Review: Cold City Version One Point One
Contested Ground Studios is a small-press publisher of role-playing games, based in Scotland. The company is best known for a/state, a grim science fiction, almost steampunk role-playing game that focuses on a huge city that is isolated and plagued by horror. They are a member of the Indie Press Revolution network of small-press RPG publishers.
Berlin, 1950: While the Cold War rages, the secretive agents of the multi-national Reserve Police Agency creep through the shadows, hunting down the remnants of bizarre technologies and twisted wartime experiments.
But the RPA is riven by paranoia, fear and suspicion. Everyone works to their own hidden agendas, the different nationalities look at each other through a haze of mistrust. In the darkness, faced by horrors beyond your worst nightmares, will your comrades watch your back or treacherously stick a knife into it?
The great battles may be over, but the war carries on.
Join the fight.
Set 5 years after the end of WWII, the PCs take on the roles of members of the Reserve Police Agency (RPA), a covert agency made up of members of the occupying forces whose job is to hunt down the twisted technology produced by Nazi scientists, such as foo fighters, re-animated Special Purpose Troopers and extra-dimensional creatures that now live in subterranean Berlin.
As exciting as the backdrop to the game actually is, I find that the real excitement and meat to the story is the interaction between characters. Everyone has their own personal and professional agendas and trust is a real factor.
Each character chooses a nationality (English, French, Russian, and American – and it’s beneficial that all characters are from different lands) and generates a background. Each player must also develop a draw, explaining how they came to be a part of the RPA. Each character has three attributes from 1 through 5: Action, Influence, and Reason.
Action is for physical traits. Influence is for intimidation and willpower. Reason is for intelligence. On the 1-5 scale, 1 gives quite poor results, and 5 indicates nearly superhuman ones.
Game mechanics are simple and should pose no problem to even the most casual of players. This isn’t the kind of game where you can just play a weekend and then move on – it’s a game that is meant to be played long-term (which is why it took 3 months to get this review finished). Fortunately, the game is so much fun that extended campaigns aren’t that much of an issue.
The Good
This is easily the best and most original RPG I’ve had the pleasure of laying my eyes on in about a decade. The entire concept of a setting in 1950 Berlin is downright awesome. How many other game systems have done this? That’s right – none.
This is a wonderfully elegant book written with the kind of passion and attention to detail which will make it a standout for years to come.
The Bad
None.
The Ugly
None.
Product Summary
Name: Cold City Version One Point One
Publisher: Contested Ground Studios
Game concept: Malcolm Craig
Category: Role Playing Game
Cost: £15 (print copy) / $13 (PDF) – I reviewed the PDF edition
Year: 2008 (Original version from 2006)
SKU: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Rating
