Battle’s End

Postmortem Studios

What is it? It’s something Postmortem are calling a “6-Pack Adventure” and to quote from the book itself;

“6-Pack Adventures are ‘pick-up and play’ adventures. They have pregenerated characters, battlemats, tokens, all that just need to be printed out or, in the case of the print version – have the cover taken off to use as the mat and the tokens cut out.”

How much does it cost? The download will cost you the princely sum of £1.75 the print copy will set you back £3.50

What system is it for? Pathfinder.

My thoughts:

This public review of role playing products is a little new for me, we all like to read products and then declaim or evangelise wildly to our friends, but to actually go on record and state your thoughts in a public manner? That’s a totally different container of Pisceans. This brings me to the package of RPG goodness I have in front of me, it comes as an electronic download from RPGNow and there’s a print version out there too, available from LULU, I cannot review the actual print edition as it’s a little hard to get it to travel along the broadband link I have.

The story starts in an inn, but let me assure you now, even though there’s a ‘Mysterious Stranger’ in residence it is not that old hackneyed hook that awaits the valorous traveller, the characters are all taking refuge from the cold night in the inn and plan to move on in the morning. The shenanigans continue from there but I won’t go into further details to avoid spoilers.

I like it, it reads like something I might have put together and I think it could generate a reasonable amount of further adventures for a party who run through it. It’s playable with only the core rulebook knowledge of Pathfinder needed over and above the actual 6-Pack. There are a couple of areas that, knowing my players, I’d have to fill in but this will not present a problem to any but the newest of GMs.

No characters ready? No problem the ones at the back of the pack have enough characterisation to get your teeth into, my only complaint with these is I’d like to see the character art all done in the same style, it’s a personal preference more than a real dislike.

A good colour printer will provide the maps and tokens, if you need them.

This pack really does contain everything you need to play a shortish game of Pathfinder; I suspect my group would play through this in about 2 to 3 hours.

I’ve attached one of the pre-generated characters to this post, Torvel Darvassa - Level 3 Human Fighter (246), that should give you some idea of the characterisation in this module.

The overall rating I’m going to give it is 4.5 Buccaneers out of 5, losing 0.5 of a Buccaneer to my personal preference for a single art style in a module.

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Tags: #DnD, GMing, Pathfinder, Review, Scenario

Preparing for today’s Alternity game and I came across something called Skill Ladders whilst reading Wolfgang Baur’s Dataware book.

Skill ladders are presented by Wolfgang as a way to avoid the monotony of Alternity’s complex skill checks. A complex skill check requires a certain number of successes before a number 3 failures. This can descend into just totting up successes and failures at the table until you’ve either succeeded or failed.

Wolfgang outlines skill ladders, just a quick to write list of what each success or failure of a hacking attempt actually means. Here’s a quick example from my prep for today.

Hacking bio tagged laser weapon

Successes

1. Removed take down pin
2. Gained access to internal ciruitry
3. Bypassed authentication routines
4. Weapon unlocked for any user

Failures

1. Mild electric shock
2. Ammo halved by power discharge
3. Weapon locked. Power discharged. Ammo depleted.

This is a quick an very easy way to write simple game raising things to respond to each failure or success with. Next time I’m doing 4e skill checks I think this easy method would transfer quite well as well. It’s a good way to show your players that they are actually progressing through a skill challenge and gives them an idea of how far is left to go.

I can’t stress how quick this is to knock up, and how powerful it is in use at the table. Here’s another example that I knocked together in a few minutes at lunch today.

Opening Hanger Airlock Doors

Successes

1. Bypass microswitches and remove access panel undetected
2.Find power conduit
3. Reroute power to door controls
4. Disable anti tamper device
5. Inner door open
6. Override safety measures
7.  Access airlock sub routines
8. Outer doors open

Failures

1. Power fails needs re-routing
2. Alarm sounds
3. Safety measures kick back in. Any open doors shut. Power fails. Start again.

I’ll definitely be writing more of these, maybe even at the table, they are that quick.

How about you?

Comments: 2 comments

Tags: DMing, GMing, Sci Fi