Escape From New York Cinematic Adventure - Third Party 5E Review

[Sparky McDibben]

Alright, y'all, Sparky's had a rough week. Today was supposed to be my day off, but that plan got waxed within about 5 minutes of waking up. So I'm going to work through my feelings in a manly fashion: by screaming RPG critique into the callous, unfeeling void of the Internet until tears stream from my cheeks and my voice gives out!

So if I seem a trifle harsh during this review, that's why. Don't worry - we're not going into tenfootpole.org territory here. I gotta keep it classy, both because y'all fine SOBs deserve it, and because my small children occasionally like to try reading over my shoulder. Hence why I used SOB, instead of the other thing.

Alright, so Escape from New York is an adventure that's based on the iconic action movie of the same name, starring Channing Tatum with an eyepatch. I purchased it for $19.99 on DTRPG in pdf format. It's designed to be run with Everyday Heroes (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/415709/Everyday-HeroesTM-Core-Rulebook) (reviewed here), (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?652619-Everyday-Heroes-Third-Party-5E) a 5E-based ruleset for modern adventures.

Be advised of two things:

1) You will have to redo the bookmarks - there's a bunch of great tables that aren't linked to, so you'll need to drop some of those in. That wasn't a problem for me, but I don't know your pdf viewer situation.

2) Save this thing as an optimized file - the art is fantastic, but d@mn does it slow down the reading experience to wait five seconds every time I hit "Page Down."

The text is 128 pages long, and divided up into five parts:

1) Introduction
2) Hero Options
3) New Rules
4) GM Advice
5) The Actual Adventure

They don't short-change you; the adventure is about 51 pages, by far the longest part of the book. Right now, though, we're only going to go over the first four sections, because the adventure is going to require some in-depth review.

The book kicks off with a foreword by friend of the forums Sigfried Trent, describing his love for the movie and the characters. Good stuff; this definitely reads like a passion project. One other thing to note is that Mr. Trent is one of three credited adventure designers (the other two being Kim Frandsen and Thomas Pugh). I'm not familiar with many of those names, but a quick jaunt through their DTRPG credits will tell you they are generally well-regarded by the market.

But I'm not the market.

https://i.imgur.com/RUC7k8H.jpg

Look, everybody wants to be Batman - I'm just being honest with myself (one of my New Year's Resolutions!)

The Introduction lays some pipe for how this world is different from ours, starting with some content warnings to discuss with your players. For example, if you're playing with Paul Verhoeven, you should probably call out that there are some fascist themes in the adventure (though always framed as evil). Likewise, if you're playing with Critical Role fans, there are also portrayals of religious zealots that might make those players uncomfortable. (I joke, but this actually is a good trend in gaming and I think it's useful as a DM)

After that, we get taken through an alt-history timeline, starting with Nixon opening China and ending with Snake Plissken blowing up world electronics with a mega-EMP hit. This runs for three pages, and actually runs past Escape From New York. While it's easy to read and relatively simple to follow, it's also mostly unnecessary for the actual adventure. If you need to run a whole campaign in this world, it's helpful. Otherwise, you need to know three things:


Sh!t's f*cked; World War III has already happened, and the US is veering rapidly towards fascism
Manhattan Island is now a penal colony and also populated by insane victims of nerve gas exposure
There's a nuke in Lady Liberty's head

BAM. Three pages saved. The rest of the intro goes over the martial law cops, some of the revolutionary groups, and goes into more detail on the security around (and situation inside) Manhattan island (called New York Max). There are some writeups on what each of the gangs inside NY are, their colors, sigils, and some weird shorthand for their strengths (Reputation, Influence, Strength, and Resources). Unfortunately, relatively little of this (and nothing of the Rep/Inf/Str/Res shorthand) makes it into the actual adventure. It'll be useful if you wanted to run NY Max as a dynamic sandbox, but otherwise, I recommend highlighting no more than three of the 13(!) gangs they detail.

There is also a great little CRT-style map of New York Max:

https://i.imgur.com/aBYTrm2.png

Now, you're probably looking at that and thinking, "Aha! What a great set up for an urban pointcrawl!" You would be wrong - there's no random encounter table at all, and no mention of saves vs poisoned groundwater, mutated animals, etc, nor any timeframe given (nor scale) for how long it takes to go from one point to another. However, each of the 19 Notable Locations does get a nice little one-paragraph summary, which is a pretty solid write up.

This left me feeling a little underwhelmed. The information presented is done well, but I don't have the tools I need to play the city as a dynamic environment, with it's own stuff going on. It's going to feel like the city revolves around the PCs, and that's generally what I want to avoid.

Next up is the section on hero options. We lead off with new Backgrounds, including "Legend" and "New York Native," along with a couple of others. These are good, and give some decent options for characters tied to this adventure. After that, we get several new professions, many of which are affiliated with organized crime in some way. There's the "Charm" for example, who is someone who deals in trading sex (or other favors) for what they want, and the "Prison Gladiator," which is exactly what it sounds like. These are decent, and the already useful Professions features in the core rules are very useful in NY Max.

After that, we get three new classes. For those of you who skipped the Everyday Heroes review, classes in this game are equivalent to a subclass in base 5E. I initially thought this nomenclature was a baffling departure from base 5E naming conventions, but recent events have forced me to revise that opinion.

The three new classes are:

Gutter Rat (Charming Hero)
Motorhead (Agile Hero)
Street Warrior (Strong Hero)

The Gutter Rat is an outstanding urban hero, using traps and various tricks to inflict the Distracted and / or Blinded effects, making the enemies much easier to gang up on. The Motorhead is going to be really good in their vehicle, and so invaluable during chase- or race-heavy games. Outside of that...their contributions will depend on player ingenuity and seeking out opportunities to put their toolset to use. The Street Warrior is a type of hero who gets more dangerous the more they screw up. There's some bookkeeping here, but I think the implementation they went with was probably the best variant of this Bolivarian archetype I could see.

There are three non-Multiclass feats, including one that is particularly nasty - Go Behind lets you use a reaction in response to being missed by a melee attack, to go behind your enemy and make an attack with advantage. That's gonna be a must-have for most rogue-type characters.

The new equipment packs take into account that most guns on NY Max are out of ammo and exceedingly rare, so the new weapons are stuff like shivs, spiked baseball bats, etc. But the real meat of the new equipment are the vehicle modifications. Do you want to weld sick iron spikes to your ride? Install a nitrous-oxide system? Put in a James Bond-style oil slick creator?

Hell yeah you do, you glorious bunch of psychopaths, and Evil Genius Games has got you covered. Honestly, this is great, and I love that it's in here.

Alright, friends, I'm going to stop there because my head's pounding and I'm exhausted. Next time, we're going to pick up with new rules for this setting, and then we're going to carry on to the adventure!

Thanks for coming along!

[Brookshw]

Alright, y'all, Sparky's had a rough week. Today was supposed to be my day off, but that plan got waxed within about 5 minutes of waking up. So I'm going to work through my feelings in a manly fashion: by screaming RPG critique into the callous, unfeeling void of the Internet until tears stream from my cheeks and my voice gives out!

Dan would approve.


Snake Plissken

If you're going to listen to someone with a mullet, that's the guy.

[animorte]

my small children occasionally like to try reading over my shoulder.
Mine can't quite read yet, but we're getting there! Oh no...

That wasn't a problem for me, but I don't know your pdf viewer situation.
I tend to use screenshots for a lot of stuff actually. Try to organize them with aptly named folders. This is fun for me, don't judge.

their DTRPG credits will tell you they are generally well-regarded by the market.
From what we've learned this far, I can see why.

Look, everybody wants to be Batman - I'm just being honest with myself (one of my New Year's Resolutions!)
Hard agree.

(I joke, but this actually is a good trend in gaming and I think it's useful as a DM)
That's fair.

I don't have the tools I need to play the city as a dynamic environment, with it's own stuff going on.
As a DM, it's always important for me to portray a living world within the game (with specific exceptions).

Outside of that...their contributions will depend on player ingenuity and seeking out opportunities to put their toolset to use.
I love this type of character. Get creative! (Tends to be my motto apparently.)


Thanks for coming along!
Absolutely! Always a good ride. :smallsmile:

[Sparky McDibben]

Dan would approve.

He would approve, wouldn't he? My God, what am I doing with my life?


If you're going to listen to someone with a mullet, that's the guy.

Oh, 10 / 10. I definitely think it was Jet Li's best role.


Mine can't quite read yet, but we're getting there! Oh no...

It's a very specific brand of bemusement when your child opens their mouth and you hear yourself coming out. It's very, very odd.


I tend to use screenshots for a lot of stuff actually. Try to organize them with aptly named folders. This is fun for me, don't judge.

OK, I'm genuinely curious what you mean - do you take screenshots of specific pdf pages and save those down? How do you organize those? Is your drive just like 456 screenshots of a PDF with a table of contents attached? Inquiring minds want to know.

Alright, folks, start your engines! Now turn them off and grab a coffee; we have RPG stuff to talk about. There are three remaining sections: rules, DM advice, and the actual adventure. Let's kick off with new rules.

Much like Dua Lipa, the designers realized you'd need some new rules for this particular setting, and kept them appropriately brief (literally three pages long). These rules cover weapons with multiple damage types (so a spiked baseball bat can deal bludgeoning or piercing damage), a new Wealth system, and the Crazies disease.

Multiple damage types is dealt with in a paragraph: whichever type of damage is most favorable to the attacker is what the weapon deals. Awesome! Short, sweet, to the point.

Street Cred is basically a reskin of the Wealth system, with some ideas of how to actualize it in play. I really like this idea - they'd already abstracted Wealth, and decided not to make it complicated. There's a whole section on how to gain / lose Street Cred, and a table on what checks can result in. Good stuff, and a great idea for realizing barter economies / economies of trust in a D&D style setting. Well done!

Finally, we have the Crazies disease. It's not really a disease - more like super-rabies resulting from exposure to nerve agents during WWIII. Basically, "crazies" (those so affected) lose basic communication skills, have extreme antipathy towards social order, and eventually develop a dislike of daylight. Communicating with crazies is basically a losing endeavor: "Think of garbled street poetry, random AI-generated gibberish, or the ravings of a madman1 and you are on the right track." You can, however, take a feat if you want to make your DM RP the random gibberish of a raving lunatic. Be kind, kids.

The next section is DM Advice for running games in this setting, and is also admirably brief (and also three pages long!). It covers the themes of authoritarianism, anarchy, and...New York City?

Not sure how NYC is a theme, but on the upside, you can definitely use it as a real place to ground your adventures. For more, see "Unsleeping City" by College Humor.

There are also several adventure ideas, running the gamut from "Gang members trying to break into show biz" to "Literally the Warriors." These are thematically grounded, while allowing enough goofiness that it's not unrelentingly bleak all the time. Love it!

And now, kids, we're going to get into the actual adventure. Gird your loins, this is gonna get rough.

First off, a few quick pieces I'm going to be referencing:

From the Alexandrian:
The Principle of Using Linear Mediums as RPG Examples (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/36745/roleplaying-games/the-principle-of-using-linear-mediums-as-rpg-examples)
How a Railroad Works (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/46297/roleplaying-games/how-a-railroad-works)

From Hack & Slash:
On Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Episode I Remix: Part II (http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2014/09/on-hoard-of-dragon-queen-episode-i_3.html)

About me: I'm an old-school style DM. I rely heavily on rewarding player agency and ingenuity, while deprioritizing game balance and system mastery. I also assume most of what I see will be garbage, so if I'm reviewing your adventure, it's because I like it enough to tell people about it, not because I enjoy tearing people's hard work apart. Above all, I'd like to quote Tex over at the Black Pants Legion:


This is in no way endorsed by the people who came up with this stuff. They'd whip me with a belt if they found out...This is a work of opinion by an @sshole. You have been warned.

This adventure assumes 3 - 5 fifth level PCs with standard array stats. It covers a quick summary of the adventure, adjustments for what equipment isn't available in this setting (no Internet, no smartphones, etc.)

We start with four paragraphs of boxed text. I'm not hugely in favor of boxed text, but in this case it functions more like the Star Wars opening scroll. "Here's what's going on..." We're told the three things that I mentioned in the opening post, and also that a revolutionary group has the arming codes to the nuke in Lady Liberty's noggin and is threatening to detonate in 24 hours.

OK, so good things:

Clear stakes - you gotta stop that nuke before NYC becomes a crater
Clear timetable that can be altered as needed (if you want to run this as a shorter campaign, make that six hours, or even one!)
Good foundation-building about the world

Bad things:

The cops own Liberty Island - why don't they just disarm the nuke? (Later in the adventure, it's explained to be tamper-resistant, but I find this personally unpersuasive; the d@mned thing was installed less than a decade ago)


We gotta take the actual nuke away from the cops. A) The terrorists have taken Liberty Island, and the PCs have to infiltrate from the NYC side, because otherwise the terrorists will detonate the nuke. This turns the game into a tense, stealth driven Metal Gear-style experience. B) The nuke wasn't in Lady Liberty, it got buried in the middle of NYC when they turned it into a prison. The terrorists have dug it up and moved it, and now there's a tense cat-and-mouse game as the PCs are urgently searching for the nuke before it can be detonated.
The first scene is the PCs being brought before the head commissioner of NY Max prison, Bob Hauk. This entire scene is to establish the stakes, tell the PCs what's going on, give them their gear, and get them off to NY Max, and I have a problem right up front:

There are no choices being made by the PCs in this scene. It's an info dump, with only one outcome - the PCs wind up in New York, or get smacked around by guards they can't fight before being dumped in New York. This is telegraphed by the adventure - it literally tells the PCs that they can't fight their way out of here. Normally, I don't mind scenarios where combat is non-viable, but that's because it forces PCs to start making other choices, like talking their way out, sneaking around, or otherwise getting creative. This setup doesn't encourage that.

In general, when I see a scene where the PCs aren't making choices, I frame past it. If there's no choice to be made, don't give them the illusion of a choice. Honestly, this could all be part of the opening scroll. All this does is piss off the characters (and possibly the players).

The relevant information being relayed here is: find the arming device, then pop a flare, and the cops will come get you. Start looking at the Empire State Building.

Then the heroes get in a minisub, which is rigged to be tamper proof, and sent to Whitehall Terminal. This is intended to be time for the PCs to RP and get to know each other - personally, if I run this, all these PCs are going to know each other and have strong bonds of trust (previous jobs, went to jail for each other, etc.). I know the designers can't rely on that. However, as is, this presents like a loading screen. Meh.

Anyways, the sub docks and we need to get to the Empire State Building, 'cuz Daddy Hauk's nuke ain't gonna disarm itself.

From here, we get a choice! Huzzah! We can either a) go through the subways (which are crawling with semi-rabid nutjobs), or b) go overland (through gang territory). If this sounds like a "pick your own encounter" set up, it is! Basically, if you go through the tunnels, you fight crazies. If you go overland, you get into a quick encounter with a gang member who leads you into a trap (probably - there is some language about how the PCs can avoid this).

OK, well, we're through that! Thank goodness, now we get to go have a sweet gunfight in the Empire State Building. There are some guards at the base, with opportunities to climb the ESB or blast your way in. Stealth is the way to go here; violence draws reinforcements from the guards at the base of the tower, potentially resulting in a pretty nasty fight. There's a lot of "if" language here as the designers try to cover all their bases, which can make this difficult to parse quickly. Moreover, if the PCs try to just climb up the ESB, they need 8 successful DC 15 Athletics checks. OOF.

My problems with that are 1) That's not really very fun to play out, and 2) the consequences for failure are potentially immediate death. I'd prefer to just tell the PCs that there's no way they can climb 79 floors of this beast in full battle-rattle.

Alright, moving on to that sweet gunfight in the Empire State Building! The terrorists are holed up on the 79th floor. There's a tactically complex fight, with effects on terrain, including broken glass, high winds (if the windows are broken), etc. The best thing, though, is that the stakes aren't actually based on winning the fight. The guy with the nuke's codes is going to jump out the window (he has a parachute, for some reason), or set off the nuke, depending on how long you want the adventure to run for. Honestly, I love the parachute. It makes zero godd@mned sense, but it is so 80's action movie.

So, at this point, the PCs can search the bodies, assuming they stopped the terrorist leader from escaping. What they find depends on how long you want to play this scenario for. If you want the short version, they've got the arming device, and can signal for extraction. If you're playing the longer version, the arming device is in another castle, but the leader had the access code to turn on the arming device (good multi-factor authentication protocols!). The actual arming device is with another group of revolutionaries at a church. This is awfully trusting of the different revolutionaries, especially groups fighting for different results.

Either way, the heroes don't have what they need, and the adventure specifically roadblocks them from using the radio that Terrorist Group A was using to talk to Terrorist Group B. Apparently, all the frequencies are written down, but the special handshake code they used was never annotated.

There's already language that the bad guys like to use suppressive fire, and that suppressive fire wrecks the generator. Just have that wreck the radio, too, or specify that all those bullets smashed up the bad guys' walkie-talkies.
Instead, the terrorists have multiple clues pointing the PCs to where the arming device actually is (a nearby church), clues about threats along the way, and who's holding it (religious zealots). I would prefer to have a couple extra clues in here in case the PCs miss some of them, but the clues that do exist are pretty obvious.

The adventure sets up three paths to get to the church from the ESB: go west of Central Park, go east of Central Park, and go through Central Park. Because the adventure expects that dawn is now coming, the subways will be full of crazies (I'm guessing; the adventure doesn't actually say that).

Alright, so this sets up another "pick your own encounter" moment. You can either fight a gang, fight a different gang, or fight a bunch of crazed druid-cultists in Central Park. Regardless of which route you pick, the adventure expects the PCs will end up captured.

Now, I'm going to extend the adventure some credit here. 1) It specifies that the PCs don't actually need to be captured for the story to progress. 2) It encourages the DM to reward creative thinking by letting the PCs avoid capture.

That being said, it also sets up a really unpleasant experience where the overpowering forces of the bad guys (including, in one encounter, a friggin' polar bear) swamp the PCs but don't kill them. That's one of those situations where the "hand of the DM" shines through. To me, if it feels like the DM is trying to keep us alive, then it ruins about 3/4s of the fun involved.

Now, the payoff to this is a pretty sweet little death race.

What I would do is have the Duke (the head crime honcho of NY Max) get alerted by the fracas in the Empire State Building that someone he doesn't want here is on his turf. As the PCs emerge, one of the Duke's emissaries is waiting for them to deliver an invitation: race in the Duke's death race, and he'll grant you safe passage to the church, maybe even some medication and ammunition. If the PCs refuse, they can still get to the church, but it's going to be a lot harder because it's now open season on them. If they agree, they can burn about 12 hours (during which they take a long rest), do the death race, and then get to the church.
The death race is pretty well constructed; the only thing the DM needs to worry about is whichever car is in competition with the PCs at any given time, and tracking the accumulated chase points for everyone else. There are scripted events that interrupt the race, adding a backdrop to the scene.

Personally, I'm doing away with all of this after the first straightaway. I'm rolling for all these cats and seeing how they accumulate points, because I love being surprised. If the PCs win, they get acclaimed by the people here, and if they lose, well, they've still got a car and a place to be.

Either way, there shouldn't be much time left on the clock as the PCs assault the church to seize the arming device. The church has some fun traps (sentry guns!) and the possibility of a social end to the whole thing (you can talk the bad guys into surrendering the arming device). My one problem with this that we have sentry guns in play during the encounter with specific fields of fire, which are not featured on the actual map.

The aftermath is pretty neatly resolved, with several contingencies laid out for the PCs.

So let's talk about map design:

Here's the map for that last fight:

https://i.imgur.com/JKo26y1.png

My problems with this are 1) it's dark as hell, 2) I don't know where anyone is, and 3) I have a hard time telling what's a wall, and what's a window. Unfortunately, these problems are repeated throughout the entire adventure.

Let's compare that with one of the maps from Brad Kerr's excellent Wyvern Songs:

https://i.imgur.com/K9cVXbM.png

See the difference? Clean, easy, evocative. All I need to run the second is a quick adversary roster; for the former, I need a three page breakdown of the encounter space. Please do not use photo-realistic maps.

Now let's talk about layout:

Here's the encounter text for the encounter with the crazed druid-cultists in Central Park:

https://i.imgur.com/oKkQplL.png

Here's a section of one of the dungeons in Wyvern Songs:

https://i.imgur.com/GndsmtX.png

See how much easier it is to pick out details? I need to be able to glance at the format and pick it up fast. The impact of a few seconds matters at the gaming table - it's the difference between the players tensely waiting to see what happens next, and everyone getting up to go grab more soda.

I don't want to come across as unfair to the designers here; I don't expect Brad Kerr-level design. Hell, I don't even expect it from Wizards of the Coast! But layout and cartography can elevate the material in an adventure, and these were missed opportunities. Personally, I'd love to run this setting as a sandbox pointcrawl, with proper procedural generation, faction intrigue, and appropriately high character mortality rates. This gets me about 50% of the way to that product, so it's certainly useful.

In general, this adventure is worth it if you really love the world of Escape From New York, really love Everyday Heroes, or are OK paying $20 for three subclasses and some vehicle modifications. I fall into the second category. Otherwise, I'd wait for a sale.

1God I want to make an Alex Jones joke so bad, but I'm going to respect the forum rules.

[animorte]

It's a very specific brand of bemusement when your child opens their mouth and you hear yourself coming out. It's very, very odd.
Definitely reached that already. Didn't name any Junior, but we call them my name anyway.

OK, I'm genuinely curious what you mean - do you take screenshots of specific pdf pages and save those down? How do you organize those? Is your drive just like 456 screenshots of a PDF with a table of contents attached? Inquiring minds want to know.
Typically I only screenshot some things for quick reference like random generation tables, stat blocks, and character tables. (Pictures apparently.) Though I have once (very recently) been known to screenshot an entire pdf during my 30-day free trial because I'm a cheap basta- I mean, efficient individual.

There's a whole section on how to gain / lose Street Cred, and a table on what checks can result in. Good stuff, and a great idea for realizing barter economies / economies of trust in a D&D style setting. Well done!
That seems valuable to social interaction, motivation, and resolution foundation.

basic communication skills, have extreme antipathy towards social order, and eventually develop a dislike of daylight.
Stepped into the real world for a second, did we?

I rely heavily on rewarding player agency and ingenuity, while deprioritizing game balance and system mastery.
So much this! Seriously, save me a chair.

In general, when I see a scene where the PCs aren't making choices, I frame past it.
Respectable.

There's a tactically complex fight, with effects on terrain
Hey, now that's what I'm talking about!

Please do not use photo-realistic maps... I need to be able to glance at the format and pick it up fast.
These are two extremely important things that I learned when looking into an annual one-page, rpg-neutral, adventure contest.

[Sigfried Trent]

Sweet, thanks again for an incredibly thoughtful review. It's got a lot of great insights and I made notes of the critique for use in future work!

These books are kind an unusual format and they may be trying to do too many things.
1. Be a love letter to the property for its fans and do a little additional world-building
2. Give the GM the tools they need to build a game for this setting
3. Build rules for the setting as expansions for the game to use in this or other settings like it
4. Have an adventure that is fun and adds to the lore and has new NPCs to use for the game
And squeeze that into about 110-128 pages.

I've been really interested to read feedback on these books to see what aspects folks get into, and which they don't and why.

The Adventure
Usually, I don't get assigned to work on the adventures, but in this case, the original author, Kim was asked to write a very early adventure as a proof of concept, and when we actually decided how big these books were, it was too short and we had to expand on it, but the author was otherwise occupied. I came in and expanded it out, and got Thomas to give me a hand as it was a short deadline. So it's got a few styles going on in there.

I did the Hippie Gang encounter and the Death Race (Since I wrote the vehicle modifications, I was darn sure going to put them to use!), as well as some jiggering to make the adventure have different length options and to make the plot a little more intricate to support the additions and give players some agency moving around the city. Tom did the three encounters between the Empire and the Cathedral and they show his fine sense of humor.

I love the examples from Brad Kerr, very economical use of words and imagery, and you illustrate your points really well with it. Something to strive for.

I will say that one reason our adventures are on the wordy side is we are using them partly as world-building material, trying to strongly evoke a vision for what is in this world, how it works, and so forth, so it gets pretty wordy. One of the wonderful things about D&D/Core Fantasy is we all kind of know that world like the back of our hand, even if each of us has a different mental image of it.

Anyhow, a pleasure to read, and you offered lots of useful insights! Thanks kindly!