[RPG]: Cold City, reviewed by Olivier.Legrand (4/5)

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12940.phtml

Olivier Legrand's Summary:

One of the best RPGs I’ve read in years. Full of well-developed ideas and with the potential to become a cult classic.

Go to the full review for more information.

[Tim Gray]

Note: not all suppliers of the print book bundle a bonus CD with it. I suspect that's a special deal available directly from Contested Ground. (Just so no-one buys it and is disappointed by the lack of extras.)

[Olivier.Legrand]

Ah, heck, I must admit I hadn't thought about that. Thanks for the clarification !

[komradebob]

Originally Posted by Tim Gray

Note: not all suppliers of the print book bundle a bonus CD with it. I suspect that's a special deal available directly from Contested Ground. (Just so no-one buys it and is disappointed by the lack of extras.)

Maybe it's a UK thing? Mine didn't have a CD

( No worries. I believe all of the CD stuff is up at the website for download ).

[mxyzplk]

Sounds great! Very good and thorough review by the way.

Ernest

[Varyar]

I got a copy of this last summer when I was in Scotland. I haven't had a chance to run it yet, but the setting is wicked cool.

(I didn't get no CD, either. I did get the author's autograph, tho. )

[Bobo]

Thanks for that exhausting and readable review! Looks like it's worth a look.

One minor point, though: the extra spaces you put in front of punctuation marks . I really don't mind a few typos too much (still, nothing wrong with running the text through a spell-checker one last time), but I find the extra spaces very annoying.

[committed hero]

I have a setting question - the review suggests that Stalin is a force for antagonism in the game. If so, how does that square with the possibility of having Communist PCs?

[komradebob]

Originally Posted by committed hero

I have a setting question - the review suggests that Stalin is a force for antagonism in the game. If so, how does that square with the possibility of having Communist PCs?

There are more than a few Comunist PCs running around amongst the pre-made PCs I've seen for scenarios, not strictly among the Russian characters, either. I've also seen pre-mades whose goal is to defect in either direction.

As for general antagonism, really it can go in any direction. A lot depends on the players involved, since the mechanics make betrayal especially brutal when it's by someone you trust. And since having trust in another character also makes you more effective when you work together...well, I'm sure you can guess where those things can lead.

OTOH, in the Minicon game of this I played in, the intra-party antagonism mostly amounted to relatively mild ribbing based on national stereotypes and mostly we worked as a team to attempt to stop the Nazi-Zombie-Mechae from escaping to South America.

[Olivier.Legrand]

Originally Posted by Bobo

Thanks for that exhausting and readable review! Looks like it's worth a look.

One minor point, though: the extra spaces you put in front of punctuation marks . I really don't mind a few typos too much (still, nothing wrong with running the text through a spell-checker one last time), but I find the extra spaces very annoying.

Are you talking about exclamation marks ? I don't know if this is the correct term in English for these signs : !!!!!!!!!

If this is the case, well this is not a typo. It is simply a French habit of putting an extra space before an exclamation mark - some people do it, others don't and I remember now having noticed that most English-writing people didn't do it. Sorry for this "cultural gap" - I hope it does not make the review too "alien".

As for typos, well, I think i've spell-checked my review twice or thrice but since English is not my native language, there is still a chance that I may have forgotten something.