Beacon Review

A second dip into Beacon, after the comparison between it and the FFXIV RPG and came out pretty in favor of Beacon.  Beacon is made by Pirate Gonzalez Games, and you can find the game on their website or Itch.  Beacon is similar to LANCER in terms of mechanics, but so if you know how LANCER works, you can skip the next section as I give a rundown of the primary mechanics.

Quick Mechanics

General gameplay loop is that you go between Combat and Narrative play, each with it's own set of rules.  You, often, won't be using Narrative actions in Combat, for example.  Combat is more structured, tactical, grid based combat where precision, range, and area of affect are important.  Narrative play, on the other hand, is looser and more free form.    

Beacon uses 1d20s and 1d6s for basically everything.  All accuracy checks are handled by a d20, and you can gain Accuracy and Difficulty on checks, which is where you roll additional d6s equal to the amount, and take the highest result of those.  If you have Accuracy, you add it to the d20 roll, and Difficulty subtracts.  Accuracy and Difficulty cancel each other at a 1-to-1 rate, so if you somehow have 3 Accuracy on a roll and 2 Difficulty, you roll 1 d6 and add it to the result.  

For most checks, ones that aren't against like an opponent in combat, is compared to difficulty 10, so the game gives players a slight edge at success, with a 55% chance at success on an unmodified d20 roll.  If you ever roll 20+, after adding modifiers and Accuracy to a check, you score a critical hit, and get a bonus effect.  

You have two HP-alike tracks, HP and Stress, and associated limiters called Wounds and Overstress.  When your HP hits 0, you mark a Wound, refill your HP, subtract the remaining damage, and then roll on the Wound table, which could result in a piece of gear being broken (until repaired during a rest, spending resources), status effects, or even being Dazed.  When Stress fills, you mark an Overstress, empty the meter, and put any excess stress there. It also has a table, but the things that can "break" there are like, consumables, or techniques, as the exhaustion makes it hard to do them, or you can lose MP.

To offset some of these, you have something called Recoveries, that you can spend during rest periods, or by taking the Refresh action in combat.  They can be used to recover HP, Stress and MP, as well as clearing Wounds, Overstress, or repairing broken things.  Very helpful.  

Now that that's out of the way...

OK, Let's Get Into It Further

So besides being Crystal Fantasy instead of Mech Sci-Fi, Beacon builds on LANCER by fleshing out Narrative Play some more.  The biggest addition is Narrative Actions, which turns the game into a PBTA style game, with moves and triggers, such as "Gain Insight" triggering "When you quickly read a person place or situation, roll:" and then has results for 9-, 10-19, and 20+, with a list of questions.  One move I like from this list is "Make Conflict", which is about handling minor combat type encounters without resorting to full combat rules.  This action also applies to social and mental conflicts too, with you choosing Costs and Benefits based on how you roll.  It's a neat and quick way to handle less important encounters, or arguments with people.  

Looking at one more, it has something similar to Fabula Ultima's "Ritual" spellcasting, or "cutscene magic".  You describe what you want the spell to do, pick a Boon and a Bane for it.  On a failure, you get the spell effect + the bane effect.  So, as an example, let's say I'm chasing someone and they run across a river and break the rope bridge.  I want to cast magic to make an ice bridge.  For Boon, let's say Fast, it casts faster than you'd expect, and the boon is Weak, it isn't as sturdy as I'd like.  On a failure, the spell goes off, but now I have a weak bridge that might be it's own challenge on top of the chase.  If I get a Hit, I can either gain BOTH the Boon and Bane, or just negate the Boon, with no bonus effect.  On a Crit, you get just the Boon.  So if I crit, the bridge forms fast and helps us catch up to the person quicker, for example.

For that one I'm not sure if I'm totally happy with?  With how cleanly the Success and Failure options are for Make Conflict, this one seems really broad.  Being able to pick flaws and bonuses for the spell is cool in theory but it feels weird to have the GM have to adjudicate that for some reason.  The Banes and Boons aren't supposed to be opposite either, so you can go "Fast/Slow" or whatever.  Something about it feels off and I can't put my finger on it.  

One minor thing I want to touch on is that one of the Downtime action is essentially a Full Respec option.  Normally, in both Lancer and Beacon, when you level up you can move all your ranks from one License/class to another, but this allows you to change everything, from your appearance, to your name, gender, ancestry, classes and talents.  You're trying to attune to another Echo of yourself across the planes.  You keep your memories, and it cannot be used to like... go Undercover (no suitable Echo will be available), but it's still possible to make drastic changes to your character as you go.

This game cares about Loot in a way that Lancer doesn't and it definitely adds another layer.  It handles this through Loot Crates that GM gens up.  Normally it has 3 slots and you pick which option you want.  Loot is assigned Per Player too, so everyone gets a choicebox, and this unlocks spells and equipment that can be used by any class that character has.  Each slot has it's own rarity assigned to it, so you can't get 3 Legendary items (10% in slot 2, 25 in slot 3, 0 in slot 1).  This matters because there is a Dungeon Delving downtime action that lets you gain a Loot Crate.  If you Miss, you only get a Loot Crate with slot 1 available.  Hit is 1 and 2, and a Crit gives you the choice from all 3 slots.  Loot you don't want can also be broken down into Residuum.  This is used to Reroll the crate.  1 Residuum lets you reroll a single slot, 2 lets you reroll a slot and choose a specific Type of loot (Skill/Spell/Weapon/Support Item), and 2 can also let you reroll a slot with the slot being 1 level higher than the original result.  

Gear isn't supposed to be swapped between players, for various reasons.  It's designed to intentionally go "Hey this is this person's gear, don't badger them for it because it might fit your build better" or to keep everyone from stacking all the armor boosting stuff on one player to skew the game.  The book does mention that you can houserule this way easily though if you don't care.  I know I like the idea of each person getting gear separate from each other, but I probably would have the Jealousy if someone got a piece that fit a build I wanted to do in the future.

Now's where we get a little weird.

Combat Phases

Combat is similar to other games, giving you a Standard, Minor, and Move Actions per turn, but you don't necessarily use them all at once.  Each round is broken down into 8 Phases.  

  1. Bolster
  2. Channel
  3. Skirmish
  4. Reposition
  5. Brawl
  6. Release
  7. Full Attack
  8. Delay

They're labelled 1-8, and when you start the round, you pick which phase you're acting in.  There are generic actions for each phase, and some of your abilities can key off those generic actions, but more likely, they'll add a new option to that list.  At the start of a round you decide your actions, and each phase passes one by one, alternating who takes the turn between the party and enemies.  Enemies have Initiatives that indicate when they act, but players are beholden to the phase actions and order.  For example, if a party member wants to Volley (A Skirmish action), another PC wants to Rush (A Reposition action), an NPC acts on Brawl, and another party member wants to Brawl, the turn order goes like this: Player 1 goes first because Skirmish processes first, now the NPCs gets the initiative if you want to act at the same time as them, but Reposition pops first, since it's right after Skirmish.  NOW when Brawl comes about, the NPC gets to go first, then the last PC.  

This is an interesting take on JRPG active time battle type things, giving each action a delay.  If you want to use your big guns, you might need to wait until Full Attack to fire it off.  Who you're targeting and whatnot is not set until you take the action.  I can see this leading to moments where an NPC ends up moving out of range, leaving someone with no legal target for the phase you wanted to activate in.  I think I like it?  It encourages planning in a neat way, and if the party staggers their build interestingly, there's a way they could go like, 4 times in a row.

Like in Lancer, I like Surging as a mechanic, which is "Take stress to take extra turns, the more you do it between rests the more taxing it is".  So if you Surge once this fight, you take 2 Stress, but the next time you Surge before they take a Long Rest, they'll take 1d3+1 Stress.

Focus is a temporary resource, gained primarily through the Defend action, where you gain Armor+1d3 Focus.  It is used to use any of the 4 default Reactions, you can take a reaction 1/Turn, as long as you have Focus), or to use some of your class abilities.  There are other ways to gain Focus, typically through some Talents, like the Enchanter's "Adamant" enchantment, or a Class like Gravewalker, which gains Focus when nearby enemies are defeated.  

Limit Breaks are your Core Powers from Lancer, and can only be used once per Quest, even if you have time to use the action to change jobs/classes between fights.  These are your big fight swinging abilities.  

In addition to the ability to equip various weapons and skills, akin to equipping weapons and systems.  Each class has a number of Weapons (listed by size, such as light and main), and then a number of Support items they can equip based on the class.  So you can really mix and match weapons, support items, and skills from all these different classes.  Spells and some abilities cost MP to trigger, and MP numbers are pretty low, so if you spam your best ability you could be out of resources after one fight.  

Another neat thing are Ancestries, which gives you 4 additional abilities.  Like the Goblin ancestry gives you: The ability to use the Rush action as a free actions 1/scene, the ability to Shift 1 space when an attack misses you, you play as a swarm and increase to size 2, and you can do 1 piercing (bypassing armor) damage for free at the start of the turn when you have someone grabbed.  These can be tweaked and you can do half-and-half to take 2 from each Ancestry, but it provides another interesting vector for custimization.  

I will say, numbers in this game are loooooow.  The Aegis, a class that's a tank, has base 6 HP.  You gain 2 HP for every point in Bulk (you get 2 stat points at level 1 to put in your choice of Bulk, Agility, Mind, and Magic).  If I drop both points into an Aegis, I have 10 HP to start, which on two bad rolls for me would be enough damage to kill me.  This is offset by your support items, like Armor, which is just flat damage reduction.  

I need to see this in action to see if characters feel too fragile or if the damage being tuned down and Armor and everything else makes it feel like your bulky characters are good at surviving.  What helps the example Aegis is that they have a lot of Armor granting abilities for both themselves and their allies, which is really cool.  Makes them a ranged supporter in that way.  

Taking a peek at the generic Support items, I like how everyone can carry healing potions so you don't need dedicated healing, or just as a "I don't know what to put in this last Light Support Item slot".  Even funnier, you can add a Companion as a Support Item which is hiiiilarious to me.  Anyone can have a little guy!

Between the Classes, Ancestries, and the Talents, which I didn't even touch on as 3 tier Feats you can take, you have a LOT of options to customize your character and make some bonkers builds.  And that's before we even get to the Gear you get from your class, the generic gear, and your Loot Crates!  There's SO MUCH.  

One thing I don't like as much is that the character creation rules are split up weirdly.  The basics of creating a character is in the beginning (good), but when you get to the chapter "Building a Beacon", there's nothing about the basic stuff you need, such as how many stat points you get to distribute, information about your Title, skills, and so on.  Grit isn't mentioned in that section either.  I kind of wish the details from page 11-14 were reprinted or reiterated in the Building a Beacon section, but it's a minor-ish complaint.  

Game Master Stuff

What I love about Lancer and Beacon is how they handle enemies.  Yeah, you don't have a huge bestiary like some games, but you have 28 base enemies, and you can modify them with universal NPC features that can change any of them plus you have 19 Templates which are bigger modifications to the base creature.  It's really cool.  NPCs don't get ALL the abilities listed on their page, instead you pick 0-2 of the Extra Features, either from their class or the Universal ones, and you could run several encounters with the same Expendable enemies, and have them all feel different.  Expendable encounter 1 could be Goblins, 2 Goblin Expendables would be 4 characters (each 1 counts as 2 half-characters, essentially), as backup archers for a bigger goblin.  Your next one could have your own version of Infested Terrans from Starcraft, which just rush an enemy and try to detonate in their face when their HP is depleted.  You could then be some Shield Drones with the Shielded trait, that lets them act like Hard Cover for their allies, making them harder to hit.

It looks limited when you just see "Oh there's 28 monsters?  That's lame" but they're so flexible you can do so much with them.  

Another thing I like: there's a half page about homebrewing stuff.  It's not a ton but it's something.  I also like the preexisting Reflections, which in the cosmology of Beacon, are a facet of a Crystal that represents a world.  I also recommend the Reflection Generator on the Pirate Gonzalez Games resource page if you need some help making up a world.  You need to settle on the Theme of the world, the role Beacons play in the setting, the recurring threat labelled The Scourge, the importance and function of Crystals in the setting, the role of Aether and Magic serve and how they function, and the nature of Ruins and Dungeons.  

Pulled up the generator and got the following.

  • Theme 1 - Advanced fallen civilizations
  • Theme 2 - Journey
  • Theme 3 - The number 7
  • Beacons - Vessels
  • The Scourge - The Living Spell
  • Role of Crystals - Soul Entrapment
  • Magic and Aether - Emotions
  • Ruins - Our civilization

Looking over that, I could see a big sweeping journey taking place to visit the site of 7 former civilizations, as we look for answers to why our cities don't last as long.  The living spell as an entity is really cool, just a spell with a will of it's own doing whatever the fuck it wants, or causing chaos all over.  That would be fun to put on a gridded world map and roll a random hex/square for it's current nexus and have it spread out in the surrounding 2 spaces in each direction, just to add some unpredictability.

Keeping with the bullet list of "Beats to know for making X", is a quest building template.

  • Inciting Incident
  • Rising Action
  • Climax
  • Conclusion

Yes, these are common terms and common advise, but something about laying out and going "Hey make sure you fill these out, and here are some example Quests" is always appreciated.  Now, some people will balk at this because it feels like pre-planning and railroading a thing, but I think having it as a "this is where it starts and ends" is a good place to start so if things DO go off the rails, you have at least some sort of framework established that you can pivot from.  Yeah the mine is haunted, and there are malevolent ghosts haunting the place, but maybe you did such a good job clearing it that you go "well fuck, I guess the mine stays open instead of people abandoning it in fear/superstition"  And then you give them a bonus Loot Crate or something.  Jumping off points are always appreciated with me.  

Also carried over from Lancer is, essentially, Sitreps, or situational combats (or Battle Plans if you want to use the book's term).  These are encounters where the goal is something other than "Defeat all enemies".  These can be things like escorting a target, reaching an escape zone to get out of a chaotic or dangerous situation, holding control points, or guarding a high value target.  Most of these have round limit, such as Destruction giving you 8 rounds to destroy as many objectives as you can.  

Again, I love these because it encourages encounters beyond "I'm going to knock you down!".   

I like the Hub city idea, as an upgradable "home" for the PCs.  It gives them a gold sink in exchange for new shops, passive benefits, and narrative opportunities.  The Junkyard for example lets the party acquire some supplies for free between Quests, while the Cafe brings new types of people to town.  

Conclusion

To wrap up this, I want to look at some of the Loot the book provides as things to populate the Loot Crates with.  For example, the Armor of Growing Endurance is a Support Item (rare) that's an Enchantment.  You modify an existing piece of armor and choose to either: gain temp HP whenever you take a Wound, or when you Overstress, gain charges that can be used to reduce future stress.  We also have Cartwheel, which is a Reaction that doesn't cost Focus, but can only be used 1/Round.  When hit by an attack, you can shift 2 spaces, avoiding triggering reactions.  

I think I like Beacon as a text.  I want to get it to a table to see how the Phase part of combat works.  I know the Loot system will annoy some people but it actually excites me (I made a treasure pool generator from items I create for Fabula Ultima for this purpose).  I was a big fan of running Lancer too, so making Lancer but Final Fantasy is really really cool to me.  Can't wait to play it one day.

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