Article:
An Exclusive Preview of Maschine Zeit, a New RPG

Last weekend, everything I thought that I knew about pen and paper role-playing games got thrown out of a tenth story window and replaced with something fresh, new, and terribly overdue. This happened at the 7th Dimension Games store in Roslyn, Pennsylvania (USA). Machine Age Productions game developer David A. Hill Jr. came in Saturday afternoon and ran a demo of his soon-to-be released sci-fi horror genre RPG called Maschine Zeit. Attendance at the event was fairly robust for such a small venue, which enabled us to split into two seperate, perfectly sized groups.

It was readily apparent from the start that this was not your usual P&P RPG, bogged down with lengthy equipment lists, complicated talents with subtalents, specializations, and career packages. Don't let the game fool you, however. It's clean, light-weight design is what allows the players to be more interactive with the story than ever before!

Nine primary attributes make up a "character wheel" of sorts. Players allocate 150 points between these stats in 5 point increments, with a maximum value of 25 per attribute. After assigning these points, each player must develop their own (gasp!) Descriptors, Skill Sets, and Associations that are linked to one of three sections of the attribute wheel. David encouraged us to be wildly creative here, with player choices ranging from Skill Sets such as 'Martial Arts' to Descriptors like 'Desperate to Maintain Current Lifestyle (Needs Money).'

Once players allocate 150 more points in the same 5 point increments to their custom-created Descriptors, Skills, and Associations, the game can begin. David gave a short primer to the universe, telling a tale of post-plague hysteria and derelict sub-orbital stations with purported paranormal activity. Our troop of Player Characters had diverse backgrounds and reasons for coming to such a dangerous place, ranging from Scrap Collection to Investigative Journalism, to a washed up child-star trying to jump start his career on a reality TV show about his adventure.