Cold City
By John Grigsby, Staff Reviewer
Available as a PDF through RPGNow.com. A hard copy is available through Indie Press Revolution.
Initiative Round
Cold City is an independent role-playing game from
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.
Cold City is a self-contained role-playing game set in a fictional version of Berlin, circa 1950. World War II has been over for five years. Much of Europe remains shattered and ruined. The USA and the USSR are now locked in a stare-down, each waiting for the other to blink. Britain broods over the loss of her Empire, while France contemplates the damage caused by the ravages of war. Germany simply struggles to recover from the brink of complete annihilation.
And in the ruined city of Berlin, something stirs; an underground war to turn back a tide of evil unleashed by the Nazis. An evil unseen by most of the world, horrors brought about by the ceaseless progress of twisted technology and lunatic scheming of evil minds.
Cold City is a game of monster-hunting in Berlin during the early part of the Cold War. Characters are drawn from the former allies who now occupy Germany. Ideally, a party will demonstrate a mix of nationalities, as this adds to the feelings of tension and paranoia that are essential to the setting. Characters are expected to come into conflict with one another, and this is as much a part of the game as what they are brought together to do; hunt monsters.
The first thing you need to know is that Nazi science was really a lot more advanced than we ever knew, and there were other things, as well. In Cold City, it would not be usual to see a disc-shaped VTOL gunship over Berlin, for example. Your characters may encounter creatures from other dimensions, re-animated corpses, and far, far worse things. As a member of the Reserve Police Agency, however, you know enough to keep your mouth closed and do your job.
The RPA is comprised of a couple of hundred agents from the four major Allied powers (England, France, Russia, and the United States) and Germany; largely military personnel selected for their toughness, intelligence, or simply because they saw something they can never unsee. These agents creep out into Berlin by night in groups of three or four, often following tenuous leads, slight rumors, and strange stories. Unfortunately, for a group that works so closely with one another, the RPA is rife with suspicion. None of the agents really trust one another with the forbidden technology and dark secrets, and when you get right down to it, where do your own loyalties lie?
Each character chooses a nationality (and in Cold City, everyone should have a different nationality) and background, representing your experiences to that point. Each player must also develop a draw, explaining how they came to be a part of the RPA. Finally, every character has three attributes, rated 1 through 5; Action, Influence, and Reason.
Action is used when the character takes any physical action, whether raw strength, manual dexterity, or reaction time. Influence is used when the character is in a situation that requires the ability to intimidate, persuade, seduce, exert willpower, encourage, or discourage others. Reason is used when a conflict requires thought, wisdom, intellectual ability, education, and deductive power.
A rating of 1 indicates poor performance, while a 5 is almost superhuman. All character start at 1 and players are granted five points to allocate to attributes. Players then choose a total of five traits, at least two of which must be negative. Traits are similar to skills, but much more broad-based, and each has both a positive and negative aspect. A typical trait might be, “crazed in a fight.” As a positive trait, such a character is bold and fearless in combat situations, but as a negative trait, the character is wild and reckless, striking at random. Positive traits give bonus dice in conflicts, negative traits remove dice.
All characters have hidden agendas, as well. Agendas may be either National or Personal. If a character is involved in a conflict that advances their Hidden Agenda, they get bonus dice. Ultimately, the idea is to advance Hidden Agendas using the trust the other characters have in each other. Which brings us to another important aspect of the game…
Trust plays a big part in Cold City. In game, trust is reflected through the trust mechanic. Each character is to form an opinion of the other characters and jot this down on their character sheet. Then, they assign a number of trust points to each other character from a total determined by the number of characters. Trust may be rated from 0 (indicating that you wouldn’t trust the character to pull a chair out for you) to 5 (you wouldn’t hesitate to leave a loved one in the character’s care). Afterwards, each records how much the other characters trust them, as well. In play, trust serves to grant extra dice during a conflict. But, trust is a double-edged sword. It can also be used to gain a bonus for an act of betrayal.
Cold City uses ten-sided dice. When a conflict arises (a conflict is any kind of situation where different results are possible), each player takes up a number of dice equal to the value of the most appropriate attribute for the situation—Action, Influence, or Reason. If the character has Traits appropriate to the conflict, then each positive Trait adds an additional die to the pool (Negative Traits that might have an influence subtract a die). It is important that the Trait be woven into the narrative of the story, however. If one of a character’s Hidden Agendas can be worked into the situation, the chosen attribute is effectively doubled.
Finally, the stakes are set. Stakes simply define what each side hopes to gain from the conflict. It is not enough to say, “I want to win.” Stakes should be more specific, such as, “I want to pick the lock on the gate and gain access to the compound.”
Once the stakes have been determined and the dice gathered, each side rolls the total number of dice in their pool and the results are compared. The objective is to get more dice results higher than the opposition. Ties are removed and the remaining dice compared. Each die that beats an opponent is considered a level of success. If the opposition is an inanimate object (such as the lock in the example above), the GM determines how many dice are rolled for the effort, based on the circumstances. If the lock was easy to pick and the character had plenty of time, the lock might receive only two dice, but it were a complex lock, and it was night time, and raining, then the lock might get seven dice. If the character were being pursued, this total might rise to nine or ten.
For situations involving multiple participants, one character on each side is determined to be the primary, or leader, and the others are designated as supporting. The leader gathers his dice pool as shown earlier, but each supporting character can add a number of dice equal to the attribute of their choice, provided they can provide a reasonable explanation in the narrative. Alternatively, each attempt could be handled separately, with each character in the conflict trying his own method.
Conflicts between player characters are where the Trust mechanics comes into play. If you have reason to trust another player who is aiding you in some manner (even if it means just standing guard while you accomplish a task), then you get to add your trust dice to the pool. But, if they decide to betray you, then the trust you have placed in them gets added to their pool, instead!
The winner of a conflict earns the right to handle the narrative, with certain restrictions. The results must be narrated using the number of successes as a guide. The character might achieve only a slight success, or she may succeed brilliantly, perhaps even acquiring a little extra in the bargain. Furthermore, every conflict has a consequence of some sort. Positive consequences might include a new positive Trait or perhaps a negative Trait turning positive. Negative consequences (for failure) are also possible.
In combat, the amount of damage done is determined by the level of success, and modified by the weapon or attack form used. Slugging someone with a fist doesn’t do much. At best, you might manage to knock them cold. But pumping a burst of machine gun fire into someone has significantly greater effect.
Beyond the rules, Cold City provides you with a map showing the political boundaries and major streets and notable locations of Berlin, 1950. There’s also a mini-gazetteer describing sites of interest and some of the more important NPCs (such as the leaders of the factions and the foes you will be facing). Last, but certainly not least, there are three adventures seeds with enough information that an off-the-cuff game could be run from them.
Critical Hit
On the one hand, I like the general idea behind the game. Cold City is a game of Cold War paranoia backed by a vast, unfamiliar territory where anything or anyone could be out to kill you. It’s the kind of setting that fiendish GMs love to exploit, and its fun for players who enjoy not knowing what to expect next.
The rules are simple enough that the game can be played almost anywhere, without the need for a lot of materials or playing space, which makes it ideal for a long drive, for example, if you can find a place to roll the dice (or use an electronic die roller). The mechanics are easy to learn and remember, and veteran GMS should be able to make up adventures on the spur of the moment, without too much forethought. Slap a few numbers into the attributes, add a couple of Traits, and you’re on your way.
Critical Fumble
However, as simple as the mechanics are, they are open to dispute and interpretation. I have one player in my group who might be termed a “rules lawyer” and is very adamant about the rules as written. I can foresee several arguments between me and him about what constitutes a Trait, how attributes can or cannot be used, etc. For Cold City to work, players will need to be mature and very receptive to the idea that the GM’s word is final and supersedes even the rulebook.
As always, the GM should beware of those players with running imaginations who will try to dominate the narrative. This is a problem in nearly any RPG, but more so in Cold City than other systems. As the winner of a conflict earns the right to narrate the results, unscrupulous players or those with a flair for the dramatic can dominate the game in these instances, and the GM should be careful not to permit them to run away with the story.
Coup d’Grace
Cold City is imaginative, entertaining, and simple, and it looks like it will be a lot of fun to play. The game is well-suited to long-term campaigns, and its simplicity makes it great for playing at conventions, on long trips, or just sitting around waiting for the movie to start. The focus is definitely aimed at mature players (simply because of the subject matter), but it would be easy enough to adapt the mechanics into something that even young children could grasp and enjoy.
Final Grade: A
