Ray read Stay Frosty.
Ray read Stay Frosty.
Originally shared by Ray Otus
2.2 Stay Frosty by Casey Garske
2017, 34 pages, RPG - sci-fi, military, bug hunt
(The numbering – I'm numbering my RPG reads as 2.x until I hit about 250 pages, at which point I will count them as "a" book and start a new count.)
Oh, hell yeah. This is a fun little traditional RPG based on The Black Hack, but inverted so that roll ≥ stat is good. (TBH used roll ≤ stat.) You play sci-fi soldiers in high stakes situations.
The game covers classes, ranks, gear, skills, crit miss/hit tables, and even vehicles. It's heavily focused on combat, but that makes sense. Most of it is predictable, but fun and good. So what's different/interesting?
For one thing, damage spills into attribute damage, which heals more slowly and affects rolls. That seems very smart to me. And in case you were wondering, yes there are psykers. (Yay!)
The other unexpected mechanic gives the game its name. Characters have a meter from 1-6 that measures the Tension and how Frosty they are. For the most part, higher Tension means the character is "frostier" (if that's a word) and gets various mechanical bonuses. The Tension is affected by a number of things, but most commonly the environment. Adventures are point-to-point affairs and you roll when you move from one node to another. A common result is the escalation of Tension. Sometimes, though, the Tension blows! And when it does, it's not so great to be ice cold; you can take damage = Tension x Level!
It looks like a lot of things mess with Tension and I'm left wondering whether it will become tedious as it jumps up and down like a yoyo. But honestly, it just looks like great fun, so I hope it's not as volatile as it looks, or that the volatile nature of it never gets old. If it's balanced right, it should be a really great pacing mechanic for sessions.
The rules are written in a brutally efficient and humorous style that I love, even if the layout and art is a little sub-par. (The art is sub-par, and yet it has a fun energy to it, so I can totally forgive that. And hell, it's still lightyears better than the original whitebook D&D art.)
The game is $5 in PDF. I buy a lot of PDFs and frequently after buying them I glance through them once and then throw them into an archive folder, where I will probably never look at them again. IOW, buyer's remorse sets in because I've wasted another fiver on a poorly-written, derivative RPG. NOT SO WITH STAY FROSTY. I'm happy to have this one. It's clever. It's sharp. It has a zine-like energy that I dig. It feels complete where it needs to be and appropriately hand-waives shit that doesn't matter. It takes a pretty fresh path over some very well-trodden ground. I definitely want to give it a shot at the table.
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/206742/Stay-Frosty
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/206742/Stay-Frosty
Originally shared by Ray Otus
2.2 Stay Frosty by Casey Garske
2017, 34 pages, RPG - sci-fi, military, bug hunt
(The numbering – I'm numbering my RPG reads as 2.x until I hit about 250 pages, at which point I will count them as "a" book and start a new count.)
Oh, hell yeah. This is a fun little traditional RPG based on The Black Hack, but inverted so that roll ≥ stat is good. (TBH used roll ≤ stat.) You play sci-fi soldiers in high stakes situations.
The game covers classes, ranks, gear, skills, crit miss/hit tables, and even vehicles. It's heavily focused on combat, but that makes sense. Most of it is predictable, but fun and good. So what's different/interesting?
For one thing, damage spills into attribute damage, which heals more slowly and affects rolls. That seems very smart to me. And in case you were wondering, yes there are psykers. (Yay!)
The other unexpected mechanic gives the game its name. Characters have a meter from 1-6 that measures the Tension and how Frosty they are. For the most part, higher Tension means the character is "frostier" (if that's a word) and gets various mechanical bonuses. The Tension is affected by a number of things, but most commonly the environment. Adventures are point-to-point affairs and you roll when you move from one node to another. A common result is the escalation of Tension. Sometimes, though, the Tension blows! And when it does, it's not so great to be ice cold; you can take damage = Tension x Level!
It looks like a lot of things mess with Tension and I'm left wondering whether it will become tedious as it jumps up and down like a yoyo. But honestly, it just looks like great fun, so I hope it's not as volatile as it looks, or that the volatile nature of it never gets old. If it's balanced right, it should be a really great pacing mechanic for sessions.
The rules are written in a brutally efficient and humorous style that I love, even if the layout and art is a little sub-par. (The art is sub-par, and yet it has a fun energy to it, so I can totally forgive that. And hell, it's still lightyears better than the original whitebook D&D art.)
The game is $5 in PDF. I buy a lot of PDFs and frequently after buying them I glance through them once and then throw them into an archive folder, where I will probably never look at them again. IOW, buyer's remorse sets in because I've wasted another fiver on a poorly-written, derivative RPG. NOT SO WITH STAY FROSTY. I'm happy to have this one. It's clever. It's sharp. It has a zine-like energy that I dig. It feels complete where it needs to be and appropriately hand-waives shit that doesn't matter. It takes a pretty fresh path over some very well-trodden ground. I definitely want to give it a shot at the table.
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/206742/Stay-Frosty
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/206742/Stay-Frosty
This really sounds great! Is there a PoD-option?
ReplyDeleteThat's a really nice review.
ReplyDeleteJens D. it's on Lulu.
Nice! I thought I saw this flickering across my stream a couple of times ... This is on THE LIST now :)
ReplyDeleteDefinitely worth having in print.
ReplyDelete