Revelation 2019

Unfortunately due to personal problems I was only able to attend the Saturday of the event. That still represented three games sessions and three different games with gaming going on from 10am to almost midnight.

All of the games I played were things that I’ve wanted to play for a long time so I was very excited about the prospect of finally to giving them a go.

Worldwide Wrestling

I’ve always had an interest in American wrestling and Nathan Paoletta’s design for the game is quite a different take on the PbtA system. During wrestling matches uses a system of momentum that allows you to build up a modifier pool that you can then use to influence the outcome of an otherwise unmodified roll for the outcome of the match. It basically reverses the normal downward spiral mechanism.

The game played over two matches where my character was desperate not to miss out on the chance to become a breakout star turn.

In play the game revealed all kinds of interesting design elements. Bits of it were familiar. The pre-match buildup shares much with Night Witches in that you get to choose scenes that allow you to shape the future narrative or build dice modifiers and pools for the wrestling scenes.

We probably played with misunderstood rules as the buildup of heat seemed unstoppable once you got beyond the initial rolls and made the final move roll a bit of a certainty.

However that made the revealing of the scripted end to wrestling matches more interesting for me as you were making a conscious choice as to whether to go along with the script or breaking it rather going with wherever the finishing move took you.

Vagabonds of Dyfed

This is the new hot fantasy PbtA game, taking the torch of DungeonWorld and trying to combine the best of PbtA, Blades in the Dark and various OSR new wave rulesets. It was also using the Kickstarter backer version of Dortoka, City on the Sea of Glass. So a double-whammy of hot rules and hot setting.

The basic setup was very Blades, as a group of Vagabonds, a local tough sent us to investigate rumours of treasure in another part of the city. On returning from undertaking this task we had grown sufficiently in skills, items, allies and meanness to install ourselves as the new daddies.

The overall journey had some setup rolls to establish advantages for the expedition but I was far from clear how this worked.

Then once we had started the journey whenever we entered a distinct part of the city we made scouting rolls, dealt with some dangerous aspect of the area and then progressed to the next.

Again it reminded me a lot of Blades in the Dark where we were establishing how our journey was going with an initial roll and then either trying to take advantage of a situation or responding to the situation we found ourselves embroiled in.

The system seemed a lot closer to something like Jaws of the Seven Serpents than normal PbtA as your character has traits that if relevant grant a plus one to the roll while Advantage and Disadvantage work as normal for new-wave PbtA rule sets.

There felt like there was a strong incentive to do what your character was good at rather than failing for XP. It felt like the right thing to do was play to your character’s strengths and spam the rolls that they had bonuses for.

After playing I felt that I enjoyed this a lot more than DungeonWorld but that I felt an urge to try and play around with the rules a bit more. I was interested in the traits or approaches being a bit more like Burning Wheel where the rest of the players can decide whether your character demonstrated their traits or whether they acted in a different way to how they see themselves.

Cartel

This was the quickstart version of the rules which I have had for a while but I’ve felt paralysed from giving a go due to desire to give the Mexican background its proper due. It was Breaking Bad that I felt gave me a way into the setting.

I played a cocky corrupt cop trying to impress her new boss, clear out a few problems for her cartel uncle and put a suspicious colleague in the literal line of fire.

The basic structure of the setting is interesting and this is good use of the Apocalypse World rules. Most options your character has are poor, violence is ever present and swift to manifest. You keep on in the hope that at the right moment you might get lucky and get out but you probably won’t.

However overall the game just didn’t work properly in this iteration for me; you can read a fuller review of Cartel if you want the gory details.