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I love RPGs! I won’t lie, what got me into this whole writing game was playing Star Trek RPGs on message boards in the mid-90s. From time to time, I hop onto one of those games anonymously for a little bit of fun until I get busy writing a book and can spend only so much time typing. I’ve also played a lot of tabletop RPGs over the years, including Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinders, DC Universe RPG, Star Wars Saga, Star Wars Fantasy Flight, Legend of the Five Rings, 7th Sea, among others.
What I haven’t had in my life is a Soviet vs. American themed cold war spy game, until now!
Having so many books from all of the games above, there’s not many RPGs I’m looking to pick up in 2017, but Cold Shadows hits a spot for me that has me positively excited. One might note that I’ve got a couple of John Wick game rulesets in my list above, and to learn that Nocturnal has taken the base of one of his more recent games, Blood and Honor, and translated that is really cool as well.
Being a writer, a big appeal for me in GMing is creating stories and watching that flows. With that as a goal, in my opinion, Wick as a designer has in a lot of ways gotten better with his rulesets with age, and as with a lot of modern RPGs has moved to a more narrative-driven style. This ruleset is no exception, and though I haven’t seen the exact modifications Cold Shadow brings to it, those base rules make this an exciting prospect.
The theme of Cold Shadows is what excites me beyond belief. I’m very vocal that I believe the best show on television right now is The Americans, a period piece story that follows two spies as they pretend to live an American dream life on the surface. You add to that the thought of spy thrillers like James Bond or Jason Bourne, and the possibilities are both exciting and limitless for storytelling in this sort of environment. Just writing this blog, I’ve got a great story idea, that I’d love to write a book on if I wasn’t so darned busy writing Space Opera! Fortunately, I’ll be able to play it as an RPG in a couple of months here.
Beyond the basic Blood and Honor set, Cold Shadows is designed by Alan Bahr, who works for Nocturnal Entertainment and has a great history of producing quality RPGs. I had the honor of doing a micro-setting for his Tiny Frontiers line last year, but I have to say, even without being a part of this book, I’m far more excited by Cold Shadows.
I could go on and on, but what I’ll do is see if I can conscript Alan for a Geekchats in the next couple weeks, so he can talk about the game and the art of good GMing, and let you take a look at the kickstarter yourself for now:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gallantknightgames/cold-shadows-narrative-espionage-roleplaying
As with all of the very few kickstarters I link on the blog here, I have backed this myself and approve this game!
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