by Rachel Carpenter

Head on over and say "hi" to Jacob!!!!!!!!!!!!
VGGeek of the Week #275 - ItsJacobJ

3 more videos, then put all the videos on the shop pages, then make the videos public, then activate the shop pages (hit "publish") on each of them, then come back here to BGG and link the shop pages to each game's entry here: My Games. Maybe by then Eight Elephants & Fireworks for the 4th will have their BGG pages approved... a girl can dream right 😜. Getting closer!

And once I get there, then I can be more social again. And play more games again too. I've got a whole pile sitting here waiting for play time :geek_grin:.

Game Over On borrowed time...

Happy Sunday and happy playing!
-Rachel

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by Damdael

I got interested in gamebooks a few years ago. First I found joy in playing books from Season 4 Graphic Novel Adventures and then I fell in love with Legendary Kingdoms books. Since then I've played through some fifty gamebooks. I try to write reviews of the books I've played in order to lure others into this rabbit hole. In my reviews I try to have comparisons to other gamebooks and place the books I review onto my ranking list so that readers can find other books to try out.

I partook in The Curse of the Snake Queen Kickstarter campaign and this gamebook was a free bonus for the backers of that campaign. This is the fifth Numed System gamebook I've played through.

First Impressions:
- As a free Kickstarter campaign bonus this gamebook is great. 120 paragraphs would be very short for a full gamebook but if you think this as a long side quest for the main gamebook this came coupled with then this is perfectly fine.
- Looking at the artwork of the covers this gamebook is in my opinion the best one of the books in the series I've played thus far. The black edges are simply stylish (compared to phone book yellow some of the books in the series have) and the creatures in the artwork fit nicely together with the background details (in some of the books in the series the creatures have seemed a bit copy-pasted onto the background with different lighting levels etc). I think it's also a really smart idea to use the back cover for a coloured map of the central location in the story. The map would be just black&white if it were on the pages of the book since only the covers are colour printed.
- The paper of the covers seems to be the same as in The Curse of the Snake Queen which is good because previous self-publications from the author have had thinner covers and the paper in those products has annoyingly warped outwards with use. The covers have a coating that adds some sheen and a smooth feel. In physical aspects the covers are fine.
- The inner sides of the covers have this cool looking black slithering serpent pit artwork. It makes the inner covers look really stylish.
- The paper of the pages is perfectly acceptable but far from the deluxe editions of Legendary Kingdoms. To give an another comparison point the paper quality is better than what I got in What Lies Beneath with Amazon Print-On-Demand. There's a certain degree of lumpiness to the pages, similarly with my copies of The Curse of the Snake Queen and A Lousy Night in Candarlin which all were produced in the same KS campaign. I surmise that glueing the pages to the spine has not been a perfect success and that causes the issue.

Rules:
Fairly standard rules for a gamebook. You start from paragraph 1 and proceed to other paragraphs from there based on your choices and sometimes to a direction dictated by the whim of the fate dice (two d6). The author has developed an independent game system, called The Numed System, and that's used in this gamebook. It uses two d6's and most of the time you are looking to match or exceed a target number.

Your character has five attributes (Education, Intelligence, Perception, Dexterity and Strength) plus a bunch of skills like Stealth, Climbing and Negotiating. Some combinations of attributes and skills give you talents like Master Thief or Great Reflexes (explained in the Path of Masters advanced rules) that sometimes unlock choices you otherwise wouldn't be able to take during the adventures. You have hit points and if they drop to zero you are dead and need to restart the gamebook. You can wear equipment like armour, weapons and amulets which give bonuses to attacks, defence or skills. You can gain permanent increases to your attributes and skills. There are several gamebooks in the setting.

When it's time to fight you can either use simple or advanced rules. You can use the simple rules if you prefer a quick game; the enemies are defeated with a single successful hit. I recommend using the Path of Masters advanced fighting rules, they are not that much more complex. First you check if anyone is surprised; that side automatically loses the initiative. Otherwise you roll for initiative (2d6 + dex) and if you meet or exceed the printed enemy initiative value you will go first every round until the end of combat. After that you determine the opponent's action for that round with 1d6 from a table of possible actions. If the opponent goes for a big attack it might have low defence so the enemy stats are not the same every round. On your turn you get one action like attacking or using an item. Melee attacks are 2d6+str+mods and ranged attacks 2d6+dex+mods. The enemies do not roll and that saves up a noticeable amount of time, a smart design decision. You defend against enemy attacks by rolling 2d6+dex+armour+shield. Rinse and repeat. Rolling 1+1 means you get a critical failure and might drop your weapon for example and rolling 6+6 means you make a critical success and have a chance to instantly defeat the opponent. Results of critical failures and successes are rolled from special tables.

The gamebook also uses 'fragments and signs'. Those are basically keycodes that allow the gamebook to remember what you've done. For example if you insult a merchant you might get fragment 'H' and later when you are walking on a dark alley the book might ask do you have that fragment and if you do some hired assassins will ambush you.

Artwork:
- The author has stated that he generally uses a mix of his own drawings, licensed illustrations and graphics, stock images, and AI-generated images in his gamebooks. This is mainly for budget reasons I would guess; the gamebooks he puts out basically are one-man self-publications with relatively small audiences.
- Whatever was the method of producing the artwork it's detailed, smooth and looks neat. I especially like to look at all the small background details in the images, like the potions and whatnot in the image below (though the location is supposed to be a taproom and the background looks more like an alchemy workstation).
- Perhaps because the gamebook was originally produced as a free extra it's somewhat light in new artwork. There's a piece of artwork roughly on every third spread of the book but just two of the pieces are completely new (besides the covers) and not previously used in some of the other books the author has produced. There's only one full page piece of artwork, the rest are small enemy portraits, third of a page city views, small images of swords, rocks, etc that repeat where something is needed to fill spaces between paragraphs.
- Except for the couple of new pieces of artwork produced for this book the images are slightly out of place compared to the paragraphs next to which they are placed. They are a bit generic. For example a paragraph might describe the hero fighting a tentacled monstrosity but in an image (which has been used in pretty much every book written by the author) next to that is just some hooded warrior with a sword.
The gamebook is ok in artwork aspects but that's it.

100% femme fatale vibes. My recommendation is to immediately walk in the opposite direction. If you can take your eyes off her.

Playing:
This section is reserved for my notable thoughts while playing the gamebook. I've kept my observations mostly vague in order to avoid any big spoilers but I've spoiler tagged my notes just in case.

[o]- I continued into this adventure with my character that has already completed four adventures in the Numed System. That means I have slightly higher stats than a new character.
- Have to say it is really pleasant to look at the coloured map of Melgar's Rest on the back cover of the book.
- A short two page introduction. The adventure location is described plus the main actors and why the hero is motivated to do something (your favourite place to get drunk is in trouble so it's a no-brainer to help them).
- After the introduction there's immediately four different directions you can go. Not bad.
- I encountered a sweet looking woman. My danger senses were blaring at full blast.
- Oh, a tavern game. And a bit more complex than what you usually have as a mini-game. I could have used a bit more player agency but it was still fun.
- I beat a random tavern patron. Couldn't help my reflexes. Oops.
- I defeated a group of disgusting creatures. And I don't mean city guards.
- I almost drowned. My dice rolls were pretty bad and I saved the situation only narrowly.
- A veritable boss fight, nice. The special boss abilities didn't trigger for me but I appreciate that it wasn't just a regular enemy with higher stats. It could have used a little more health (1-2 points) to make the fight a bit longer.
- Managed to live another day.[/o]
Playtime: 1h 44min

What would be your choice for an escape route?

Positives:
- It's not a very long (or thick) gamebook but there still are path splits. The different parallel paths have different events/fights/etc. And it's not just two parallel paths that you can choose between, in most cases there are three or four different paths you can make take. That's a pretty good amount of choice for a gamebook. For me this is an important aspect for a gamebook.
- There are multiple phases in the story where you have X amount of time to do what you want to do before the story proceeds. In my opinion this kind of design works really well in gamebook: provide the player more possible choices than there is time and the player will need to make some tough decisions what to prioritize and/or what seems more interesting.
- I feel that this is a better designed gamebook than its older counterpart The Tamer's Chain. Both gamebooks (gamebooklets?) originally were freebies for Kickstarter backers of longer gamebooks. The author clearly has developed in gamebook design skills with each new project.
- Mini-games with more rules depth than you'd expect. Most of the time when you have a mini-game in a gamebook it's something like 'you and your opponent both roll 2d6, whoever gets the higher result wins!' but this gamebook has a much more interesting mini-game. That said there could have been more player agency (for example when to stay and when to push your luck).
- I like how enemy actions are randomized for every combat round.
- Meaningful skill checks. Failing a skill check might mean you are locked out from doing something you wanted to do or that you need to succeed in a second check or die.
- The game system works fine. Personally I enjoy gamebooks with more complex systems (for example The Dark Moon Rises and Obvious Mimic which use D&D 5e rules) more but this system does make for a smooth and fast play. If you aren't interested in spending a lot of time choosing your equipment and selecting prepared spells then this system is most likely fine for you.
- The 'fragments and signs' code system works well. The book 'remembers' what you have done previously and events change based on that.

Neutral:
- The gamebook is short at only 120 paragraphs. As a free Kickstarter campaign bonus it's really great but the current asking price of 10€ feels a bit steep when you can get five times as long gamebooks for 16€. Though there's the aspect of supporting an author that self-publishes gamebooks so perhaps one shouldn't be so stingy in paying a bit extra...
- There isn't much item management (which is something you usually expect to have in a gamebook).
- Even after being handled and played through the covers/book looks neat unlike my copy of The Secrets of Candarlin which had a big issue in how the edges of the covers bent outwards and stayed like that. The paper of the covers is thicker and better suited for its job.

Negatives:
- I've now played through five books that use The Numed System and I haven't seen a single ranged weapon. Even if there was one available for purchase in a shop would there be any difference besides flavour and attack modifier attribute compared to melee weapons? Similarly there are possible action types in the combat rules that never seem to have any use. Free actions? Your character doesn't have any free actions. Switch weapons? You will never want to switch weapons (unless you've been very unlucky with the dice and dropped your weapon after a critical failure). The type of melee weapon (mace/dagger/sword/axe) you have equipped hasn't either mattered even once, only the amount of attack bonus that the weapon in your hand confers... All this makes the ruleset feel underused and pale in comparison with D&D based gamebooks in which deciding what kind of weapon you want to equip is a meaningful decision.
- You have five attributes plus eleven skills and only like three of them are used/tested in this adventure. In my opinion a good gamebook provides moments for all kinds of characters to shine. This gamebook fails kind of badly in that aspect.
- There isn't much new artwork. Most of the images supporting the paragraphs are re-used from the author's other works plus they are a bit generic. Understandable for a Kickstarter freebie but it wouldn't be fair towards my other reviews if I didn't take this into accord.

Minor Issues:
- A minor typo in the simple fighting rules: '2W6' instead of '2d6'.
- In paragraph 66 perhaps the result for double of 1 would be better off as 20 rather than 100. It's too much of an instant win result.
- It would be more interesting if you couldn't take the same option multiple times in 84.
- Paragraph 117 strangely uses the pronoun 'him'. It would probably be more correct to use 'it'.

Verdict:
I think I was positively surprised by this short gamebook even though there exist plenty of better gamebooks. It has meaningful mutually exclusive paths, it often offers a very good amount of choices when you need to decide something, time limited phases are a great design decision, a more elaborate mini-game than what you usually get, random enemy actions are another great design idea, skill checks are meaningful and the game system works and makes playing fast (but not very 'deep').

Besides praises there are also quite a few neutral and negative aspects; the gamebook is short, there isn't much item management to speak of, the physical aspects of the book are perfectly fine (but nothing more), it's a bit meaningless what kind of equipment you have (just get the gear that gives you the biggest modifier bonuses), only a couple of the character skills are useful in this adventure, there isn't much new artwork and it's kind of generic.

Using the BGG rating scale in my opinion The Terror of Melgar's Rest is an above average gamebook and perhaps you can even call it good which merits a rating of 6.5. I'll place it to slot forty-three on my gamebook ranking list for now.

~ Damdael

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by sdonohue

Character Collection 2: Rookies is a 2021 release from Gaming Ballistic LLC for The Fantasy Trip. It was written by Douglas H. Cole and illustrated by a team of artists.

Presentation
This item is available in both PDF and softcover. The softcover is a 12 page staple-bound book. It features sturdy color covers and shiny interior pages in black & white. The layout is primarily two-columns in portrait format.

Content
The book starts with a table of contents listing each of the 40 starting or inexperienced characters. The inside front-cover has 1" counters for each of the characters.

There is a brief explanation of how to use the book and then it moves quickly to detailing the characters. Each character has a name (typically just a first name), a brief description (example: 32-point young wizard), a description of their history and motivations and then a character stat block with attributes, talents, spells, weapons, and armor. There is also an illustration of each character; some are in fighting poses and others are just standing. Since these are beginning characters, entries are pretty short and there are typically 4-5 characters per page.

Evaluation
This is a pretty basic take on a book of NPCs. The descriptions are brief and depending on the GM's use for the character, they may not matter at all. This is a good resource for a gm who needs a quick NPC when the players suddenly take more interest in an NPC than expected (or pick a fight with one) and the GM doesn't want to spend time fleshing them out. It's also useful for new players as many of these characters are 32 points and so could quickly become starting characters.

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