Kriegshacker I

(I know.)

This is a two-part modification of Gregor Vuga's excellent sort-of-WFRP Kriegsmesser. You will need a copy of Kriegsmesser.

Part one covers general rules. Part two will cover Sorcery!

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Players Roll Everything

I think this is sort of implied by Kriegsmesser anyway, but let's state it for Kriegshacker: players make all rolls, even if a non-player-character or monster or other hazard is acting against them; in these cases the players will roll to "resist" the action.

Fighting

Players can use any appropriate skill in a combat situation. This need not be an actual fighting skill. A character could Flee! to escape the fight, Sneak to hide until the coast is clear, or even Provoke to cause infighting amongst the opponents. As long as it makes sense, it can be used. If no skill applies, then the player can use LUCK as normal.

All players involved in the fight roll dice. If anyone gets a success (4+) then the fight is avoided or won or otherwise resolved in the players' favour, although there may be complications. Anyone who fails (1-3) or succeeds with a complication (4-5) suffers those consequences, even if the fight is won.

If no player rolls higher than a 3 then the fight is not resolved, and may even continue, if the Referee decides.

Difficult Fights

The Referee may decide that some fights are more challenging, perhaps because of tougher opposition, an environmental effect, non-combatants getting in the way, and so on. In these cases all involved players have a -1 dice (-1d) or higher penalty.

Generous Referees may allow players to receive a +1d bonus for superior equipment, numbers, position, tactics, and so on. This seems very un-WFRPish, but it's your game.

Damage

Anyone who rolls 4-5 as their highest dice takes a Wound. Mark this on the character sheet in pencil so it can be erased later. For each wound, the player has a -1d penalty. If a player receives a third Wound, then they also take a Terrible Injury (see below).

Anyone who rolls 1-3 as their highest dice takes a Terrible Injury; they should roll on the tables on Kriegsmesser pp30-31. They also suffer a Wound. Terrible Injuries should be noted in ink as they are permanent. If a player takes a sixth Terrible Injury then they are Maimed and take a permanent -1d penalty. Write "Maimed!" on the character sheet, in big red letters if you can. If they are Maimed again, they take an additional -1d permanent penalty, and so on. I recommend adding an extra exclamation point for every Maimed result.

Healing

One wound is healed after a rest period, which should probably be at least a day. When a Wound is healed, the -1d penalty is removed.

Terrible Injuries and Maiming probably shouldn't be able to be healed, except perhaps by sorcery, and in that case I'd probably say that the injuries are hidden rather than healed. Seems more WFRPish.

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Kriegsmesser is very robust and elegant as is, so these are just tweaks to make it more to my liking. Next: Sorcery!

Bunch of Jackasses, Standing in a Circle

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is weird. It's clear that these are the versions of the characters from the 2014 film, all snark and I AM GROOT and personal stereos with classic tunes, except... they aren't. They all look a bit different, they all have different backgrounds and histories, Star-Lord has very different taste in music -- but still isn't a murderous psychopath, boooo! -- and they are all Canadian. It's all a bit off-kilter and almost feels like you're playing an unlicensed knock-off.

(Although computer-Groot is more or less identical to film-Groot, and if he's Canadian, I can't tell.)




I know why it's like this and why they aren't the comic versions or even brand new computer game incarnations of the characters, but it does slap a big old identity crisis right into the middle of the game and while said crisis doesn't hurt the game, as such, it does make it feel, as I say, weird.

But weird as it is -- and it is weird, did I mention that? -- it is also good fun. It feels a bit like the film tie-in games of the olden days; I'm thinking of stuff like Ocean's Batman: The Movie or RoboCop 2, with a jumble of play styles in one game. Most of MGotG is a generic but solid action adventure, with a bit of running, a bit of jumping, and some light puzzling, now and then interrupted with set-piece fights -- of which more below -- but there are also a couple of short spaceship sections, and far too many -- prepare thyself -- quick time event sequences.

QTEs! Oh how I have not missed those cursed things. To see them popping up in a game from 2021, long after everyone had agreed they were a terrible idea, is an unwelcome surprise. They add nothing to the game, and are often plonked down at the exact distance from the most recent save to guarantee maximum annoyance. I turned them off after the second or third instance.

(And thank you to the developers for allowing us to turn off some of the more annoying gameplay elements. I was very pleased to see that there's a very comprehensive set of options for customising gameplay.)

I like the team based combat, which is a little bit standard action game and a little bit real-time strategy. You have direct control over Star-Lord, jumping, punching, and shooting while the rest of the Guardians run about doing their own thing, but you can issue orders for them to use their special abilities -- which change and improve as they earn experience, because of course there's an rpg-light experience system -- from a mostly-slick radial menu thingy, and you can also -- most of the time by accident if you're anything like me -- call them in for a team talk huddle that sets up a minigame in which you have to deliver the right sort of inspirational speech by picking words from a floating word cloud that only Star-Lord can see. This team huddle feature is a little strange and underdeveloped, and I switched it to automatic after the first couple of instances, but it leads to the Guardians all getting supercharged and, more important by far, the fight music changing to one of a selection of perhaps predictable but nonetheless uplifting 1980's pop hits.

(Beating up alien soldiers to Wham's "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" is oh so silly, but oh so great, and it never gets old.)



It's a good system that works well most of the time, and makes combat -- of which there is a lot -- always compelling. It also helps distract from the part of battles that you control, which alas is quite loose and slippery, and never really feels like you're in full, well, control of Star-Lord. I do wonder if it would have been better to take direct input away from the player during fights and instead run the entire team, including Star-Lord, from the orders menu. This is more or less what I ended up doing in my playthroughs anyway, keeping Star-Lord out of the fight and issuing commands from the sideline like some sort of football manager. In space.

The writing, in general, is okaaaaaay. There are no real surprises in a tale of a scrappy sort-of-family pulling together in the face of certain doom, and while it lacks the emotional punches of the films -- no Nebula, and no (sob!) Yondu -- there is a decent stab at doing something with Star-Lord being forced into parent responsibilities despite deeming himself unsuitable because of his own upbringing, or lack of.

The only other major issue with the game is perhaps a case of it's-not-you-it's-me. There is a point in the story, which up until then has been linear, where it looks like the whole thing is going to open up and let you zip about space doing jobs to earn money to pay a Nova Corps fine, and then... the Guardians all decide no, they'll just go and do one big paying job instead, and off we go to the next level, all those other possibilities abandoned and ignored.

(Sad trombone sounds.)

In all fairness, the game never says it's going to go open world, but my gosh it suggests and teases it, and that it doesn't feels like a huge missed opportunity. Where the game goes from there is fine, it really is, but it could have leaned into the cosmic side of the Marvel Cinematic Computer Game Universe and -- literally -- explored the wider setting that, as it is, we only get hints of.

Still, even if Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy isn't as much fun as it could have been with just a couple of tweaks -- and okay, a massively expanded middle section -- it is still a lot of fun. Much better than a film tie-in should be, even if it's not really a film tie-in. Weird.

Arbitrary score: 2021 out of 2014.

Mission: The Enemy Within

Another untested and probably insanely unbalanced Stargrave scenario with which you can ruin friendships!

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THE ENEMY WITHIN

Alien shapeshifters operate in this sector. Keep your eyes peeled, Mac, they could be disguised as anything.

Why are you looking at me like that, Mac?

Mac?

Mac?

SET-UP

Set up the table as normal. Place terrain, select board edges, and place loot tokens just as in a standard game. Select a Target Point as normal.

Everything is normal.

Except...

SPECIAL RULES

You've got to be flarkin' kidding! On an initiative roll of 8 or 2, the opponent picks one of your crew, who immediately changes into their true form of some nasty gribbly alien thing. Replace the crew figure with a suitable alien model, which will act as normal in the Creature Phase. Any model other than the Captain can be replaced. Any effects or injuries received prior to the change are discarded.

Treat the shapechanger as a Bounty Hunter (p143). In the Creature Phase the alien will act as normal, with one exception; if they were carrying a loot token before they changed, they will attempt to get off the table with it by the fastest and shortest route.

The actual crew member will be found after the game, tied up, gagged, and stuffed in a supply locker back on the ship, but otherwise alive and well. Any special gear they were carrying will be found with them; assume that the shapechanger's strange physiology mimicked any special abilities or gear.

Option 1 - Trust no one! There is more than one shapeshifter in each crew! One will reveal itself each time a 8 or 2 is rolled for initiative. You should probably limit it to only about three per crew, but I can imagine a wild game in which there are a lot more!

Option 2 - I knew this would happen... Each player selects the opponent's hidden alien before the game begins, and in secret. Writing it down on a piece of folded paper for a suitably dramatic reveal seems appropriate.

LOOT AND EXPERIENCE

Loot and experience are scored as normal, with the following additions:
+10xp to the controlling crew when one of its members changes.
+5xp for eliminating the shapechanger if it is was part of the opposing crew.
+25xp for eliminating the shapechanger if it is was part of your crew.

I Had the Power (Up)!

On Sunday, I went up to That London to go to the Power Up! exhibit at the Science Museum, prompted by reading about Orlygg's visit... except I didn't go until Monday for unimportant reasons I won't go into.

(I went and ate spicy paneer chapati wraps in the park instead.)

On a scorching day pushing past 35° Celsius, I did what I always used to do on hot summer days, and went into a dark room to play computer games!

This is only half of it!

It's debatable whether Power Up! is truly an exhibit at all, but I don't suppose it matters. For an old fart like me it was an exercise in nostalgia, playing games from my youth on the original hardware, and for youngsters -- of which there were not many, as it was a school day -- it's an opportunity to see where computer games came from, and that there is fun to be had with the older systems.

This was a pleasant surprise. A version of this -- I think the Mark 6 -- was my first console.

It was £12 for a day pass, which isn't terrible for a London museum and by my rough count I played around 27 games, so that's money well spent I reckon. Yes, I could emulate all of them, but it was good to play on the original hardware and I got the chance to handle some consoles I have never seen in the flesh before, like the 3DO, NeoGeo, or WiiU; there is something of a thrill to experience them for the first time, but perhaps I'm just a big saddo.

Aside from the N64 controllers almost all having that distinctive loose thumbstick, all the hardware was in excellent condition, and I wonder where it all came from. It's a brave collector who would donate their vintage console to be handled by thousands of grubby mitts, and I can't imagine the Science Museum itself has a stack of old SNESes in a back room. That said, the Amiga CD32 had its launch at the Museum, so it's possible that the machine there was indeed owned by them!

I have only a couple of minor criticisms. There were a few notable omissions, such as the PC Engine and any handhelds that weren't produced by Nintendo, and not all of the games were the best showcase of their machines; are we really saying Frogger is the Commodore 64's killer app?

(I would also have loved to see a Wondermega or "tower of power" in the flesh, but those are the nittiest of picks.)

Otherwise, Power Up! is an interesting if superficial look at the history of computer gaming, but also a great day out if you're a fan of computer games.

Arbitrary score: Blast Processing out of MOS6510.

Your humble correspondent, having completed Sonic 2, entirely legitimately, honest.
(And no, no idea what happened to my hair.)