Self Published
2010
Complexity: 4
Stone Age is—unsurprisingly—a prehistoric role-playing game, which is a setting that seems like it would be interesting, but is extremely underutilized. It’s also another 24-hour RPG, which as previously stated I like reviewing because they tend to be short and interesting. For a 24-hour RPG it’s also a bit… let’s just say “ambitious,” and you should keep the time restraint in mind while reading this review because me doing so while writing it would be unfair to other games.
Setting: N/A
Stone Age takes place in a prehistoric fantasy setting described as “Tellus, where magic exists.” That’s pretty much it. I’m just going to go ahead and invoke my “known or knowable” setting clause here, since a prehistoric setting with magic and elves is pretty much the same as a standard prehistoric setting… except for the magic and elves and stuff.
Character Creation: 2/5
The character creation system in Stone Age is a bit odd. Characters have six ‘attributes’, five ‘specials,’ and four ‘ratings.’ Attributes and specials are generated by drawing nine cards and assigning them to the attribute or special which marks it with the cards suit, and adds to the attribute or special’s value. The first card adds ½ its value, the second adds ⅓, and the third adds ¼, with face cards presumably adding a static value—based on an unlabeled table since the actual rules only say “Face cards add.” Players also select a race—which provide bonuses and restrictions on stat allocation, gain traits and skills, and several derived stats.
Attributes function more or less like other games, while the specials are more specialised qualities—Magic and Nightvision—and things whose value indicates how many of something a character gains—Skills, Followers, and Gear. Rastings are derived stats determined by the characters attributes, unused cards, or race.
Mechanics: 2/5
Stone Age has a fairly interesting structure to it, the game is broken into ‘sessions’ reflecting a week of in-game time, twelve sessions are one ‘season’—which have survival-related bonuses or penalties—and four seasons make up a year—which increase a character’s age. In each session characters get a production scene—in which they and their followers gather resources—an action scene—where resources are converted and/or fights are had—and narrative scenes—during which role-playing occurs.
The basic resolution mechanic is fairly straightforward. The player plays a card from their hand, and if the card’s value is lower than the tested attribute or special the test is successful, generating a number of “result points”—with face cards having specific special effects. There’s a lot more stuff surrounding this—hand sizes, card drawing, difficulty levels, complications for failure, etc—but honestly, I just don’t really feel like trying to explain all that stuff for resons that will become apparent in the next section.
Overall, it’s an interesting system as—like any hand-based card system—there’s a random element in the cards that are drawn, but also a more strategic element in deciding what cards to use in which situation, and this does fit in with the heavy focus on resource management that the game has. Basically, if you’re in need of specific resources you can use your better cards to get them rather than relying on chance. However, it does seem a little overly-complicated, and like the actual experience of the game would turn out more like each player playing their own game with occasional interaction.
Writing: 1/3 [−]
So as previously stated, this is a 24-hour RPG, and one that tries to do a lot, and it really shows. By that I mean that it is not very well written. Phasing is often very poor, things are under-explained or just not explained at all, and there are multiple instances of sentences starting and not ending—e.g. “If you have multiple cards.” The ordering of content isn’t terrible, but it’s definitely less than ideal. However, with careful reading and a few suppositions the rules are understandable—or at least so far as I understand them, which I cannot be certain is the same as the author intended.
Presentation: 2/5
As you may expect there’s very little in the way of formatting, but the formatting there is surprisingly solid. The content is broken up with colored heading and subheadings—that are actually appropriate colors—and there’s actually only a handful of paragraphs with page breaks in the middle. That all being said, there’s still some issues. Certain sections—specifically character creation—could definitely do with being broken up into some smaller sections to make it easier to understand. Also none of the tables are labeled, there’s only two of them but one is the only place that actually explains what “Face cards add.”
Final Remarks
As stated previously, Stone Age is a 24-hour RPG, and one tries to do a lot, probably too much—seriously, there’s an aging mechanic. There’s definitely something there, but sussing it out of the tangle of words presented doesn’t really feel worth the effort. This is another one of those games that really like to see a revised edition of, because there are a lot of ideas there, but they just really need to be further developed.
Base Points: 6
Character Creation: 2/5, Mechanics: 2/5, Presentation: 2/5
Adjustments: −2
Setting: N/A, Writing: −1, Content: N/A
Overall Score: 33% 5/15 Points)
I’m pretty sure I more or less understand the rules, basically.
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