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Old 11-14-2014, 01:17 AM   #11
Agemegos
 
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Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
Default Re: Dracula Dosier Kickstarter

Quote:
Originally Posted by lachimba View Post
Im on the fence about picking up Double Tap and the Quartet or not. Can any tip me towards either option?
I'm really pleased with Double Tap. It provides detailed treatments of a lot of abilities that got a bit rushed in the original book. There are explanations of under-explained skills, concrete, specific, illuminating examples of how investigative abilities might relate to vampires, conspiracies, and vampire conspiracies, example spend benefits for Investigate abilities, example clues, example Tactical-Fact-Finding benefits. General abilities that were a bit neglected get new Cherries and Thriller Manoeuvres so that coverage is a bit more even. There and lots and lots of examples of little bits of movie-spy tricks and improvised tradecraft and things you need to know to improvise like Michael Westen.

There's a bunch of good advice to players, the Cartagena Rules, which serve as a bit of an antidote to the Bucharest Rules.

There are descriptions and game rules for a lot of different bits of equipment from Mission Impossible face masks to special ammunition and grenade launchers. There are Thriller-grade rule systems to bring digital intrusion, infiltration, surveillance, and manhunts up to the same standing that chases and fighting have in the basic rules.

In the "Director's Companion":
• "Cameos" are 26 statted NPCs from "Arms Dealer" to "Vampire-enthralled goth", with goals and characterisation notes to prevent the trope from becoming a cliché, for a harried GM to reach for when their mind has gone blank.
• "Establishing shots" are quick descriptions of 26 generic thriller locations from a 24-hour seedy diner to an urban traffic jam. Each has a paragragh descriptive detail plus example "extras and cameos", or clues you might find in each one, hints on how to use the location in a chase or in a fight, and rules effects for the sorts of things PCs might do there, such as spill the molten steel in a foundry.
• "Monsters" includes two new monstrous powers and four more descibed and statted monsters.
• "Stories" has some useful advice on the dynamics of stories about conspiracies getting pulled apart, and introduced the "Suspyramid", a diagrammed algorithm for stories of a disintegrating node in a Conspyramid.
• There's a page of advice and suggested rules changes for running a one-on-one game with a solitary Agents.
• The Victorian Era, WWII, and the Cold War are described as alternative eras, with suggested rules changes.
• There are several pages of reference sheets: a summary of Cherries, a summary of Vampire Powers, a summary of the new Thriller Combat options. And an index.

I reckon that Double Tap is something that you won't want to be without if you plan to do more that get your toes wet with NBA.


Zalozhniy Quartet is a prepared short campaign consisting of a villainous organisation, a bunch of NPCs, a Conspyramid for the conspiracy they are in, a grand scheme that has to be stopped, adaption notes for Supernatural, Damned, Alien, and Mutant vampires, and four "operations". Each Operation has a "eyes only briefing for the Director" several ways in, NPCs, a handful of scenes — up to a dozen — that might come about in various ways depending on what the PCs do, and number of ways out, many of them leading to other operations in the set. The whole things is set up so that you can draw the PCs into the campaign by running any operation first, thus getting a way in in Baghdad, a way in in Odessa, a way in Vienna, a way in in Zurich, and I think a way in in Beirut. It's monstrously clever, and meticulously laid out, but running prepared adventures is not a thing I do. I've read this one fairly carefully, and I don't understand how a group of PCs generated according to the rules could make it through. But then I've had little practice and less success at running NBA and I'm probably missing something.

Zalohniy Quartet is for if you don't want to design your own conspiracy or if you don't want to improvise a campaign as you GM. You can certainly pillage it for bits of content — I used its description of Odessa — but it doesn't contain tools that you will use to run your own games.
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Last edited by Agemegos; 11-15-2014 at 11:08 PM.
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