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Aleksander R. Nordgarden Rødner
Norway
Oslo
Oslo
Proud father of Sarah Arwen
Live long and prosper.
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3:16 - Carnage among the stars. Just say it out. From the get-go it slaps you around, and tells you to straighten up, cause you're in the infantry now! Originally written for a 24-hour contest, author Gregor Hutton has refined it and rewritten the rules to actually work.
A quick read of 96 pages, it is beautifully decorated, and has a cartoony feel to it. Perfectly blending flavor text and actual rules most seasoned players will have read - and understood - the entire thing within a couple of days.
The key to any good RPG is clear rules for characters and a good system for conflict resolution. 3:16 has both. I have yet to find a player who has not grasped the basic consepts of the game within ten minutes of explanation and demo-playing. Simply limited to two kinds of dice, d6 and d10, the game features just about any kind of weapon you might want, from hand-to-hand weapons and grenades through sidearms to weapons that yield 1d100 kills.
Another great thing with this game is the fact that there are a lot of examples of use of the rules, which help understanding greatly.
The second time I played 3:16 was as a game master. My group loved it, and we had an excellent time, with one of my players scoring 83 kills in a single mission.
3:16 is simple to grasp, and quick to play, a single mission taking up to two and a half hours to play through. Featuring the best of both the roleplaying and boardgame worlds, this RPG still has ample opportunity for actual character development both in between missions and through. using the game's wrench in the machinery; flashbacks.
When everything seems to go down the drain, whenever you're really going to lose (and badly at that), you can envoke a flashback. You have two kinds of flashbacks; strengths and weaknesses. When using a strength, you tell a tale of some past victory, and relate that to the situation at hand, taking down all of the enemies, no matter how many of them there might be.
When you use a strength, your character, and only your character, gets out of the situation. He or she might get captured, but at least you're still alive...
Flashbacks represent the single strongest roleplaying feature of 3:16, but they are limited; you have ten of them, evenly divided between strengths and weaknesses. When first picking up the game, it has a real boardgamey feel to it, but in a good way. As you play through a campaign though, some real roleplaying comes into play, both through flashbacks, but also through sessions in between missions.
Another aspect of the game is the political one. In the end, it's each man for himself, and making it from Private to command rank, even all the way up to Brigadier, maneuvering, backstabbing and such mix up the nitty gritty of the rollplaying with some real, honest to goodness roleplaying.
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Mike Holyoak
United States
Idaho Falls
Idaho
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Nice review. I've had this game for awhile now, but haven't been able to get it to the table. Your review has whet my appetite again.
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Proud father of Sarah Arwen
