From another thread:

Quote from: Silverlion;388101Would you start a thread to tell me about Cold City? and/or Hot war?

Can't help you with Cold City, but Hot War is awesome.

I should really take the time to write a full-fledged review, since Malcolm Craig was kind enough to gift me with a PDF copy. But alas, real life impinges on my gaming time, and I the opportunity to sit down and actually write it escapes me.

Hot War is a "sequel" to Cold City, as Spinachcat summarized thusly:

Quote from: Spinachcat;388094Malcolm's Cold City is one badass espionage horror RPG.  I've played it three times and its rocked.  You fight Nazi occult leftovers and weird experiments in the back streets of post-war Berlin with a team that you may or may not be able to fully trust.  Truly great stuff and certainly one of the gems of the small press world.

In Hot War, the Cuban Missile Crisis explodes into actual warfare, and Great Britain is not only hit by nuclear weapons, but also invaded by Soviet troops. The privations of a nuclear apocalypse are made all the more horrific by the supernatural horrors loosed on Earth by both sides, courtesy of the secret supernatural research programmes (bolstered by the same Nazi occult lore they fought over in the previous game).

It is now 1963, and the last stronghold of humanity in Great Britain is overpopulated, disease-ridden, filthy, starving London. Draconian martial law, rationing of essential supplies and other horrors of war are made all the more horrific by nightmarish, Lovecraftian-in-all-but-name supernatural threats stalking the streets.

Players belong to a task force which investigates and contains supernatural incidents, which may include anything from London policemen, to American airmen stranded in the UK (and completely oblivious about what's happening back home), to civilians like scientists, politicians and journalists.

In addition to the usual investigative horror, there's supposed to be a lot of friction between PCs of disparate backgrounds, with the ready-made characters and adventure being a handy demonstration. This sort of friction is an old standby of some of our most memorable CoC game sessions; we enjoy the contrast between cosmic horror and petty human squabbles (will we rise above them, and buy mankind a bit more time? Or will we succumb to our pettiness, and the rest of the world be damned?), and while I am not particularly well-read in Cthulhiana, it's great to see a playstyle I so closely associate with my own gaming group get this front-and-center treatment.

I am also not particularly well-read in derivative Cthulhiana, but Charles Stross' "A Colder War" springed to mind when I started reading (and later was explicitly cited by the author as an influence).

I haven't looked closely at the system, but it seems to be a very simple conflict-resolution deal, with freeform traits (like "everything has a rational explanation" or "the Commies have eyes everywhere"). I'll use it as the setting for a CoC one-shot game, because I love CoC, I know it inside-out, and it's already got a huge, ready-made list of nasties I can throw at them.

The book, though, is solid gold. There are several pages of handouts, posters and other "flavor" art which I intend to print and, well, hand out to PCs. Some, like the one which educates civilians on capturing, preparing and consuming sewer rats as "supplementary protein" I found particularly... effective, in driving home the setting's sense of horror and despair.

I highly recommend this game. Maybe it's not one that will spawn 10-year-long epic campaigns, but I can see myself getting a few sessions and maybe even a mini-campaign out of this. Converting the setting to Call of Cthulhu or any other system you may prefer is a breeze.

And with the PDF at $10, I feel it's pretty good value for the money, especially considering the visual presentation.

Quote from: The Butcher;388113From another thread:
Can't help you with Cold City, but Hot War is awesome.

I should really take the time to write a full-fledged review, since Malcolm Sheppard was kind enough to gift me with a PDF copy.

Not much to add here, but that would be Malcolm Craig.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;388117Not much to add here, but that would be Malcolm Craig.

Disclosing any knowledge of other game systems undermines your authority as the 4e evangelist.  The implication that you've even lightly perused other materials questions your dedication to DnD, and, by implication, WoTC and the Pope.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;388117Not much to add here, but that would be Malcolm Craig.

Stupid me. I stand corrected -- OP edited.

Cold City is about hunting monsters in the ruins of early Cold War Berlin. The really fun thing about the setting is that the monsters can be literal or figurative - sure, there's Nazi arcano-tech and all kinds of horrible aberrations left over, but there's also the template of real history to work with. That really appeals to me and I enjoyed running Cold City a lot. The game's central theme is trust, which has mechanical weight in the game. You're playing a mixed team representing the four nations that have partitioned Germany, and each wants to get its greasy hands on whatever the Nazis left behind - in some cases to destroy it forever, in others to keep it from the new enemy, in others to use it for the national good. That the stuff you are digging around for has horror/sci-fi trappings doesn't really distance it from reality unless you want it to.

It's a good game that is stuffed with exciting color. If you're interested in the time period and place, it is a rabbit hole you can really fall into. In my campaign I tried to hammer home the fundamental conflicts of the setting - if the only guy who can get you access to a hidden weird-tech bunker beneath a U-bahn station in the Russian zone is also an unrepentant former einsatzgruppe war criminal, do you still do business with him? Do you follow orders or answer to a higher calling, when you hold a deadly abomination in your hands? Can you really trust the Amis? Can you really trust anybody? Really cool stuff.

Quote from: Angry_Douchebag;388123Disclosing any knowledge of other game systems undermines your authority as the 4e evangelist.  The implication that you've even lightly perused other materials questions your dedication to DnD, and, by implication, WoTC and the Pope.

I'm more informed than my adversaries usually give me get credit for. Sadly, the reverse is not true.

Do we know if he plans to do a modern era version? Perhaps? Would it be hard to adapt either one to modern day?

I don't think Cold City would lend itself too well to a contemporary hack. It's very focused on a particular time and place. Hot War would be a better bet for that, but it'd still be sort of awkward.

What's the system like in these games?

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;388161What's the system like in these games?

Indeed? What works, how does it work?

I can only speak to Cold City, which I've run in campaign and convention one-shot mode.

The trust mechanic is inspired by The Mountain Witch, and operates in a similar way - the more trust you have in another PC, the more mechanically advantageous your bond, and the greater damage they can cause in betrayal. It's pretty sweet and does a good job of instilling the paranoia and odd bedfellows that mark 1949 Berlin.

Characters have a pair of agendas - a national agenda and a personal agenda, both of which are supposed to focus on anticipated play. "I must recover and preserve arcane artifacts" might be a national agenda, and "I must punish the men who killed my brother" might be a personal agenda. These serve as both flags highlighting what players are interested in and situation generators in their own right.

Finally you have Traits, which are freeform and player-authored. You end up with pools of dice based on Traits, trust and so on. The system is not the game's strongest point - It's functional but not really remarkable outside of the trust bit, which is very fun in play. The setting really carries the game.

Here are some pregens for a convention game. And the last page is a system cheat sheet that should give you a good idea how the game works.

Quote from: Silverlion;388156Do we know if he plans to do a modern era version? Perhaps? Would it be hard to adapt either one to modern day?

I had been noodling around with the idea of a follow-on to Hot War set 50 years after the war, 2013. Britain-as-authoritarian-state (V for Vendetta being a fairly obvious touchstone here), post-nuclear apocalypse situations. It's just a handful of notes, though. Nothing concrete at all. I was slightly more advanced on a game using similar mechanics to CC and HW, but set in Constantinople during the period 1918 to 1923. Fascinating time, with the city controlled by the WW1 Allies (much like Berlin in the Cold War), with the rise of modern Turkey, revolution, the final death agonies of the Ottoman Empire, the spectre of the young USSR, and then layers of mystery and occultism. Might be worth having a punt at. Needs lots more work, though. I did muse on it a little here.

But, regardless of all that, thanks for the interest in Hot War. Personally, I love it as a game and setting and I think it has a lot to offer. My artistic partner Paul did an amazing job with the visuals, putting a lot setting information into posters, memos, and other in-game artefacts. And it's a game that rewards both short and long term play.

There's a whole bunch of stuff about Hot War you can download here, including an intro PDF, short demo with character sheets, and various other bits and bobs. The same stuff is available for Cold City, including the v1.1 system chapter. You can check that out here.

Thanks again for the interest! As always, I'd be delighted to answer any questions you might have about either game.

Cheers
Malcolm

Quote from: Malcolm Craig;388326I

Thanks again for the interest! As always, I'd be delighted to answer any questions you might have about either game.

Cheers
Malcolm

Awesome stuff. Lots of research required for the Ottoman one, I'd like a modern day one as an idea--but that's just a preference. I'm vaguely reminded of Charles Stross' Laundry series, which might be another tack to examine--not exactly but iimagine an authoritian state that has arisen purely from bureaucracy and it's need to order the universe. A government in need for control and order--establishes its methods and procedures, but that becomes a self perpetuating power that is blind to the now, and lost in forms and regulations and lines (queues.) Would need some issues of conflict between "Needs Now", and "Wait for approval," along with trust that can be built between agents and their immediate "committee" of rule, which can help them if they follow the rules, but hurt them if they break them too much.



I may have to get Hot War, or Cold City. I keep looking at them going--if I had cash for the print book....I'd snap it up! I'm just a poor game designer though *LOL*

How much supernatural is there in the games?

Quote from: Silverlion;388335I may have to get Hot War, or Cold City. I keep looking at them going--if I had cash for the print book....I'd snap it up! I'm just a poor game designer though *LOL*

How much supernatural is there in the games?

Yeah, I know how it feels! Too many games, too little money.

The supernatural/occult/weird science aspect of the game is something of a sliding scale. That's to say, it's present, but it's up to the group as to how prevalent it is and how much of an impact it has on the game. My building block for this has always been the old BBC Quatermass series from the 1950s. They always blended the supernatural, science, and contemporary social and political concerns in a very cool way.

Games can be as overt as facing down hordes of Soviet twisted technology creatures in a Thames estuary marsh, or more subtle, like a strange bioweapon that is transmitted like a venereal disease, creeping its way through the remnants of the British government.* That's kind of a long way of saying that the element is pretty much up to the individual group.

Cheers
Malcolm

*That one is actually a game situation created and written up by the very talented Scott Dorward, which will be in the first issue of the quarterly Hot War Transmission, the first issue of which is out next month! You can check out an actual play here.

This game clearly not being an RPG as such, I'm moving this thread over to other games, where Story-game discussion belongs.

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