No superhero rpg history list this week; they'll return in two weeks. Today I offer a review of a great new supers rpg, Base Raiders.
AGES OF APOCALYPSES
The Hulk dropped a mountain on them in one campaign. In another they’d aged out and died or been quietly
eliminated by the government. In one campaign their enemies had run the world
for generations, killing them off before they could become public. Another began
with a titanic clash between the two sides at a secret prison complex. My
favorite combined natural disasters and supernatural invasion to vastly reduce
their population.
Killing off heroes is a way of life for supers campaigns.
For some GMs that provides a way to clear the decks and give
the players room to operate. It puts the focus and responsibility on the PCs.
It can also be a way to deal with a campaign world with extensive history and
rich backstory. Instead of inviting buy-in, that detail can instead encourage
player opt out. This cuts across campaign genres. Consider the Wrath of the Immortals in Mystara and the Sundering in the Forgotten
Realms.
Ross Payton’s Base
Raiders is a complete Fate-based superhero game which begins with this
premise. The world has a rich and diverse history of super-powers. Think of Astro City or all of the weirdness
present in either of the Big Two universes. Anything went from alien invasions
to Atlantaen mindworms to replicant robots to masked vigilantes to demon lords.
But that’s over now- as all of the potent and powerful supers of any stripe
vanished in a mysterious incident they call Ragnarok. That’s a solid premise,
but Base Raiders takes it further.
It adds questions of government paranoia, fame seeking, and
a sense of collapse. Most importantly focuses core play on the base raiding of
the title. When those heroes, villains, and other weird beings vanished, they
left behind bases- in some cases dozens of them. These marvels contain secrets,
materials to scavenge, hi-tech toys, and the possibility of new powers. The PCs
are supers- or at least have heightened abilities. They’ve joined together to
raid these bases for various reasons- finding a lost loved one, shutting down a
danger, discovering a cure, locating a source for new magics, finding vast
quantities of filthy loot. They have to fight past traps, failed experiments,
and sentient guardians of all shapes and sizes. But they must do this quietly
for fear of alerting the authorities or competitors. Base Raiders is “Super-Powered Dungeon Crawling” as given in the
subtitle, but that’s not all it is.
Ross Payton sent me a pdf of Base Raiders as a review copy. After spending about fifteen minutes
with it, I went online to buy a printed copy. I wanted a physical copy to flip
through and mark up. I have more pdfs than physical books these days, but I
haven’t made the transition fully. When I hit something with as many cool ideas
and concepts as Base Raiders, I need to work through it fully. Does the game
stand up to that thorough read-through?
PRESENTATION
I’m tackling this review a little differently. Usually I
offer an overview and walk through the sections in order. This time I want to
split things into three areas: what it looks like, how the system works, and
what the setting’s like.
Base Raiders isn’t a small supplement, with 260
standard-size pages. It offers a complete game with both mechanics and setting
well presented. The layout’s cleanly and simply done. It has a nice balance of
white space and you can get through the text easily. It’s a few minor tweaks
away from being excellent. The illustrations range across the spectrum. You
have a few highly detailed pieces, some nice consistent character
illustrations, and then some lazier and more cartoony art. The cover’s a little
busy but it conveys the game’s piece. The Fallout-style
advert pieces sells the idea of a super organization offering Vault-like base
construction. Base Raiders does have a couple of small presentation problems.
Some columns break oddly across pages. That happens in some key reference
spaces which is why I noticed. That rarely interfered with my ability to get
the rules. Overall it works.
SYSTEM MECHANICS
Base Raiders uses the version of Fate, Strange Fate, created for Kerberos
Club (reviewed here). This pre-dates Fate Core and so offers a more complicated
architecture. It feels more like Legends
of Angelerre, The Dresden Files,
or even Stands of Fate. It still isn’t
a complex system by any means, but it does have a lot of moving parts and a more
involved power/skill construction system.
I’m guessing most readers know Fate- a set of system mechanics
which have gone through several versions. Designers have used the basic engine
for many versions, including universal game. Fate has a simple resolution
system with a roll + skill versus a target number. The roll runs from -4 to +4
or -5 to +5 depending on the dice used, with a significant bell curve at zero.
Margin of success generally adds to effect. Aspects are Fate’s other significant
element. Aspects represent qualities on persons, places, or things. It allows
for quick descriptions with mechanical effects. Aspects can be invoked, often
by using the limited resource of Fate points, to gain a reroll, bonus, or to
create an effect in a scene.
Fate veterans will find a game that sticks pretty closely to
the basic concepts. PCs can have a large number of aspects- some of them tied
to their powers. Assessments, Declarations, and Maneuvers all have slightly
different rules. Stress “rolls up” to the next available box. Shifts cause
effects, but there’s no spin rules. The system drops Stunts in favor of the
powers and extras rules. Base Raiders keeps the key elements intact and extends
on them with several new concepts.
The most significant of these is the handling of powers.
These can be represented by Unique or Strange skills. For the most part these
are the same, but the latter covers actual powers. To use them a character must
have a source of powers and each Strange skill must also have a drawback.
Unique skills can represent training or background (like Underworld Networking or
Dark Knight Vigilante). Basically players create Unique and Strange skills by
assembling a set of trappings for the skill. Trappings represent the most basic
uses for skills. Even common skills are defined by these trappings. For example
the basic Melee Weapons skill includes Strike, Strike + Range, Parry, and
Information. Burglary includes Examine, Security, and Information. Players used
to Fate Core’s more universal approach to skills may find this too granular. To
assemble a skill package, players use the skill trappings chart. Related
trappings cost less to add and the system’s smartly done and balanced.
Drawbacks and extras can be used to reduce the point cost. At the cost of
reducing the character’s Fate Point refresh, these skills can be raised in Tier
which increases the effectiveness.
That’s the element perhaps most problematic in Base Raider’s
particular flavor of Fate. Power Tiers change the dice mechanic in play. A
character using an Extraordinary Tier power against a Mundane Tier defense
rolls three Fate dice plus 1d6. A greater shift, say Superhuman against
Mundane, means more dice shifted. That dramatically changes the game. On the
one hand it does simulate the difference between superbeings and humanity. On
the other it creates a kind of arms race. Characters without a single high tier
offense and defense skill will find themselves outclassed quickly. In play it
creates weird situations and imbalances.
I’ve run several times with this dice mechanic and Fate-
both with Base Raiders and with a Scion hack. Players either disliked or
merely tolerated the system both times. I spoke to several of the players to
get their sense of things. In particular the veteran Fate player in the Base Raiders
game thought that the idea was interesting but swung things too wildly. He suggested
a 1d3 or 1d4 might work better. I haven’t tried that solution. I don’t think
the game’s broken- clearly Ross Payton and others have gotten workable and successful
campaigns out of it. The mechanic made sense in Kerberos Club; it offers weirdly
unbalanced PCs who are dangerous to even be near. I’m less certain of it here.
Beyond that Base Raiders offers several interesting mechanics which could easily be borrowed for other Fate games. It
includes Strange Fate’s system for handling collateral damage (a must for a
supers game). Some tiers of trappings add interesting new effects. Players pick
Archetype and Backgrounds which provide examples as well as aspect slots.
Character and team goals have an impact on mechanics and advancement. Some of
the most interesting sub-systems cover power interactions and base building.
The latter especially offers ideas on how players and the GM can
collaboratively craft a new base and plot hooks for the group. There’s a “loot”
system which encourage players to scavenge from the bases they raid in order to
convert them into usable resources.
SETTING MATERIAL
The background, GM material, and sample base make up a
little over half of the book. It might seem overkill to spend so many pages
describing a world only to tear it down, but it really works. The complexity
and crazy detail forms the wreckage out of which this new superhero world will
be built. It offers an interesting new take on balance in such a world and what
happens when that’s completely toppled. GMs and players will find great
material to forge exciting plots and interesting characters. Any superhero
gamer ought to read this. The Build-a-Base concept, how supers organized, the
underground black markets, organized crime’s response- Base Raiders has many
flashes of brilliance.
Two themes run through the rules: the bases of the title and
the idea of self-advancement. The setting offers a logical reason why so many
bases would exist. In some ways it’s more logical than a fantasy world filled
with dungeons. Superbeings with access to nano-contruction devices went wild
crafting labs, prisons, fortresses, and sanctums. And they didn’t stop with a
single facility. The central idea- going into a super base can be done as a
classic dungeon-crawl- works really well. The book describes many kinds of
bases and offers great ideas for the how and why of that. Black marketeers and the
Underground offer PC Base Raiders has the right mix of tension and support. Raid
plots may involve tracking down, researching, and preparing for a raid. The public has an insatiable curiosity about
these secret bases, rival factions want the power which can come from them, and
the authorities want to stop anyone from entering. The PCs themselves may have
many different reasons for breaking in.
That leads to the second theme, the potential power which
bases may offer. The heroes and villains who vanished represented the most
dangerous and powerful beings on the planet. Those remains…not so much. Many
civilians (and potentially many PCs) have begun to hunt for
get-superpowers-quick schemes. From super-soldier formulas to ancient scrolls
to untested armor suits there’s a mania for becoming one of the lucky and
chosen. Imagine the power of the internet harnessed to this kind of obsession.
It makes for an interesting contrast between characters driven by this hunt and
those with more altruistic needs (finding out the secret of Ragnarok, discovering
a cure for a loved one, finding answers about one’s own origin). That’s a great
and playable set of concepts.
Ross Payton brings these ideas together well. While the game
pitches itself as a dungeon-crawler, it doesn’t have to be just that. In fact
that hook overshadows some of the other ideas present. A typical dungeon-based
game would have more in the way of “magic-items,” monsters, and location dressing.
Base Raiders focuses as much on the broader picture. Base raiding could easily
be used as the starter for a longer, more conventional superhero campaign. The
PCs gather together for just a job and instead bond as a group. They learn
secrets in their first few runs, gain new powers, and eventually expand their horizons.
They can become the new paragons in this post-collapse world. The presence of
the bases then offers a ready supply of future villains to fight. I could
easily imagine running a pick up campaign from that starting point.
The example base may be the only weak point of the material.
And even that’s more about what my expectations than the write-up itself.
Payton provides an interesting and dangerous setting in The Zombie Factory
(spoilers: see cover). The five-level dungeon comes complete with maps, traps,
and a dangerous set of foes at the lowest level. There’s discussion of how to
tweak the material and it feels like a useful toolkit. But it doesn’t seem to
work as well as a demo module for a couple of reasons. First the set up assumes
that the players come to the base via a teleporter from another base they’ve
already raided. That detail’s key to the layout and trap of the setting. So you
either have to handwave that or come up with another base for the group to go
through first. Second the base has a semi-omnipotent defense AI who essentially
blackmails the PCs into carrying out its wishes. That’s not a great way to
start things out. Both times I ran the scenario I made major modification to
remove those issues. The Zombie Factory’s a great base, but works better as a
later campaign element. I’d like to see a demo module which stresses the cool
aspects of base raiding and perhaps even the heroic elements. The players have
to get into a base to stop something bad from happening. At the same time
another group has also broken in. I’d like to hook the players with the fun and
dungeon-crawly bits of the setting before bringing the hammer down. The book
could also use some simple and balanced pre-gen characters representing
archetypes. The example characters given vary in power level and a few have
weirdly open power sets. That means GMs will have to tweak them to make a good
team.
OVERALL
I really love Base Raiders conceptually. The world’s smart,
interesting, and well presented. I’m a fan of superhero rpgs and I’ve been
assembling my history lists of the genre. That means I’ve gone through many
setting sourcebooks from default classic worlds of big ticket games to the
smaller and edgier backgrounds niche smaller presses offer. If I’m lucky, I’ll
find a character concept or plot I want to lift. Base Raiders presents one of
the few supers settings I’d want to play out wholesale. Each chapter offers
multiple new ideas. This is one of the most interesting and game-inspiring
superhero rpgs I’ve read in a long time.
But I’m probably not going to use the system. I might tweak
it or adapt some of the elements for our house homebrew. The introduction
indicates that conversion guidelines for Savage Worlds, Mutants & Masterminds,
and Wild Talents will be available on the website by the end of 2013. I’m
really looking forward to those. I’d love to see stronger demo module and some
balanced pre-gen characters for play. Beyond that this setting demands another
sourcebook offering even more material and ideas. For example, Payton could assemble
a set of generators for random base creation. Imagine something like Frog God
Games’ awesome Tome of Adventure Design, but tuned to superheroes.
Who should buy this? Anyone interested in superhero games-
regardless of system. GMs will find much to love here. The material here could
at the very least offer a great new set of plots and arcs for any supers
campaign. I’d also recommend this to Fate hackers. Payton plays with the
Strange Fate system and adds some interesting new tweaks and sub-systems. It isn’t
Fate Core, but if you like playing around with the nuts and bolts of the
system, you will find some cool ideas here. It moves away from a streamlined
stunt & aspect approach I’ve seen people online present or even the
shopping list structure of Icons. Finally anyone who enjoys novel world-building
in an rpg book.
I’ve posted a couple of Actual Play sessions of Base
Raiders. Both use a heavily modified version of the base given in the book.
This one has video and audio and uses the Base Raiders system as is.
This one is audio only and uses a version of Base Raiders adapted to our homebrew Action Cards system.
tl/dr: buy it.
