Originally Posted by puška
About 2016-17, we played Mutant Year Zero the first time and, that evening, I thought: this'd make a great system for T2k.
About a year later, our group adapted the Year Zero engine to do just that. It was fun for a while, until it wasn't. The d6 gimmick dice—nuke symbol on 6s, biohazard sign on 1s) worked well to quickly discover exposure to radiation and/or biologicals (we still use this method in our 1e-homebrewed campaign).
I own most of Free League's games. And I can say they all look fantastic. The settings are mostly well-drawn and feel alive within their own world. On the other tentacle, there's Alien. I eagerly grabbed it when announced, being a Giger fan and loving the original film, but within a couple hours of playing it, well... as said somewhere above in this thread, the rules are a terrible hot mess some creature left on the sidewalk.
Free League does hexcrawls well (Forbidden Lands & Mutant) because of their random tables and intentionally quick-paced game. But there is a LOT of handwaving. And limited skills that sometimes have to be sussed through because they really don't cover much in the way of skills the way skills-based games do (most of their games have only 12 skills listed). There's a lot of attribute (only 4 attributes) checks in place of a particular skill (is that a Wits skill or an Empathy skill?). Many character/game situations that arise frequently are ignored by the rules, and especially with FL's initial printings, that forego actual proofreading at the expense of initial buyers. The inside cover of Alien has a typo in the name of Weyland-Yutani (the first of at least several dozen) and they character cards feature a Pilot who doesn't have Piloting skill. Fixable errors, for sure, but ones that should have been caught long before the ms. was sent to print. Their proprietary dice—gimmicky and uh, cool—were initially manufactured by Q-Workshop, but for Alien and after, mass produced sticky plastic chunks from Chinese labor. Which would be quite ironical given that the game is going to be published in Poland (Q-Workshop is a Polish company, for those who didn't know).
The other downside (from this perspective) to them as a company, is they tend to cater to the loudest fans (let's make Symbaroum with D&D ruleset, because ... MONEY!), who for T2k, are already shouting for crossovers with Alien or Tales from the Loop. Y'know, cuz aliens and mechanized armor robots are cool in "gritty, realistic" WWIII. (Please, Mr Miller, don't have signed a license deal that allows for crossovers.)
It will have great art. It will probably have great atmosphere.
It probably will not have detailed accurate military orders, despite their PR assurance that military folks have advised them on it. It will probably not have rules that are friendly to detail-oriented/realism-favoring players.
On the fence about it's value with fluff. Highly doubtful the crunch will offer satisfying bites.
|