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The Terminator RPG: Quickstart Part II
by bruce [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 03/09/2024 03:10:15

This is more of a Sandbox adventure compared to the first one. It should also state that you need the first QS to play this one. It's a continuation of the previous QS. It doesn't correct any of the mistakes in the first.



Rating:
[1 of 5 Stars!]
The Terminator RPG: Quickstart Part II
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The Terminator RPG: Quickstart
by bruce [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 03/09/2024 03:06:46

I have all 3 versions of the QS and the final rulebook in print and pdf. Was there a proofreader? There are many mistakes and omissions in the QS and final book. Example. One-character is a knife fighter, but it has no range for throwing the knives. In the Range section of the weapons stats, it only says, Thrown. Under the skill, it says the same. No definition of how far that is. The use of a knife on a Terminator is almost worthless. Why include the character? His gun's stats, range, damage, ROF are not listed. Another example. In the adventure, the Terminators are said to advance on the characters and reach them in 2 rounds. Yet it also says they shoot at the players. The mechanics of the game only allow for: Moving or Charging, Shooting, Melee combat or 'something else'. How can they reach the characters in 2 rounds and shoot at the same time? Another character is a Sniper. But there are no stats for the weapon in the QS. The QS also is still not the final rules. Items have been changed. Armor vests have different stats in both, for example. The adventure is Theater of the Mind, but a lot is missing in the description. The adventure demonstrates the hacking rules, which are interesting. How many times will this be used in a game is questioned. I don't see any reference to Lip Reading. There are Hope points given for the characters to use. On the character sheet they're called Ratings points, with no reason for the different names. The rules are crunchy. A lot of detail in some areas, while others are almost ignored or forgotten. Good idea, great IP. Poor usage.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
The Terminator RPG: Quickstart
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The Terminator RPG
by Dan [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 02/25/2024 10:16:34

A very complete core book with multiple eras of play, however this digital version has un-usable performance issues. This PDF is horribly optimized. Look for a physical copy if interested in this game.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
The Terminator RPG
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SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Progress Report Issue Four
by Gordon M. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 12/07/2023 16:12:19

Quality work, as always, from the Nightfall team. Is always nice to see the other Cannibal Sectors getting fleshed out.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Progress Report Issue Four
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SLA Industries 2nd Edition
by Chris [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 11/15/2023 04:54:37

A fantastic reworking of a beloved classic. It captures the feeling of the old setting without the unnecessary clunky systems that could bog down the old game. Love it.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
SLA Industries 2nd Edition
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Hellboy: Korhonen Series, Part 1 - Cannister 7
by Eric G. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 09/01/2023 05:44:09

I am a fan of the Hellboy comic and of the d20 RPG that was inspired by it (and pulp action in general). And I was excited about the the fact that there are going to be published adventures written for it. But I was disappointed by what I bought. I find this product short and lack luster. I bought the PDF for $5 and found out that it is 12 pages...including the cover, the page with legal boilerplate, and one page with a brief introduction that explains that Cannister 7 is meant to be part of a series of adventuers. This adventure (or the outline of this adventure) is covered over the other 9 pages.

In very broad strokes: The heroes are sent to collect a dangerous McGuffin in Berlin. And one or two groups intervene to try and steal the McGuffin from the heroes by force.

Things Canister 7 does well:The layout & graphics are proffesionally done and have actual Hellboy art inside from the comics. Good and good. Though the mission is very simple, the authors think about the likely choices/responses the heroes are going to make. And provides outlines for how the adversaries will react to those choices. The heroes won't necessarily be railroaded into specific situations. Good.

Things that are missing: There are zero maps provided. Yuck. Where the action takes place will varry by PC choices, but maps of a sasfehouse, a warehouse and a roadside would all be very useful. Can a GM figure this out on their own? Sure. But if I'm buying an adventure I expect to be able to prep and run it with minimal elaboration on my part. There is also zero boxed text or sample dialogue offered for the adversaries. (?!?) Double yuck. The villians might as well come as 2 dimensional cut outs from cental casting. The only potentially interesting people for the PCs to talk with are the 5 NPCs provided for the "hand off" of the McGuffin. And it says that their "face" would love to exchange two or three sentences and then vamoose. Many PCs won't interact with the only NPCs who have anything resembling a personality. Finally there are no stats. You are sent to the Hellboy book to access stats there for the generic opposition.

What I think this really is: a useful outline to prompt a GM to create their own 1-3 hour adventure from.

I pay $5 for PCI's Arcanis adventures which make for an interesting comparison. Arcanis adventures run around 30 pages, run over 4-8 hours, have maps, colorful indivual NPCs (with box text or bullet points for info and how they share it) and stats for unique enemies. They don't have the groovy graphic design and layout...but as a GM I find them an excellent value. For $5 I don't think this is a good value despite recycled Hellboy art. I hope Nightfall Games puts more meat on the bones of the next instalment.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
Hellboy: Korhonen Series, Part 1 - Cannister 7
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Hellboy: Korhonen Series, Part 2 - The Wet Werewolf
by Eric G. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 09/01/2023 05:43:07

Disapointing.

I am a fan of the Hellboy comic. And I thought that Mantic Games did a good job with thier Hellboy RPG main book. So I had hopes for this product. But this line of adventures continues to underperform. I am not sure if I will purchase the third or other future parts.

For the price of a $5 pdf you get 7 1/2 pages of adventure plus a title page and some legal boiler plate. Anyway you slice it, I do not consider this a great (or even a good) value. There are no encounter maps. Only one NPC (and not even the central one) gets a last name. Some obvious NPCs don't appear at all - for example the PCs are almost certainly going to investigate at a hospital and liason with local law enforcement. No names or characters given. The PCs are told to avoid the tabloids. No reporters or tabloids given. Which I guess explains why there is no complications for them actually geting involved. I guess the writers want to do a "sandbox" style adventure, but its hard to do on 7 and a half pages. And some of those pages are filled with art...which while lovely don't help flesh this out beyond a basic outline.

I want to like this but am frustrated by everything that should be in here but is missing. In college I had all day to prep stuff to run as a gamemaster. As a working adult I don't. I'm looking for more than what's on offer.

I give this three stars rather two or one because there are some improvements from Canister VII. The NPCs want to talk to the players in this one! And the plot, threadbare as it is in its 7 pages, captures some of the goofier energy the Hellboy comic sometimes has. A fairly standard argument between neighbors results in a botched summoning that spirals out of control without quite killing anyone ... if the heroes can contain the chaos. A lighter adventure its potentially a fun palate cleanse between more serious campaign beats.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Hellboy: Korhonen Series, Part 2 - The Wet Werewolf
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Devil's Run the Roleplaying Game (2d20-SWADE)
by Aaron [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 08/24/2023 22:28:28

It's exactly what I was looking for, but I found Devil's Run looking for an SWADE game. Instead, I found a 2d20 game with conversion notes scattered throughout the book. Now I'm posed with the challenge of convincing my group to learn a new system or struggle with the added challenge of constant conversion when the publisher could have easily formatted a separate SWADE edition.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Devil's Run the Roleplaying Game (2d20-SWADE)
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StokerVerse Roleplaying Game
by A customer [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 06/14/2023 19:47:04

Wonderful. Truly captures the feel of Dracula but expands the world and ratchets up the horror. The Victorian era rpg I personally have been waiting for. The book looks great with moody artwork and inteteresting graphic design. The writing is excellent and every page is exploding with great ideas. Would recommend unreservedly.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
StokerVerse Roleplaying Game
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SLA Industries Threat Analysis 1: Collateral
by Lowen M. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 06/09/2023 08:34:53

Absolutely amazing. The long awaited sourcebook for the second edition, finally bringing not just the details about enemies and life on Mort, but also gives insights to the Metaplot, finally fleshing out and adding onto what was established in the original Data Files.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
SLA Industries Threat Analysis 1: Collateral
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CORPORATION 2nd Edition Quickstart
by Len T. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 06/01/2023 08:09:18

I’ve been playing the original Corporation RPG continuously for over six years, mostly as a GM. I love the game and the Brutal Engine game system. Corporation is my all-time favourite RPG. That’s my background for writing this review.

The quick-start is a 40 page (not counting front & back cover) document that breaks down as follows: a one-page introduction, 5 pages of introductory background to the Corporation setting, 16 pages of rules for the S5S system, 5 pages covering four pre-generated characters and their abilities, and 13 pages for an introductory scenario. There are no maps (they’re not needed) and little artwork, all of which is unrelated to the content.

The introduction has a bit of waffle about what cyberpunk is. I’ve never thought of Corporation as cyberpunk, so didn’t think this added anything. There is also a paragraph on what gear you need to use the product (dice, 3-4 players, etc).

The background section is very bare bones (as you’d expect from a quick-start) but is adequate and does introduce the UIG and the big five corporations that are central to the setting. These blurbs are brief but OK as far as they go. There is also two pages on spires, underswells and old cities, which are there to set the scene for the introductory scenario, which is set in a spire. Overall, this section achieves what is needed, but nothing more.

The rules section covers the basics of Nightfall Games’ in-house S5S system. This gives you enough to play the introductory scenario and nothing more. I found it gave an adequate explanation of the rules but still left a few ambiguities. So it required some GM interpretation when I ran the game. This could have been fixed with more detailed examples, especially a full combat play through going through the full hit and damage process with options. One point of concern for me was that a character’s PSI rating provides a small pool of points that act as both Fate Points (for everyone) as well as being used to power psychic powers for those with that ability. On the face of it, this doesn’t make taking psychic powers very attractive. Be interested to see how this works in the full rules.

The pre-generated characters are intentionally left bland so that players can freely personalise them. This makes sense and is a good idea. There is no indication as to what “level” these agents are or how many XP they have, but I assume they are starting level characters. Their stats and skills certainly suggest this. While it doesn’t state which corporation the agents work for, reading the character sheets indicates they all have the languages (E.I.) skill. This would imply that they are E.I. agents and therefore the setting is an E.I. spire. The character sheets themselves are very functional, being easy to read and follow.

The scenario is very generic and basic, being designed to take players through the rudiments of the S5S rules system. This is just as it should be and it does this reasonably well. However, don’t expect detailed plots or roleplaying opportunities (it’s a quick-start scenario!). Basically, you’re an agent team in a generic unnamed (E.I.) spire that has to deal with a riot from the underswells.

So how does it play?

Well first up, I took one of the pre-generated agents (agent Cole) out to the range for some old fashioned target practice. His/her marksmanship ability is the lowest in the team (and the same as agent Butcher’s). The target was stationary, had no armour, and only 12 HP (the stats of the weakest foe given in the booklet). So what did we learn?

Agent Cole is a very bad shot and should not have graduated from agent training. Even firing at good range at such an easy target he/she had only a 30% chance of hitting (as per the rules system). Furthermore, the standard Black Cougar pistol is a garbage weapon that doesn’t really hurt people. Our weak, unarmoured target required an average of 4 hits to bring down. That is garbage!!

The first run through took 24 combat rounds to fire the 15 round magazine of the Black Cougar (yes, you count rounds). Of these combat rounds, 8 rounds resulted in misses + jams, meaning another 8 rounds were spent on the Recovery action to un-jam the weapon. The remaining 8 rounds resulted in 4 misses, 3 hits, and a weapon reload (Recovery action). This produced a total of 9 damage against our 12 HP, unarmoured, stationary target. Pathetic!

For the second run through we decided agent Cole would use the Prepare action to aim before firing. This reduced the DV to 7, resulting in a 40% chance to hit but only firing every second round. In this instance, it only took 12 combat rounds and 6 bullets to eventually bring the same target down. That’s not great either. Fortunately, there were no jams to recover from. How can an agent, and an iconic weapon, be so utterly useless. They really need to fix the lethality of the Black Cougar; enemies should be scared of the weapon, not laughing at it.

Unarmed combat didn’t go much better, with both agent Cole and Butcher getting their lights punched out by starving civilians. It’s a sad day when supposedly highly trained and augmented agents can’t win a fist fight against malnourished civilians. Even agent Cooper, the best melee fighter of the team, didn’t seem to do that well. Actually, the fist fights became a bit of a pain, as it took many, many combat rounds to finally land enough blows to deal enough damage to knock out a target. Although, funnily enough, fists have a higher minimum damage (2) than the Black Cougar pistol (1)!!

Going into the scenario, we found the agents were failing more than they were succeeding at what they attempted, and the players began to find this somewhat frustrating. Our experience was that your character needed a skill bonus (i.e. stat + skill) of 5 for the required skill check to have a reasonable chance of succeeding. Also, skill points seem vastly more valuable than stat points, as they are what provide the Skill dice for the roll. These are the dice that give you bonuses and prevent a failed roll becoming a debacle. So having stat 0 & skill 5 would appear to be much better than having stat 3 & skill 2. The full rules system will hopefully balance this more.

The player who took the psychic character (agent Butcher) didn’t find him/her very effective or find much use the power he/she had. The player wound up expending PSI points to try and pass rolls, leaving little left to activate powers. Recovery of PSI points wasn’t covered in the quick start. To be fair, I don’t think the quick start really gives you enough to properly evaluate the game’s psychic powers. Best to wait for the full rules.

Overall, the agents presented in this booklet were pretty underwhelming and struggled to achieve anything. The rules system seems weighted against success, at least as far as the given characters are concerned. There’s also a bit of book keeping in that you’re tracking rounds fired, armour ablation, PSI points expended, etc. I don’t see this as a big problem, but others might. Combat also seems to take a long time to resolve.

Now this review is based on our first play through, so take that as a caveat. Our group are all experienced Corporation players, but are new to the S5S system, so we likely made more than a few mistakes. Also, as I recall, the dice were not particularly kind to the players. So I’d encourage others to give it a go and provide their experience.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
CORPORATION 2nd Edition Quickstart
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SLA Industries 2nd Edition: The Slasher, Issue One
by Gordon M. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 05/30/2023 12:46:50

Local Nutter Wets Himself Crying With Laughter

The Slasher is a deranged look in to the wonderful world of SLA Industries resident celebrity superstars and Downtown menace, the Serial Killer; costumed psychpaths (no, they're different to Ops or Contract Killers, those guys are on SLA's payroll) who terrorise the locals of Mort's Downtown Districts.

Packed to the brim with hilarious articles from the POV of the Serial Killers and fantastic art by Dave Allsop, this parody/homage to The Digger (a Scottish tabloid about Glasgow gangs) will give fans of Nightfall's SLA Industries setting a wonderful insight to the most deranged people in the World of Progress with it's darkly comedic take on what happens when celebrity obsession runs headlong into vioent crimes caused by social iniquity.

Can't wait for Issue 2.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
SLA Industries 2nd Edition: The Slasher, Issue One
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SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Quick Start
by Jay Z. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 05/27/2023 14:18:10

A messy start to a flawed revival of a 90's cult classic. Sample characters have wildly varying amount of gear, from a few having 2x the starting cash of a character in the final edition (which didn't change the economy all that much from the 90's) to one having barely any equipment. The intro adventure isn't anything to write home about either, and contains some gems like "If the characters turn left at the intersection, they eventually hit a dead end" and a couple other "you can interact with this but it's a waste of time if you do moments.

edit: What a coincidence those reviews showed up right after I posted mine. edit2: docked it a point 2 to 1 because the devs were too obvious about soliciting positive reviews to counter this one.



Rating:
[1 of 5 Stars!]
SLA Industries 2nd Edition: Quick Start
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Creator Reply:
Thanks for the review and editing it so that it now makes sense. Yes the fans of the 2nd Edition and QuickStart wanted to rebalance things I assume. The nature of SLA is that there is dead ends and, in cases, monotony; it's not all about giving the PCs what they want or need straight away. I hope you find a game that works for you, in the same way SLA does for the other reviewers.
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Thanks for the review and editing it so that it now makes sense. Yes the fans of the 2nd Edition and QuickStart wanted to rebalance things I assume. The nature of SLA is that there is dead ends and, in cases, monotony; it's not all about giving the PCs what they want or need straight away. I hope you find a game that works for you, in the same way SLA does for the other reviewers.
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SLA Industries Threat Analysis 1: Collateral
by Simon V. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 02/17/2023 02:45:21

Great Sourcebook for anyone wanting to run a SLA game with additional options for players that are familiar with the deep lore. Massive amount of insight on 1 category of threats in the World of Progress, ambitiously completed.

Can't wait to see what's next.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
SLA Industries Threat Analysis 1: Collateral
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SLA Industries Threat Analysis 1: Collateral
by Michael B. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 02/14/2023 13:42:36

A superb book! The art work is absolutely top notch, this supplement really he with fleshing out more of the denizens of Mort!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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