[Inamoena Tempora]

Since I've been burned in the past with narrative games, a few questions beforehanded...

1) How are weapons and armor (or even more basic: tools) treated in a conflict? Are they relevant, do they confer a bonus or an advantage, or are they merely colour?

2) I know that the setting is probably only loosely defined, but what do we have here? A neolithic setting, except for the metal weapons? A culture of noble-savage type primitives amidst a more traditional "sword&sorcery" type world? Something else entirely?

3) What is the Beast? A mythical creature of great power, or merely a name for the main bad guy of the adventure? The review mentions a social combat system, which seems...odd, considering that the basic premise is that a power-hungry hunter intends to slay an unpleasant creature and drain it of it's blood in order to increase his own prowess. Talking the creature to death or embarrassing it to the point of no return somehow lacks a bit of ooomph in my opinion, not to mention that it feels strange. "So, Grendel, tell me about your mother..."

4) How much variance can be put in the basic way of playing? From the previews and the review it looks like it's seems it's basically just "find the beast, best the problems that might occur on the way, hack the beast to pieces in an epic showdown and get a spiffy power-up tatoo as a reminder". Which sounds like fun for about 3 or 4 games. But somehow seems to lack a long-term incentive of playing it again.

I don't want to sound overtly critical. Actually, I dig the idea behind the game. (And there was this PS2 game with a similar premise of killing huge, monstrous beasts and using parts of them to create powerful weapons and armour...I liked that idea. And this seems similar from the concept). Creating a game for 2 ist a marvellous idea, since it gets harder each year to gather the 4-5 people required for a "regular" rpg. Something quick for two sounds like a great idea.
But as I said, I've been burnt in the past, and games that looked like they could provide epic struggles governed by clever dice mechanics turned out to be the dice-based equivalent of interpretative dance.

Which reminds me, the basic die roll mechanisms used in the game were omitted from the review. They can't be grasped from the preview, either. Would anybody care to enlighten us on how the system actually works?

I'd love to love this game. But the reviews and previews were so terribly vague to this point...

I.T.