Riftbreaker 2e | First Look

an ambitious game, that is not for me

Can you turn a MMO into a TTRPG?

That is the promise made by Riftbreakers 2e by blackoathgames.

As a person that loved playing MMOs in the past (Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2 and FF14) I was intriqued.

The game has tons of positive reviews and after playing a couple of sessions I have to admit:

I don’t like it!

I had a version of this article saved for a couple of weeks now and I was hesitant to post it.

Do I want to post a “bad review”?

The fact is that this is not just a review or “first look” but a look behind my personal preference.

It’s a look at what I want from a game, what I personally consider good game design and how it will affect my choice of game going forward.

I want to be fair:

The game has some really solid tools but also some things that really bother me

Game Loop

The Game Loop is one of the first things I want to understand when I play a game, especially for soloplay.

But what even is a game loop?

Shadowdark allows you to turn gold into XP, so the game incentivizes things like dungeon crawling.

Ironsworn gives XP for finishing Vows, Making Discoveries and Creating Bonds and the available Moves incentivize doing exactly that.

Draw Steel gives out Victory Points for successfull Combat, Negotiations or Montages. These Points make you more powerful during your adventure and turn into XP during Rest. The game incentivizes pressing on and overcoming challenges.

Mythic Bastionlands makes you explore a map and solve myths through the escalation of Omens you can discover. For every solved myth you gain Glory.

As you can see, I think the game loop is closely linked to the reward structure of the game.

They tell me what the game is about, what I should seek out while playing and how I progress my character.

How does it work in Riftbreaker 2e?

At its core you get quests from a quest board.

Kill a monster, go on patrol, deliver some stuff or go into a Rift and defeat the Riftlord.

Get a Quest, go to location, do the thing and get a reward.

There are other options to progress your character like achievement paths, crafting and Loot as well as rolling doubles (Riftbreaker uses a traditional d100 system) but I would say the quest board represents the core gameloop.

The “Loop” gets supported by a Travel mechanic that utilizes a hexcrawl and random encounters to help you create an interesting game.

GM Emulator

While it can be played in a group Alex’ games are best known as SoloRPGs and this one is no different.

It comes with a GM Emulator that let’s you “test” a scene with a twist factor and should it get interrupted your roll on a 2d8 table to find out how.

The ‘Interrupt Table’ is really cool and offers a lot of clear and diverse outcomes.

It’s one of the things I really liked in this game.

However, I didn’t quite get the point….

I am well aware that this is a tool and I can use it however I want, but I can’ help but wonder:

How does it fit with the core gameloop?

If I run a hexcrawl and create encounters and events through the mechanic of that hexcrawl, how do I implement the GM Emulation?

What even is a scene?

Is it a new hex? A travel day? What is it?

I would have loved a couple of examples or more guidance to show how the games’ creator thinks this meshes with the intent of the game.

Otherwise it’s just a tool that doesn’t serve the overall experience.

Or at least I don’t understand it.

Combat

Let’s be honest: Combat is important and most TTRPGs feature it in one form or another.

Let me break down a few core features:

As many (or all?) of Alex’ games this one works with Zones.

I love Zones, especially for Soloplay

It’s easy to set up and doesn’t require a complicated map.

On the other hand, it also makes combat a bit “samey” (Is that a word?)

There isn’t much happening besides using abilities for the most part.

I personally think using some special elements on the zones like cover, difficult terrain, elevation can really enhance the experience.

The Combat itself uses a d12 loadout that you fill with your abilities.

Each ability can be placed a maximum of 3 times.

At the start of combat you roll a d12 five times filling your “hand”.

You can spend a meta resource to use those abilities and discard them back into the loadout, refilling (rerolling) your hand to five abilities at the beginning of the next round.

I don’t particularly like loadouts.

But looking at it from a design perspective it makes sense.

It allows for deeper character customization and tactical decision making.

It comes down to preference I guess.

I do however have a major issue with this system:

My Major Disappointment

Let’s look again at how combat works:

Are you really going to roll on a d12 table every round, possibly 5-6 times, writing it all down, keeping track of what you already rolled putting it back in the loadout with pen, paper, dice and eraser?

I very much doubt it.

The game is designed to be played with cards.

In my opinion it’s what makes the game playable in the first place.

The author has thought of that as well.

Unfortunately, the necessary cards are sold seperately for 44$ (at the time of writing this article).

Why would you sell an item that is essential for the enjoyment of your game for more than the game itself?

It feels like buying a board game and the publisher says:

“Well, here are the rules, you can make the pieces yourself or buy this DLC.”

I guess the game serves as sort of a MMO Emulator, but I don’t know if a Gem Shop is the thing you want to emulate.

Sticking with that analogy:

Sell it as cosmetics but provide a blank piece of paper with the abilities written on it.

I feel weird saying that because I haven’t seen anyone else complain about it, but it’s baffling to me.

It’s absolutely possible to create a card for yourself.

Cut up some index cards and write down the ability.

Do that 3 times for all your abilities (12 at the beginning of the game, so 36 cards).

It’s what I did and it was really annoying.

I can’t help compare it to Ironsworn where I can download all the assets for free creating resources that are fun to use and enhance the experience.

At that point I was honestly pretty turned off by the game but I decided to continue playing.

I wanted to give the game a chance and also share a more thorough experience with my readers.

The First Quest

When it came time for my first quest I was flipping through the book thinking:

Where is the map?

I am doing a hexcrawl and there wasn’t a map.

I spent about an hour looking through the book, checking the publishers’ website when I finally found a reddit article with the same problem:

The POD from Amazon doesn’t provide the map.

I contacted Alex and received it the next day, no problem.

What I don’t understand is:

Why?

If for whatever reason you don’t want to provide it with the character sheets, at least put a small disclaimer somewhere.

I doubt I am the only one that had this issue and it would have saved me a lot of time.

Now, I am not a game designer and I understand there are many different things that go into it, especially if you are trying to make a living off of it.

To that regard, I also don’t want to sound overly negative and highlight something that I really liked:

Rifts

If you have followed my last few articles you know I have been thinking about improving my experience with exploration in Solo RPGs and found something called flux spaces.

Those are essentially areas that are large and “samey”.

Instead of going from room to room you travel between landmarks creating some sort of point crawl.

Rifts are, as I understand it, essentially that.

You go into a Rift with a certain theme like “Frozen Wasteland”

You then roll a feature and either encounter “Nothing”, “Danger” or a “Landmark.

The latter is really well designed with 4 d100 tables determining Descriptor, Object, Action and Theme.

Considering the overall theme of the rift you get an endless possibility of landmarks to explore.

That’s just really well designed.

The objective is always the Riftlord who you find by rolling a usage die

I actually like the whole concept so much that I wish it was a more prominent part of the game making it part of the game loop and reward structure.

Not sure how it would look like.

Overall Thoughts

Even without the whole Monatization of the game I don’t think I am the target audience.

This ties back to what I said in the beginning about understanding preferences.

I don’t particularly like hexcrawls or dungeoncrawls unless they serve a specific purpose (like chasing Omens in Mythic Bastionland).

I also don’t like to roll on a bunch of tables.

A quick and abbreviated example of play of a hexcrawl:

Roll Travel Die (p.111)

Encounter Bandits in Kar Helos (p.128)

Determine Hostility (p.95)

Start Combat (Bestiary p.227)

Determine Loot (p.205)

Find Magic item

Determine Magic item (p.190)

Try to Identify Magic Item

Remember that I still have a Magic Item I need to identify.

Some would consider the game crunchy.

I don’t.

Crunch means something else to whomever you ask.

To me it means counting and calculating a lot of numbers to get to my desired result.

That’s not what is happening in Riftbreakers.

It’s a lot of flipping through the book to find what you need while simultaneously keeping track of everything on 6+ different Sheets for your character depending on what you currently need.

It’s a Toolbox.

It has great Tools and some cool systems but it doesn’t feel streamlined enough.

I don’t get a distinct vibe from it.

Then again, maybe that’s what the game needs to be if you want to emulate the feeling of a MMO.

Something for everyone.

I want to emphasize that this is my own personal preference and thoughts about a game.

There are some good reviews out there and I encourage you to check them out as well if you are considering to buy Riftbreakers.

I tried my best at being constructive and explaining my points.

See you next time,

Daniel