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Ascendant is a great game, with crunch in the right places.
As others have said, the bits that take a while are all front-loaded into character generation, and session time, whether actual combat, investigation, or other actions, is always simple to resolve mechanically. compare the number for the power/attack being used to the opposed value or the magnitude of the problem, adjust for extraordinary effort being used on either side (hero points), roll d100, consult the chart to see if the action was successful and by how much. In my experience it's very easy for a player to sit down for a session with very little knowledge of the system and still make decisions. for example, a player can decide to focus on putting out a fire instead of attacking the villain, and the GM can just present the information as "the fire is X strong, your power is Y strong, that means it will take X-Y=Z time to put it out, which you can halve by using a hero point". in play, you get used to thi...
Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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Great artwork and great puzzles!
There are several "layers" to the puzzles, and my kids and I are only going through the first layer as I write this review, but it's great so far! As in the examples, it's mostly look and find, but there is more "puzzling" puzzles alter, plus I have been watching the kids pass over clues to the overarching puzzles. This is very much in the style of the Usborne Books puzzle books "Knight's Quest", Dragon Quest", et al.
I bought the PDF, and was able to print out the puzzles 11"×17" (approximately A3) in glorious colour, and it's great. This is one case where "the medium is the message", and I don't think the native PDF would be as enjoyable, unless you have a decent tablet.
With that out of the way, I also want to say how great it is to find an activity book like this, online, in PDF for a rainy dat activity for the family.
My only complaint is that Planet Urf hasn...
Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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Like most older gamers, I've been around the block a few times with regard to preferences. I went through a "D&D and nothing else" phase, a Traveller phase, a White Wolf phase, a "buckets of dice" phase, a Fate phase... pretty much everything since the early 90s.
One theme I seem to come back to again and again is *granularity*. For me, a major test of a system is how well it can distinguish between two things that are relevant during play. Some systems barely even consider granularity, some go to extraordinary extremes and some try to strike a balance between narrative and granularity that can sometimes overwhelm matters. Few games get the balance perfect (Ars Magica, maybe?) but that's not really what's important; not the balance between narrative and granularity of simulation, but getting the granularity right for what the game is actually trying to achieve. Take Fading Suns as an example. While it has a deservedly legendary setting, the game ...
Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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I've been running a ~35 session campaign for my group since the PDF was released to backers ~9 months ago. Ascendant quickly became one of my top 3 RPGs I've ever played or run due to the extremely deep character building system and the simple mechanics that yield realistic outcomes. I kept a 1 page printout of a cheat sheet with the CHART, damage values, and several of the benchmark tables (speed, distance, weight, time) from the front of the book, so that I didn't have to reference the simple things at the table; it was basically a homemade pared down version of what the Gamemaster Screen is. Armed with the cheat sheet, I only had to reference the book during play to double-check certain powers. The game plays fast at the table and even the toughest fights play out quickly compared to 5th ed, PF 1e, or 3.5. Outside of combat, I *love* how this game makes the players feel awesome in their areas of competency but the characters tend to be narrow enough in their expe...
Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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