Review: Pinnacle Empty Quiver

[BryanHansel]

[Willow]

I assumed that the GM would know how the rules work, but when I'm a player I like to know what the rules are too. And there's really not enough time to go over them, make a character, and play, in such a short ammount of time. The two most obvious solutions would be to have rules explanation and character generation, THEN start the one hour clock, or to play with a higher time limit.

The skill/equipment lists need to be vastly narrowed, and explained. It's also hazy how you even use them, it just seems like a player will arbitrarily pick a skill and roll it.

The most glaring contradiction was the table. I can't recall any others off the top of my head.

As for the dodging in combat sentence, that's exactly what I was referring to. It gives a rule for the option to dodge, but (as I recall) no real explicit mechanical benefit for doing so.

Multiround, lots of die-roll combat doesn't really play up the strong points of a game that's supposed to be tense go quickly. Have you considered some sort of scene based resolution? (While it's not a perfect fit, running Pinnacle Empty Quiver with the Dust Devils system sounds pretty fun to me.)

This game suffers from alot of unstated assumptions. There's alot of places where it's clear that the designer had an idea, but didn't convey it very well. (Or in the case of some of the omissions, at all.) I imagine you'd be able to run a game of this, but I really couldn't make heads or tails of it.

[jmstar]

[BryanHansel]

[Destriarch]

[BryanHansel]

Thanks, Ash,

I have to thank Jason Morningstar for finding that great image with the shell casing flying out. Here's the top left done up like the bottom right:




My brother, Eric, is a graphic designer and this is his mock-up/idea for the cover:



I'm not fond of the bh presents and he left out quiver. I don't think the font is right, but it's pretty close. Trying to get him to change the font might be a wrestling match.

One More. This one uses a better night vision trick than the top left. Via Jason again.



Thanks for pointing out the copyright issues. You can never be too cautious when it comes to copyright. The photos are Courtesy of U.S. Army. They're in the public domain and can be used however you'd like. The Army asks that you credit them, "Photos Courtesy of U.S. Army," and credit the actual photographer when possible. I'm a little concerned about using them, because these are pictures of the best of the best and the soldiers deserve a lot of respect, so I'm having a friend who is currently in the military look over the final version of the game with the pictures when it's finished, and a friend who is an ex-Marine and still active in the military community and an old rpg bud watch the development of the game to make sure I don't do anything stupid.

[jmstar]

[Destriarch]

[Willow]

[Destriarch]