Pathfinder Second Edition: The Fall of Plaguestone - Review & Recap

    I finally ran my first Pathfinder 2ed adventure - one of my payers had bought The Fall of Plaguestone adventure, so we figured we could test out the new rules and see what the writing quality was like. It was a very mixed experience. There were some things in both the rules and adventure that I liked, but there were also some rage-inducing issues. It did not leave me looking forward to playing P2e again, either to finish the adventure (we got 2/3rds through it) or to make/run my own adventures for the new system.

    For this review I’m going to start by talking about P2e and the characters I made for it (some players didn’t have the book, so I made pre-gens), then go through the adventure itself (there will be light spoilers), and give some final thoughts on the system.

1) Making Characters
     In theory the new system is very easy: pick your Ancestry, a Background, and a Class. Choose a feat for the Ancestry and Class, note the Skill Feat your Background gave you. Assign your Attribute Picks. Buy gear, everybody gets 150 silver. Then wrap up the details and fill out a character sheet.

    In practice this took a lot more work than I expected. Some of that is learning a new system, though I had made a character before (in this post) so I wasn’t completely new to the system. 8Some of it came from the difficulty of choosing a worthwhile option. For example, the Wizard has 6 level 1 Class Feats…

• Counterspell - counter a foe from casting the same spell you have prepared
• Eschew Materials - you don’t need a spell component pouch
• Familiar - you have a bonded small animal, which can give you a small bonus (but not fight)
• Hand of the Apprentice - you gain a focus spell of the same name. You can make a ranged attack with a melee weapon, once in a fight, and you have to be able to take a 10 min rest before using it again
• Reach Spell - by adding 1 action to the casting you can extend the range of a spell by 30 feet
• Widen Spell - you can add 5-10 feet to the radius of a burst or length of a cone/ line

    So Counterspell is mostly useless. You can only counter a spell you have prepared, and you lose the prepared spell to do it. So I can counter a magic missile, which might sometimes save a companion from dying, but I lose the spell myself and only have 3 spells for the day total, so now 2. Eschew Materials is useless, how many times have you lost your spell pouch? (or, how many times has your GM forgotten that you even have spell pouch to begin with?) The Familiar is a semi-decent spy and useless otherwise. Hand of the Apprentice is useless, it’s got a slighly better chance to hit than using a crossbow, damage is the same as your melee (so, pathetic for most low-Str Wizards) but you can only do it once per fight. Reach Spell is the only clear great to have ability, since you can attack with some of those touch spells from a safe distance instead. Widen Spell is maybe okay sometimes if you’re using a battle-mat, but I run “theater of the mind” fights and it’s incredibly hard to translate a slight bonus (5 feet to 10 feet) into a more abstract system like that.

    And too many feat choices are like that, a lot of reading new rules for how things work in excange for a bunch of crappy options that may or may not ever see play. Granted, 1st edition had the same problem, there were a whole heaping bunch of crappy options and edge-cases, but at least then you got so many abilities that there was usually one good thing in the lot. In 2nd edition you don’t get as many abilities overall (at least it doesn’t seem like it, and I really don’t want to go through the effort of making several characters to compare).

    Adding to the time, I did have to fight with some new character sheets. I absolutely love Dyslexic Studio’s website, but the sheets were not loading properly for me in Firefox (my preferred browser), and the PDFs are not edit-able, so I had to use Edge and download the HTML files, and then everything worked fine (bugs he fixed a few days later, lol). That slowed me down. Still, it took me about three hours to make 3 characters, and it felt a lot longer. It did not seem to be any more streamlined than 1st ed and I did not feel like my final characters were comparable to 1st ed versions. Wizards lose the bonus spells for high Int, no longer get the Scribe Scroll feat extra, and the bundle of Racial Abilities have been cut-up and strung-out in the new Ancestry Feats system (where you only learn how to be a proper Elf around 7th level).

    Again, I haven’t sat own and done a point-by-point comparison - but the initial impression was that I was doing a lot of work for little return, and I would have been better off making a DnD 5th character, or just going back to Pathfinder 1e. There was nothing new that made character creation a better experience.

2) The Adventure
     I’m going to try and keep the profanity to a minimum, but the adventure was garbage. There were a few okay spots, but overall I was not impressed by the quality of writing Paizo was charging me for. Now, here is where I may vary a whole lot with most other GMs. For example, I had heard tons and tons of great things about the Rise of the Runelords campaign, but when I played/GMed it I thought it was crap. The main villain and overarching plot (ie, the Runelords) are really a side-note lost and forgotten in a bunch of pointless side-quests, most of the big set-pieces like the haunted house and giants attacking the city were boring, there’s a lot of stupid crap where you’re told to make your players “care about” a place or people - yet nothing in the game gives them anything to care about (and that really should have been done before the game by giving each character some hook into the people/ places), and just the overall feel was amateurish - I’ve crapped out campaigns as good or better at 4am without advance warning. For a published product I expected something more.

    So with that in mind (that I’m a grumpy old b-stard) I did not like several parts of The Fall of Plaguestone. The characters are explicitly paid customers in a caravan, trying to get to a certain city, when a murder breaks out half-way there and they get roped into solving it and trying to save the town. That’s nothing to write home about, it’s the same kind of plot contrivance GMs have been shoving PCs into since the hobby began. The fight opens with an attack by wolves, several “Creature 0” wolves and one “Creature 2” Caustic Wolf.

    Here is the Number One thing I hate about this adventure and Pathfinder 2nd edition - the new CR system sucks @(!$!($#@%(!$^)@%(^@^@ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    I only had 3 players, one of them bowed out at the last minute. So the party was a Cleric, Rogue and Wizard. There was no front-line fighter-type/ tank. I wasn’t sure what the combat was going to be like, being new to this adventure and the game in general. I figured I’d run the combat “by the book” so I could see how it worked, even if it made the fights a little hard, I was just going to be very generous about death saves and recovery time if needed. And I needed it. The Cleric’s limited spells and no Wis bonus meant there was very little healing the party could do. So I thought. Actually, I was remembering the old healing skill from 1st edition, the new Medicine skill (which the Wizard had) is actually very good at healing people - arguably better than the Cleric Heal spell (well, no, it is better - and wands are useless to low level characters, potions are expensive - a 1d8 heal potion is 40 silver or your starting 150).

    So healing sucks, no big deal if the PCs have decent Armor Classes, right? Problem is, while the CR0 wolves had only +6 to hit (which was pretty good), the CR2 caustic wolf had +11 to hit - which is incredible. For my Cleric PC they had a +3 attribute, and another +2 for being trained with a weapon, so +6 to hit at 1st level. At second level that would go up to +7. At 3rd level +8. 4th level +9. 5th level they get an attribute boost, so +11. The Rogue was slightly better, with an 18 Dex and a finesse weapon, so he had +7 at 1st level. Then +8, +9, +10 up to 4th level. At 5th he got the attribute bonus and went Expert with his weapons, so a whopping +14 to hit at 5th level. Which means the CR2 monster was hitting like a 4th or 5th level PC - but they were fighting it at 1st level.

    And that adventure did it constantly. There is supposed to be a CR2 boar that attacks in the town. Well, the PCs figured town was safe, and so they split up to investigate a murder, which meant only a single character was there for the boar fight. They would have died. Period. They could have ran away, but what good is that? They live, they don’t get any xp since they didn’t defeat/ neutralize the enemy, and all we did was waste several minutes at the table. A non-winnable fight is only good for flavor (you guys are in a very scary place) or to kill the PCs. Otherwise it’s a time-sink.

    Which there was too much of already. There is a murder the first night at town, and the PCs have to solve it so the movie can happen. It the murder the plot? No, the plot is somebody trying to kill the town. Which, had the bad guys just done that and not tipped their hand with the random murder, would have succeeded and all the PCs would be dead. Literally the bad guys derailed their own plot, it wasn’t the quick-thinking work of the PCs.

    So the first act has 14 enemies CR 0 or 1 and 5 enemies CR 2 or 3. A quarter of the fights need all the players, and still might get someone killed. Remember though- this act is framed as a murder mystery, not a combat slogfest. There are also 5 traps, and 4 bonus xp actions. Which all told comes out to 862 XP per player at the end of act 1. It takes 1,000 XP to level up. The party needs 4 more on-level encounters (CR 1) to hit next level. And they really need to level up, because in act 2 there are 8 CR 0s (no prob), 6 CR 2s (decent fights), 2 CR 3s (hard fights) and 2 CR 4s (really, really hard fights). I don’t count xp, so I had everybody level up to 2nd and gave one player a Ranger (also level 2) to give the party some more combat power. Even still, the last CR 4 fight they had to run away from because they were losing it badly. As level 1s? They wouldn’t have made it to the last fight.

    Finally, as GM the writing was meh. It usually told me what I needed to know, though some spots are not laid out well. You have to own the Bestiary for some of the monsters, and flip to the back form some of the stat blocks, which I hate. Wish they had just added 5-10 pages and printed everything in the book, I was overcharged anyways. The story isn’t that interesting, the pacing is off (act 1 is too long and slow, act 2 too short), the characters are boring (I re-wrote some NPCs on the fly to make them more interesting to me, since I had to act them out). For the players the Cleric was mostly useless, the Wizard had somewhat better cantrips for damage-dealing, the Rogue had a ton of skills, but the skills don’t always come into play. The special “Exploration actions” didn’t get used, I forgot about them and the adventure didn’t remind me or help me incorporate them. So if this is your first time as a GM or PC, not very helpful.

3) Pathfinder 2e and Me
     Why the hell did I pay $100 for this? That was just for the Core Rulebook and Bestiary, my player added another $23 for the adventure. And it’s mediocre at best. I cannot find anything in this game to convince me to play it instead of Pathfinder 1e or Dungeons and Dragons 5e. The few things I like (attribute picks, streamlined action economy, a few spells and spell mechanics) could all be house-ruled into either of those two games for little effort. I was excited when they said they were working on a second edition, even with the massive time and money sink we had in the dozen+ 1e books. Then when I saw the playtest materials I was doubtful. Having now made 4 characters and GMed 2/3rds an adventure, I don’t want to play it again. Maybe I’ll steal a few things for house rules, maybe I won’t bother, but this game is not getting any more money or time from me.

Ultramodern5 Review part 2 - combat and final thoughts

    With a second adventure under the belt, and testing the combat system, I have my final thoughts on the Ultramodern5 RPG.  And I think all those thoughts can be summed up by looking at one character, not mine, our friend Andi's Heavy "Bubbles."

    Bubbles sounded like a really cool character.  The Heavy class focuses one using the really big guns, so Bubbles shoots the minigun (aka Rotary Cannon).  Andi took the class abilities where Bubbles adds to the armor class of allies nearby - which was perfect for our party of 4, the Face was not a strong combatant and the Techie has a slightly better offense than defense, while my Gunslinger/Martial Artist was designed to run into melee range.  Bubbles' other ability was improved Overwatch, so if needed he could hold our flank and blast any number of baddies who tried to sneak up on us.  In the team or solo Bubbles looked like a good character.  But didn't play that way.
    Our first adventure was a building infiltration, it was a lot of planning and talking but no shooting.  Bubbles was able to get hired on as a guard, which gave us an "inside man" and valuable intel.  But the class didn't have any non-combat capabilities.  This is half the fault of DnD 5e, which is sadly lacking in anything non-combat, and half the fault of the Ultramodern5 team, who should have realized this limitation and tried to correct it.  So adventure one was a little disappointing, but we knew adventure 2 would be combat-focused, so finally Bubbles would get his chance to shine.
    Sadly it was not to be.  The Heavy class is all about those heavy weapons, but we found some problems.  The rotary cannon always fired multiple bullets, which meant it could hit a 10' cube and targets had to make Dex saves and took no damage on a successful save, or full damage on a failed save.
    Problem #1.  Ten feet right in front of you and ten feet a hundred feet in front of you are two very different arcs.  Let me use a diagram...

So here's my biggest problem with the square-grid system DnD and others use, things do not line up well at all.  I would much rather use a hex map, and allow objects to stand in-between hexes, which gives better positioning.  Still, 10' is two squares, which I'm spreading over 3 squares because that makes more real-world sense.  The 10' right in front of the shooter (played by the GIMP mascot) is a huge angle, while the furthest 10' is a very tiny angle.  Now, there is some validity to the concept that at close range you can cover a large angle because the targets are so close you're not likely to miss, while at a long range you have to keep to a narrower angle so that you can hit the smaller targets.  Which I can buy, with something like a machine pistol that has a relatively small ammo supply.  But something like the minigun, which carries hundreds to thousands of bullets, seems like it should be able to fill any angle with a potentially lethal amount of firepower.  So in the end the minigun just doesn't feel like it's hitting enough targets.
    Problem #2.  Weapons in U5 with "auto" fire have 2 damage values, one for firing a single bullet and one for firing auto.  Those numbers are always 1 die type apart.  So a Machine Pistol does 1d4 single, 1d6 auto.  An Assault Rifle does 1d8 single, 1d10 auto.  The "Rotary Cannon" cannot fire single shots, only auto, so how much damage do you think it does?  I'll give you a second...
    The answer is 1d10.  Yup, the same damage as an Assault Rifle.  What !?!?  The thing that fires a thousand bullets does the same damage as the thing that can, at best, fire 30 bullets?  As I mentioned in the last post, a 2-handed Greatsword does 2d6 damage.  So this is just insultingly low for such a huge weapon.  Not only is that damage low, is could be zero.  According to the rules when you auto fire (which the minigun has to) you don't roll to attack, the enemies roll Dex saves.  And on successful saves they take no damage.  The DC for that save is either 8 + Dex mod + Proficiency Bonus (if proficient) or 15, whichever is higher.  Your Ladder can get 1 attribute up to 22, or a +6 bonus max, and the max Proficiency Bonus is also +6, for a maximum possible DC 20.  That's pretty low.  Especially given that a successful save negates all damage.  I believe Bubbles had a +2 Dex (Heavies are Str builds), and we were level 5 so we had +3 Prof Mods - that's just a DC 13, below the minimum DC of 15.  And a creature with no Dex mod can beat a DC 15 save 30% of the time.  Again, that might be fine if we were talking about a machine pistol or other "small arm" - but we're not, we're talking about a huge, fire-breathing, bullet-spewing monster of a minigun!
    Problem #2a.  We played it so that Bubbles rolled his to-hit and it was applied among the number of targets the GM determined.  The other problem with making them saves is that the player now doesn't ever roll to hit, only the GM rolls for the monsters, which sucks for the player since he doesn't get the fun of rolling anything and sucks for the GM because he has to make 12 rolls for all the Small drones in that 10' cube.

    The sad story of Bubbles is that of missed expectations.  From everything we read in the book the expectation was of a hard-hitting, hard-to-kill tank.  The reality was that Bubbles was hard to kill, but while he had the advantage of being able to hit multiple opponents, did not do a lot of damage to any of them.  With my Gunslinger and Martial Arts mix I was able to do just over 100 points of damage in 3 rounds - about triple what Bubbles could do.  That's just not right.
    The other problem of our adventure is again inherited from DnD but overlooked by the U5 team - interacting with technology.  Our adventure was supposed to be a zombie outbreak (it's in the book), but one of our players doesn't like the living-impaired so the GM changed it to an android/robot outbreak.  Something so common it's cliché in the SF field.  But with only the "Computer Use" and "Engineering" skills, and literally no sample DCs, trying to figure out if something could be hacked, how hard that would be, and what modifications could be made was left entirely on the GMs shoulders.  That's extra work on the GM, and it means the payers can't read a rule to set their expectations, instead it's a big question mark until it comes up.  Which, in a science-fiction setting, anyone with a functioning brain knows it is going to come up!  And I'll illustrate that with something the U5 team did right.  My character took the "Runner" Ladder, and one of my abilities was that I could move 10' and then spend the rest of my move as a climb speed (so no Acrobatics roll needed).  That said to me that I was really good at climbing stuff.  So when we were attacked by a robo-forklift I had a crazy thought - since I was a melee-based character, could I climb on top of the forklift to do my melee attacks?  The GM decided it was just crazy enough to be plausible, and that I would make a Dex save to avoid getting run over, but if successful could climb on top without another check.  That was perfect, the Dex save gave that bit of risk and uncertainty but skipping the Acrobatics check kept it from being so uncertain it might not be worth trying.  No where in the book did it say I could climb an evil forklift, but it did say enough to logically and reasonably determine if it should be possible.  Which is where the computer use and engineering fall short, they don't have enough detail to extrapolate from, as a player trying to formulate a plan or as a GM trying to set the appropriate difficulty.


    After a second adventure my impressions have been reinforced - I don't think this is a very well-written game, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.  There are lots of other games that were designed for modern/ SF/ urban fantasy and do it a lot better.  None of us wanted to play a third adventure, though we might someday try converting our characters to another system, who knows?
    Doing some research I did find that the U5 team is working on Ultramodern Redux, and had a successful Kickstarter campaign earlier this year (2019), so who knows, maybe the next book will be awesome?  I hope they do learn from this version and can give those who like DnD 5e a good modern/SF system to use.
    There is going to be one more post on the game though, next I'll put up my character.


You can read all the posts in this series here

Ultramodern5 Review part 1 - An Outline of the Game

    A few months ago some friends found Ultramodern5 from Dias Ex Machina at a con and asked me to look at it.  It's a modern/sci-fi DnD 5th-compatible RPG, apparently the original Ultramodern was built for 4th.  I like SF games, I've played lots of Star Frontiers, Rifts, Battletech, Star Wars and more.  I was a little skeptical though since DnD is not just a fantasy game but also built on fantasy tropes, the whole tank/healer/dps that was codified in MMOs was really started with DnD - and that gets a little harder to model with real-world combat without magic (or super-science that equals magic).  So I did not go into the book with a lot of enthusiasm, and my first quick read-through did not make me want to read it in more detail.  Still, our friends wanted to try it, so I drafted another friend to run the thing and we had our first adventure over the last weekend.
    Our adventure was a little odd.  The book has 2 adventures but the GM came up with his own idea.  It was open-ended for us to either fight or talk our way through, and to his surprise we ended up talking in a sort-of-Leverage-styled heist.  This is not an ideal first adventure to judge the game buy just because everything not fighting is weak in DnD, I think weaker in 5th than earlier versions even.  So we really did not interact with a lot of the rules.  Still, it was enough to get a taste of the system, and our next adventure is going to be more traditionally combat focused and the GM was going to use/adapt one of the adventures in the book.  I feel like I understand the system enough after playing it and reading through it in more detail to give a basic review, but I expect this review to be in several parts as I explore more of the system.  I'm also going to post about how I made my character later.
    Okay, I think I'm just going to walk through the book and comment on it in order.  Let's start at the beginning...

Setting and Misc Rules

    U5 does not have it's own setting.  There are apparently two other books, Amethyst and NeuroSpasta by the same publisher.  Haven't read them so I can't comment on them.
    There are no rules for magic in U5, so if you want an "urban fantasy" setting you'll have to use the DnD 5e rules.  Which might be tricky, does a "mending" spell that fixes objects work on a computer?
    There are only a few new rules.  One is for auto and burst fire, which I am not a fan of on reading, but I'll comment on them after we play the combat rules.  The other is the addition of "Computer Use" and "Demolitions" skills.  I kind of want to say that with the design of 5e these should both be Tool Proficiencies, but that's more semantics than anything.  I really wish they had added some more skills, or at least how to use existing skills.  Some of the classes have things like "Tool Proficiencies: All ground vehicles and aircraft" - wow is that vague... so can I drive a tank?  MechaGodzilla?  A 747 jet airplane?  You guys really have to be more specific than that.  I'm disappointed that they didn't put any work into this, into updating the fantasy of 5e into a modern/futuristic setting.  Since they ignored important things like this, the GM has to do the work - so why bother buying a book if you have to write the rules yourself?  Right?
    The only place that does talk about piloting is the feats.  There is an "Exo-Armor Proficiency" feat.  Exo-Armor is defined on page 99, I'm on page 8 (it seems to be what most games would call "Power Armor" and mecha).  There is not a dedicated section that talks about skills, the new skills and feats are stuck in the first 8 pages of the book.  Again, crap layout - there should be a dedicated section to explain this stuff.  Page 112 also has 5 categories of vehicles: light ground, heavy ground, super-heavy ground, aircraft and watercraft.  That's a little better division (though not by much), and again why the hell isn't it in a section about proficiencies?  (why not have a 'Military Training" feat that lets you apply your proficiencies to vehicles and weapons with the "military" descriptor?)  The few feats are "meh" at best, honestly I forgot they existed when making my character.

Races

    There is one race, Human.  This is fine in a modern setting, but aliens and genetically altered humans (even animals) are staples of lots of SF, so I'm a little bummed that they didn't address creating non-humans at all.  The equipment in the game goes up to laser weapons and mini-nukes, so this is designed for modern to far-future sci-fi after all.
    All Humans get a "genetic benefit" that can give you something like "Eidetic Memory" or "Light Sleeper."  That adds a touch of the diversity from fantasy races, but it is not much.  And some of the benefits seem like they might not get used very often (Nimbleness- you can move through the space of any creature that is a size larger than you), while others seem a little overpowered (Toughness- you have DR 2 against slashing and piercing damage; so you take 2 less damage from all guns?  Wow).
    Here is a good place to mention something that has driven me nuts about this book - the naming conventions.  "Toughness" has been a feat that gave you an extra hit point per level since DnD 3, and there is a genetic benefit that gives you those extra HP, it's just called "Extreme Fortitude" instead.  One of the components to your character is called a "Ladder."  What do you think that would add to your character?  Anything come to mind?  Well, it's kinda an archetype, but where 5e uses archetypes to provide variations to a class, 5U uses them as kind of but not quite background options.  One Ladder is the "Runner" who starts off with an extra 5' of speed as the name would suggest.  But on later levels they actually become parkour masters and general acrobats - either of which would be better names.  There are Archetypes too, but they are more like the 'Prestige Classes' of Pathfinder.  One of them is named "Cleaner."  Now, I've mostly heard the word (in a profession/ability context) to refer to a type of criminal who 'cleans up' after other criminals, destroying evidence of wrongdoing.  But the archetype is really an assassin, someone who specializes at killing people with one shot, or in one round of combat.  I haven't looked into the background of this company, but the book reads as if they do not speak English as a primary language and only got a semi-competent translator.

Backgrounds

    In 5e you don't get much from your Background, just a few skills/ tools/ languages and a few tables with role-playing suggestions.  U5 manages to give you even less, removing the role-playing stuff.  So honestly you could just let people pick 2 proficiencies and take an extra $50 and drop this entire section.  This is mostly crap in 5e and I'm sad that the U5 guys didn't improve on something that needed some love.

Lifepath

    Oh boy, the Lifepath tables.  A series of random rolls to discover your character's background.  These are an old part of gaming, really big in the 80s-90s with Traveller (maybe the most famous, in  your background you could be killed, and thus have to make a new character before you even finished your first character) and Cyberpunk 2020, Star Trek, Mechwarrior and several other games.  DnD has never used them in a core game, but they've cropped up a few times in supplements.  Lifepath tables are hard to do right, you need a system that gives you at least a semi-coherent story and some sparks for your imagination to build on.  These are not that.  Frankly, the U5 Lifepath tables pretty much suck.  It can give you some funny results (one friend's character has a bunch of failed relationships, I have 5 enemies and only 2 friends) but I'd rather adapt a different game's tables.
    Why not tie this to the Background system?  Maybe you have 4 Background picks, and each has a related table.  So take a pick as a Merchant and maybe you did great with your sales and start with extra money, take a pick as a Soldier and maybe you got promoted, or wounded in combat?  Then have a few random tables for your family and friends and stuff?  That would at least tie the benefits to the Background system instead of them being a world unto themselves, and then they would, you know, describe your background.

Ladders

    So you select a Ladder at 1st level, then at 4th (and every 4 thereafter) you can take another ladder ability instead of a feat or attribute increase.  So really these are feat chains/trees.  They are also designed to give you some power spikes to make up for the fact that SF stories usually don't gain and throw away special equipment like DnD/epic fantasy.  There are 7-

• Born Leader - get bonuses to skills as long as you don't fight or cast a spell, help your allies
• Juggernaut - get extra hit points/ damage reduction
• Runner - move faster, AC bonuses
• Savant - some skill bonuses and random stuff
• Survivor - take damage, kinda weirdly similar to the Juggernaut in a way
• Veteran - get a pool of re-rolls
• Warrior - power up to OVER 9000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  (well, to 5 at least)

    Virtually every Ladder lets you change the attribute you use for attack and damage rolls, which kinda makes the point of having different attributes pointless.  The powers you get from the Ladders cover the whole spectrum of useless to really strong/ maybe OP.  And others are just weird.  Here is an ability from the Born Leader... after taking a long rest, if you wear no armor and wield no weapons, you gain a +2 bonus to Charisma or Intelligence (select one) until you make an attack roll or cast a spell. Select either Charisma or Intelligence as your primary born leader ability.
    Ummm... what?  You are smarter or more likable until you attack someone or cast a spell, then you have to sleep to become smarter or more likable again?  What the hell kind of sense does that make?
    I don't like the ladder system.  Some of the abilities are fine, but as a whole it just seems stupid.  It's mechanics over logic.

Classes

    The heart of and DnD based system, there are 10 classes...

• Face
• Grounder
• Gunslinger
• Heavy
• Infiltrator
• Marshal
• Martial Artist
• Medic
• Sniper
• Techie

    The classes are complicated enough I need to talk about them individually.

Face
    You're kind of a Bard.  You get an ability to roll a DC 15 Wis/ Perception each turn and gain 1 extra action, that can't be used for an attack.  Then you get to choose a few abilities, most of which can't really be used in combat.  And there are some very questionable abilities like Polyglot (you learn 3 additional languages, and gain more over time) and Possible Sociopath (you have resistance to psychic damage and Advantage on saves vs effects that sense your emotions or read your thoughts).  Languages usually are not very important (and they can be pretty boring, you really have to purposefully build an adventure around language barriers to keep them from being more annoying than dramatic).  And if you're not using magic (which again is not in this book) then the psychic damage resistance is useless - why not add Advantage on Deception rolls or something to make this more broadly applicable?
    You also get a vehicle worth up to $30,000 and an Armored Personnel Carrier costs $8,000 while a Tank is $25,000.  Ummm.... yeah....  Somebody did proofread this, right? (as a side note, not many characters get a vehicle, so I guess public transportation in really, really good in the future)

Grounder
    You're the generalist fighter.  You can focus on using automatic or single-shot weapons.  You can also select from a pool of abilities.  Some are okay, like being able to move and fire a rifle/ 2H gun without attack penalty.  Some are borderline useless.  Like Combat Ineffective (if an ally goes to 0 HP gain Advantage to attack the foe who did it) and Comrades In Arms (if ally takes a critical hit, gain Advantage to attack the foe who did it).  Just how often are either of those things going to happen?  Some abilities are pure magic, like Jump In Front (if you and 1+ allies are hit by an effect of up to 60' across, push all of them out of the way and take as many hits as the allies you moved) which allows you magically teleport and throw full-grown adults several stories with no damage to any of them.  Not a bad class overall, but kinda strange in places.

Gunslinger
    Specialize in 1 or 2 pistols.  This was one of the classes I took (my character is a multi-classed Gunslinger/ Martial Artist) and there are 3 abilities I really like.  Classic Tumble lets you take 1/4 damage from an attack or failed Dex save.  Limber Up gives you Advantage on Dex and Str rolls for one turn.  And Kinesics lets you ignore difficult terrain, movement doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity and all attacks against you have Disadvantage.  So you can flow through the battlefield for one turn.  I ended up making my character based on John Preston from Equilibrium, the gun and melee hybrid who can stand in the middle of a crowd and kill everybody.  It's actually a pretty cool class, and one of the best in the book.

Heavy
    You fire the really big guns.  This is another good class.  You get to pick from a couple of abilities, but most of them are useful and fit the class concept.  Imposing Frame means you're so scary that allies near you get an AC bonus and have cover.  Easy Target (which has a bad name, I'd call it 'Monster Hunter') means you do extra damage the larger your target is (up to a +8).  Some of them are kinda "meh" - Overwatch makes your automatic attacks hit a 10' larger area, which is not always useful and only really applies if you're using a battle grid.  Shrapnel does your Dex or Str mod in damage to a foe within 5' of one you hit - again, not always useful unless your enemies like to bunch up (and by what magic do you make your normal bullets explode?).

Infiltrator
    The Rogue, not in the 'super skilled' sense but rather in the 'assassin' sense.  This class is very strange, it is literally the only class that doesn't get to make any choices.  Every other class has some sort of pool of abilities, but Infiltrator only get fixed powers.  They aren't terrible, you can do extra damage and are harder to hit, but it's an odd design choice to make them so limited.

Marshal
    Also the Bard, at least for the stuff that buffs the party.  A weird class because every single ability applies to your allies, none of them help you.  So a Marshall by themself is basically helpless.

Martial Artist
    Another good class.  Their main mechanic is the Combo Chain.  Each successive hit does more damage and unlocks special finishing moves, which can do extra damage, push/ knockdown enemies, or attack all nearby enemies.  A good amount of flexibility, a unique core mechanic, good design.  While I think this is one of the best classes, it still shows the strange errors that run rampant throughout the book.  The MA has two powers, I'm going to quote them below, see if you can spot the problem-

Gun-Something-Something
You treat one-handed small arms as melee weapons when attacking targets at 5 feet or closer

  and

C-C-C-Combo Breaker
You treat one-handed small arms as melee weapons when attacking targets at 5 feet or closer. Additionally, all ranged attacks with one-handed small arms made against targets 5 feet or closed can be considered melee attacks.

    If you answered "the second power does everything the first one does and more, thus there is no reason to ever take the first power" give yourself a cookie, and apparently you're smarter than the editors.  (bonus if you noticed the "closed" should be "closer")

Medic
    Another support class like the Marshal, but this one can actually act on its own.  Oddly, this is pretty much a spellcaster, which feels super out of place with the class design so far (and logic).  You get spell slots, but not many of your abilities are as powerful as spells.  Also, some of your spells require a "medical kit" which has 50 uses, but at 1st level you have a whopping 2 slots.  So the kit doesn't have the medicine, you magically charge the kit to do something.  Though you do have your "cantrips" to use at-will.  Not a bad class, but the magic masquerading as technology makes my head hurt - pick a lane guys (also you have some powers to kill people with, so much for the Hippocratic Oath).

Sniper
    Decent class.  A sniper focuses on doing damage at long range, which the game shortens to 25' or more - not a bad decision given how close most RPG combats tend to be.  I'd personally make the sniper a feat or class ability for making far shots, not sure it works that well as a class, again just because of it's narrow focus.  Still, this one seems like it would work fine.

Techie
    With a name like "Techie" I'd expect the class to be good with all technology, maybe even things like computer hacking.  Nope.  This class should really be called something like "Gunsmith" since the main abilities only boost a firearm.  At 12th level you can actually make an Engineering check to create an improvised tool, which seems like something anybody should be able to do and not a special class ability.  Not a great class, even for the limited thing it does.

    The classes are a strange mix, some very good and with solid design work, some that just make no sense.  I will admit that the class design work in 5th edition is kinda spotty, so the foundation is not great, but I'm surprised at how many weak abilities and classes there are.  I'd say it's good enough, but could really, really use a re-write.

Archetypes

    These are much like Ladders, a small collection of related abilities, and kinda like Classes in that each one has some niche it's meant to enhance.  There are 25 of them total, so it's a pretty broad range.  With so many I really don't want to break them all down.  I'll say that personally I think the majority of them are middling to garbage.  A few are pretty good.  While the "Cleaner" is badly named, it makes a great Assassin, doing big bonus damage (your level x 4) to a single target, which is only usable once but if you down your target you regain a use - so the more you kill the better you kill.  The "Grandmaster" is a cool idea, you pick a specific style of martial arts and gain bonuses, but the actual effects can be weak in some cases.  "Machine of War" is cool since every time you attack someone within 30' you heal 1 HP, so you like killing and it makes you happy, which is just awesome with the right kind of character.  "Militarist" is funny since you gain points when bad things happen, like an ally rolls a natural 1, that you can then spend for bonuses.  A lot of extra bookkeeping and attention to detail, but I do really like the concept.

Equipment

    Wow, so this is the section that I hate the most.  You're lucky you can't hear all the screaming I have done at this book so far, and this chapter elicits a lot of them.  Ultramodern5 wants to be everything non-fantasy, it's designed to go from present-day tech to far future laser guns.  That poses a pretty big challenge.  And they totally drop the ball on it.  The thing they get right is using Tech Levels, broad categories of related technologies.  So Tech Level 0 is steam power, early firearms, and generally 1800s.  I kinda hate that, just because this is the lowest tech in the game, there were a ton of technological innovations before the 1800s for crying out loud.  That's a small gripe though.  So Tech Levels go up to 5 which is antigravity, disintegration and "complete body reconstruction."  With those broad categories you'd think that each TL would have it's own sub-chapter in the Equipment section, that would be the smart thing to do.  But no, instead everything is just lumped together in one big table with the TL a tiny footnote at the end of each line.  The lack of organization sucks big time, and makes it a chore to buy your gear since you have to read line by line to find which items might apply to you.  And they don't even use the TL system right.  The book says that any item without a TL is TL0 - so 1800s tech.  But the Machine Pistol and Assault Rifle don't have a TL listed; and I don't think the Pony Express rode with AK-47s!
    Prices are also all over the place.  There is Capsicum Spray (aka Mace, Bear Spray, Pepper Spray) that costs $55.  Damn!  I can buy that stuff from the dollar store.  Now there is a note that if your setting is TL1 or higher, all items of that TL and lower are half price, except for TL0.  What?  So now it's an even bigger pain in the butt because I have to divide all the prices after I figure out which ones I can try to purchase.  Come on guys, get a clue.  That makes some things even worse though - there is a dart gun, does no damage, but one of the darts for it does 12 damage (which is a lot for a single attack) and only costs $10 !!!!!!!!!  And it has no TL listed, so it's 1800s TL0 !!!!!!!!!  WTF
    There are also some really big oversights.  There is no backpack, they apparently don't exist in this alternate dimension.  No rope.  There is a Pillow (thank god) but no Bed Sheets (which I could turn into a rope) but there is Duct Tape (which even mentions it can be used to make rope) (though I've watched Mythbusters so I know that's a time-consuming process) (miss that show so much).
    Damage is another really bad thing.  We have the DnD hit point inflation, so you need to be able to do a lot of damage at higher levels (unless you like your entire 4 hour game session to be one fight).  But something as huge as a Minigun (called a "Rotary Cannon" bizarrely) does only 1d10 damage - a DnD 5e Greatsword does 2d6 for crying out loud!
    There are some vehicle rules, thank goodness since I don't think the 5e rules have anything.  Again prices are all over the place.  Military vehicles like tanks and APCs are listed alongside passenger cars with no reference as to who should be able to own what.  That is something the GM should be watching over, but they could at least acknowledge it.

NPCs and Adventures

    The last section of the book has the "monsters" and two sample adventures.  The adventures are a little weird since they are designed for level 4 and 14 characters, nothing for a basic starting character.  I can't comment on these sections because I haven't looked at them.  I'm not the GM, so I'll wait until our next adventure is over (I'm not really planning on playing this character past one more).  I do like that they included some sample characters, which are 4 and 14 to go with the adventures.  Down the road when I've had a chance to go over these I'll post on them.


Final Impressions
    This is an okay system.  There is a lack of modern/ SF material for DnD 5e, at least that I've seen, so I guess something mediocre is better than nothing.  I really don't think the book was well-written or designed.  I'm surprised that I liked the character I made so much, and our first adventure was okay, but I have no desire to play this system in the long term.  Would I recommend it?  No.  Get Shadowrun or Star Frontiers, Cyberpunk 2020, Rifts, Gamma World, Mechwarrior, Alternity - almost anything else has a more developed and focused system.

Pathfinder 2e - First Read-through

    So I broke down and got the new Pathfinder 2nd Edition Core Rulebook and the Monster Manual.  About $100 worth of books, though I was lucky and got a sale, on top of all the books my friends and me have purchased for the 1st Edition.  I have not yet had a chance to run it, but I want to do a few articles with my first impressions, and some character creation.

My Background With the Series

    I came to Pathfinder a little late, a few years after it came out.  I co-ran a rotating GM campaign that went from levels 1 to 12, played the Rise of the Runelords campaign all the way through (to level 18), and ran a lot of 1-shot adventures.  So I have a good amount of experience with the 1st Edition, and we have a communal pile of books that include every hardback that Paizo published, and the Ultimate Psionics because that book totally rocks.
    As for what I think about Pathfinder, I don't like it as much as I used to.  I initially liked it a lot, I thought it did a good job of building on the old Dungeons and Dragons 3.5.  And at first it was neat to see the new options in each book, but soon it started to become a lot to keep track of.  One of the turning points was when talking to a friend and one of us made the comment that, "it's more fun to make a character than to play a character."  With so many options, such intricate feat chains, it takes a lot of effort to plan out your character to be effective or take advantage of a particular mechanic - which makes actually playing them a bit of a letdown.  Worse, the proliferation of options means that the quality of those options varies wildly.  Some feats are so specific that you wonder if you'd ever use them - and others seem like things anybody should be able to do, or should be covered by a skill or part of another feat.  Which means you have to wade through a ton of options and throw out lots of them to try and find the little gold nuggets.
    Still, while it is not my favorite system (none is at the moment, I like DnD 5th overall but it has some serious problems in my opinion) I have run games for it recently, and keep up on what's happening.  When I heard about the playtest I was optimistic.  I would love a simpler, more streamlined Pathfinder.  I got the Playtest Pdf and I was not impressed.  Like with DnD 5e I think it's a great idea to have fewer abilities to keep track of (and plan for), but I also think that if you're going to have fewer abilities then they need to be broader and more generally useful so you don't feel like you're wasting anything.  Which neither DnD or the Playtest seem to agree with.  So I didn't follow all the twists and turns of the Playtest, and didn't run out to buy the new 2e book.  Still, I couldn't resist (I'm weak-willed, I'll admit it), and thus we are where we are.

What I Don't Like After Reading Over The 2e Core Rulebook

    In no particular order...

1) The layout is weird to me

    The 2e book is about the same size as the 1e book, 623 to 568 counting to just before the character sheets and index/glossary.  Now, the page count only matters to me because I'm paying for it - the bigger the book the more it costs.  So I really don't want to pay for anything useless.  Let's look at the new (left) and old (right) pages of class abilities side-by-side (and I apologize for my phone camera pics, I couldn't find a Pdf to screenshot so had to do it by hand)...

    Okay, so having the name of the ability larger is a good thing, but the space under the name for the keywords (which I'll rant about next) has a lot of wasted whitespace.  Here's another sample page, from the Fighter's class feats...

     Having artwork scattered throughout the book gives your eyes a break from all the text, but it also takes up space that could be used by the text.  The art doesn't tell you anything about the game or how to play it, so it is low-value to me as a GM.  Likewise the sidebar on every right-hand page listing the major chapters of the book is kind of useful, but it also takes up space.  This book is about $60, which is $10 more than the last book, but with the layout I feel like I've paid more for less game.

2) I am not a computer

    I mentioned the keywords above, they are on everything.  Every ancestry (race) and feat has them, take a look at some fighter feats...

    I really, really hate this.  This is computer-speak.  I, as a sentient being, know that if I am reading the list of Fighter Feats, then all of these feats belong to fighters.  I don't need you repeating it EVERY TIME.  The example above at least has some other keywords, the Concentrate, Stance and Flourish keywords do at least refer to specific rules.  It's kind of annoying to have to flip back to the page that defines those rules, but eventually they'll get memorized so that's not a big deal.
    What pisses me off is insulting my intelligence by telling me that Halflings have the keywords of "Halfling and Humanoid."  No s**t Sherlock.  It says Halfling on the box, and a Humanoid is anything human-shaped.  Maybe you might have to define humanoid in the glossary, but it is not hard to figure out.  If you want to write computer rules for your game, put them in a separate document.  One of the things I love about RPGs is the human element, so computer-speak is not welcome at all, in the slightest.  Again, I'm paying for each page, so me paying you to insult me is not cool bro.

3) People have said the book contains "everything you need to play" and that is incorrect

    NO MONSTER RULES, AT ALL.  So the 1e Core Rulebook didn't have any monster creation rules either, but it did at least have 7 pages on creating NPCs.  Not much, and I'm not saying it's praise-worthy, but at least it had something.  With this book I can only make monsters as PCs, which is more work than I want to do and I'm not sure how well it would balance in the long run.  In 2e, no monsters for you, go buy the $50 book with them (Spoiler Warning- there are no monster creation rules in there either, maybe those will be in the next $80 book).  Come on people, this is a basic thing you need to run a game.  If you're going to make one super-huge and expensive book then at least make it complete.
    I have a suggestion for where those monster rules could go - in the 25 pages of useless background.  Oh yeah, who cares about stupid rules for building monsters, what you really need is a broad and so-vague-it's-worthless setting.  Here is an image for the "Inner Sea" region, note the desert area called "Golden Road" in the middle-ish...

    Now here is the entry for the "Golden Road" country/region...

      This description is crammed into the bottom-half of the page (who needs more text or a close-up map when you can stare at the lovely picture of camels?) and is full of names that mean nothing and hints at story that boil down to "like Egypt and the Silk Road."  The little setting material here is not enough to do anything meaningful with - and totally zero value to me since I'm not paying another $100 for stuff I can write on my own (or with my players).  Even for those who do want a setting, this is not enough to start writing campaigns.

4) The art is different, but not in a good way

    This is a pretty small complaint, but I'm talking about all of my first impressions here so I'm including it.  Look at this...

     I know my phone picture is bad, but this has a kind of cartoon-y feel that is at odds with the more realistic style in the last book and elsewhere in this book.  Just a random, minor complaint.  Back to more pressing issues...

5) Who the hell designed that character sheet, and why haven't they been publicly beaten with a stick?

    This is the sample character sheet in the back of the book...

     (to mis-quote Crow T Robot) I'm a color-blind robot and even I know you don't use Burnt Umber as a background color!
   

6) I was really hoping for a lot more innovation, I'm not sure who this game is written for

    Here's a page out of the combat section...

    There's the good old grid.  Hope you don't like that artsy story-game "theater of the mind" crap.  Okay, so some out there are saying/ thinking, "well, the first edition only had a grid" and they are right.  So who is this game for?  Is it only for the people who liked the first edition? (and in that case, why would they re-spend all their money for this instead of playing the game they already like?)  Why can't it also accommodate new players and styles of play?
    Here's an easy example.  In 2e, just as in 1e, all living creatures move in exactly 5-foot increments.  And if you like that, great.  But what about this extra rule...

Gridless Combat (optional rule)
    If you don't use a grid, then divide all speeds by 5, so the standard 30' movement become a "Speed 6" value.
    When using skills, if multiple characters are racing each adds their Speed value to their Acrobatics roll.
    In combat, you can spend 1 action to move towards or away from a foe that is near you (GMs call), or 2 actions to close to melee if the foe is far away (again, ask your GM about this).  With or in place of that, you can spend one action and divide your Speed value as you see fit as a bonuses to either your AC, Attack roll or Damage roll (representing your moving for an advantageous position during the turn).

    There, simple, takes as much space as one picture and gives some options to those people who don't like playing on a grid.  So why can't Pazio do that?  Why isn't this edition trying to reach a broader audience and be better than the last?
    The funny thing about reading this rulebook is that I don't see why I would recommend this to someone who either hates or likes the first edition.  If you hate the crunch, this is still pretty crunchy and is likely not going to add anything new that your current game doesn't do.  If you liked the crunch then this is likely going to be too simple, and a lot of the new stuff you could house-rule yourself into your current game (take out the stupid rule to change all of an anchetype's abilities or none, instead pick and choose from the same level or lower - and bam, you're got almost all the extra flexibility in character creation; then simplify everything down to 1, 2 or 3 actions, maybe drop or consolidate any skills you don't like - there you have it) (ie, use the stuff in Pathfinder Unchained and some elbow grease).

7) If you're going to say that Encounters, Exploration and Downtime are the 3 major pillars of play then you should organize your rulebook around them

    This one really drives me nuts.  So the rules divide the game into those 3 phases above.  Which means the game is supposed to flow between them.  So you would think the rules would be laid out around them.  Nope.  Let's look at one phase, Downtime.  Now, the "official" Downtime section - the one with the chapter title of "Downtime Mode," is on page 481.  And just page 481, that's it.  not much to go on.  Well, those are not all the Downtime rules though.  Page 294 has the table with the Costs of Living.  Pages 236-237 have the "Earn Income" skill action and the table for how much you earn based on how well you roll.  Page 240 has the "Subsist" skill action.  Pages 244-245 have Crafting (pages 577-579 have the rules for normal and special materials).  Pages 500-502 have some more downtime rules in general.  And finally page 248 has "Treat Disease" and page 251 has "Create Forgery" and I don't know how many pages have downtime-related feats.  So that's at least 9 non-contiguous blocks of rules for what is supposed to be 1/3rd of the game.
     Who wrote this?  Who proof-read it and thought it was good?  You create a system to help guide the game, for both players and GMs, from the large background stuff to the moment-by-moment stuff and back, and you decide to cut it up and scatter it across your book instead of committing to it and build on it?  Why create it in the first place?  Again, not a computer, I know that crafting a sword and swinging a sword are two different time-frames, I don't need you to call them "Downtime" and "Encounter" - don't make up these divisions unless you want to actually use them.

What I Like After Reading Over The 2e Core Rulebook

    Okay, so the whole thing isn't bad, there is stuff I like (again, in the order it came to me)...
   

1) You Build Your Attributes Over Your Background

    Rolling for attributes is no longer the default method.  Instead all attributes start at 10.  When you pick your Ancestry (used to be called Race, I'm okay with that change too) you get a +2 bonus to 2 attributes, usually a -2 to one, and then one +2 that can't go in your boosts, but can go anywhere else.  So from your culture and your free time you built up some of your abilities.  Then you pick a Background and it gives you one boost chosen from two skills, and one more boost that can't go to the one you picked.  Again, your first job gave you some abilities.  Your Class has a key ability score that gets a boost.  And finally you have 4 more boosts, they just have to be applied to 4 different attributes.
    I really like this because your character's attributes now align with their history.  If your Wizard has an 18 Strength then it's because you've been sinking every free boost (and your character his/her free time) into developing Strength.  No more all-18s from the dice gods or rolling set after set after set trying to get the scores you want.  Love this, it will be mandatory in all games of 2e I GM.

2) Multiclassing is closer to my ideal

    I have always loved multiclass characters, but I've always hated the systems.  If I want to play a Fighter/Wizard hybrid it's because I want some of both classes - like the Fighter's Melee abilities and the Wizard's spells that enhance melee.  I don't care about Charm Person or Teleport, I'm a fighter who uses magic to be a better fighter.  But in 1e (and other systems) you have to take a whole level, getting all that Wizard stuff I don't want and diluting the character instead of enhancing it.
    Now, sadly the 2e system is not exactly at that ideal (actually I should have put some of it in the stuff I don't like, but I don't fell like editing this even more - I'll address it in another post), but it is a lot closer.  You can choose individual (mostly) abilities and combine them with fewer wasted options.

3) Things have been simplified

    Bulk is a good thing to import from Starfinder.  The 3 action system is pretty good (with some exceptions, "Raise A Shield" is a f***ing joke).  I like the Arcane, Divine, Occult, Primal divide of spells and some abilities (again, some issues with it).  Choosing an ability each level instead of a fixed class and interminable anchetypes is a good change (though as I said above, you could house rule it into 1e).

Mostly Though, It's A Mix

    From what I've read I've got a few "damn"s and a few "cool"s and a lot of "meh"s.  I don't think it's a bad game, I don't think it's a good game.  I think it's a confused game, that doesn't know who it wants to appeal to or what it wants to be good at.  I think some work and house rules could make it a lot better, I'm not sure if I would want to do that work though.  Going to keep reading it, not sure if I want to run it.


    So those are my first impressions, and I'm sure I left out a lot of stuff.  So I'm going to be making some characters and looking at the rules in more detail in the future.  Let me know in the comments if you've read or run it and what you think.

Mobile Game Review - Marvel Puzzle Quest

    I will long curse the day my friend introduced me to the evil Marvel Puzzle Quest (or MPQ).  It looked so enticing at first, a match-3 casual game with cool superheroes from the Marvel comics and films.  It was fun in the beginning, a nice way to kill a little time.  But then, after being seduced by it's neat artwork and interesting spin on the old match-3 system; it shed its sweet demeanor and showed it's true villainy, it's horrific microtransactions and pay-to-win mechanics.  I should have know better, but sadly it got its digital fangs into me and nearly drained all hope and joy from my life.  So I am here to warn you, dear reader, of this wolf-in-colorful-spandex so that you can avoid the mistakes I made.

    Okay, so my opening might have been just a touch melodramatic (if there is such a thing for a term that innately means to excess?) but there is some truth to how MPQ has hurt me.  I've never been a big fan of mobile games: which I will call this even though I played it on my Windows 10 laptop through Steam (my screenshots are from a phone emulator though).  The mobile mindset seems to be to make a game fun enough to get someone interested, and then not fun at all unless they pay money, and the more they pay the better things are for them.  That horrible generalization (though perhaps not unfounded) describes MPQ very well.  For proper perspective, I am not against paying for games, I know from my own projects that programming a game is hard, hard work.  And having artistic talent is something that you should be rewarded for using.  But as someone who's lived most of his life below the poverty level I am very keen about getting a good return for my limited money.  And MPQ does not give you nearly enough for how the game is deliberately designed to constantly suck the cash/ Steam gift cards out of your wallet.  That said, let's take a look at how the game works.

Match 3 pop-culture-style, or, Bejeweled with Eye Beams

    So I remember the release of Bejeweled by Pop Cap Games back in 2001, it was a monster.  Everyone I knew was losing hours upon hours to that damn game.  I resisted for a while, but even I gave in (and this was back on a Windows 98 desktop computer).  It was fun, I will give it that.  Oddly, it was also the only "match 3" game I played until MPQ.  The match 3 format is easy enough, usually you move two adjacent pieces to make a match of 3 or more in the same colored pieces.  The matched pieces disappear, and new ones drop into place.  It's a simple mechanic, it's really just about pattern recognition and some luck.  Easy to get into, and engrossing enough to be fun.
    MPQ takes that basic formula and adds it's central concept, superheroes.  Each match you make earns "Action Points (AP)" for each tile matched (so matching 3 red tiles gives 3 red AP).  You choose up to 3 heroes, and each has up to 3 abilities.  Some abilities are passive, so they are always in effect, while the rest have an AP cost.  For example Iron Man's Repulsor Blast power costs 10 red AP to use.

    Your heroes and your opponents (also up to 3 at a time) each have health points.  The goal is to reduce the other guy's health to 0, which knocks them out of the fight.  Each hero (I use the term generally, there are playable villains like Doc Ock) does a different amount of damage for each color, so out of your group the hero who does the highest damage will 'move to the front' after each match (making them the one to take damage).  In addition to doing damage from each tile matched most abilities also do damage or create special tiles.

    Special tiles change a tile of a certain color on the board into a new hybrid tile.  So Iron Fist can make a Green Attack Tile, which means a green tile on the board - that is not already special - gains a fist symbol and automatically does a certain amount of damage at the start of Iron Fist's side's turn.  Luke Cage can make a Red Protect Tile, which reduces the damage his side (whoever's in front, not just him) takes by a certain amount. 
    The most common special tile though is the Countdown Tile.  This makes a counter that decreases each turn, and when it hits 0 it triggers some effect.  Because all of these special tiles alter ones on the board a big part of the game is trying to match away your opponenet's special tiles while protecting your own.

    Having these powers adds a whole extra dimension to the basic match 3 game.  You don't want to make a match that includes one of your special tiles (you destroy your own if you match them).  Likewise, you may not need a certain color, but make the match to get rid of an opponent's special tiles.  So there's an extra layer of decision-making to each turn, and strategically there are some heroes who work better with others.  Since most powers cost AP, you don't want a lot of heroes who have the same colored powers since you won't be able to use them all.  And some abilities just combine in very useful ways.
    Also, the artwork is good and most of the powers look pretty cool with their short animations.

Why Hulk No My Friend?

    Sadly, it is in this cool concept, having a roster of heroes, where the evil creeps in.
    You get a few free heroes at the start of the game.  And they all have a "Level" that determines their overall power and "Covers" that determine what powers they can use and how strong (combined with the hero's Level) those powers are.  You have to gain covers to increase a hero's maximum level, but you win covers at random from earning "Tokens" that you turn in for a random hero from a pool of them.  These tokens can be won, but usually just the least powerful - heroes themselves are rated by "Stars."  A 1 Star hero is the lowest and least powerful, with a low maximum level.  5 Star heroes are the most powerful and can be upgraded the most.  This makes it hard to talk about characters, since there is a 1 Star Iron Man, a 3 Star Iron Man as well as 4 and 5 Star versions (each with different art).  I have no idea why there isn't a 2 Star Shellhead though.

    Confused yet?  Yeah, it's kind of hard to describe (for being pretty simple really).  Anyways, so you can earn tokens for playing the game and even just for logging in.  But, those are almost always lesser 1 or 2 Star heroes.  Each token has a small chance (sometimes just 1% or so) of giving you a higher-Star hero's cover, so occasionally you'll get a great deal.
    To review, you get heroes at random, and the free heroes are the least powerful ones.  Then it gets better.  Each hero can have up to 5 covers in each of it's 3 powers, but can only have a total of 13 covers.  So you cannot get all 5 covers in all 3 powers, you'll have to choose some to under-power.  And after you've gotten those 5 covers in one power, or 13 covers in one hero, all the same covers are useless.  You can 'sell,' or really convert, them into purple currency (ISO?  I forget, I always called it "purple crap" for how useful it was).  Purple Crap is spent to level up a hero, which you cannot do unless/ until you get a cover, within their limits, so it is really easy to get Purple Crap.  I usually had at least 300,000 points of the stuff (my friend was always over 1 million).  It was hard to get a lot of heroes to level up.

    One of the biggest reasons why it was so hard was the game's other system designed to screw over the players, your limited Roster size.  You can only have a number of heroes up to your Roster size.  So at the beginning of the game you have around a 6-hero sized Roster.  Once you get all 6 slots filled you have to sell off ones you have to make room for different heroes.  In order to increase your Roster size you have to spend real money (called Hero Points) - and the kick in the pants is that It Gets More And More Expensive The More Heroes You Buy!!!  So you just started the game, the tutorial pretty much filled your roster, and you like the game so you decide to buy some more character slots.  Well, look, it's only 300 Hero Points for 3 slots.  That's pretty good, like under a dollar per slot, not too bad.  So you fill those up.  No big, only spent a few bucks on the game, I'll buy some more.  Oh, wait, now it's 350 points for 3 slots.  And then 500 points for 3 slots.  And then 400 points for 2 slots.  And eventually 700 points for 1 slot.  And the cost just keeps on rising.

    This is crap.  It is total, 100% scum-sucking garbage CRAP!  The longer you play the game the higher the tax on playing.
    Well, no problem, I'll just get rid of any characters I don't really like, and I'll slowly buy slots with the few free Hero Points I can get from playing.  Yeah, that kind of works.  But you see, some tokens stay good forever, and some are limited-time events (called "Vaults" to drive home how they're stealing your money), and once you open a token and get a cover a timer starts.  You can only hold onto a cover for 14 days, at the end it is automatically converted to Purple Crap.  So over and over you're going to keep losing covers, and watching all the tokens you don't have room for pile up, and then you'll need to open those higher-level tokens to keep up with the game, but what if it has a cool character you don't have any room for?  Either you shell out ever-increasing money or say goodbye to a hero you might not see again for months (remember, the tokens produce random covers) or just get disappointed because you didn't want that hero in the first place.  Literally whatever the outcome is it's bad, unless you have a lot of money to burn.

I Hate Myself For Loving You

    And that sucks, because the game itself is pretty damn fun.
    It's got just the right amount of complexity to be interesting without becoming so hard that it loses the 'casual game' appeal.  It's actually pretty fun to play, but every second in-between matches is filled with the frustration of managing your roster.  The joy of getting a new token quickly becomes the disappointment of it not being the hero you need to go with the other one you've got, or the frustration of not having enough space.  And it's not one of those games you can just spend a little on, the cost keeps going up and up and up the longer you play.  There are over 300 heroes total, I cannot imagine just how much real money it would take, or hundreds of hours of playing, to be able to poke-catch them all.
    Adding insult to injury, most of the gameplay revolves around events.  These are a pool of opponents that change every 3-4 days.  Each match you win in the event gives you points.  And there are rewards for the top 100-500 players of each difficulty.  These are covers, so you can get exactly who you want - if you can out-score other people.  Which really means the people who play the most have the best chances of getting better characters.

    The other thing you can do is "PvP."  This is not real PvP, I don't know a good term for it, I've seen a few games do this same thing.  What happens is that the servers look for another player, pick 3 random heroes in that player's inventory, and those are your opponents.  The computer is controlling them, you never directly face another live person.  And this is the other way to try to get good covers, except the match-making algorythm is so terrible you will often be fighting level 255 enemies when your highest hero is level 70.  So good luck.  And whenever the computer picks one of your teams and someone defeats them you lose points/ standing - unless, of course, you pay real money for a 'shield' to protect yourself a day or two or three.
    Crap.

    I really want to like this game.  I like the Marvel heroes, I like the gameplay and the graphics are solid.  I like having a game I can log into for a few minutes and not have to really commit to playing, it gives me a break in-between other (admittedly more productive) things.  But the suck-you-dry business model that never gets any better is just too much to put up with.  I respect myself and value my time more than that.  If you like match 3 games and either have money to burn or a high frustration tolerence then give it a try - but my advise to most people is don't bother, and don't reward this company for being so disrespectful to it's players.

"Adventures In Middle-Earth" Review part 5 - Odds and Ends

    In the final part of my "Adventures In Middle-Earth" (or AiME) review I want to briefly talk about a few other things I like about the game, but which are not very developed or that I just haven't used...


Wealth Levels
    So every Culture ('Race' in 5e) has a standard of living...

A culture’s Standard of Living is a rough indication of the resources of any one of its members. The game ranks the average economic status of a folk in five tiers: Poor, Frugal, Martial, Prosperous, and finally Rich. It is used to gauge the approximate economic background of a character, and his ability to make out-of-pocket expenses.

    Now, I hate counting out gold pieces.  It's pretty much impossible to design and sustain a reasonable RPG economy, things seem to always be too cheap or too expensive in my experiences.  And I'm not sure how much it really adds to the game.  Sure, if you're a few bucks short of getting that shiny you want it creates incentive for your character to do something stupid (read: adventuring).  But is that really such a compelling motivation?  And isn't that just a low-level problem?  By the time you're level 10 you should have plenty of money and/ or skills to make money.
    Sadly while AiME defines these 'wealth levels' it doesn't really do anything with them.  It has some descriptions about each level on pages 147 - 149, but it doesn't divide equipment by those levels.  I would use this system to do something simple like: each character can choose 1 weapon, 1 armor and any 5 items from their wealth level's list.  Which AiME doesn't, so I kind of wonder why they put it in the game in the first place.
   
   
Fellowship Phase
    The book describes it as this...

Most games of Adventures in Middle-earth presume one or two adventures a year – “The Adventuring Phase”. When the adventuring is done, characters are given time between their travels to recover for a while, spending time with loved ones, looking after a business, or pursing their own interests. This time between adventures is referred to as the Fellowship phase, and characters may perform various undertakings during it – learning new abilities, removing Corruption, or establishing powerful patrons as allies. The Fellowship phase is an addition to the standard rule set, and is designed to evoke the storybook atmosphere of Middle-earth.

    It's the AiME "downtime" system.  Now, I really like the idea of downtime systems.  I think it adds a nice layer to the game to note time passing and that the heroes don't fight evil 24/ 7 for eternity like in a comic book.  But downtime systems are very tricky.  For one, time itself is not really well defined or use mechanically, there are a few good articles by The Angry GM about that.  Second, the downtime choices need to be meaningful, give you something to care about enough to be worth adding yet another mini-game to the rules.
    Sadly, I don't think AiME's Fellowship phase really adds much to the game.  There are very few actions you can take overall, some are tied to specific cultures at specific places, and not many are terribly meaningful.  Not to say that it's a bad system - while you are at Lake-town you can forage for healing herbs (rolling on a table for what you find and how much) or buy an upgraded piece of equipment at the market; neither of which you can do elsewhere, so it makes finding/ being at Lake-town feel special.  But there just isn't enough of that.  It's an okay system, that's the most I can say for it.
   
   
Combat Roles
    Okay, so I'm kind of cheating here - this rule isn't from the AiME books, it's from the original "The One Ring" RPG that AiME is adapting.  But I think there's a really cool idea for fighting roles in the "Adventurer's Companion" book...

    The true test of a company’s mettle comes when a small band of heroes is surrounded by many enemies. It is at that moment that a company of veteran adventurers can demonstrate that fellowship means more to them than just friendship and closeness.
    When a company of heroes is attacked, the player-heroes can choose to adopt a number of combat roles, representing their capacity to fight as a tight-knit formation.

Captain
    The captain of a company stands out in the confusion of a battle, as they must lead their warriors as they face the enemy. This makes the Captain the favourite target of archers and other creatures able to attack from a distance, wishing to see the leader of their enemies slain.

Champion
    By making a display of personal prowess, the companion fighting as the Champion attracts the attention of the most powerful foes among the adversaries, in an attempt to vanquish them singlehandedly.

Ward
    If among the companions there is someone whose life the heroes want to safeguard the most, a player may choose this role. At the onset of a fight, the companions look out for their Ward, manoeuvring to let only the weakest opponents engage the protected hero.

    I love this system.  It follows what a party might do anyways, but it sets how the monsters are going to attack explicitly.  Ranged monsters will attack the Captain, the biggest (or the most) monsters are going to attack the Champion and only the weakest monster(s) will attack the Ward.  This is cool because it gives direct control in how the fight plays out to the party.  And frankly, I think most RPGs out there would benefit from giving more direct tactical control to the party, and more abilities that played off the party as a whole.  It's a small thing, and I haven't had a chance to play with it, but I think it's a great addition to the game.


And that's all that really jumped out at me as being different from basic DnD 5e.


So what do I think about AiME?
    Not bad, not bad at all.
    This is a pretty good system for a "low magic" fantasy setting, and it does a good job adapting The Lord of the Rings to DnD 5e.  I've enjoyed running it, and my players have said they've enjoyed playing it.  The "Wilderland Adventures" campaign is pretty good overall, one adventure (the 4th) seems a little weak to me, and they like railroading the players a bit too much - but it's better than plenty of other prepackaged adventures I've run in the past.  It's also easy to adapt into stand-alone adventures or to tweak the story-line to fit your party better.
    My only real complaint is that they kept too much of the core DnD 5e classes/ class abilities - they really needed to make some custom classes.  But I just let my players take some archetypes from Xanathar's Guide to Everything and I re-wrote a few abilities to suit my tastes.
    I'd say give it a try if you like 5e and Tolkeen, I think you won't regret it.

   
You can find previous installments of this series here