Longshot City Review Part 1

A while ago, I backed a Kickstarter for an RPG book called Longshot City. I am a sucker for supers RPGs especially if they stray away from the modular point buy mold that has been the established method for these sorts of games since Champions set the standard. Longshot City is one of those outliers.

There are a lot of superhero RPGs. As a huge RPG and superhero comic book fan, I own a lot of superhero RPGs, but I am always on the lookout for the perfect one for me. I don't feel like I have found that yet. Is Longshot City going to be that perfect superhero RPG? I don't know. Maybe?

What first attracted me to Longshot City was the clean simplicity of its character sheet. Superhero RPGs can get notoriously complex. That's something I tend to push against. I just wrote about being burned out on D&D. A big part of that is the game's upward trend in complexity. 

Superhero games have almost always been more complex than D&D. Asking for one that is less complex than current editions of D&D limits my choices quite a lot. They do exist. I wrote a review for Amazing Heroes awhile back, and there's also The Supercrew. I love both of these games a lot, but both may fall a bit too far into rules-lite territory for most.

Longshot City is designed and published by Melsonian Arts Council who published the RPG Troika. MAC is a British publisher, and in their part of the world, while I was playing D&D, those folks were reading Fighting Fantasy game books. (If you look into Fighting Fantasy, you will see that the books were written by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingston. Be aware that this is not the same Steve Jackson of Munchkin and Fantasy Trip fame, but a British author with the same name.)

Fighting Fantasy is a choose your own adventure style game book with dice driven conflict resolution elements. It is important to note that these were not designed to be played tactically with miniatures like D&D was. Fighting Fantasy was always designed to integrate with the telling of its story. It's a different beast. It is a game system designed around the reading of a book. (There is an Advanced Fighting Fantasy RPG. I have read it, but never attempted to bring it to the table. Maybe I should change that.)

Troika's design was inspired by and based on Fighting Fantasy, the gamebooks and system that its authors enjoyed growing up. Longshot City, in turn, is based on Troika. I have not played or even read Troika. Its tagline is: The Science Fantasy RPG. I should probably check it out sometime, but it doesn't seem that familiarity with Troika is required to play and enjoy Longshot City.

The resolution mechanic in Longshot City looks very simple and straightforward. Roll 2d6 and hope to get a result that is equal to or less than your total skill value. So, it's a roll under system that uses six-sided dice. Opposed rolls are different. Here both parties roll, add their total skill values, and the high roll wins. Again, really simple. Combat uses opposed rolls. Most everything else is roll-under. 

Speaking of combat, attack and damage rolls are separate. Damage is rolled on 1d6 where a number is then selected from an array. A knife, for example, shows a damage array of 2,2,2,2,4,8,10. If you roll a three with a knife, you choose the third position from the array inflicting 2 damage. If you have bonuses to your damage roll, then it's possible to roll higher than a 6. If this happens, any value over 6 results in 10 damage with the knife. The rules feel pretty routine and grounded in the old-school, but one that stood out to me was the rules for inventory. 

Every player can carry 12 things. More than that and you start to suffer penalties. But, that's not the cool part. The cool part is that when you need to pull something from your pack or purse or pockets or whatever and you are under time constraints (like in combat) then you roll 2d6 and must roll equal to or higher than the object's position in your pack. This makes ordering positions in your inventory very important. Need to be a quick draw with your gun? Better list your gun first in your inventory. (I thought that this was cool.)

The rules for Longshot City look good. They look like they could be easily managed at my table, but they aren't the part of this book that stood out the most. What really grabbed my attention was the myriad of charts and tables used in character creation. All characters are meant to be created randomly and the variety and quirky charm of these selections promises to produce a game with a very different feel than anything that I have played before.

Speaking of charts and tables, I want to make special mention of the "Knockout Table." Most games in the old-school are pretty deadly with a strict "if you are out of HP, then you are dead" policy. I imagine this might be true of Fighting Fantasy as well, but that generally doesn't feel like the way it's done in the comics. Longshot City manages to walk this line by adding something called the Knockout Table.

The Knockout Table ensures that falling in combat has some kind of serious consequences, but death is not always (or even usually) one of them. These results are so true to the spirit of the genre of comic books that I might use this table even if I end up playing a different superhero RPG. It's such an awesome table, I'm just going to share it here.

My physical hardcover book is beautiful. Its dimensions are 7.25 x 10 inches, which is larger than a zine but smaller than most standard RPG books. It comes in at around 75 pages, and for presentation I give it a 10 out of 10. As for all the great character creation tables, I have decided that the best way to show those off is to create a character step by step, which I will do in part 2 of my review on Monday.

Beer Can Fourth of July

Today is July 4th. This is observed in the United States as our country's Independence Day. This is not something that I generally choose to celebrate. I don't like the heat, or crowds, or loud noises. Independence Day is probably my least favorite of the holidays, but the movie with Will Smith and Bill Pullman was good. 

I don't really believe in national borders. I guess it's indicative of growing up engrossed in a fantasy existence. I like the idea that everyone in the world deserves the same opportunities regardless of the accident of their birth, whether it's their nationality, their race, or their gender. As the barriers to communication continue to erode thanks to technology, I like to imagine that we are heading towards a united world. I like the dream that Gene Roddenberry shares in his vision of the future.

I don't support recent events undertaken in the name of patriotism. I don't believe in building walls to keep others out or in storming our capital to protest the peaceful transfer of power. I am grateful for the opportunities that being an American has given me, but I want everyone in the world to have those same opportunities. Shoring up our borders is never going to get us there.

  

  

I do have one 4th of July story from my childhood. It's short, but I have often recalled it, because it speaks to the distinct personalities of myself and my two sisters. It's a story that I call:

  

Beer Can Fourth of July

It was July 4, 1975. I was 9 and about to turn 10. My sister Sally was 8, and my sister Karla was 5. Mom and Chuck were working in the role of tavern keepers, watching over and running a tavern for the owner. Literally watching "over," as part of the arrangement allowed us to live in the apartment above the tavern.

Mom and Chuck had worked late that night as one does when running a tavern, and they were asleep. We, being children who had not yet achieved our hibernating teen years were up and about. We knew better than to wake Mom and Chuck. So, we whispered and played quietly. This didn't last too long. Being quiet was boring. We needed to go outside. 

Going outside meant sneaking downstairs into the tavern, through the back storeroom and out into a fenced in backyard that was really more of a weed filled alley than a yard. That's what we did. First we reveled in the novelty of being alone in the tavern during the day. We played with the pool table. We stole and shared a Slim Jim from a big barrel of the things. (Why we did that, I can't say. Those things are awful!)

  

  

We did eventually make it outside through the storeroom. Sally stole a can of warm Coke from the storeroom because the salty Slim Jim had made her thirsty. We must have been careless with the Coke, because when she popped the top, it fizzed and a stream of Coke shot into the air. I would have thought that she would have been upset over the wasted Coke, but instead she was overjoyed.

"It's fireworks!" She exclaimed.

Karla chimed in, "Yay! Fireworks!" (I don't think she even knew what they were.)

That was it. The game was afoot and high jinks were about to ensue. We rushed back into the storeroom and, I went to grab a case of Coke, so that we could drag it outside.

"No!" Sally objected, "Don't waste the soda."

Right! Sally was always thinking ahead. We grabbed a case of beer instead. We didn't care about the beer. In fact, in our minds using the beer in this fashion would leave Chuck with less beer to drink, and we liked Chuck when he drank less. It seemed like a win win.

We took turns shaking up beer cans and "exploding" them into the air creating our own fireworks. 

We watched in sublime rapture as can after can of beer shot its glistening, fizzy, amber payload into the sky over our heads, sparkling in the bright morning sun! Then raining glistening drops of golden beer sparks all around us.

It was glorious! 

To this day, it is the best fireworks display I have ever seen.

In the end, I believe that we shook up and shot into the air, a case and a half of beer. What did we do with the cans? Nothing. We just left them laying all over the ground in the back alley. As the sun began to rise higher in the morning sky and noon approached, we were smart enough to sneak back to our rooms and play quietly like nothing happened.

Then of course, the door to our room opened and Mom and Chuck were there. Here is the part of the story that I always remember because what happened next was just so … "us."

"Do you want to tell me about the beer cans?" Chuck asked with a sort of calm that said that we were really in trouble.

I knew that we were caught, and suddenly became aware that what we had done was probably wrong. Funny that this never occurred to me during the beerworks display.

I hung my head in shame, silently. It was all I could do.

Sally, who was and still is the most cool headed human being that I have ever met, looked Chuck straight in the eye and said, "What beer cans?"

Karla, only five, had not honed her survival instincts just yet, but she wanted to be helpful. So, she looked to Sally and said, "You know…"

Thinking back on it now, I'm sure that we smelled like a brewery. 

There was no avoiding the consequences. We took our lumps, and we had to pick up the cans. It didn't matter. We had won. 

We had our very own fireworks show, and we got away with a little something extra in the process.

Because, you see ... they never did find out about the Slim Jim.

Tired of Dungeons and Dragons

I've been playing Role-Playing Games for over 40 years. Not just casually. I have played and continued to play these games on a regular basis during every bit of that time. My friendships are largely centered around the activity of role-playing games. This blog was created to give me a place to "think out loud" about my own RPG designs. I wrote in my memoir about first playing D&D and the impact that it had on my life at the time. That impact remains.

RPGs led to board games. Those too impact my life. They are an important way that my wife and I can interact and connect. I am fairly certain that I wouldn't be so engrossed in the world of board games if I hadn't first discovered and immersed myself in RPGs. I have made a few friends here in Michigan. I made those friends while playing Dungeons and Dragons. I will be playing Dungeons and Dragons this Saturday.

I need to "level up" my character. Currently, I have one level of Fighter and one level of Druid. Fighter and Druid are character classes. These help to define what your character can do. I have two of them because I can't make up my mind. That's a problem with me. I always want something different. We have so many board games because I love playing different games. I like exploring new mechanisms in different combinations.

That's kind of a problem when it comes to RPGs. The board game hobby seems to be driven by a thing people like to call, "The Cult of the New." It seems like the term is used as a negative one by those people who have been playing board games for a lot longer than I have. It refers to a preference for the newest shiniest game on the store shelf. I don't see this as a bad thing. It means that people are always trying new games.

In the RPG world, there are plenty of new games. The problem is that people don't play them. The RPG groups in Muskegon mostly play D&D. Those that don't struggle with low attendance. Humorously, the "Cult of the New" vs "Cult of the Old" debate also exists in the RPG hobby, but it's about different versions of Dungeons and Dragons. The new "5E" (5th Edition, the latest version of D&D) versus the old "OSR" (Old School Rules, versions of D&D that are written to emulate older out of print versions of D&D.)

The RPG hobby can be about so much more than different ways to play Dungeons and Dragons. There are many other RPG games that have been written and could be played by an enterprising RPG group. I've reviewed a few. The thing is, when I step into the local public game groups, those games aren't being played. One of my friends is super excited about a new game coming out called DC20. It's really just another company publishing their own version of Dungeons and Dragons.

There's as much diversity in the RPG industry as in the board game industry, but not in its player base. How is that possible? Well, in the RPG hobby usually a new game book is purchased by the person who will be the Game Master. A Game Master is someone who hosts the game. That person is usually someone like me. They are someone who likes creating worlds and imagining all the different things that a game can do at the table. 

Maybe like me, they purchase new and different games, or create them themselves. However, when it comes time to play, if they bring this innovation to the game table, especially in a public forum, they will experience diminishing returns. I mean, low attendance and reduced interest. The greater RPG player base wants to play D&D. This bias is so strong that Hasbro, the publisher of D&D doesn't attend conventions, and doesn't interact with their customer base in any meaningful way. They don't have to.

GMs hope and dream of new ways to play. We are the ones who purchase the products and drive the industry, but in the end, when all is said and done, we buy these games just to read them, not to play them. And this happens a lot. I guarantee that 95% of games purchased on DriveThru RPG are read, but never played.

And people like me, who have been running and playing the same game in the same way for 40 years, continue to do so, because it's the only game in town. In a hobby that should be an abundance of riches, I can look at all the shiny options on the shelf, but I'm only allowed to touch just one.

So, I look at my Fighter/Druid and consider taking my 3rd level in Warlock just to mix things up a bit, because -- because I just don't care about the options that I have. They aren't new. They aren't interesting. They aren't all that different from the options that I had in 1984. D&D's tactical combat isn't fun. Killing monsters isn't fun. Gathering treasure isn't fun. Leveling up my character isn't fun.

… And yet, playing D&D is fun. 

How is that possible? Because role-playing at its core is about pretending with your friends, and I will always enjoy that. I had a blast during our last few games. I will have a blast on Saturday. But, D&D doesn't get the credit for that. The credit belongs firmly in the hands of the RPG process itself. Maybe that's why people don't want to change. Maybe learning new systems distracts from the RPG process. 

I don't know. I do know that I will still be playing RPG games in another 40 years, even if D&D is still the only game in town. 

Pauper's Ladder

I want a board game called, "Pauper's Ladder." A second edition of the game is getting ready to come out in October. I thought about asking Julie to preorder it for my birthday, but I'm afraid that she might feel weird about getting me a birthday present that I won't be able to enjoy for another 3 or 4 months.

  

This isn't a game we can just wait for and then go buy at our local store. It's published by a small independent game company in England. The only way that I will get it is if I preorder from the publisher and pay international shipping. That makes Pauper's Ladder pretty expensive, but I still want it.

Pauper's Ladder is an adventure game. It's a competitive game where players race to achieve objectives in a sort of fantasy over-world environment. This is similar to a game like Talisman, which we used to have but got rid of. Talisman was a good game and we liked it, but we didn't love it. The overall scope of Talisman was a bit too narrow and gameplay just took too long.

  

Pauper's Ladder has a more "sandbox" feel to it, and plays in about half the time of Talisman. These are solid pluses. In addition, a YouTube reviewer that I enjoy called The Dungeon Dive named Pauper's Ladder as his number one adventure game of all time. And, while I was watching a playthrough of the game Julie said, "That looks interesting." Yay!

Julie isn't a fan of fantasy games like I am, but she enjoys some sandbox adventure type games. I'm thinking specifically of Stardew Valley: The Board Game. I actually get some Stardew Valley vibes from Pauper's Ladder, mainly in how charming and approachable it seems. These are big pluses for the game.

  

  

Unlike other adventure games, Pauper's Ladder seems like it will actually fit on our table and be easy enough to set up and tear down. These are huge pluses. There are a lot of adventure games. The market for adventure style games has exploded over the last several years, but almost all of them (and I do mean all of them) are huge table hogs requiring massive amounts of time to set up and hours upon hours to play. 

  

  

Also, they are all campaign games that require a commitment of several game sessions to play. Julie and I play games together and we don't mind the idea of a campaign, but it's nice to be able to just play a game for the experience and then come back to it when we want, rather than feeling like we are being forced to play a game multiple times. Which we have to, with campaign games, because we forget. We are old. We were born in the 1900's.

Pauper's Ladder isn't this. It plays in a single session of just a few hours or less. It has tons of support from the publisher, and tons of fans worldwide despite the limits of its distribution. This said, I do recognize that Pauper's Ladder isn't for everyone. It is very random. You draw cards to see what happens and then react to the draw of the cards. You have little means of mitigation, but the game isn't punishing. If you fail to overcome a challenge or defeat a monster, there are no negative consequences. Your character can't die. You won't gain the positive rewards that you might have hoped for, but you just keep on playing.

  

Pauper's Ladder's board is a large (but not too large) over world map. It's brightly colored and divided into various zones. Each zone represents a kind of terrain. There are mountains and forests and mines and cities and swamps … stuff like that. Each type of zone has a deck of encounter cards that goes with it. When you enter a zone, you can explore it. When you explore a zone, you flip a card and place the card into the zone to show what is there. Each zone holds from two to three cards. If a zone is full, you can't explore any further. You must encounter the things that are already there.

Achieving certain milestones in the game is your goal. There are milestones for completing quests, acquiring skills, battling monsters, gaining treasure and one for slaying a dragon. The first player to achieve 3 of the possible 5 milestones is the winner of the game. This is one of those wander around the board and look for opportunities kinds of games. You have a character that will grow stronger and more capable as you play and every character travels with a bird companion. (Yeah, a BIRD companion. It's THAT cool!)

  

A big part of the fun of adventure games like this is the sense of discovery and the surprise that comes from drawing a new card. That can grow old after a lot of plays, but Pauper's Ladder has an expansion called the Moon Towers that replaces all the decks of encounter cards with new ones and adds new objectives. So, once you have played out the base game, you can start again with a completely new experience. There's also the This Cobbled Isle expansion that adds a new type of encounter area and several new cards that can be played in either the base game or the Moon Towers expansion.

  

  

There's a lot for an adventure game fan like me to be excited about in Pauper's Ladder. I think that its charming look and casual game play will appeal to Julie. I know that the sense of adventure and exploration will appeal to me. This is the kind of immersive game experience that I live for. In the hobby game community people talk about their "grail game." This is a game that they hope to gain, but that seems more like a dream or myth than a reality. Pauper's Ladder is my grail game. It's the board game that I most want to have.

Board Game Hobbyists

Julie and I have around 200 board games in our collection. That feels like a lot. I know that there are collectors and hobbyists out there with a lot more, but for us … it's a lot. We don't play frequently enough to even play all of the games that we have in the course of a year. The cool thing is, we like all the games that we have. There are only a few games now that we are thinking of getting rid of. Every game that we have is a keeper, yet we don't play every game that we have.

  

  

So, why do I want more?

That's an interesting question, and it creates a sort of funny mental tug of war. I often bounce back and forth between, "Let's cull half of our collection." And "Let's buy this awesome new game that I found!"

Julie laughs at me for these obviously conflicting points of view. Not because they exist, but because of how quickly I can switch between them. I believe that I had once suggested culling over half our collection and purchasing a neat looking new game, not within the course of a single conversation, but actually within the taking of a single breath.

I meant both things sincerely. I don't mind clearing the decks. I am a strong proponent of "Out with the old. In with the new." So, yeah. I recognize that we have enough board games, and that we may even have too many board games, but I still want more.

We watch videos on YouTube of people who talk about the board gaming hobby and rate their favorite board games. They talk about and review new games that are coming out. Reviewers often get copies of games many months or even as much as a year or more before the games are available for purchase by the average consumer. Those games that they are still talking about, or the ones we can still remember by the time they reach store shelves are the first ones that Julie and I are likely to buy when we make a trip to our local game store.

It's the learning about and pursuit and purchase and playing of board games, it's all of it put together, that escalates board gaming from a past time into a hobby. Clearly, I spend copious amounts of time, reviewing, ranking, regarding, and reminiscing about our own collection. It's why I wrote nearly 50 blog posts ranking my board game Top 100. (And that was just the most recent ranking frenzy.)

I have a birthday coming this month. I want to go to Zeeland to have lunch at our newly discovered favorite Mexican Restaurant and then go to our friendly local game store to get a new board game. I'm not sure what game I will get. We never know what might be available when we walk through the door. It's another reason that we try to stay informed about what's coming. That way we will recognize something that we might like when we see it.

It's fun. Learning a new game is fun. Finding a favorite game experience is fun. Spending quality time with my wife is fun. Sharing this hobby is fun.