Review: Pinnacle Empty Quiver

[Joshua BishopRoby]

Wow! Okay, this submission isn't strange or jokey or kooky at all. The author obviously put a lot of serious thought into developing the design. I'm almost not sure how to approach it... ;)

Pinnacle Empty Quiver is a game in which the players are special ops infiltrating a base that holds (a) a nuke set to explode and (b) their loved ones as hostages. The PCs can disarm the nuke or they can save their loved ones, but not both -- and if they disagree, they're perfectly able to split up and work at odds.

REVIEWER NAME: Joshua BishopRoby

1) CREATIVE AND EFFECTIVE INCORPORATION OF RULES (1-10): 9
Feedback: Steel is a player resource, and is used throughout and used creatively. Teamwork is essential to the entire play experience. Law is the least firmly attached, as players can "Lay Down the Law" (it's a special maneuver), they are sort of representatives of Law & Order, and the nuke was transported outside the bounds of international law. The game is played in the one-session-two-hours time constraint and has a countdown clock for the nuke. Pretty slick all round.

2) CLARITY (1-10): 5
Feedback: I swear, this game reads like the instruction manual from an old Avalon Hill wargame, by which I mean: all the rules are there, and are even written pretty exactly, but the sense of the rules is hard to come by due to lack of structure and layout. Things that should be bulleted lists are simply listed in running text. There are a few critical typos that obscure meaning and the reader has to go, "Oh, I think he means 'reacting', not 'reaching'." And lastly, examples of play would go way, way far into making this lots clearer.

3) COMPLETENESS (1-10): 7
Feedback: What this game needs is a little playtesting and a heavy edit and it's golden. As a tight-focused game, this design handles pretty much anything that might come up in play. I suspect that there are probably too many options when it comes to skills, and the skill list might be trimmed down to make things work a little smoother. There is some partial flagging of player interests, but no systemic support for following up on them -- if I take Jungle Survival and the GM puts the base in the Middle East, I'm going to be annoyed that I wasted my Specialty Skill on that.


4) ESTIMATED EFFECTIVENESS IN PLAY (1-10): 7
Feedback: While I am sure this game is playable as written, I think it's probably playable with difficulty, and most of those difficulties have to do with the presentation rather than the structure of the rules.

The game is a little light on character roles, being hugely tactical, and I might want a little more detail added on characterization. Otherwise, this is one cut above a (very well designed) board game.

The big moral quandary -- nuke or hostages -- seems to be unsupported, but it's totally an emergent quality of the Threat Level rules. If you 'go rogue' to rescue the hostages, you go faster but riskier. If you stay with the team, you go slower but safer. Unfortunately I think this is probably something that players will only understand the second time they play. Secret passages tempt the players to take the opportunity to split off, and I imagine that in actual play if the team splits into two teams, one may very well try and switch plans on the other one.

5) SWING VOTE (1-10): 8
Final Feedback: This looks like a really fun crunch-fest with lots of details and throwing around military jargon, and overall it simply seems like a really fun evening of entertainment. I suspect that the game even has replay value without the suggested alternate setting rules -- the base with the nuke and hostages could be anywhere, and if we make up new characters for a second game, we could make the group composition wildly different, as well, producing a completely different game experience. I'd really like to see this game continue towards publication.


TOTAL SCORE (add items 1 through 5, above): 36

Bryan -- I just wanted to take a moment aside to tell you -- KEEP DEVELOPING THIS GAME. This has a whole lot of potential and I think you've got something very interesting going on, here. I'd love to see this design make its way to publication.

[BryanHansel]

Thanks for the review, Joshua. It was very fair and positive.

I just got back from Mexico and have some catching up to do. I wish I would have had more time to work on the game before I left, because I think some of the clarity issues would have been fixed. Such is life.

I don't want to muddy up the review here, but I did have a pseudo comment. In the completeness section of the review, you sited an example where the player selects jungle survival, but the GM puts the base in the Middle East. I was hoping that the players would realize that during their recon, they could put the base anywhere they wanted in order to use the skills they selected. I'll definitely need to make that clearer.

Thanks for the review!
Bryan

[Joshua BishopRoby]

That would be a good addition, Bryan. It would make explicit the second half of the flagging & situation creation connection.

[BryanHansel]

[Joshua BishopRoby]

[BryanHansel]

[Graham Walmsley]

[Maastrictian]

Pinnacle Empty Quiver

REVIEWER NAME: Chris Hall

SUMMARY: Players portray special forces operatives who must disarm a nuclear bomb before thousands die, but in doing so risk the lives of their loved ones. Pinnacle Empty Quiver is a fast paced game with a melodramatic action movie feel.

1) CREATIVE AND EFFECTIVE INCORPORATION OF RULES (1-10): 9
Feedback:

This game does an amazing job of using the time limit. I especially like how character creation is meant to be interrupted by the GM.

Team and Steel are particularly well incorporated into both the feel and the mechanics of the game. Law felt more tacked on to me.

2) CLARITY (1-10): 8
Feedback:

I’m not sure what role the squad specialty is meant to take. Is this a theme for the players team or are these NPCs that the players can draw on to gain bonuses?

The rules for rejoining a team don’t really make sense to me, and could use an example.


3) COMPLETENESS (1-10): 7
Feedback:

If the equipment and skill lists are to be maintained, which I don’t recommend, there needs to be an explanation of what the various technical terms mean. What, for instance, is a “Aimpoint M68 CCO device”?

Examples covering threat levels and teams gaining and loosing members would be good.

Both game masters and players are going to need more guidance than is provided to create and resolve interesting scenes. Even a random setting table would be a help, so that not all fight scenes take place in a random bunker or warehouse.

4) ESTIMATED EFFECTIVENESS IN PLAY (1-10): 5
Feedback:

The lengthy list of specialty skills seems to run contrary to the games goal of lightning fast character creation and play. I’m not sure what these add to play that the squad assignments don’t already give. I’d simply drop them.

Selecting individual equipment that each Steel point represents seems even more cumbersome, and I would certainly drop this. The players should have narratively interesting equipment, they should not be spending time during the game writing stuff down.

While the rules make an effort to provide replayability, I don’t see this game having much. There are only so many innocent civilians you can put in danger before the idea gets old.

The Recon and Insersion stages of the game seem to to slow down the action. In a game which gives the players so much control over the results of their actions, it would be easier to allow the players to invent details like satellite photos and infrared scans when narrating why they are able to easily sneak into the guard post.

One of the strongest parts of the game were the random timed events. This does a great job of building tension while keeping the pace up. These events seem to force the players to move even faster, so they can get to threat level seven before time runs out.

5) SWING VOTE (1-10): 9
Final Feedback:

I absolutely love the core concept of this game, and I feel like what the author needs to do to improve it is to cut out those parts of the game not serving that concept. I get into this in more detail in the effectiveness in play part above.

TOTAL SCORE (add items 1 through 5, above): 38

[Maastrictian]

On reading the comments in this thread --

What this game does not need is more rules. I think fast and tense action, spiced with melodrama, is what makes this game successful. Adding rules about how one roll carries over to another or what have you would only slow things down.

--Chris

[BryanHansel]