In the Afterword to his masterwork Hot War (202 digest-sized pages, black-and-white softcover, $28), designer Malcolm Craig says that the game is “centred around things that fascinate me.” I could embroider that on a sampler and put it on my wall; I would go so far as to say that any game designer had damn well better find something that fascinates her if she’s going to go through all the mishigoss of writing a game. Not just to keep her plugging away at it, but to sell it to the readers: fascination is contagious. But un-fascination is freaking viral – if you aren’t interested in your game world, or elves, or combat rules, the readers can tell, and they won’t bother to be players. Or to keep reading. Malcolm Craig, on the evidence of this game, is fascinated by monstrosity, betrayal, dystopia, underground structures, and politics. (But I repeat myself, he laughed hollowly.) And you the reader will be, too.

The British, from Wells to Wyndham, have a genius for dystopia; with Hot War, Malcolm Craig stakes his claim to that noble tradition. Presenting a semi-sequel to his previous game of monster-hunter infighting in postwar Berlin, Cold City, Craig lays out the world of Hot War in a very few bold strokes. (Paul Bourne’s illustrations — mostly propaganda posters and photos of monstrous “test subjects” – provide the ideal atmospheric assistance in this project.) The Cuban Missile Crisis became World War III. All sides used “twisted technology” stolen from the Nazis: building and summoning monsters. The War has wrecked Britain, and civilization (as far as the PCs know) is pretty much restricted to London and the Home Counties, and is likewise pretty much disintegrating. You are part of a secret inter-agency task force ordered to hunt down Soviet monsters leftover from the invasion, and anything else the Government needs hunted. (Terrorists, mouthy refugees, fascists. You know.) Your true agenda depends on which agency you really work for: The jealous Royal Navy? An experimental monster-research lab? The increasingly desperate Americans? Your true agenda will also differ from your orders, perhaps fatally. Conflicts are dice pool battles; you get more dice by pulling in those secret agendas, your relationships, and anything else you want to risk. (There’s a beautiful negative-feedback system by which you can sabotage your own secret agenda by using it in doomed battles.) The winner of the conflict narrates how he won and assigns any fallout, the characters change, and the game propels itself punchily on. It strikes me as a nigh-perfect game for shorter campaigns of six to thirteen sessions; about the length of a British TV season. It strikes me as a nigh-perfect marriage of rules engine with game feel. It strikes me as fascinating.

Tags: contested ground studios, corebook, horror, hot war, malcolm craig

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