Good
morning ladies and gents! Now, I'd like to tell you all a wonderful
story about a half-ogre monk, two rival sorcerors, a mercenary
barbarian for hire, and a fairy with a battle axe.
Ooops, wait,
that's my group's last Dungeons and Dragons session. Oh, it was great.
This one sorceror with a metal gauntlet tried to bitch-slap the other
sorceror and then there was a huge barfight and my half-ogre threw
someone out a window and the building caught fire...
...So. Who doesn't enjoy a good table top RPG? The random plot twists,
the wacky character antics, and there's always that one jerk who tries
to kill every NPC you run into.
Drunks love adventure!
In
The KER-Saders, that jerk seems to be KER, who awakes one fine morning
with a mind to commit homicide at the local bar and then skip town with
his drinking buddy, a clown/magician(?). Luckily the town guard aren't
as vigilant as they might be and the pair can pretty much come and go
as they choose. Unluckily, Ker gets killed by gnolls. His friend races
back to town to gather a group of rescuers to recover and revive his
body, and the KER-Saders are born.
Never start a fight with the protagonist
Spoon-Weaver's
latest game follows the twisted tale of a typical party of adventurers,
apparently based on a roleplaying campaign he played with his friends.
Like most of these kinds of games, played over several sessions with
spotty attendence, the plot has a lot of holes and unexplained but
convenient team ups. There is the paladin character who bravely pledges
to find and revive this person he has never heard of before who is
apparently wanted for murder, and the orc cleric (?) who comes along
for the ride with even less explanation. Apparently even having green
craggy skin and a face like a hog will not prevent the only female
character from damsel-in-distress syndrome. She is randomly kidnapped
later by birds. Luckily two other people fall out of a plot hole to
make the party a foursome at last.
Party time
Really,
though, the plot doesn't have anything wrong with it that can't be
fixed with some polishing, explanation, and resolution. It just goes by
too fast to be plausible. Better character introductions, as well as
links to the rest of the world (why is the dead guy the only person
with a house?) would go a long way towards helping the team fit
together. At the moment, all we are left with are questions. Why are
all of these people joining your party? Why is it so important to
revive a bar-hopper from the slums? Why would crows steal your cleric
but no one else (especially when she was probably the heaviest person
around)? Why did these two guys join us, and do we have to buy them
equipment now when they might disappear at any moment? Since the game
is in demo stage, perhaps all of these questions have answers planned
in the final version. If they are, it will make a very interesting game
that will be fun to follow and play through. If they aren't, then it
will be just another hack'n'slash follow along.
Battles are both random and by NPC
placement
Some bugs not squishable.
The
KER-Saders seems to have a case of ADD with quests as well as party
members. First we're off to save KER, whose remains may well have been
eaten by hungry gnolls but perhaps not. Then, it seems the gnolls have
become rotted zombie gnolls and a new quest is introduced to figure out
who/what zombified them. Traveling and exploring more, we have the
aforementioned quest to rescue the mossy-skinned cleric, followed
closely by some intrigue regarding the latest party-member's troubled
village, and then another quest to kill some apparently bad person in a
cave. Thus far, only the one with the guy in the cave has been
resolved. Sort of. He's dead, at least.
It's a dead thing. Poke it!
At
this point, I feel a disclaimer is necessary. I like this game. I
enjoyed playing it. The plot twists, if a tad random, were at least
interesting and unexpected, the party is pretty well balanced, and
battles range from laughably easy to challenging (Some balance
tweaking might be needed since most fights were pretty much over in one
turn). Graphics, though occasionally ripped, work together well, and
the music is appropriate. The maps were maze-like enough to be
interesting but not enough to get annoying.
Sweet building graphics.
The
game has a lot of potential. Its biggest problems right now are a lack
of purpose and biting off more than it can nom. There are a lot of
threads the plot could follow, but right now they aren't tied to
anything, and the questions that come to mind when playing it have no
answers in sight. For one thing, as fun as it is to play a table top
RPG, watching one being played or reading a transcript of it isn't
nearly as interesting. Remove the in-house jokes and crazy antics, and
the result does not make for engaging gameplay. If the plot moves
beyond a 'this happens, then this happens, then this happens' mentality
and begins to involve the player as a party member instead of a
spectator, it will be much more enjoyable.
