Game: Rap Sheet Haven: Player Resource Hit
Publisher: Louis Porter Jr. Design
Series: Haven
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 16th, August 2004
Reviewer’s Rating: 5/10 [ Perfectly acceptable ]
Total Score: 5
Average Score: 5.00
“We know who you are…” says the boiler plate from the back of Louis Porter, Jr Design’s Rap Sheet: Player Resource Hit. Heh. I hope not. Previous GameWyrd reviews of Haven: City of Violence products have not been kind.
If you’re a Haven player then what can you expect from the resource kit? You can expect an extended character sheet. You’ve fairly thick softback covers (I can stand the booklet up on my desk) and you’ve 16 pages to record stats, notes and backgrounds in. You get that for about $5. To be fair, that’s about what you’ll pay for a similar extended character sheet/folio/deluxe.
The first page is what you’d expect – a space to record the key numbers. Strength, will, agility, stamina, intelligence and perception as well as the main crunch points like fighting value and subterfuge. There’s room for skills, benefits, drawbacks and more languages than any character could possibly claim to speak.
This is Haven – the next page has room for you firearm stats and the page after finds space for such minor things as your character’s sex, age and background. Heh. Similarly, on the second page there’s room to record hand-to-hand combat stats and its on the third page where you can record important notes and sketch a picture of your character.
There are two pages to record contact details – quite useful in Haven since the game is chock full of corrupt cops, informers, fences, grasses, dealers, cleaners and hitmen. The next two pages has six boxes for Adventure Logs. There’s not really enough room to record an adventure here. I could just about squeeze the important points of a scene or key conversation with an NPC in here – but then every gamer has a very different style and bullet point outcomes of gang wars and drug deals would work.
There’s a page to record information about an organisation. This could be a criminal organisation, or a professional one, a secret club, underground wrestling or similar Haven-esq organisation. Ironically there’s more room to write down the organisation’s history than there is for your character.
Page nine is a character sheet for your dog. Lovely! Without being sarcastic I do suppose that quite a few Haven characters have rather tough pet guard dogs. I’d probably put a dog character sheet too. I might have put it at the end of the rap sheet though. As it happens the Rap Sheet includes a page to record which drugs your naughty PC might have on them, more room to record hand-to-hand manoeuvre stuff, ammo and vehicles. There’s a grid on the back of the rap sheet where you could sketch out the floor plan for you burglar proof apartment, armoured van or whatever the G.O.D. lets you get away with.
The Rap Sheet is good enough. It does what it promises you it’ll do and it does it professionally enough. I suspect the design suits Haven quite well. It is worth noting just how well Louis Porter Jr Design are supporting Haven. These guys, lead by Mr Porter, of course, are doing a good job of looking after their players. This publisher means business.
