Néstor C.
A personal opinion about Seasons of the Death
En resumen, el manual tiene cosas muy interesantes pero repetir las mismas cosas del mythras imperative, si bien es entendible si se quiere tener un manual independiente, a mi personalmente me mola menos.
… Lo que sigue es un mensaje en inglés que he terminado mandándole al autor en el discord de Mythras después de que me preguntara por qué Seasons of the death un juego que permite jugar en cualquier ambientación apocalíptica, me había decepcionado un poco.
En resumen, el manual tiene cosas muy interesantes pero repetir las mismas cosas del mythras imperative, si bien es entendible si se quiere tener un manual independiente, a mi personalmente me mola menos.
Eso si, el manual tiene perlitas y si vas a dirigir en un entorno contemporáneo usando mythras, es más interesante de primeras que the company de openquest o las guias del investigador de armas modernas de BRP, y no sólo por tener catálogo de armas si no por tener todas las reglas necesarias a mano, un bestiario completo de criaturas naturales y un par de reglas nuevas respecto a las armas de fuego que sin interesantes.
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As promised I will try to expose my own opinions about Seasons of the Dead here. Not always one has the privilege to talk directly with the authors.
Before I start I guess that it is important to clarify that the following is my very own opinion after a fast read of the book, and as such, it may be wrong, biassed and I may have missed important points in the text.
Seasons of the dead is part of the mythas gateway initiative, because this, it shares a lot of information with other manuals that i actually own and it feels, to me, as a lost opportunity to adding more content around the important topic, which is in my opinion, the necessary toolkit to play a contemporary apocalyptic world.
I know that this is a necessary evil if you want to have a full game, and in this sense I'm being unfair, but I have the same issue with other products like m-space and Lyonnese (the last regarding the full mythras ruleset).
When I purchased one of those games, including Seasons of the Dead, I knew that this is a toll I must pay to get what I really want, new rules, modified rules, tools and new lore when it applies, but in other games, like M-space and Lyonesse, it was easier to reach the new content while in Seasons of the Death you must read the text with more careful to reach the rule additions over the basic Mythras imperative. I know that generally they have titles like Kill% but as a suggestion, I would find very useful an entry in the index under a “new rules” topic or something similar.
My initial feeling of disappointment came just because that, when I browsed the book without going deep, chapters 3 to 10, roughly half of the book looked just repeated content, i was aware of the fact that i readed it fast and without paying to much attention, but that initial sensation was enough to relegate this book to the down of my “to read” pile. Of course, that is something that relies totally on my side, and regarding the suggestion about indexing the new rules there is little to do about it.
Now after a second read a bit more closely I catch interesting bites on the chapters 3-10 of which I will talk about later.
If someone has no other Mythras products, then Seasons of the dead is a pretty interesting way to get printed almost all the mythras imperative but magic and superpowers plus mythras firearms and a full set of modern equipment and bestiary.
Chapter 1 is small enough to don’t fall in the repeated content feeling, even if it covers mostly the common topics about what is a rpg game, etc. the last pages are interesting, as a suggestion it may be nice having a larger bibliografic section covering also different apocalypse movies rather than only the zombie ones.
Chapter 2 is 100% interesting content to me. To read such things I purchased the book, apocalypse types, how to run the game, sesion zero. All of this comes with nice ideas, so the next lines are more in the improvement line rather than in the criticism:
I would like a bit more emphasis on survival type of games, at the same level as action/adventure, horror and investigative, but only because I was wanting for a survival horror sandbox toolbox not because the text was incomplete. Also a nanotechnologic apocalypse could be a good addition i guess. Session zero is pure gold, even more if the master is not used to more modern and collaborative rpg like pbta, etc. Maybe having specific set group creation rules here or in a posterior chapter, using the m-space circles rules or a different approach should be an interesting addition.
Chapter 4 is fully functional. It would be interesting that depending on their origin a character may have several native languages, not only one but this is something that probably is evident and doesn’t need to be clarified.
As an improvement I would like to see more cultures . The current ones, urban, suburban and rural seem to me a good starting point, but a bit USA centric, far away from the richness that our current world hads. My suggestion here is to create a list of basic templates (the current urban, suburban, rural, maybe adding village, maybe adding something more) and a set of modifier adjectives that allow to shift one or two skills. So you can have, por example, urban “arctic” and put survival as a basic skill if someone comes from Alaska or village “near sea”, rural “warzone”, etc.
Chapters 5 to 10, as I said before, have little interest to me, as a regular mythas dm but some rules or topics like barricades, survival, zombie virus, kill% and depletion%.
To me, the present survival rules are a lost opportunity, caused by my own uninformed expectations. I wanted settlements rules, in depth exploration / weather / biouvac rules, several city / event generators… the kind of thing that makes a survival horror sandbox easier.
The wrath and zombie virus is a smart way to insert zombi in the previous rules, and it works perfectly. As an improvement and just because i’m a compulsive house ruler, I would make the potency variable with a multiplier caused by the wound severity: like x1 for minor wounds, x3 for serious injuries and x5 for major or something similar, for example, zombie virus, potency 20% (so it may vary from 20 to 100) also, I will ask for a opposed roll by injury, not only once at the end.
Kill% is a great rule, I really like it and it is a great addition to armour reduction, what I miss here is how this rule interacts with luck points, of course luck points may be used to roll the attack again or swad the decens and unit dice but I would like something like “the spend of 1 luck point converts a kill impact to minor/serious/major” injury or something similar.
Depletion% is a pretty interesting rule, but to me it looks only half executed. I mean, if you want to eliminate the accountability of the ammo during combat, why is that accountability still here regarding the inventory and forcing players to multiply x5% any single bullet?
For my personal tastes, some degree of micromanagement regarding the resources of the player/group/settlement is interesting in an apocalyptic setting but I can also understand that if you want to remove it you want to remove accountability in general.
Eliminating the accountability while the combat will impact directly on those who enjoy tactics. Maintaining it regarding the inventory will annoy those groups that don't want to care about this kind of thing.
I could house rule it in this way:
I will assume that everybody has enough ammo in their weapon for a single confrontation (how long / how many opponents needs to be, at least suggested)
I will increase the depletion% to make it less common
Once the confrontation ends everybody needs to reload.
If for some reason someone can’t reload, in the next confrontation their Depletion% will be 1 grade easier, and this is stackable (2 grades easier after 2 fights without reload, etc).
ammo is found and traded in full magazines rather than bullet by bullet, i’ll ungroup the current size ammos by size and type (but medium pistols / light machine guns which share the same ammunition).
Chapter 11 is pretty nice, useful for any adventure setted in a contemporary world, maybe i liked to see the AP/HP values of the guns, to have covered these cases when someone wants to destroy or disable a weapon and black powder looks like the table has an errata (they have AR/HP, rather than only AR, or AP/HP), personally i will give some degree of armour reduction to black powder guns, but that’s because i’m used to oppose them to medieval armor. In any case this chapter is a great job.
Chapter 12 is mostly a great addenda to any modern setting, not for the rules ( I exposed before my thing with mythras gateway product & Lyonesse, sorry for being reiterative) but for the samples.
Chapter 13 is pure gold if you want the statistics of natural animals, I have no suggestions here but maybe increase the number (the more, the better, you know).
Finally, I like having detailed indexes, which is the case. Please note that English is not my primary language and I may not always express myself politely. In any case I want to be nice and make a positive commentary to seasons of death and if I fail, it is because of my own limitations with the language rather than my will.
Runeblogger: Pedazo de carta. Me dan ganas de leer esas pequeñas reglas que comentas. Y si quieres, te publico la reseña en el blog.
emod: Vaya, le has dado una buena lectura al manual.
Néstor C.: {@Runeblogger} Pues voy a tener que dedicarle un rato para convertir esto en una reseña, calcula que como pronto lo tendré la semana que viene.
15 PX
