Review Time: Accursed

Good Day once again.

So last time we took a look at a game that was still in its funding stages. Today we're gonna pay attention to a very wonderful game that is.

I first became aware of Accursed through the fine fellows of Role Playing Public Radio, and once I sunk my proverbial fangs into the project I was hooked.  Sadly, I missed the Kickstarter for this project, but I have been keeping up with each and every release to date. All of which can be found HERE.

So, what is Accursed? And why in the hell should we care... at all?

I'm glad you asked.

Accursed is a setting for the wonderful Savage Worlds role playing rules system, which you should totally check out if you haven't already. I mean come on, you used playing cards for initiative... how awesome is that! Now, on to the fluff and excitement!

Players take the role of the Accursed or Witchmarked, denizens of the Lands of Morden that have been turned into monstrous being through some means or another, but generally the Witches did it.  These Witchmarked stand as the primary opposition to the Witches of the Grand Coven and their armies of monsters as well as some assholes that are just prejudice against the Accursed.

Here is the "Cliffsnotes" version of the setting history:

• 50 years prior to the current time line The Grand Coven invaded the lands of Morden, bringing with them the hoards of mercenaries and monsters that comprised their respective armies.
• The denizens of the various kingdoms/countries of Morden put aside most of the prejudice and quarrels they might have had in order to combat the Witches and their armies. This became know as the Grand coven War, and the alliance was known as the Army of Light.
• The Witches began turning the citizenry of Morden into monstrous Shock Troops to assist in their eventual conquer of the Lands. These are the Witchmarked.
• It wasn't a typo or grammatical error, it really was eventual.
• Despite their best efforts, the Army of Light was crushed. But they put up a good fight.... just not good enough.
• During and after the Grand Coven War those Witchmarked that retained a Will of their own decided that (in my words) "this bitch made me a monster, fuck that shit and fuck her and her stupid face." These Witchmarked are the titular Accursed that players portray.

Each of the Witchbreeds parallels on of the traditional "monsters" that we have come to know and love over the years. Lets get a gander.

The Dhampir: These are you Vampire types, and the type to most easily pass for a "normal" human. They're charming and fast... oh yeah and they crave blood, but that's to be expected.

The Golem: Here we have the Frankenstein's Monster type. Composite creatures of flesh, bone, wood, etc and brought back to life through arcane formula. Physically these guys are slow, but rather powerful. And they're extremely flammable. One of my favorites.

The Mongrels: To make it simple, they're people with animal parts grafted on. Their abilities are the most physically varied, as the grafted parts can grant a number of different benefits from Gorilla arms granting tremendous strength to Owl's eyes for seeing at night.They also live in a constant state of pain due to their non-standard replacement parts.

The Mummies: They're Mummies, I don't know what else you really need to know as far a a type is concerned. Mummies require rest "in" their sarcophagi daily; to get around that they mad their sarcophagi into armor capable of incredible offense and deference. they're also pretty good at Alchemy.

The Ophidians: Snake People!! They're poisonous and slippery, perfect for assassins.  Too bad they're being eaten from inside by their own venom.

The Revenants: ZOMBIES! They feel no pain, and all their obsession is the deaths of the Witches.  I thought it was interesting that the creators took the Black Cauldron approach in the genesis of the Revenants.

The Shades:  These are Ghost people.  They're half in and half out. They can pass through wall but damn are they creepy. And they can't pass salt lines. As they're rather "spirited" Shades are naturals with Witchcraft.

The Vargr: Lastly we have the Werewolf-ish sorts. A pretty standard package including a bestial form, enhanced senses and natural weapons. Their downside being the amount of food they must eat to keep up their strength.

The book itself gives a much more effective run-down of the eight breeds, but I will say that the Ophidians and The Shades feel a little tacked on. But that's to be expected as I believe they were the last two breed to be created and put into the game. They're still cool, though.


Aside from the variety of "creature" that can be played, my favorite aspect of the game is the Acceptance / Rejection mechanic.  Player can either accept their monstrous nature or reject it.  This mechanic is actually out of the hands of the players as far a any stat change is concerned, leaving it up to the GM to pay attention to their players and their actions and motivations.


The world itself is rather interesting. The Lands/Countries that make up Morden are mostly parallels of real world countries where the original tales came from, you just have to read into things a bit.  The write ups for each country don't always feel like they're giving you every detail, thus leaving players and GMs to fill in the blanks.  Seriously, the map only has a handful of cities and the capital cities of each country. In the two sessions that I've run so far, every location (town or otherwise) has been original to my version of Morden.  To be honest I really like that.


For those familiar with Savage World already, the skill listing has been cut down but combining some skills into one i.e. Climbing and Swimming are now Athletics. I can't think of any issue this would cause, it's just less skills to remember.

Again, other than a change here and there the system runs pretty standard to the stock Savage Worlds rules.
I will throw in this little tidbit: although the setting book says you need the SW Horror Companion, you don't really need it. There are four total hinderances and edges from the Horror Companion that are included i. Accursed lists as well as spell, but that's about it.


To be frank and very honest, the one aspect I love about Accursed is that it feels almost like Castlevania the Role Playing Game. I don't even care if that causes you to loose any interest interest.  Accursed is an awesome Dark Fantasy setting.

So far the Cupcake or Death Krewe have played two sessions. So I can't speak much on the long game at present.


So here's the score:
If you like Dark Fantasy, the traditional Universal monster + a few more, and the feel of the Castlevaia franchise then you'll probably dig Accursed from Melior Via.

That's all I got for yo fine folks for now.

As always,
Stay Frosty

Kickstarter Gaming Spotlight: Fragged Empire

G'day dear readers.
Let me begin by asking, have you heard the good news about our true and gracious overlord, Kickstarter?

Okay, so for those that came in late, Kickstarter is an Amazon operated website that allows artisans of varying crafts to get funding from the crowds out there on the INTERNET that dig what the artisan is doing..... some sort of Crowdfunding. If you want something nittier and grittier, then check this LINK, it'll take you to one of the FAQ pages.

Now that that's out of the way, on to the point of this post.

I recently discovered the KS for a game by an Australian Graphic Designer named Wade Dyer, this game is known as .... wait for it.... Fragged Empire.  I know, you already new that from the title of the post, but I digress.

Here have some fresh and tasty box text:

Fragged Empire is a tabletop RPG setting & rules, set in a far future 'post, post-apocalyptic' setting. Your people have survived 100 years of brutal tribalism & savagery & are just now emerging back into space.

Set in the style of Ridley Scott’s 1979 film Alien, television series Firefly, Farscape & Blake's 7 & computer-based role-playing games Mass Effect & Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic.

Now, I don't know about you folks, but I enjoyed all of those words in green and their collective meaning.

As non of you probably know at this point, I do love me a heaping helping of Sci-Fi gaming, From Eclipse Phase to Bulldogs!, I just love it. And Fragged Empire seems to have me covered rather well.

Okay, so most of the fanfare aside. Lets take a look at the game itself.

History:

In the future, Humanity is Badass. So badass that it has "terraformed millions of planets and creatied electronic wonders beyond our imagination."  Now, as any good gamer out there knows, once you've maxed out all your skills and shit, you get kinda lethargic and apathetic and such. Well, humanity hit that point and just kept rolling down that hill, hitting  the point of genetic degradation.

Once they hit terminal velocity FUCKED, Humanity created a new race to "inherit" their empire (you know, like Simba was supposed to before Scar went all sly manipulator). The new race was know as The Archons.

From there, The Archons took the proverbial ball and ran in a different direction. They didn't worry about expanding their empire too much or creating new technological wonders, nope, they started playing with genetics.  Their only goal: to create the "perfect" race. After a thousand years, enumerable races had been created, some were neglected and others quite the opposite.

So, The Archons finally think the have the formula right when they unveil the Xion.  Then they change their minds, like within the next space-day or two. Understandably, the Xion weren't too keen on giving up the title, so they fought back and lost..... hard. Only one little Xion survived and fled into uncharted space, and like any good vengeance tale the lone Xion came back two (count 'em one, two) hundred years later with his/her own army of genetically engineer being called The Nephilim.

After a six year war (wait, seriously... just six years? Eh, alright I'll go along) The Archons were tiny bits on Nephilim boots. Now that one Xion from before, he/she was pleased, vindicated, whatever and just decided to bounce (as they said in my youth).

Now we get to the present portion of the time line. 100 years after the war, The Nephilim and three other races of Humanity's Great-Grand "children" have started to get out into space and check out all the shit that was left behind by the Archons and who knows what else.

Races:
I'll go ahead and apologize for using the box text for the races. It's just that at this point in the game that I think it's best to use the creator's words to describe them.

The Corporation
Rejected by their creators (the Archons) as inferior, the Corporation (formerly known as Vargarti) have grown to love the Great Xion War as it freed them from an existence of insignificance & irrelevance. They are now eager to prove themselves. Not a nation in the classical sense, the Corporation is a massive corporate entity comprised of millions of smaller, affiliated business enterprises; a purely capitalistic society.

The Kaltoran

Born with the genetic memories of their ancestors, Kaltorans are an innately gifted & flexible race. They are eager to make a new future for themselves, though they struggle with the ‘genetic memories’ of not only the Great Xion War but the extreme measures taken by their ancestors to survive it.

(Yes, they have four ears.)

The Legion
A physically imposing race, hastily created by the Archons to fight their losing war against Xion. The Legion now struggle to create a stable society & to find meaning with no war to fight. In recent times the Legion have formed a close economic relationship with the Corporation, acting as enforcers for hire.

(Damn, he just looks so badass.)

The Nephilim
A junk-word term used to describe the diverse descendants of Xion’s genetically engineered army. Created to wage war on the Archons & their creations, before being abandoned by their creator, Xion once the war was won.

The Nephilim have an eclectic, primal & often violent society that is supported by advanced biological technology. While publicly no longer loyal to Xion, their pursuit of genetic perfection at any cost is pervasive.

Currently, I only have bullet point descriptions of the actually game mechanics. The only mechanics that have been expanded upon are how skills work and some of the combat rules, these are featured in a preview of the books layout that you can find HERE.

From everything available to me at the current moment, Fragged Empire looks awesome.  I know that I plan to back it as soon as I can, and if your into Sci-Fi gaming I recommend you check out the Kickstarter and the website for more details.

At the present time there are 31 days left, and the project has already been more than funded (it reached the goal of  $15K in twelve hours.)

Now do be aware, that all of the pricing on the Kickstarter is in Australian dollars. So if your an American, such as myself, the pricing is actually a couple dollars less that what you see at first (but they have the conversion in the tier descriptions).

TLDR:

• Fragged Empire is a Sci-Fi RPG were you play as one of four races that are essentially the "great-grandchildren" of humanity.
• Not enough info currently to talk about much more than the races and the skill mechanics.
• The Kisckstrater has 31 days left at the time of this post.

Thats it for the very first Cupcake or Death Gaming Kickstarter Spotlight. Let me know what you think, did I put too much info out there, too little, just right? And be sure to let us know about any Kickstarter projects you think are awesome, we'd prefer gaming related projects but we'll at least take a look at the projects that are posted.

Thanks Guys,

STAY FROSTY

Update time:

Here we are with 22 days left till the KS ends, and the project is 361% funded, how awesome is that.

Now as any good Kickstarter, getting to this level of coin has unlocked a few stretch goals. The majority were to enhance the book: +24 pages, higher quality pages, and a hard back cover (as opposed to the paperback originally planned).  But we have reached the point where there is officially a second book.

The second tomb is known as the Antagonist Archive (alliteration how I lovvve you), and its essentially akin to the Monster Manual for my DnD hombre's out there.... well, sorta anyway. We are now at the point were the stretch goal are enhancing the AA, so far it has gained additional content for locations and Factions. Currently the project is about $800 (give or take) away from reaching the $55K mark, which unlocks short stories in the book. 
The stretch goal after the 55k mark and currently last goal (at an unknown amount) is that the book becomes "Alive." I'm not gonna lie, I have no idea what this means, but with 22 days left, I sure as hell hope it gets there so i can find out.

Now sadly, The Antagonist Archives doesn't come free to backers. You have to pitch in an additional $15 for the PDF and $25 off of the POD version that you can order from Drive Thru RPG once the books are release.  Personally, I don't have too much of a problem with this and it makes me happy to know that both books will be available for POD since I can only opt for the PDF versions currently.

Oh yeah, have this finely crafted LINK to the FREE sample book on DTRPG.

That's all for now,
Later