public consumption. The game is called Warrior, Rogue & Mage and is available on DriveThruRPG, although if you don’t want to give DRPG your credit card info I suggest you bug Mr. Wolf for a direct download link. Better yet, get him to seed a torrent.

Raw Stats

Let me start off this section by telling you the total cost to own this book: Nothing. Zilch. Zero. Free. So remember while I’m discussing what I like and dislike about this game that it cost me nothing.

As of the writing of this review Michael Wolf has only published a PDF of this book. So while I’d love to have a professionally done hard copy I respect that producing something like that is expensive. Well, unless you do a little research.

The Artists

While the writing and layout was done by Michael Wolf, the editing was done by Andrew Modro with the cover & interior art done by The Forge Studios (Pawel Dobosz & Maciej Zagorski). Ever hear of these names? Probably not, but if you follow my links you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the massive amount of activity these indie-gamers are putting into their career. Keep these guys on your radar, because they’re pounding the pavement and someone’s likely to breakthrough.

Creative Commons

The PDF was released under the United States Game Copyright Law and the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 License. It doesn’t specify if it’s international at all, so it defaults to the Unported version.

Two things about this I don’t get:

• They chose not to use the Creative Commons iconic image.
• They picked the “Non-Commercial” version.

The Creative Commons logo is more than a logo. It’s a statement. The statement you make by having that logo is simple and clear: Share me. Modify me. Remix me. I’m assuming the creators thought that the blurb would work the same, but it frankly doesn’t. The Creative Commons logo stands out, period.

Which leads me to the “Non-Commercial” clause in the license they picked. By picking this clause no one can make any money off Warrior, Rogue, & Mage without first getting permission and special license from the creators. This can only be a detriment. Consider for a moment if a company liked WRM and wanted to run with it. While Mr. Wolf wouldn’t get any of the profit off his ideas he would still reap the benefits of being the originator, creator, and designer. Renown is a lot more valuable than cash. No company is going to attempt this if they have to get rights from Michael Wolf. Why? Because writers are fickle beasts and companies know this.

The Straight Numbers

The book weighs in at a very thin and readable forty pages. That’s a front and back cover (2), credits (1), foreword (1), table of contents (1), a blank character sheet (4!), and 30 pages of actual gaming material, divided into 7 chapters and 4 appendixes. The only thing missing from the book is an index which it probably didn’t need. This adds up to 8.2MB. Yep that’s only 3 floppy disks! This is perfect really, because you’re most likely going to want to read it on an eReader (small size means fast load) and download it over a crappy Cafe wifi connection.

Reading Experience

What can I say about a book that doesn’t have a physical companion? Obviously not much. I can’t tell you if they picked the right materials, how well the book stands up to rough use, or if the ink smudges. The physical reading experience of this book is limited to the device you use to read it. I happened to read it with ePDF (Ubuntu Acer AspireOne Netbook) and GoodReader (iPad). I’ve had reports that open source PDF readers (ePDF) make it terribly hard to read. Something is screwing up in the formatting and it seems it only comes out on the cutting edge PDF readers: GoodReader, Acrobat Reader, Google PDF. So much that one person said it looked like a completely different book in Acrobat.

Layout

If you’ve read roleplaying books before you’re going to be instantly familiar with the design once you open the book. Sadly it’s the standard two columns of text on each page. I can’t imagine it’s easy to switch to something non-standard like full page, but I do think this would have greatly benefited the work.

He somehow managed to balance the text, the art, and the tables in a way that assists the reading rather than interrupts. This was definitely professional work worthy of praise. That Michael Wolf was able to do this and write the whole thing is a pretty significant achievement. With that said I’m not sure what kind of drugs Mr. Wolf was ingesting when he was placing the tables, they seem to be on the opposite end of where they’re needed.

Fantasy Art

Speaking of art, wow. While some of the images are about as generic fantasy as dragons and wooden doors, they are non-specific enough to work with the context. Sometimes the images get silly (Propeller blade swords? Someone is compensating for something.) or outright outlandish, but in general they work. I mean they really, really, work. Still there was no excuse for how much space the border art gobbled up.

I guess I’m more in awe of how tactful they are. Nothing like the cartoony Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition work. Still, the book could have used at least something more heroic or action oriented, or two or three full page works. Ultimately it was a lot like reading a 8th grade nerd’s class notes.

Typography

I wanted to get to this last because I’m really going to turn on the firehose. To the person responsible for the typography: Never fucking touch a book again. This was terrible and every page should have sent red flags up like a kernel panic. Here are some of the gritty details:

• Chapter headings are in light gray outline font. I’m not kidding.
• Words in paragraphs are sometimes grayed out. On closer inspection this is due to “spots” on the background image.
• Beveled front page title and subtitle. Talk about tacky.
• Bold text was at many points unreadable. Some times two characters were so squished together that they seemed like a single blob character.
• There were blocks of text in a terribly ugly pseudo-monospace font. I couldn’t even be bothered to read them.
• There were almost zero separators between different fields of text.

Beyond that I had to generally squint at the text to make it clearer. Even GoodReader’s text enhancing algorithm was terribly vexed, I had to switch on “text only” mode in order to read some passages. While the sepia tone makes it seem more authentic designers need to remember that our eyes still have to read this stuff.

Two final nitpicks:

• Every chapter should start on it’s own page at the very top of the page.
• Where the hell are the bookmarks?

Content

It’s time to get to the actual game. Warior, Rogue & Mage can’t seem to decide between being a indie game for moderate to veteran players or being a newbie friendly starter. For example while the first chapter has no explicit examples, sample characters, and the ordered list of character creation steps is in the very back and yet the writers has decided you need to be educated on what NPC means.

Foreword

I wanted to give the Foreword its own special section because it really deserves its own special section. If you’ve ever wanted to see what indie-author slash-fanfic looks like then you need to take a gander at the foreword. It is quite possibly the creepiest section in the entire book. When the foreword writers (which include Mr. Wolf) aren’t fellating Mr. Wolf they… actually, no they just talk a lot about him. Any sentences that do mention Warrior, Rogue & Mage are a list of Web 2.0 buzzwords:

There is something electric about this game, a feeling of limitless potential. The system is intuitive, flexible, and fun. There is an emphasis on character over numbers that is created by the simplicity and openness of these rules that I find refreshing.

At its core, the system is light and complexity is brought about by your choices as a player, not by pages of rules.

The foreword authors are Adam We??er(Weiber? Fucked if I can read that last name), Rob Lang, and Michael Wolf. Who talks about his showering habits. I have no clue what the hell is going on in this forward but it is strangely erotic.

The Game

As you start reading about creating your character you’ll notice something amusing: There are no classes. The Warrior, Rogue & Mage actually refers to the attributes all characters have. That’s right, this isn’t the standard STR CON DEX INT WIS CHA layout from D20. I just about jumped up in joy (something not advisable under a low ceiling) when I found this out. This is what creativity looks like.

Making warrior spell casters or assassin brutes are as easy as dividing your points between the attributes. Anyone can cast a spell, swing a sword, or sneak around as long as you’ve got at least one point in that attribute. I like this idea because it makes it blazing simple. If my pot smoking buddies can make a character with this then it’s perfect. Less time working, more time playing.

Skills work just like the Fallout series (a bit of a surprise) with a twist, in that you’re either trained or not trained in a skill. Being trained in a skill means you get to add +2 to the related Attribute. Oddly Warriors, not Rogues or Mages, have the most skills. Kind of disappointed, but you can’t really do anything about it.

Then it gets kind of boring and… familiar. You spend ten points on your attributes (Warrior, Rogue, and Mage), but no more than 6. HP, MP, FP (Fate Points), and DEF are determined by different formulas based on your Attributes. Armor and shields add to DEF. Characters get to pick a Talent (Read: Feat). Pick three skills. Yawn. Whatever, I guess it’s unavoidable. Some of the math really needs to be checked again because there are some interesting holes (Rogue 0 is the same as Rogue for 99% of the time, Warrior 4+ is overkill for any melee attack). Half the Talents make you decimate in combat, the rest are useless for heroes. How awesome, I can feed my party of four for an entire day, thanks Talent:Hunter! Hardly heroic.

Once I got into the meat of the mechanics and combat I nearly fell asleep. It was like I was reading D&D3.0 all over again and all the creativity suddenly lifted up and fluttered off the pages. If, and I really do mean if, you can make heads or tails of the wording on some of the rules you’ll find yourself in an entirely different game than described everywhere else. Suddenly we’re bogged down in exploding dice, weapon range, sustaining spells, and armor penalty.

But there are two things, specifically, that bug me in the combat chapter:

• “A character with 0 HP is considered dead or dying.” Ok. What. There is a huge difference between dying and dead. For instance, like, not being dead and being dead. Since there is no negative HP (stops at zero) I’m not sure why the “or dying” has been added. This line is continually repeated through-out the book.
• All the important tables (like skills) are listed in the very back. I see no reason for this other than to actively force the player to page flip while making his character.

The Dungeon Master section is the same bullshit we see in every Dungeon Master guide: “Your word is law.” “Pay attention.” “Don’t let rule fights take over the game.” “Be fair.” Yeah, ok I’ve read that crap a hundred times over. What I want from this is ways to make the DM experience more balanced. Yeah, you heard me: Game Mastering is fucking unbalanced. All the work is shoved on one person (who may or may not be experienced enough to handle it). Give me details and information on how to get the players to take on more of the story work. Storytelling is cooperative, isn’t it? So why is the GM supposed to do all the heavy work?

I breezed through the sample storyline, it’s nothing worth reading in depth. They even admit to it in the very last sentence.

Left Over Bits

I’m kind of glad there are optional rules, because I was seriously questioning how I’d ever get through a game without vehicle combat rules.

Final Thoughts & Ratings

So here I am, at the end of this review. I’ve said a lot of good things and a lot of bad things about the book. Most of the bad things can actually be fixed with another edition and some good advice. But what do I think about the game?

It’s a “Fantasy Heartbreaker,” and that means one thing: It tries really hard to escape the shackles of stereotypical roleplaying games with a few innovations. It certainly gets free, but seems to have been apathetically filled with old school mechanics for absolutely no reason. All the ingredients are there, but someone seems to have fallen asleep on the stove.

That said: Download this thing. Talk about it. This has a future and you should get in on it while the getting is good.

Materials: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Story: ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Mechanics: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
Play: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Overall: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Posted on July 29 2010