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In this episode of The Reviews, The Caleb G ( @TheCalebG ) takes a look at The Calling Sci-Fi Western RPG by Ohad Reiter ( @OhadReiter )
Howdy cats and kittens! It’s TheCalebG aka Professor Crunch aka the founder of Point Five Past. Today I’m here to review The Calling, a game published by Ohad Reiter and currently available on DriveThruRPG. The publisher was kind enough to send a copy of the book for the purpose of this review.
The Calling has several purchase options available on DriveThruRPG as well as a free quick-start guide. On the game’s website (www.thecallingrpg.com) character and GM sheets are available for both letter and A4 paper, as well as fillable PDF options.
Quick Overview
The Calling is a genre mashup of Science Fiction and Western tropes. The game’s world is a post-Armageddon that has been rebuilt based on classic movies. Players create characters that are the Chosen of Star Gods, alien beings that reshaped the world prior to Armageddon. Adventures range from classic elements of fighting mutated creatures and salvaging ancient tech to protecting the Star Gods from cosmic horror monstrosities. While most RPGs will have GMs take the role of deities, the Star Gods in The Calling have a much more active role and impact on the game.
Book and Resources
This book comes in at just shy of 450 pages. Most of these pages are text, charts, and examples of how to play the game. There is some full page art scattered through the book. It’s black and white and very reminiscent of classic pulp comics.
The first 300 pages are devoted to game rules and structure. Story details are scattered throughout, but the main mythology of the game world is told in about 10 pages after that first rules section. The last 100 pages are focused on the bestiary and magic spells.
Primarily focusing on the rules with flavor sprinkled in is a great approach. The Calling is a pretty crunchy game, so building a foundation for the game’s intent and concept on the mechanics is crucial.
The online resources for The Calling are slim but helpful. Three different versions of both player and GM sheets cover the bases of everything the table will need for a game. And as someone who is always searching for an easy-to-use digital character sheet for games, having the official sheet from the publisher is much appreciated.
Story
The short version of The Calling’s story is that Armageddon happened 300 years ago. Survivors gathered somewhere in Asia and rebuilt society based entirely on old movies. There aren’t big cities, just small towns surrounded by farms and ranches. Towns are drawn straight out of old Westerns, right down to Main Street and the saloon. Leadership in towns is organized like mafia movies. Monasteries show movies to town residents for both entertainment and spiritual enlightenment.
Most folks in this world rarely leave their towns. PCs are adventurers, the few brave and skilled enough to survive the dangers of the new world. They are also the Chosen of the local Star God, an alien being that is more or less responsible for the region where the PCs live. Not only do the Chosen Ones complete heroic quests, but they also serve and protect their Star God who, in return, supports them by answering prayers and granting miracles.
The longer version of the story tells players exactly what happened 300 years ago and how encountering the beings that would become Star Gods led to Armageddon. While exploring the depths of space, humanity met alien beings. These beings came back to Earth, became part of human society, and began using their advanced genetic manipulation abilities to help improve the world. However, the Star Gods also picked up many of humanity’s worst traits and started fighting amongst themselves. During this time, humans continued their usual terrible behaviors and ended up in a war as well. However, they now had access to much more advanced technology thanks to the Star Gods, so this war became Armageddon and wiped out most of humanity.
In the aftermath, the remaining Star Gods repaired and rebuilt the Earth, returning it to a vibrant natural state. They nurtured the surviving humans and helped them develop. When humanity was at a point of being able to understand concepts such as history and culture, the Star Gods used old movies to instruct and guide them. Thus we see the current state of the world in The Calling.
All of the dangers in this new world come from both the impact of both the Star Gods and the destructive choices of humanity. The genetic experiments the Star Gods performed led to mutated beasts roaming the world, including even deadlier versions of dinosaurs. Creatures based on human myths are also a threat, but these have a more unclear origin. During the Armageddon, humans built advanced and dangerous robots who are now living deep underground doing strange robot things. They have taken on shapes reminiscent of monsters from high fantasy stories to strike additional fear into their human prey A variety of classic monsters like vampires, demons, and werewolves also exist as altered humans who made deals with Star Gods. And there are also cosmic horrors that are on Earth for the sole reason of hunting and killing the Star Gods.
Mechanics
The basic dice resolution in The Calling is very simple. Characters have five traits (Muscle, Grace, Insight, Resolve, and Charm) that range from one to six. When faced with a task, players roll 2d6 and add the related trait value. Meeting or beating the target number (called the Difficulty Score) generates a successful result. Rolling snake eyes (two 1s on the dice) is a critical failure and rolling boxcars (two 6s on the dice, called Midnight here) is a critical success. A Midnight roll also generates a currency called Favor that can be used when interacting with Star Gods.
There are 14 skills, each of which is assigned or related to a specific trait. However, there is no positive modifier for being trained in a skill. Instead, there is a negative modifier for rolling an untrained skill. Character abilities and situations can provide both positive and negative modifiers to rolls.
With only a few exceptions, NPCs and monsters do not roll against PCs. NPCs and monsters have set values that players roll against. For example, the player will roll their character’s attack against a monster’s dodge score and roll their character’s dodge against a monster’s attack score.
The Calling also provides a structure to resolve dramatic scenes from movies such as negotiations, heists, investigation, and so on. When a scene like this starts, players describe three actions the party takes to resolve the scene. The overall result is based on how many successful skill checks are made ranging from zero to three. The book gives a breakdown of several classic scene types and guidelines of how to establish the scene, what skills to use, and how to define the overall success after rolls are made.
Character Creation and Gameplay
Building a character in The Calling is very quick. Players start by selecting their character’s Dojo and Calling. A Dojo is a fighting style. There are eight options including Cyborg, Katana, and Laser. A Calling is both a character’s background and their general method of interacting with the world. There are ten options including Cowboy, Nun, and Witch. Players then assign a set array of five numbers to their characters’ traits.
Dojos and Callings also grant Masteries, which encompass everything from supernatural powers to physical prowess. To use the terms of other games, Masteries are the catch-all for feats and class abilities. They also grant access to Prayers, which are The Calling’s version of magic.
To use Prayers, players take a specific combat action to role play offering up the request to their character’s Star God. If the request is granted, the Prayer is paid for with Favor. Prayers have many effects, ranging from summoning ally spirits to dealing elemental damage to enemies. Almost every Prayers also has a healing effect for the party as well.
Players strive to complete their characters’ individual quests as they experience the game’s other events. Quests are selected from a list in the character’s Calling and are broad enough to be incorporated into larger plot elements and intertwined with other characters’ quests to make the overall story more interesting. Completing Quests is how characters advance and gain levels.
As mentioned before, NPCs and monsters don’t roll dice. Instead, they have set Difficulty Scores for players to roll against. The only exception is their initiative. Their attacks and abilities also have flat damage, no rolling. This makes for very streamlined encounters and combat.
There are a large variety of combat maneuvers and options. This is where most of The Calling’s crunch comes into play. All of these maneuvers draw upon action and western movie themes and strive to help players recreate that fun on-screen action at the table. As a perfect example, ever want to shoot off someone’s hat? That’s in there.
A helpful feature of combat is that Goliath-sized monsters (the largest size category) are treated as multiple creatures each with their own stats, actions, and attacks. When a part of the Goliath is reduced to zero hit points, its actions are no-longer available in combat. This is an excellent way to manage combat with larger creatures and give players strong tactical options and clear objectives.
Gameplay in The Calling fits the fairly standard “big heroes in a dangerous” world concept. As Chosen of local Star God, characters will be asked to help with all kinds of tasks as they venture between towns completing their own quests. Unlike deities in other games, the Star God plays an active role in the campaign and interacts with the characters regularly, In fact, the choice of the Star God’s domain defines the overall theme of the campaign that’s being played.
Being an active part of the game puts the Star God in danger. The Chosen are not quite the Star God’s bodyguards, but they were chosen to defend the Star God from extreme danger. That danger takes the shape of Doppelgangers, a unique monster type that exists solely to destroy the Star God. This is where the cosmic horror element entrees The Calling. These Doppelgangers are hidden in the world and turn into twisted, terrifying monstrosities when they reveal themselves.
These Doppelgangers are integral to every campaign in The Calling. Only six exist in the game world and characters must find and destroy them. Doing so advances the Star God, granting them additional abilities that can support the characters. Dying to a Doppelganger is the only way for a character or party to be truly wiped out. In fact, if this happens the players lose the game. Additionally, Doppelgangers act as progress locks. They must be destroyed in a specific order for characters to advance through available levels.
Opinion
I’m torn about The Calling. It’s a great concept. Mashing up genres and presenting a post-Armageddon world inspired by action movies and Westerns is amazingly fun. Building a character with the Dojo and Calling option provides for lots of flexibility and creativity. The mechanics are easy to learn and understand but crunchy enough to provide lots of engaging tactical combat. The monsters are easy to run while still being interesting. The story itself is original, unique, and very entertaining. The book is written in a very accessible style and contains lots of great information for players and narrators of all skill levels, even though it does seem to be aimed primarily at new players.
But there are elements that are not so great as well. The book, while mostly well-organized, does present some information randomly. It’s not a distracting problem, but it could have a better structure. There are some minor grammatical errors throughout the entire book. The art that is there is fantastic and on-theme but there’s not much of it. The language of the book is inconsistent, changing between in-world style, generic advice structure, and personalized “I” statements from the author. The game advice contains many “only”, “never”, and “always” statements. This is not necessarily a problem but it does feel like the game comes with lots of restrictions.
Speaking of restrictions, The Calling has a very defined structure and pace. There is clearly a start and finish to the campaign, along with win and loss conditions. This is not bad, but it is different as the majority of RPGs are open-ended. But a defined structure can be very beneficial, especially for newer players. Open-ended RPGs can present players with paralysis of choice. Having too many options can be overwhelming. The defined structure and pace also helps with time management when it comes to playing the game.
Overall, I like The Calling. It’s a fun, pulpy game with a cool story and setting driving the action. It asks for a lot of role-playing prompts from players and rewards those with mechanical support. But the presentation is rough around the edges. It’s a little distracting but that’s the worst of it.
The Calling is easily accessible to new players and appealing to experienced players. It’s not quite a niche game but it’s not as expansive as other RPGs. I hope that it continues to grow and develop. This game feels a lot like 13th Age, to me. It gives players a very specific box to play in, but provides many options of what to do inside that box. I feel that this is an excellent game for an actual play podcast or stream. It’s the type of game that delivers a very specific experience. If that’s the experience you want, you will absolutely love this game.
THE RATING:
The Caleb G: C+
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