Xtraor

Post-Apocalyptic
New Realms Publishing
2016
Complexity: 4

Introduction
Here at SWotIRORG I review obscure role-playing games. That is technically what Xtraor is, and as such, I am reviewing it. Admittedly, I went into this with some pretty low expectations—I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but seriously, look at that cover. And for the most part my expectations were about right, but there is still something worth looking at here, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered writing up this review.

Setting: 1/3 [−]
Xtraor takes place in a post-apocalyptic world inhabited by super powered entities… and that’s more or less it.

Character Creation: 3/5
Characters are created by drawing 5 power cards from a deck of 54—hmm, why does that concept make me shudder?—powers range from things like fur and claws, to elemental manipulation and invisibility. Each card includes a power description and an attribute value ranging from 10–18. When a card is drawn the value is assigned to one of your character’s attributes. This actually strikes me as a really interesting way to balance characters—i.e. better powers come at the cost of lower attribute scores and vice versa—although I cannot say if the powers and scores are really balanced. After generating attributes and powers, you are instructed to just decide who or whatever you want your character to be. For example, if you drew Fur, Claws, Lightning Blast, Fire Ball, and Ice Darts you may—and should—decide that you want your character to be a bear wizard. Aside from being fairly simple, this does also seem like it would encourage creative thinking, as you’re given what your character can do and asked to determine what they are, rather than just being told what your character can be.

Mechanics: 2/5
The mechanics in Xtraor are completely diceless and, well, complicated. Basically, at the beginning of each turn all characters must decide how many of their Combat, Move, and Power points—total equal to ability score—will be assigned to actions for that turn. Assigned Combat points are used for attacks, while unassigned ones are the character's defense against melee attacks for that turn. Similarly, assigned Move points are available movement and defense against ranged attacks while unassigned points are initiative and Alertness—basically Perception—and assigned Power points can be used to activate powers, but cost 1 fatigue—I’ll get to that in a bit—each to assign. So essentially, each round requires a kind of resource management based on what you think the character may need to do. In addition to assigning Power points, characters also take fatigue from pretty much taking any action, and will be rendered unconscious if their fatigue and wounds exceed their Endurance. Fatigue is also regained at the end of each turn, but generally only 1–4 points. I realize this seems like a lot of attention to put towards this, but you’ll understand later.

As the game is diceless, combat is resolved by comparing the attacker’s Combat points to the target's defense, if the attacker’s points are higher the attack succeeds, if not the target’s defense is lowered by a number of points equal to the attacker’s Combat points. Now here is where things get wacky, a successful attack deals damage equal to the amount by which the attacker’s Combat points exceeded the targets defense plus the attacker’s Might score. Now I didn’t mention this before, but a character’s Endurance is calculated by adding their Might and Body scores; and if you’re kinda okay at maths you’ve probably noticed that this means the average character is going to go down after two hits. Of course if a character has a lot of fatigue from pretty much doing anything, it’s incredibly possible to be dropped in one hit. But who knows, maybe that’s what they were going for.

While the who system is novel and replaces randomization with a little extra bit of strategy, it just seems way too cumbersome to really be fun, or tolerable.

Writing and Presentation: 0/5
This book reads like a fist draft that hasn’t even been proofread by the author. That may seem like I’m being a little cruel here, but this is a level of quality I’d expect to see in a 24-hour RPG, not a “revised” edition that someone is actually expecting people to pay money for. Honestly, the only reason it’s not rated lower is because I was able to more-or-less understand the rules—unless I totally misinterpreted them.

The text is actually fairly neatly laid out, just glancing at the text makes it almost look like a real game. However, the formatting is fairly inconsistent throughout, and apparently after the second page they forgot what manual breaks were. There are no graphics to speak of, other than the cover and backs of the power cards, both of which make a late ‘90s GeoCities site look professionally-designed and aesthetically-coherent by comparison.

Content: 1/3 [−]
While there is a good selection of powers available, that’s literally all there is. The book seems to be written as if there were supposed to be more content, but that content isn’t there. The rules say ranged weapons deal damage based on the weapon’s Might score, but the book contains no weapons. Rules for anything other than combat are completely absent, which would really make this more a combat game than a role-playing game, but it’s advertised as a RPG and that’s how I’m going to review it.


Xtraor has some interesting concepts, unfortunately whoever was behind it decided that fleshing out those concepts into a complete game was too hard and just pushed out whatever they had when they gave up.This game could have been something worthwhile, but it ended up being just a book you can accurately judge by its cover.

Score Summary
Setting: 1/5, Character Creation: 3/5, Mechanics: 2/5, Writing: 2/5, Presentation: 1/5, Content: 1/5

Base Points: 6
Character Creation: 4/5, Mechanics: 2/5, Presentation: 1/5
Adjustments: −3
Setting: −1, Writing: −1, Content: −1

Overall Score 20% (3/15 Points)
A textbook example of interesting concepts and lazy execution.