Honour RPG Review | Tabletop RPG alternative to Dungeons and Dragons

Good mornin-afternoo-vening, dear Steemians!

I'm going to talk about a pen and paper or pencil and paper, whatever you want to call them, RPG however, I won't go for the considerably more well-known ones although I'm a huge fan of Dungeons and Dragons.

Instead, I'm going to talk about an RPG coming from Hong Kong and i'm not actually referring to some sort of weird Chinese knockoff of a Western RPG - although if those exist and you know something, or you have one, please contact me; I would be totally interested in checking out a knockoff RPG of a Western system, but this is a RPG developed in Hong Kong by a dude called Dominic Perry, and his game is called Honour.

This is a not only the title of the game, and a clear sign of its Asian influences, but it's also part of the game’s core mechanics - it's the closest thing to a sort of moral alignment system.

Honour isn't your usual RPG because whilst combat can and will occur, it’s suggested that you don't focus on solving issues with violence, much like in Age of Decadence.

Granted, that’s a videogame, and it is more difficult in that one to not focus on combat, although it is kind of doable, but in a pen and paper RPG setting, you can definitely do a lot more things with way less combat. This makes the Honour system a very good choice for those of us who are really into role-playing, the actual act of playing the role that we have created for ourselves or that was assigned by random chance.

Honour’s setting

I would describe Honour’s overall setting as a cross between a low-magic Shadowrun setting and Magic: The Gathering, with a bit of a Fate mechanic in it as well.

The whole game setting works on the idea of alternate worlds and parallel universes that coexist one next to another. They somehow physically exists one next to another and there are certain characters and entities who can travel from one universe to a different one, similar to Magic’s planeswalkers.

The game is designed and created in Hong Kong, and it's very actually Hong Kong-centric. The game is steeped in Asian influences for everything from its themes and characters to the general approach towards game mechanics. But not in the stereotypical Asian sense - martial arts exist, sure - but again, this isn't this for the hack-and-slash, kicking-down-the-door-kill everything-that-moves-and-ask-questions-never type of gamer.

Since the entire game is based on parallel worlds, everything happens in the world of Pangu - which is almost a carbon copy of Earth - same planet, same continents, but the names are different and events have happened differently on Pangu than on our Earth.

But just so you know, our Earth does exist in this game, but you may not want to hang around it that much because on our Earth - as we know, technology is the main driving force that our civilization is characterized by, whilst on Pangu there’s also magic.

Now let's talk a bit about that low magic setting

Saying that the game is low magic isn't necessarily correct, but it's a pretty good way to present it in as few words as possible, because the game comes with the mechanic called the Meta Reality Level.

The Meta Reality Level - MRL - means that right before you start playing, the DM and the players have to decide how much crazy insane and magical shit can happen in the game.

You can have a game that has a very low level of insanity, which will be more like a quasi-simulation of your life. It's going to be kind of like watching a TV show: everyone is human and nothing really extraordinary happens, but things out of the ordinary can happen, for instance there's murders, mysteries and that sort of stuff.

Then there's a second level in which some mystical things can show up to a limited degree. Finally there's the third level where basically anything and everything goes, so you can have catastrophic events and characters, or other entities, with superhero-level powers or abilities.

So that's why I said low-magic because by default it's kind of low on magic, but it can be this crazy fireball-throwing, people flying, super-strength having epic adventure if you choose so.

The nitty-gritty about the game mechanics

The game does have a pretty solid magic system in it, and there are several ways that you can approach being a magic user in the game, in case you're playing that sort of a game where magic is more easily attainable.

The great thing is that it has a system that will allow you to actually build your own spells. That may come with its own cons, obviously there are various pros and cons, but it's one other characteristic that adds to the customization that Honour allows for, besides the MRL.

Technology will function similarly to how magic does, in the sense that you can also invent and create things that will replicate the effects that you would get by using magic. So depending on how you create your world, that's where the Shadowrun-ish sort of idea comes in, because you could create some more advanced, sci-fi things than current real-world technology.

I mentioned at the beginning that this is a role-player’s system and that combat should be avoided. It may not always be avoidable, but you should try to.

In case that cannot happen, there's all manner of fighting options at your disposal. You can fight with melee weapons, ranged weapons, unarmed, but the strength of the system relies in the way in which it was designed to actually allow you to solve issues with a plethora of other skills that you have. You don't only have HP and a mana pool or spell slots, like your average general RPG, instead in Honour you actually have three separate stats, three separate resources and they are: physical, mental and emotional.

Your physical characteristics will influence how much physical damage you can do and absorb.

Your mental ones are related to how well, how much, how logically and how reasonable you can think.

The emotional ones are basically how you relate to other people, your level of empathy and this is what magic relies on.

As a result, you can actually have fights, or duels, in which you use any of these. In a hand-to-hand fight you will be using your physical characteristics, but let's say you have a game of chess - your challenge is to win at chess - playing chess is where your mental characteristic is used.

The gaming system itself is based on D12s and in case you are a dice collector - and I am one - the dice that you can get from the website have a Yin and Yang motif going on, but not really; they actually have a dragon and a tiger on them. It makes sense once you dive into the book. Regardless, they’re still D12s, so you can play them with generic ones as well.

Another very Honour-specific mechanic is that when it does come to combat, it’s not turn-based instead you make use of cards. This isn't necessary where the Magic: The Gathering influence comes in because the cards aren't necessarily random, because they represent your actions in combat, or during your turn, but combat isn't really turn based.

How combat happens in Honour

Everyone has a deck, or a hand of particular cards, which includes the enemy. Both you and your enemy will choose a card and then place it face down on the table. Once everyone at the table decides what their characters will do in the following seconds, they flip the cards and everything resolves simultaneously.

Why do I keep saying “if it comes to combat”?

The core book comes with a lot of already made professions, or specializations, that you can go for and sure, you can be a criminal, some Triad sort of dude, a gangster or an extortionist. But you can also be a teacher and you can also be a lawyer, a market trader or an accountant. I know that doesn't sound that exciting, but this isn't the fireball-flinging kind of game either.

Like I said earlier, in the superhero Meta Reality Level you can kinda do that, but generally this is a role-playing game, so for instance if you were a lawyer your skills would be things like Argue, Critical Thinking or Attention To Detail. You could actually solve a lot of things as you might do in real life, but cooler because you'll be the protagonist in your own action movie or adventure movie, or mystery movie.

Normally in real life, you'd call the cops and/or the firemen and/or the ambulance, but in this game you can actually be a paramedic and have a bunch of skills that keep people alive or heal them. Similarly you could be a nurse or a doctor, so this way this is why I've been saying that this isn't for the combat-focused gamer, it’s meant for the role-players, the storytellers, the people who really love to get immersed in the story, create their own narrative and interact with other people's narratives and things of that sort. It's it's kind of my type of system from that point of view.

I know for a fact that Nine Dragons - the publishing company - is preparing expansions and I think the first one will actually be the Nihon expansion, also known as Japan.

Another cool thing about the core-book is that towards the end of the book you have all the stat tables, every piece of data that you might need from the game. It’s a great mid-session time-saver.

Honour is a solid effort and as you guys and gals know, I really love indies and whether they’re video games or tabletop games, i'm here to look into them and give them a fair chance and a shot.

This was a very condensed look at what Honour is and if anything I said sounded interesting, look a bit more into it because it's a very very promising alternative to for RPG night.

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You can find Honour here: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/170639/Honour-Core-Rules

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