Monday, 28 May 2012

Sleeper RPG: Playtest @ Birmingham Games Expo 2012 (Updated)


Introduction


[30 May - Added scans of documents

13 June - Added more scans of missing characters. Thanks Anna :) ]

I turned up for my first ever games expo excitedly on Friday morning to pick up my tickets and rush off to play an unreleased RPG game called Sleeper.  A disaster occurred, they could not find my tickets. Within minutes someone introduced himself as Tony and whisked me away and sorted me out with tickets then virtually escorted me across the road for the game.

Thanks Tony, disaster to superb customer experience in minutes.

Sleeper RPG: Before The Game


UK Games Expo: Game Link - http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/game.php?id=RPG37

Having never played a game at an expo before I thought I would try something new. The write up above looked quite intriguing and the briefest of scans of the Death Spiral website helped.

A bald gentleman introduced himself as Ben Counter, freelance author and one of the creators of the game, and said he would be running the session.

After a few minutes I figured out where I knew the name from, minus ten points for me.

The Famous Ben Counter

Sleeper RPG: Introduction


Ben introduced the general game concept. (from the Site)
Sleeper is a roleplaying game of Cold War relics and secret wars. It pits your character’s superhuman powers and elite training against the deadliest relics of the Cold War. The game combines military action, ultramodern gear, science fiction horror and the secret history of the twentieth century in deadly and thrilling battle for the survival of the world. During the darkest days of that conflict, the superpowers came to believe that nuclear war was a likely event. So they took their biggest secrets – the artificially enhanced agents and soldiers, possessing superhuman powers and the highest levels of training – and buried them in secret facilities from which they would wake when nuclear war had finished. These sleepers would then help found the post-nuclear world according to the principles of the regimes that created them.

I had a feeling of Cold City, Hot War meets military action movie. We had six pre gen characters to choose from. I selected Gravedigger as he was frankly the best. A teleporting KGB sniper agent. When I played him he developed a strange liking for the hot tub, I don't really know why.


Gravedigger


Sleeper RPG: The Game


The scenario was set up to get us working together and into the way of the game fairly quickly. Our team AFBreaker (Toby), Orange Dart (Chris), Blue Saviour (Jinnie) and myself were tasked by our masters to go and extract an industrialist from him large mansion in the middle of nowhere.

All our characters were highly trained killing machines with some form of 'super power'. Gravedigger could teleport, fairly accurately, AFBreaker could suggest things to people, Orange Dart could regenerate damage and Blue Saviour could create matter from nothing.

Ben had draped a large map across the table and indicated where we were starting. A-ha! I thought large square gridded map this is like D&D4E.



Sleeper RPG In Play


After noticing two dead bodies floating in the swimming pool our crack team of hardened tough people realised that we were heading into a total Clusterfluff. Spotting a neo nazi with a giant german accented dog indicated AFBreaker would probably be attacked the most, this turned out to be correct.

The scenario involved quite a lot of combat and a good few opportunities to try out our other non-killing skills then more combat. Ben ran the scenario really well and the whole thing ran fairly smoothly from out perspective.

The Game System


Everything that follow is based on my fickle memories of a single game of a prototype of the system. They are hoping to have the game ready for release in time for the games expo in 2013. The comments are just an expression of my opinion and should not be considered a formal review.

The good news is I quite enjoyed the system once I got used to it, which took about 20 to 30 minutes.  The system to me felt like a mix between D&D4E and Savage Worlds. To me it had much of the strategic miniatures based nature of D&D but ran quite a bit quicker and all the feats and powers were replaced with a single ability that could be used virtually at will. The Savage Worlds feeling came from the use of different dice depending on skill level (d10 for normal skills, d12 for trained skills) and the speed of the combat.

There was something else as well. Ben stated that X-Com was part of the inspiration which completed the picture nicely.

I also thought there was a general atmosphere of Mythos style foreboding but I see tentacles everywhere.

Skill use could be combined so the character with the best skill could boost their roll with the help of others, when possible.

So at one point Gravedigger tried to calm down a terrified maid after appearing from nowhere in front of her. A persuasion skill then, which I was not trained at (an empty Sleeper RPG - Aboutcircle) based on nerve ( which I had 2 in) I had to roll d10 + 2 vs a Target Number set by Ben. Despite my best kindly Russian teleporting sniper impersonation:
"Be calm Fraulein! Stop crying!" (clumsy pat)

I failed the roll and she was saved from slipping into a catatonic state by the suggestive power of AFBreaker.

Later on I had the chance to shoot stuff, with my sniper rifle! I was trained in the sniper rifle (filled in circle) and had a base of 4 for all my shooting skills. Therefore a roll of d12 + 4. Plus bonuses for calling a shot and having a sniper scope.  Target Number was 8 modified by the expected kind of things.

If people got hit and the damage penetrated their armour wounds were taken. IIRC if the damage was even Special Damage results could happen. Dropping weapons, becoming immobilised, dazed. Damage and status effects were indicated by the use of coloured tiles placed underneath the character or NPC marker. It was quite enjoyable watching the markers pile up under an NPC who was being whaled upon.

The trickiest part with the skills was knowing when to roll a d10 and when to use a d12.

We mostly told Ben what we wanted to do and he told us if there were particular movement penalties or effects and told us what to roll.  This made it quite nippy. Instead of scouring a character sheet for the best skill, power, feat or whatever for each round you could just say I jump through the window and spray the baddies with bullets while teleporting their trousers off. The system seemed to make it quite easy.

Fate points could be use to  reroll dice or boost dice rolls. We had three fate points for the session and were given two temporary fate points for the encounter. As the encounter and the session were effectively one and the same this gave us five fate points each. I think I used to of help to help with fluffed rolls. They did help out characters feel a bit more like awesome action heroes.

I did actually try to teleport off a baddies trousers just for fun but it went awry. For some reason I never used a fate point.

Artwork


The artwork I saw was really very good and caught the style of the game perfectly. I believe there is more information here. His deviantart page is here.

What Happens Next


The scenario ended with a satisfying conclusion. We got through relatively unscathed which I put down to our exemplary team work and some lucky dice rolls, helped out by the the use of Fate Points for rerolls.

Ben said experience points were probably not going to be used for character progression. Instead they would gain resources through playing the game. Prototype weapons could be taken and used in a later session. teachers could be rescued to improve skills. Gold could be taken from the vault of a villain and used ... the rewards would be greater for those that investigate and explore and role play.  Probably a bit like Traveller.

Summary: Not A Review


I am not a great fan of miniature based games, nor a huge fan of D&D4E which could have been improved by calling it D&D Tactics. I do quite enjoy Savage Worlds though.

Despite what I have just written above I really enjoyed this. The characters are all combat veterans  living in a changed world where all they have to go on is their training. It makes sense they would be used in military style operations and the miniatures system helps keep the combat flowing smoothly. For smaller skirmishes and grunt fight the miniatures would be entirely optional giving more time to progress through a lengthy scenario rather just just getting through a fight in a night.

The system worked quite well and we all managed to pick up the general principles fairly quickly. The general rule of roll high against a Target Number seemed to be consistently applied throughout. Ben sang the praises of the maths genius who was making sure it was worked and balanced. Rolling 1 just caused a normal failure for most non-power related skills.

The skills seem to cover a wide variety of things with broad sweeps. I have just noticed Esoteric which looks interesting. Maybe there will be tentacles?

I am guessing character creation is a points based affair. IIRC Ben said that normal starting characters do not start as trained (d12) in any particular skill. I am not sure how experienced our team were meant to be.

The high concept of empowered cold warriors fighting to save the modern world from horrors from history is quite good and could be taken in many directions by a GM. It is easy to imagine a mix of sessions involving mass combat, stealthy assassinations, dealing with interpersonal conflicts, voyages of discovery, secrets of the past being revealed and so on. Something for everyone really.

What they have already is a very workable system I look forward to seeing what they have in a years time if I am lucky enough to make it to the next expo.

If there are any specific questions about anything let me know. I am planning on scanning and uploading the documents from the game when I get access to a scanner :)

Scans

AFBreaker Background
AFBreaker Character Sheet

Billhook Background
Billhook Character Sheet




Links


UK Games Expo: Game Link - http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/game.php?id=RPG37
Company - http://deathspiral.co.uk/sleeper/

Ben Counter - http://www.blacklibrary.com/Authors/Ben-Counter.html, https://twitter.com/#!/bencounter