Frugal GM Review: Corporia

I have a rather simple rule about this blog....well, I probably have more rules that don't immediately spring to mind, but the one that is on my mind is that if you are a publisher and you send me product I will review it.

Mark Plemmons, a good friend of mine who runs Brabblemark Press, recently came out with his new RPG, Corporia after a successful Kickstarter Campaign.

Now I helped out a bit during the design process, nothing to brag about in my opinion, and got my name in the book as a Contributing Editor. I wasn't expecting to actually get a hardbound copy of the book, but guess what came in the mail today? Yep, number 177 out of 200 limited edition signed & numbered copies.

Now this takes me back to the original blog rule......you send me product and I'll review it.

In a nutshell, Corporia is a "modern" RPG set in the "city" where you get to play a modern-day member of the Knights of Camelot. Now I can go on about the setting, but if that sentence isn't enough, you should just go look at the preview on DriveThruRPG. Seriously....go look at the preview....it's worth at least a good 41K words....

The book is about the size of a trade comic book but hard-cover. The art and layout is great, and I've seen some rumblings about the quality of the paper. I think some were thinking it should be high-gloss super-quality paper. Meh...it appears to be a high-quality matt magazine stock and looks good enough for me. I only have a couple of books with that upper-end paper and honestly I don't really use those books.....looks great on the shelf though. This book is a nice size and a more usable format that most every other gaming book out there. It is a minor touch, but just addition of colored "tabs" on the page sides...tabs that mirror the other color accents in each chapter (great effect!) go a long way with me. Also a HUGE fan of the index with Director-only entries noted in red.

Basically, Mark knows his way around some great layout ideas......

The rules themselves are an easy read and the rules have a lot of leeway for the GM and the players to work together in-game. There are a couple of sample adventures, a rather generous GM (Director) section, and enough sample NPCs to run a couple games.

Now I'll be the first to admit that I probably won't be running any games of Corporia, mostly because I play HackMaster and well.....that's my game. I do hope to get to play a game though at a con.......hope there are some at Origins!

Now I am fully cognizant I didn't go into the specific of how the rules work or the setting of the "City", but with about 1/5 of the book available for preview and a great Character Dossier (16 page character creation guide) available, it is easy to check it out for yourself.

BTW.......the RPG Book in PDF form is on sale for $14.99!