Cold City and Hot War

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Linden
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Cold City and Hot War

Post by Linden »

Thought I'd set the ball rolling on discussing the other games. Has anybody else played either of these?


Had a brief exchange with another poster on YSDC about the CC/HW system. I appreciate that it's more of a storytelling game than a traditional rpg and the mechanics reflect that. However, I felt that the conflict resolution mechanism as presented made far too easy for PCs to gang up and get a huge dice pool sufficient to win all but the most insanely difficult conflicts. As the potential consequences of a successful conflict include the upgrade of PC attributes and traits the characters become ever more powerful making it easier for them to win subsequent conflicts which enables them to become powerful and so on and so on. The other poster said he'd found that the opposite occurred with the PCs entering into a "death spiral", of declining abilities. I know Hot War introduced some tweaks but they don't strike me as having any major effect on the basic conflict resolution mechanic.

I was wondering what other people's experience of the game system was. Have I perhaps been running it incorrectly? The only thing I can think of is that I've been a bit too liberal with allowing PCs to use their trust ratings in conflicts. Be interested to hear your thoughts.
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Marcus Bone
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Re: Cold City and Hot War

Post by Marcus Bone »

Hey Linden,

I own both of these, and am happy to call Malcolm a good friend (he was living in Wellington a few years back while working on his PhD). While I appreciate the Cold City setting, I think Hot War is almost the prefect game setting...

That said I'm not a big fan of the game mechanics, but I've run a number of sessions using both the GUMSHOE mechanics and my own Rending Horrors rules.

Actually, thinking about it I've only played Hot War once with the actual mechanics, and unfortunately I found it way too open for interperation. That said the story was excellent and I'm a big fan of the GM who ran the session.

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Linden
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Re: Cold City and Hot War

Post by Linden »

Marcus Bone wrote:
While I appreciate the Cold City setting, I think Hot War is almost the prefect game setting...


I love the way Hot War mixes various strains of British horror, recent history and bits of other genres. Think the game has a really strong identity with the retro design that they've given to the rule book and the Transmission magazines.

Marcus Bone wrote: That said I'm not a big fan of the game mechanics, but I've run a number of sessions using both the GUMSHOE mechanics and my own Rending Horrors rules.


As mentioned previously I found MiniSix worked well for Cold City. Think CoC/BRP would be good for both settings as well if a less pulpy, more dangerous game was required.

Marcus Bone wrote: Actually, thinking about it I've only played Hot War once with the actual mechanics, and unfortunately I found it way too open for interperation.


One of my group said he found the system "too deterministic" by which I think he meant that something like a combat encounter has the potential to be all over in a single conflict resolution whereas he would prefer for it to be done in stages i.e. the traditional rpg approach of combat rounds, people running around knocking lumps out of each other, maybe a bit of ebb and flow between the two sides. Had some sympathy with that being a bit of an Old Skool gamer myself. That said I do like the agendas concept and would possibly translate it into another system by giving the PC a bonus whenever they make a roll in which the agenda comes into play.
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Linden
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Re: Cold City and Hot War

Post by Linden »

The Daily Telegraph has published some pictures of the soon to be sold Brompton Road tube station. Once used as an air defence bunker during the war, the black and white photos strike me as suitably atmospheric to serve as a preview for a Hot War game. The more recent ones could perhaps illustrate the outer sections of a morlock or ghoul lair in Dark Conspiracy and Call of Cthulhu respectively.
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Linden
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Re: Cold City and Hot War

Post by Linden »

A friend pointed me in the direction of the trailer for Frankenstein's Army. No idea if it's any good or not but the idea of reanimated cyborg zombies on the Eastern Front struck me as very much in keeping with Cold City's twisted technology. You might also be able to work it into the Delta Green mythos - a mad scientist taking the resuscitatd casualties idea and going one step further.
"There's a lot of dignity in that, isn't there? Going out like a raspberry ripple."
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