Greetings! I have gotten another* ENNIE nomination, also in the “Best Free Game/Product” category.
This time, I was nominated as part of an excellent team: the contributors to 9th Level Games Level 1 anthology for Free RPG Day 2021. Since the anthology is free, you can download it here, and (if you like what we’ve designed) vote for us to win the ENNIE award!
Voting is open until until 24th, so don’t delay. Vote today!
Learn more about the games I contributed to Level 1 (both in 2021 and this year) in this Twitter thread. The one in the 2021 collection involves collecting and rolling every single die you own.
*My game Secret Science Sewer Siblings was nominated in the same category in 2020. It is still available for free, here on itchio!
On to our regular content. It’s a little lighter this month, because we are in the midst of a move.
Played: Fate of Umdaar
Fate of Umdaar is new game in development from Evil Hat, designed by Dave Joria. He’s expanding his Fate setting Masters of Umdaar into a full-featured game. The game is a science fantasy epic inspired by media like Flash Gordon, Thundercats, He-Man, and She-Ra. I got to play in a five-session playtest series.
Highlights: The playtest was a lot of fun! I played Princess Zenobia Gallowglass, runaway scion of one of the planet’s sinister Masters. We had a motley group of Champions, with my Princess, her genetically-engineered Mutawarrior bodyguard, a Dragonfolk gravity-bender, and a martial artist from a tribe of people made out of radiation!
Our adventures took us from the Pit of Pain prison to the Icequake Tundra to a confrontation with my father, Ghoulian Gallowglass, at the Ascendant Castle. Everywhere had all the over-the-top trappings you could wish for: undead squid psychics, marmotfolk cults, and a truly formidable tunneling ice worm.
The system shone when we had to make interesting decisions. I decided to bluff my way through our entire confrontation with the brutal war-leader Master the Cudgelord of the North, acting like he couldn’t harm me with his powerful artifact hammer. This let me use my high Deceive stat to chip away as his morale as he hesitated—but if I had rolled poorly, I’d have stopped being able to use that stat at all, and probably taken serious harm from his hammer to boot!
Musings: This was my first time playing with Fate, and so I had to get used to the system’s economy. Fate points are crucial, and using them wisely is the heart of the tactical side of the game. The dice are pretty swingy, so you’ll often want to spend Fate points and invoke your Aspects for a re-roll or a +2. (Aspects are truths about your character and the world, which you need to be able point to to justify spending Fate points on a roll. My High Concept Aspect, for instance, was “Rebellious Scion of a Master,” and another Aspect was “My Father’s Stolen Moonsteel Daggers,” defining my signature weapon.)
If the PCs run through their Fate points in a confrontation, they may simply be unable to win. This could make for fascinating moments, but might not be desirable if the story momentum has been driving towards a victory for the Champions and the dice and Fate points conspire to snatch it away. It seems like a key part of GM-ing Fate (which our GM Alun modeled well!) is coming up with juicy compels to offer players at opportune times, in exchange for bonus Fate points.
Final Thoughts: I really enjoyed trying out Fate in this wild swords & super-science & sorcery setting! I look forward to the game’s full release. If you’re intrigued, you can watch a video playlist of our sessions here.
Elsewhere
—Geek Native did a great write-up of Back Again from the Broken Land, calling it “Tolkien unburdened from Tolkien.” Our aim with the game was to get at aspects of Tolkien’s work that we loved, and that were not always reflected in other high fantasy RPGs. I am glad that came through! (Plus, there’s discussion of whether or not Back Again counts as a cooking game.)
—Leah, who co-designed Back Again and is also my lovely wife, designed a game called This is Not a Place of Honor, inspired by real-world attempts to envision long-term warnings about nuclear waste. The blog Speak the Sky did a solo play-through of the game and wrote up the eerie and cool results!
—ZineQuest returns to Kickstarter in August! I will not be able to run a project between attending GenCon and moving... but if anyone's looking for a stretch goal writer to contribute design for a Zine Quest project, hit me up! I'd love to do something.
—Back to what we started with: I joined with other Level 1 anthology contributors to discuss our games in the 2022 anthology! Check out that video here. Plus, you can download the 2022 anthology for free here—and why not pick up the 2021 anthology and vote for us to win an ENNIE while you’re at it!
Till next time, may you seize your fate (points), cook tasty meals, and vote for an ENNIE win for Cloven Pine Games!
Gamefully Yours,
Alexi