Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 - Review

I just played A Quick Trip to France, the Achtung! Cthulhu Quickstart adventure. 

There were two competing WW2 Cthulhu RPGs: Achtung! Cthulhu and World War Cthulhu (now out of print, but it's in Chaosium's queue for a new edition).

Achtung! Cthulhu (A!C) is pulp action with the Nazis using Cthulhu magic to further their aims in the war. In World War Cthulhu, WW2 is the setting and the PCs are assigned to a special section of British Intelligence tasked to fight the Mythos. I always liked spies and a more gritty WW2 game, so I preferred World War Cthulhu. That said, if you wanted to shoot lots of Nazis and especially Nazis with a Cthulhu taint, then Achtung! Cthulhu is what you want to play. Think Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos.

This new edition of Achtung! Cthulhu uses the Modiphius 2d20 system, the same system used for Conan, Star Trek Adventures, and Dune. The 2d20 system is designed for pulpy cinematic action, so it's a good match for Achtung! Cthulhu.

If you are looking for a simulationist version of WW2, then this would disappoint you. In real life, war is really a contest of attrition and resources. The side with more people, weapons, and supplies wins. People are expendable resources. In OSR games, where PCs have few hit points and can be killed easily, one lucky bullet and you buy the farm or a ticket to the field hospital. In those games, PCs need to work smart to stay alive.  So, you do as much possible to reduce risk and work the terrain and situation to your advantage.

In real life, marines carried on average 117 pounds of equipment (75 lbs in WW2, a M1 rifle is about 12 lbs). Weapons, ammo, food, and their full kit. In Achtung! Cthulhu, PCs can carry 1 Major item (rifle) and 3 Minor items (pistol, knife, grenades) before they become encumbered. If you have a Brawn bonus you can carry 1-3 more Minor items. 1 Major items = 3 Minor items. You may decide to be Encumbered and carry either 1 more Major item or 3 Minor items. When Encumbered, you can't run and various test difficulties are increased by 1. This isn't realistic, but in the world of Sgt. Fury, this matches the comic books. They run into combat with a major weapon and secondary weapon and that's it. No backpack filled with rations or a water canteen.

In the QuickStart, I played Corporal Sarah Walker, an Aussie with a dog and Boomerang (her signature weapon). My issue was that her one Boomerang was a Minor item and if she had a normal Brawn, her pistol, trench knife, and ammo belt (each a Minor item) would already encumber her. There's no room for an entrenching tool, canteen, or food. Luckily her Brawn allowed her two more Minor items. I decided I wanted a flashlight (Minor item). Carry anything else and she can't even move (I exaggerate here, but I think you get what I mean). Her Boomerang doesn't return if it hits and if it is thrown as a Salvo (for Stun), it doesn't return if it misses.

The really weird thing is that her Boomerang (range Medium) has a longer effective range than her Thompson Machine Gun (range Close Quarters). So, if the target is in the same zone as her, the Thompson is better, but if the target is one zone away, the Boomerang is better. In real life, a Thompson Machine Gun has an effective range of 164 yards. A boomerang 44 yards.

I wanted grenades, but that would have encumbered me. WTF? In real life, soldiers carried at least 2 and sometimes 2 dozen, depending on where they're going. I also asked about an entrenching shovel, which is standard equipment for digging foxholes and burying your sh*t. That also would encumber me. Now, this is starting to be really annoying.

When we found lanterns (Minor item), any PC picking one up risked being encumbered. More annoyance. Taking enemy weapons (Major item), more encumbrance. 

My PC had the Sharpshooter Talent. My first bonus die was free if I used a ranged attack and aimed. It also gained a Piercing effect +1. And the normal Aim minor action allows you to reroll any single die. Now, the stupid Thompson Machine Guns are Inaccurate (you can't aim with them). But the Germans used MP40s which have the exact same stats as the Thompson except you can Aim with them and they're Reliable (first Complication with the weapon is ignored). So, I immediately changed weapons with a dead German. Not only that, German and Allied weapons make a different sound when fired. So, when you're behind enemy lines, it's preferable to use a German weapon. There's a chance someone might think it's just an accidental discharge or friendly fire vs enemy action. Also behind enemy lines, there's lots of German ammo lying around (usually found on dead Germans).

During combat, I found the Range of the firearms very limiting and unrealistic. In our final encounter. We entered a large room consisting of 3 Zones: two Zones for the large room and a final Zone for the dais where the bad guys were performing a ritual. To shoot them, we would have to enter the room (if we didn't, firing would cross 3 Zones and be impossible) and fire at Long Range to hit the cultists. Considering the Thompson (and MP40) are Close Quarter weapons, it meant that we needed 3 successes to hit anybody on the dais. Since you start with 2d20 without any bonuses, it's unlikely you can hit anyone. And if you do a Salvo, which is to empty your clip, you only gain the Stun effect. It doesn't increase your chance to hit. We wound up moving 2 Zones before we were combat effective. This is crazy bad. The combat turned out to be more like Conan than WW2. We were mostly toe-to-toe with the bad guys in the same or adjacent Zone, firing guns. It wasn't very realistic, but more cinematic.

Another thing is that the PCs have Truths. If applicable they reduce (or increase) the difficulty of a skill check by one. e.g. Give an automatic success (or require an extra success). If your PC had Army as a Background, you could pick Paratrooper, Trained Marksman, or Deadly Commando as a Truth. Well, my PC had Deadly Commando as a Truth, so when I asked if it applied to Stealth or Combat, the GM decided it was too broad, affecting almost all of my combat die rolls, and decided no. It only applied to sneaking into an enemy camp, in darkness, and garroting an enemy. Basically making the Truth worthless in most cases. After trying to use the Truth (asking the GM if it applied) a few times and failing, I stopped asking. My feeling is that if this was overly broad, why did they list it as the 3 choices in character creation? I then went to the Modiphius forum and found an answer. Truths are only supposed to be used rarely, in clutch situations where success and failure are important. The Truth should also be invoked with some creativity.

An aspect of Fortune points got nerfed compared to Conan and Star Trek Adventures. Instead of adding an extra die set to a 1, you must set one of your dice to a 1 before you roll the rest of your dice. In Conan and Star Trek Adventures, using a Fortune point is like gaining 2 extra successes, but in A!C, you lose one of your dice which makes a big difference.

Now, for the good stuff. I really like how they did magic.

One of our PCs was Sven Nilsen, a Runeweaver. In CoC, Odens sometimes help humans against the Great Old Ones. So, Sven has spells to call on Thor to smite the Black Sun German cultists seemed spot on. Seeing Germans get hit by lightning is pretty cool. What's even more ironic is that the Third Reich leaned heavily on old Norse Mythology and iconography. And having Thor be like up your ass is like having your own Gods punish you for being bad.

Since PCs and NPCs use magic, the magic system works really well. Spells cost stress to cast, so the question is just whether you are healthy enough to do the deed or whether you're willing to hurt yourself to cast a necessary spell.

In our game, the bad guys were casting a ritual. They were held to the same rules as the PCs. To complete their massive ritual, it was an extended test where they had to get multiple successes. If they had too many Complications, then their ritual would fail. We got lucky, on the last round of casting their ritual, if the bad guys succeeded, they would have summoned something horrible (impossible for us to kill), but they got two Complications on that last casting roll, and what they summoned wasn't too happy (he must have called the Old One with the wrong name, you know how annoyed people get with a wrong number phone call or when someone tries to sell you an extension on your car warranty) and grabbed the summoner and dragged him elsewhere. 🙂

I found this spell mechanic much more interesting than CoC's. In CoC, PCs generally don't cast spells and bad guys only have to make one die roll to succeed, so PCs try to disrupt the ritual by killing the caster or messing up the intricate ritual (damaging the ritual circle, damaging spell components, freeing the human sacrifices). To make the PCs's task harder, the ritual caster generally has cultist mooks and some sort of magical barrier. And that generally is about it for CoC. But in Achtung! Cthulhu, the Complication level goes up for the spell caster as the PCs do their shenanigans, thus having a clear mechanical affect on the caster's die roll vs the GM having to guestimate whether what the PCs did had any effect on the ritual.

The sanity mechanic in Achtung! Cthulhu is pretty much weak sauce. You just make mental stress tests, damage affects the Stress track (mental and physical stress is not differentiated on the track, stress is stress). If it's horrible enough, you get a mental injury / scar. But since this game is pulpy action, it's no fun if your PCs wind up going crazy and running away, so this generally won't happen. This is not CoC.

During combat, Sven did an all-in-spell casting to smite the Black Sun leader, but the backlash from casting the spell Injured him and would have killed him except, our Born Leader, Captain James Swann, gave Sven a Fortune point to Avoid Defeat (Sven had used his last Fortune point to help cast the spell).

So, Achtung! Cthulhu works for pulpy cinematic games where you jump into a room full of Nazis and open fire with a submachine gun or punch them, carry only the clothes on your back and a few trusty weapons, and death only happens to NPCs.

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p.s. I found out that the Achtung! Cthulhu Quickstart - 15th Feb 2021 Final.pdf (as of 8/11/2022) has rules that are different from the published Player's Guide. The Player's Guide rules supersede whatever rules are in the QS.

Core book differences (there may be others, but these are the ones I noticed):

• Helmets do not give any armor benefits (QS gave a +1 Armor). 
• Thompson Machine Gun: Salvo: Stun (instead of Area); Qualities: Inaccurate (only, no Stun).
• Fortitude is a focus under Resilience (not Survival).
• One Fortune point may be spent per skill test or combat round (not per Scene).

What soldiers carry: https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a25644619/soldier-weight/

The Thompson Machine Gun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thompson_submachine_gun

WW2 Guns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_weapons_of_the_United_States

Boomerang range: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomerang#:~:text=A%20right%2Dhanded%20boomerang%20makes,22%E2%80%9344%20yd)%20range.

M-1943 Entrenching Tool: https://www.historynet.com/m-1943-entrenching-tool-the-swiss-army-knife-of-field-spades/

Modiphius forum post on Truths (look for post by Modiphius-Nathan [Modiphius Staff] March 24, 2022): https://forums.modiphius.com/t/truths-in-combat-casting-spells-attribute-bonuses-when-spellcasting/16256/6

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p.s.s. I'm playing Operation Vanguard. GM is running it Rules As Written (RAW).

Sneaking around is a long series of stealth tests. Initially, I thought it would be a good way to improve our Momentum Pool, but having 4 PCs sneak around always lead to failure on multiple occasions and using up our Momentum especially if you need to make a long series of tests. But so far, it doesn't seem to lead to much in consequences. So, why make us do so many tests?

There's also no group stealth roll (one die roll for the whole group), unless you can use the Assisting Other Characters rule. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

This also leads me to think that the scenario is poorly designed. It might be better to have escalating random encounter tables based on the number of failures. There should be consequences for failure, but not so serious you wipe out the commando group.

Combat takes forever and is a slog. In one combat, we took 4 sessions x 4 hrs = 16 hours for one long extended fight. This one combat showed me how unrealistic and boring combat is with A!C. PCs took multiple bullet hits. Nazis took multiple bullet hits, even Mooks. It just made for very long, boring fire fights. Part of it is waiting for the GM to tell us our Difficulty Number.

The limits on Encumbrance also came up as very unrealistic. Pickup one grenade or pistol (over your 1 major item [a rifle] and 3 minor items [ammo belt with 3 reloads, a knife, and first aid kit]) and you can't Rush. And if you try to Rush and fail your die roll, you can't move (or after some complaints to the GM, you can only go as far as just using your Minor Movement Action). And if you're Encumbered, it's harder to Move (difficulty level increased by 1) which includes Stealth. So, if you're a commando group behind enemy lines and if you take a realistic full kit, you can't move and can't be sneaky. Our commando group didn't have any grenades because of the encumbrance rules, we decided to bring rations with us instead.

Weapon ranges are crazy an unrealistic. I made a character with a Longbow. Its effective range is Long. A rifle or machine gun's effective range is Medium. Using a machine gun in Salvo mode (using a clip of ammo) does not increase the chance to hit, but just allows you to hit additional targets (Area). At one point, I was using a mounted canon. Its range was Medium. There is no distinction in ranges between artillery and small arms. So, my Longbow can shoot further than the canon (or a .50 caliber machine gun whose range is also Medium).

Truths are broken. I took the Truth Army: Trained Marksman. Because this seemed to apply to most shooting situations, the GM thought it was too powerful and too generic, so decided it almost never applied. If it's too generic, then why hardbake it into the rules of character creation? And if you're supposed to limit its usefulness, then why have it at all? And why are the example Truths so broad? If the intention is to only apply in "clutch" situations, then why not call it: "Once on a blue moon, I'm a lucky shot." Or limit its use to only once per game or session? Why not just throw away the Truths and just use Fortune points? Or say you can only use a Truth with a Fortune point, it's a triple success?

The scenario took 8 sessions. I gained 15 XP from GM Threat spends of 3 or more (otherwise he couldn't hit my PC). And at least 15 XP from failing a skill test when at least 1 bonus d20 is purchased. 2 to 4 XP for most heroic per session (we forgot to count this) = min of 16 XP. 4 XP is awarded for achieving a main mission objective. So, if my PC survived, he would have gotten at least 50 XP. It takes 10 XP to Improve an attribute, Skill, or add a Focus or Talent. If this is the standard pace for XP awards, then it wouldn't take too many scenarios before he turns into Captain America.

My PC spent 3 Fortune points to stay alive, but kept on getting shot and died each time he got up and tried to do something. Spending the Fortune point allows you to take another Injury, but doesn't remove any Stress, so any new damage would cause another Injury and Death, unless you spend a Fortune point. So, spending Fortune points to stay alive only works if you play dead and wait until the end of the scene, so you can recover all your Stress.

Overall, I would never run A!C RAW. It's too crunchy for a pulp game, slowing every action to a crawl, and it's too restrictive. A pulpy game needs to be fast paced and loose. There are major mismatches between the system implementation and its premise.

Dune: Adventures in the Imperium (2d20) - Review

You can get the free QuickStart (QS) PDF here (includes a very short adventure: Wormsign).

I watched a streamed game at ModCon 2020, an online convention. That flowed very smoothly, but it was run by a GM well-versed in the game system.

I've run and played Star Trek Adventures and Conan 2d20 which uses the 2d20 system.

Movie Poster

First, the art is very good and it is clear they got the Dune license from the Dune 2021 movie. The dragonfly Ornithopters, Mentat lower lipstain/tattoo, and Bene Gesserit veil designs are unique to the 2021 movie. Those are present in the illustrations. And also the clever font design for the DUNE title.

After reading the QuickStart, I had enough problems with the rules that I had to Google search various aspects of the rules and look in the full core rulebook for clarification. I found some, but not all the answers I was looking for.

When you read some of the examples, there are no die rolls, only nebulous references to the rules. It were as if the rules were still in flux and no concrete examples were written into the rule book. And once the rules were solidified, no one went back and updated the book with concrete examples. So, even when I'm reading an example, it doesn't explain anything. It's a non-example example. In various forums, I also found contradictory advice by the game designers.

During play, more questions came up. Quick searches in the rulebook yielded no answers.

After a day of searching for answers on the web and rereading the rules, and thinking about the system design, I figured things out.

The designers wanted to create a single system, a universal system, to resolve any type of conflict. They list 4 Forms of Conflict: Dueling, Skirmish, Espionage, Warfare. From small scale, up close dueling, all the way to satellite view of armies sieging a fortress. This is a great idea.

The problem is that they needed an all encompassing term to name various things in the conflict, so they called these things Assets. In a Duel, the Assets are weapons and armor. In a Skirmish, individual Mooks (generic unnamed bad guys) and equipment. In Espionage, spies, informants, spy tech, blackmail info. In Warfare, whole armies and fortresses. So, depending on how close your camera to the action is, the Asset can range from a single weapon to a whole army. This was not explained very well in the QS or core book. (I finally found the extensive list of Assets p.189-215, which was not clearly explained on p.164).

Characters have Drives and Skills.

Drives: Duty, Faith, Justice, Power, Truth.

Skills: Battle, Communicate, Discipline, Move, Understand.

Like in other 2d20 systems, you add the two to create your Target Number (TN). Roll 2d20. Each d20 can generate 0 to 2 successes. 1 = 2 successes. 20 = Complication. If you can reasonably use your focus, then a die roll <= Skill is 2 successes. A die roll <= Drive + Skill, 1 success. The number of Successes you need is the Difficulty Number (DN).

The game is trying to be more character driven, so you may pick any Drive you want to pair up with your Skill. Min-Maxers will always try to use their best Drive (Drive with highest score). What is the drawback? Your character may become predictable and your enemies might take advantage of this in the future. What is nice about this is that all action is rooted in a Drive. So, all action is story driven. Why are you fighting (Battle) this person? The answer is based on the Drive you are using. When you are speaking to someone (Communication), what are you trying to convey? Duty, Faith, Justice, Power, Truth?

Characters have no Hit Points. You win or lose an extended contest based on your Battle if it's a physical fight, Communicate if it's a social contest, Move if it's a race, etc. In some systems, your Skill is your Hit Points, but in this system, it's a temporary track. Your Skill does not degrade during the contest, so you just keep track of how much damage you've taken, it's more like temporary fatigue during the contest. Once the contest is over, you throw away the temporary track. If you did pick up a Complication, it would stay until you resolve the Complication.

This is nice because a physically strong (high Battle) but weak willed individual (low Discipline) can not be easily defeated in Battle, but can easily be swayed.

When you Move an Asset, you can move normally (1 zone), subtly or boldly. Moving subtly or boldly requires a Difficulty 2 test, but if you succeed, you get some benefits. p.166 Move.

During a Skirmish, the PCs were attacked by a bunch of Mooks. Mooks go down after one hit. Combat is still a contested roll, but it looks like if you beat your attacker, you can't do damage to your attacker, but only gain Momentum. Defenders gain Momentum with extra Successes; Attackers do damage and can either spend 2 Momentum to do +1 damage, create a Trait (2 Momentum), or bank the extra Momentum. Any successful attack takes out a Mook. A successful attack does 2 damage + the Quality of the weapon used (in the QS, that's 0 including the NPCs). Spend 2 Momentum and do +1 damage. This is the damage Mooks will do to PCs. This means most PCs can take 2-3 hits before being defeated. They can then Resist Defeat once per scene, where they can spend 1 Momentum & gain 1 Complication and stay in the fight. The next time they get hit though, they will be defeated and be out of the fight. Being defeated does not necessarily mean death. It could mean being knocked out or captured.

The issue I had was that I had 12 Mooks. Did all 12 Mooks get to attack? The answer is yes, but it would be unfair if they all targeted a PC and took each PC down one at at time. So, I would generally spread out the attacks. Maybe if a PC turns out to be a massive combat monster would they realize this and focus fire. During combat, individual PCs can intimidate enemies and make them flee or surrender instead of physically fighting them. That is always an option. So, you can have a battlefield with a Bene Gesserit cowing some Mooks while a House Soldier cuts some down and a Courtier bribes others to turn traitor.

How do range attacks work? If you are in the same zone as your target, you can just shoot. Otherwise, +1 Difficulty (need another success). To get rid of this range penalty, you must aim in the other zone by moving your aim to the other zone; this takes an action. The rulebook calls his Moving a ranged weapon asset.

I wasn't sure if you get a contested roll against ranged attacks until I found an example on p.175 Attacks, Defeat, and Using Assets: "Nasir drops the other thug in their zone with his pistol in another contested test." So, range attacks are also contested rolls. This makes sense if you get to take cover or dodge Maula Pistol darts. The darts aren't like bullets with very high velocity. Even with a Personal Shield, you can still shoot the target if you're in the same zone and push the pistol slowly past the Personal Shield and then fire. The Difficulty is 2.

Another use of Momentum is to Keep the Initiative. Spend 2 Momentum and either you get another action (+1 Difficulty, needing an extra success) or you can let one of the other PCs go right after you. To prevent abuse, once you Keep the Initiative, at least one enemy gets to act before you can do this again. This isn't in the Common Uses of Momentum section of the rules, for some reason it's under Action Order in Basics of Conflict.

In combat, we overlooked creating Traits (2 Momentum). Instead of doing 1 extra damage (2 Momentum), you can create an advantage that stays throughout the scene. Against a large number of Mooks, it would be good to find a choke point (+1 Difficulty to be hit) or a defensible wall (can't be shot with range weapons). Once this trait is created, the Mooks can overcome it with bypass choke (2 Threat) or punch holes in wall (2 Threat). This creates more story during the combat.

In other 2d20 systems with damage dice, special d6s, you roll damage and on 5s & 6s, you score Effects that are weapon specific. Since this system doesn't use damage dice and does a set amount of damage, they've added Traits and Assets that can be created with Momentum during your attack. This reduces the number of dice needed and makes Effects more story based.

In 2d20 systems, you always want to fill your Momentum pool, so you can buy extra dice in clutch moments. This happens when a PC with a high Skill + Focus succeeds in a task, so that PC generally buys an extra 1d20, get excess successes and puts the extra back into the pool.

One issue is that to get your Momentum pool going, you want more dice rolls. For a game trying very hard to tie in storytelling into the system, it does heavily rely on dice pool accounting. This takes you out of the storytelling mindset.

Overall, there was some good design for this game, but it wasn't written clearly. There are lots of gaps in the rules. I fear the books were rushed to print to meet the movie release deadline. The rules need to be revised for clarity.

For me, the jury is still out whether I would recommend buying this RPG. Try out the free QuickStart, watch some how-to-videos, Google questions that you have. Proceed with caution.

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Dune won a Gold ENnie 2022 for Best Writing.

Conan 2d20 at Free RPG Day 2017

I was curious about the the Conan RPG because I was actually actually more interested in the new Star Trek Adventures RPG and both games uses the 2d20 system.

I only had about 1-1/2 hours, so I watched part of the game and the GM let me decide what some NPCs did, which was cool.

I really liked the system. I noticed that the Conan Attributes were more combat oriented vs Star Trek's.

• Conan: Agility, Awareness, Brawn, Coordination, Intelligence, Personality, Willpower. 
• Star Trek: Bravery, Control, Empathy, Presence, Reason, Resilience.

The system uses d20s (max 5d20) and d6s (specialty dice for damage).

It is a roll 2d20 and roll low system. If you hit your skill number (something like 7 to 14) or below, you get a success. If the die roll is below your focus number (something like 1 to 3), you gain another success for 2 successes possible for each d20 rolled, for a normal maximum of 4 successes on a skill check. The number of successes needed is up to the GM, but Average tasks take 1 success and Epic tasks take 5 successes. So, how do you get extra successes? You can spend Momentum points to get extra d20s or spend Fortune points for automatic 1's, but you max out at 5d20. Momentum points are gained through extra successes you didn't spend and either kept for yourself or thrown into a party pool for other PCs to use.

The GM has Doom points to influence the game play as most of the rules are in favor of the PCs.For example:

• PCs always goes before the GM's NPCs - unless the GM spends a Doom point.
• Ties in combat go to the Player - unless the GM spends a Doom point.
• PC wants an extra d20? But there's no Momentum points around and doesn't want to spend a Fortune point? Give the GM a Doom point and roll an extra d20.

At the start, the GM gets 3 Doom points for each PC and each PC gets 3 Fortune points.  

Damage uses specialty dice. 1d6:

1 = 1 pt harm
2 = 2 pt harm
3 or 4 = 0 harm
5 or 6 = 1 pt harm + 1 Effect.

An example is the Barbarian PC has a Vicious weapon, so each Effect result = +1 pt harm. So, if he rolls a 1 and two 6s, that's 3 pts of harm + 2 Effects = 5 pts harm and since he had the Talent Blood on Steel, he can spend 1 Momentum to increase the Effect to +2 harm, so the total harm would become 7. (The weapon actually does 6 damage dice, but I simplified it in the example to 3 dice).

Each 5 harm = 1 wound, 5 wounds and a PC is dead. NPCs can take 1 wound or more before dropping, depending on whether they're a mook or not.

So, the game was crunchy and flexible enough for various tactics. Also during play, one player wanted to have the ship tilted towards the bad guys and he wanted to roll a barrel towards them. He paid a Fortune point to change the tilt of the ship just as he pushed the barrel. Very epic.

After 1-1/2 hours, the PCs were still on the boat fighting pirates. I took a look at the scenario The Pit of Kutallu, The players were still on the first scene of multiple scenes, so I suspect they won't finish the scenario after 4 hrs of play.

What I liked about the system is that it codifies what the GM can do on the story level with Doom points and it also allows PCs to influence the scene with Fortune points. Since the world of Conan is about Barbarians and Thieves and Sorcery, I found the combat oriented system appropriate. There's enough crunch in the combat to make it varied and interesting and there's enough rules to allow a player to acrobatically leap past armed slavers to rescue a girl.

Momentum follows the ebb and flow of action in a scene and Doom allows the GM to add tension and complicate a scene.

There's much to like in the system. Hopefully, this carries through to the Star Trek Adventures system.