Last issue I promised you some previews of some of the newer games out there, so, as they're a bit long, I'll get to it forthwith: Odyssey - A First Look Odyssey is the third offering from Gamer's Den, and from advance indications, it looks to be the one with the widest appeal. At the current time, the game has not been released commercially -- it's in the final turns of its stage II playtest, but as the rules have firmed up nicely and the program bugs become almost nonexistent, I would expect games to open up for the general public within a couple of months at most. Odyssey is best described as a fantasy power game, and is most closely related in flavor and scope to Legends (if one must make such a comparison). It is designed to accommodate the ability to create multiple modules, so that while the basic rules structure stays the same, the game world, victory conditions, troop types, spells, and items can radically change. Thus, if one likes the basic system, there's an inherent replayability built into the game. The first (playtest) module is called Hero's Quest, and is a basic free-for-all power game with no pre-built alliances or factions. You can ally with others in the game, but there are no formal factions to join. Victory is contingent on controlling a certain number of important cities and guilds - something that looks likely to take more than a few turns! Thus, while the game is technically closed-ended, its length is such that it can almost be treated as open-ended while one gets the hang of the system. Players have the ability to control a fairly large number of "pieces" in the game - pieces being a catch-all term for the actual units that are manipulated: characters, parties, armies, population centers, and guilds. All of these things (except guilds) may be purchased during the game setup phase, and more may be recruited, conquered, or influenced during the course of the game. Characters and Parties While characters are in many ways the focal point of the game, they do not have to be the player's primary units. Armies and Population Centers may all carry out orders completely independent of characters, including their owning characters. The makeup of a character is controlled by a host of statistics. There are of course the race and sex of the character, the former being limited by the particular module one is playing in. Hero's Quest (HQ from here out) gives one a lot of leeway in this, with no fewer than nine different races to choose from, each with their own base sta- ttstics. Each character must choose a class, or profession from the list allowed by the module. These professions are typical fantasy ones such as Fighter, Scout, and Warlock. For the expenditure of some additional setup points, characters may be dual classed, and receive the appropriate name: a Warlock/Priest combination is known as a Justicar, while a Druid/Commander is called a Warden, for example. Triple classes are possible (e.g. the Warlord is a Commander/Fighter/Scout), but cannot be chosen on setup. Next comes the inevitable list of numbers, in this case divided into four sections : Abilities, Attributes, Affinities, and Other. Attributes range in value from 1-100, and are the basic physical and mental makeup of the character, such as strength, intellect, and luck. Attributes range from 0-10,000 and may best be described as broad areas of knowledge, such as arcane, leadership, and tactics. Affinities range from -10,000 to +10,000, and govern the characters ties with the magical influences of the world : thermal, force, and toxin for example. Finally, all the other relevant numerical stats are grouped into Other - defense levels, hit points, number of actions allowed, glory and prestige gained, etc. To complete the character definition, there are spaces for possessions (equipped or unequipped), a familiar, special titles gained, and any magical or special status that may be held (clairvoyant for example, or spectre). Note that all of these numerical stats can and will increase during the game, either as a result of actions taken or by the direct application of experience points to the score in question. All characters must be in a party at all times. The party may itself be inside of an army, guild or population center, but it must exist as a separate entity. Parties only have Affinities and combat modifiers as stats, and these are typically only used in the event of hostile actions of some type. Players are limited in the total number of parties and characters that they may control at any one time, but this number is typically fairly large (20 of each are allowed in HQ). Armies Up to 20 army command may be controlled at any one time as well, not including garrisons (a special non-moving army command that is fixed to a particular population center). The actual troop types available are fixed by the module, but in any event they have almost as wide a range of stats as do the characters. There are 23 separate statistics for each troop type, including such things as ranged hit probability, survivability, movement rate, and melee defense. Characters may train troops from population centers (if they are of the correct class and experience) or summon troops magically (wind gliders, skeletons, and the like), and some population centers have the ability to produce certain troop types on their own - including some the player didn't know about initially! There is for arranging your troops on the field of battle, as well as for special contingencies that may occur during the battle. All things considered, there's plenty here to keep the average armchair general happy for several hours each turn. Population Centers and Guilds Population Centers range in size from tiny hamlets to huge capitals, and defenses may range from none at all to mighty citadels. Depending on size, each population center has a certain number of actions it may perform each turn, ranging from growth to commerce to regional scouting. All population centers have a guard rating (i.e. how hard it is to perform covert actions such as theft or sabotage against it) and Affinities ratings, to determine how susceptible it is to magical influences. Further, each is rated for wealth, morale, recruiting ability, divinity worshipped, primary racial components, gold in treasury, and several other factors. Owning population centers are very important, as they provide not only gold and military recruits for your position, but also glory (and thus, prestige) for the owning character. Guilds are entities that are contained within population centers that have specific functions and power levels. Guilds perform specific functions (for those that can afford their fees!) such as religious conversions or resurrections (for Church guilds) to the teaching of new spells (for Arcane guilds). Guilds tend to be rare and powerful, and are items to be coveted by players! In addition to all of the above, there are huge numbers of things I haven't yet touched on - special markers scattered about that provide quests, or rewards (or penalties to the unwary!), or the ever-present monster dens, where deadly creatures guard great treasures - perhaps. Items of all sorts will show up that need to be investigated, and there are extended missions and subplots available for the players to follow )up on. I won't go into details on those -- this is just a first look, after all, and so we'll save the rest for the full review that is to follow the commercial release of the game. Gamer's Den plans to run Odyssey strictly via electronic mail, but, for those folks with no e-mail access, not to worry: licenses are already in place with Llucky Llama to run postal-only versions of the game. It's important to note that there won't be a mix of e-mail and postal players in the same game (as this is seen as giving the e-mail players too big an advantage, what with their quicker inter-communication). There's also a host of nifty features available in the game mechanics, such as getting archived turns sent to an ally, or posting broadcast messages to all. As of this writing, I'm not sure that a turn fee has been fixed in stone, but rumor has it that it will be around $5.50 or so for up to 200 orders per turn - quite economical, compared to some power games on the market. Note that this is for the e-mail game - there's probably a good chance the postal game will be a bit more to cover postage and printing costs - but then, turns will only run half as often too. I'd urge anyone interested to drop Gainer's Den a line via e-mail at Internet: support@den.com or CompuServe: 73613,3472. Traveller - The New Era: Forging of an Empire Eclipse Entertainment's new PBM offering "Traveller, The New Era : Forging of an Empire" is based on the latest incarnation of the popular and quite durable Traveller RPG from Game Designers' Workshop. The rules and presentations are very, very faithful to the RPG rules themselves - insofar as the game isn't an RPG at all, but a closed-ended "control the star cluster" game. All the components of Traveller are there, from the technology, including sandcasters and meson guns, to the planetary statistics, to the dreaded Virus itself. The basic premise to the game is that, in 4634 AD, the mighty Third Imperium was wracked with interstellar war. During the ensuing thirteen years of strife, a unique cellular/crystalline lifeform was developed, capable of taking over and subverting similar crystalline structures - such as the controlling arrays used by virtually every computer system in existence. Unfortunately, the Virus had an unintended effect -- if it took over a sufficiently powerful computer, it was capable of attaining sentiency. Needless to say, the Virus spread like the, er, plague, and the entire Third Imperium collapsed; the Virus continued to split, grown, and mutate into myriad "strains". One such strain was labeled the "Empire Builder", because of its desire to build and expand its holdings. One such strain took control of a large fleet of support and auxiliary ships. Desiring to find a safe haven from which to grow, it happened upon an ancient alien ruin that provided it with a way to build jump drives with ranges theretofore unheard of. Constructing such drives, it jumped to a small cluster of rich worlds outside the normal plane of the ecliptic of our galaxy, and began to settle the habitable systems with the personnel of the fleet. At some point after these colonies were established, the Virus disappeared, for reasons unknown - which brings us to the present. You are one of 25 worlds in the cluster that has reached a sufficient tech level to think about expanding and taking control of the fragmented worlds of the cluster. To obtain victory, a player must control a certain percentage of the systems in the cluster - the percentage being dependent on the number of allies that are attempting to declare victory. In addition, the mysterious, hidden Virus Prime Base must also be subjugated - not an easy task, from the hints in the rules. To do this, the player has all of the standard tools of galactic overlords everywhere. Each turn, players may build items ranging from warships to mining platforms to planetary defenses to troops. Additionally, they may invest money in their planets' infrastructure to increase production or update old factories, and may invest in R&D as well. Once built, ships may then sally forth to explore, trade, colonize, or fight as you see fit. All the while, the critical industrial expansion and R&D must be occurring behind the scenes. The Tools of Commerce There are a number of non~military vessels and structures that can be built, some of which are vital to your position's future success. Not all of these are initially known for example, you don't know how to build Colony Ships at the start of the game. Even so, there are still a number of worthwhile projects to contemplate. Mining Platforms are critical, as your biggest limiting resource is not manufacturing capability, but raw materials. The typical RM output of your starting world is barely sufficient to build a single destroyer per turn. Putting a few Mining Platforms with able commanders into an asteroid belt, however, can easily quintuple your RM production, or more. Cargo ships are also quite useful for trade with any NPC planets you happen upon - and trade can be quite lucrative indeed. Also not to be neglected is your planetary infrastructure - a steady increase here means more Mega Credits for research and material, as well as a larger production capacity and an up-to-date industrial base. The Tools of War Of course, there are the usual wide array of warships to be built, and as you'do more research, you'll discover even bigger and better ones. You are allowed to outfit the ships with equipment as you see fit - for example, a destroyer can carry 200 "spaces" of equipment. This would allow you to outfit it with 2 lasers and 2 sandcasters for example, or perhaps a missile launcher and two meson guns, or even maneuvering thrusters, ECM, armor, and 15 additional marine quarters should you plan on using it to board enemy vessels - the choices are completely yours. It's lots of fun to fiddle with various designs - while the process is clean and uncomplicated, you can spend hours doing what-ifs. Meson guns are highly accurate and have unbelievable penetration, but are short,ranged and only do fair damage, while lasers are long ranged and accurate, but aren't too goo at penetration or damage ... and so on. Additionally, there are a huge variety of planetary troops types to build: infantry, armor, air defense batteries, CAS aircraft, etc. Each are used should you invade another's planet or -- heaven forbid -- be invaded yourself. Finally, there are the system defenses such as missile platforms and orbital defense satellites to construct cheap and expendable, but not highly effective except in large numbers. Of course, you never have enough in the way of resources to build everything you want, so it's always a balancing act, trying to outguess.your opponent. Putting meson shields on all your ships won't do you much good if your enemy is going heavily into particle accelerators and lasers, for example -- yet your ships just aren't big enough to cover all the bases and still have an effective design. Decisions, decisions... The Tools of Science R&D is often enshrined as the heart of any strategic space game. This is somewhat true of Traveller, but not to such an extent as other games - in Traveller, increases tend to be more incremental in nature, rather. than completely dramatic. Still, it is very important not to neglect this area. One curious nile is that, even after attaining a R&D breakthrough to the next tech level, you can't build anything of that TL until all of the industry on the planet in question is updated and retooled. Thus, it's quite possible to have the know how to build, say, TL13 ECM units, but to be unable to build them, as your planetary industrial base is still stuck at TL12 - something that can be remedied only by more investments in infrastructure. The actual mechanics of R&D are pretty simple - you spend as many Mega Credits (MCr) as you wish, then sit back and see what the scien- tists produce. Oh, you do have a bit of leeway here - you can prioritize the different areas of research : Computers, Engines, Hulls, Planetology, Weaponry, Ground Troops, & Shielding, but even so R&D is a hit-and-miss affair. R&D may also be assisted by having your ships perform salvage missions, to look for lost or abandoned equipment that may be held over from when the Virus fleet first arrived in the cluster. The Game Mechanics Each turn, the players are allowed to issue 10 orders plus 1 order for every system they control. Interestingly enough, there is no limit to the number of standing orders that may be run at any time - so pretty soon you find yourself with more standing orders running than you have specific orders to issue. It is highly desirable to pretty much run your empire with standing orders, and use specific orders to either establish more standing orders or to handle fleet movement and exploration details. Turn reports are quite hefty and replete with excellent illustrations, including a map of all charted systems each turn. Text reports are in very small font typically, but well laid-out and quite clear. Turnaround time is about 2 weeks, and orders may be faxed in or E-mailed for free or phoned in for an extra $2.00 charge. The only drawback is that turn fees are a bit steep, ranging from $8.75 for up to 15 orders possible (not issued - if you can issue the orders, you get charged for it, but standing orders are free), and increasing from there, maxing out at $13.00 for 36+ orders. Conclusions All-in-all, a sound game, and so far, quite enjoyable, if a bit pricey. My ratings are Anticipation = 8, GM = 8, Depth = 8, Interaction = 7, Value = 5. To contact Eclipse Entertainment, write to them at PO Box 28397, Tempe, AZ, 85285, or phone/fax (602) 496-9204. Their E-mail address is eclipse@primenet.com. Rules and setup for new players are free - afterward, additional rules are $3.00 each. Back to Shadis #20 Table of Contents Back to Shadis List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master List of Magazines © Copyright 1995 by Alderac Entertainment Group This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com