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If you like zombies, you are going to love this one!
It's a fine pen & ink style sketch, coloured discretely in shades of red (on his check flannel shirt and also for flesh showing through a battered pale skin and blood around his mouth from the last meal) which proves remarkably effective and atmospheric.
This would make a fine cover for a zombie game or scenario, an image that grabs the imagination and draws you in to the core theme of ravaging hordes of zombies that have to be defeated at all costs.
Shame about the potty-mouth title, a few coy asterisks do not obscure obscenity. Fortunately the licence terms only require credit in the shape of the artist's name, should you use this picture in a commercial product, you do not need to give the image's title.
It's enough to make me write something zombie-related, just so I can use such a great picture!
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The title is a reference to the Pigface album. I couldn't pass up an opportunity like that for wordplay. |
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This is a delightful resource, a wander through some of the cities in the world of Camelot Cosmos.... but a wealth of detail that would provide flavour to any steam-fantasy setting even if you do not use this one which you ought to try if you like steampunk meets fantasy with a bit of chivalry thrown in.
There is a lot crammed in here. It's more flavour than hard fact with everything from likely names of street gangs to notes on the Gentlemen Assassins and Unseelie influences... Evocative descriptions of the Factols - distinctive bastions of industrial might - jostle with tables of Wyrd Effects and discussions of the war economy, Fyrd patrols and the role of Hags, grotesque crones with oversight duties within the Factols.
Some bits are very setting specific, although there is little rules 'crunch', but much could be transplanted elsewhere if your fantasy setting is subject to heavy industrialisation in steampunk style - I can think of a couple of games in my collection in such a style for which this might be raided.
This makes for an entertaining and flavourful read. While it is primarily aimed at the GM, there is little conflict in allowing players access if they want to get more of a feel for the world in which their characters live.
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I have bought it and do not regret it. Already i have used a few seeds in my Shaintar campaign, allowing my players to go beyond the dungeon adventure. The various twists, even if you don't use them can sprout other ideas.
I have ear marked plenty of the seeds for the future use and i look forward to use one of them in the next game.
This is a very good value and an excellent product (despite the occasional typos).
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Filthy Shades Cliche is a hilarious word game and literary exercise. And cheap. Just buy it and check it out.
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It has nice art work, and was cute to look at. I bout it mostly for the amusement I would get from the art work.
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An evocative piece of art from Bradley K McDevitt and Postmortem Studios, this black and white illustration would work great in a dark fantasy or horror work, demonstrating the during (or after) of a ritual sacrifice. The quality of the scan is excellent and it is well-framed for use in a game book. McDevitt is one of the best at "dark art" in gaming, and these Clipart Critters are an excellent way to get access to his art on a small press budget.
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A wonderful product all around! The story concept is completely original, yet compelling and immersive. Well done.
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I found it a nice piece of background work. I think it is best as an idea book to add flavor to a campaign, or to add a few quick ideas for a few nights of play when a game master is short of ideas otherwise. It is not for the younger players without some modifications, but I am sure any GM can make them if they desire to do so.
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Excellent creepy pen and ink sketch of the head of a zombie, decayed but recognisable as human... (or formerly so)... just the thing for creating the right atmosphere in anything zombie-related you are writing.
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A fine detailed drawing of a Renassiance-period suit of armour standing in an alcove. But is it empty?
It might be, a display piece someone keeps around to impress. Or in storage ready for use...
Or it might have someone inside, even if it is a rather fine and expensive suit of armour for a mere guide.
Or is it a golem? A construct of some kind. Such things don't come cheap, so you might well use a valuable suit of armour to make it.
It also appears to be left-handed.
Whatever you decide is going on, it's a fine suit of armour if you permit this particular level of technology in your game.
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Nowadays it seems like there's 100 "100 _________" supplements on onebookshelf sites. Some are lists that a simple google search could beat. Others are more creative and give an insight into the setting that they relate to. Few are $7.50, the current price for Postmortem's "100 Conspiracies". However, it would be a huge mistake to conflate those one-page chart-list products with this product.
100 Conspiracies starts with a couple of pages about what a conspiracy is and how to construct an interesting one. The very first GURPS supplement I ever bought was Illuminati, so having a refresher/introduction was useful and welcome. A lot of people (including major screenwriters) don't actually put much thought into how a conspiracy works or what it might be after. This can be overlooked in an action-thriller movie, but at the game table people are going to be asking a lot of questions. The introduction, something many supplements skimp on, gives a good method for moving forward.
The meat of the supplement is 100 one-page summaries of conspiracy theories and how they could be used in your modern roleplaying games. There are 2-3 one paragraph hooks for each of them, as well as a semi-hilarious list of what factions or organizations might benefit from the conspiracy.
As other reviewers have noted, there are some proofing/editing problems, though the layout of the work is definitely top-tier in terms of its usability. If there's a conspiracy you like for your game you literally just print out one page and you're good to go - there aren't any that spill over to two pages and there's no garbage art to clog up your printer.
There are no bookmarks and no hyperlinked index, which is a bit of a problem because the conspiracies are not in any particular order and their titles, while humorous, are not exactly on target. I have to reviewer-tilt down one star for the presentation/proofing problems (at least the ones that exist in early 2013.)
That said, the conspiracy theories themselves are well-written and the relentless focus on "cui bono?" ("Who profits?") helps GMs situate the conspiracies in their game in an organic and satisfying manner. Because of this, the supplement is well worth checking out for anyone who has a modern-day game of espionage or investigation. Supernatural elements can easily be added to many of these conspiracies if they aren't already there - maybe the black helicopters are piloted by psychic agents or servants of the Old Ones!
If I had to identify an area (other than editing) that could improve this supplement, I would suggest a section in each conspiracy that emphasizes what fears or anxieties that the conspiracy promotes. The AIDS conspiracy theories, for example, have racist and homophobic undertones - the Clinton Death List conspiracy theory is a product of right-wing radio. People who believe in conspiracy theories rarely do so because of evidence - the very lack of evidence is normally used as a reason to believe! They believe because the conspiracy theory fits other prejudices, fears or concerns regarding their world and their lives. We don't hear a lot about communist infiltration today (except on Glenn Beck) compared to what our parents and grandparents did in the 1950s, because in the 1950s Americans feared conflict with the Soviets. Similarly for these conspiracy theories, I would like to consider what drives them in order to determine what would be appropriate in my particular game.
All in all, "100 Conspiracies" is MUCH more than your typical "100 __________" supplement, because of the high level of detail and the emphasis on constructing plausible conspiracies (not the same as realism) for use in your particular game. It's rare that a "supplement for any game" really is for any game, because most don't give this attention to customizing the material or give a framework for understanding it. "100 Conspiracies' does.
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A crime boss? Well, maybe. He could just as well be a prosperous merchant or the town mayor.
Whoever he is, this beautifully-rendered greyscale image shows someone who's doing quite well, quite prosperous looking. Quite heavy, fleshy - you can imagine he's enjoyed many a sumptious banquet and goblet of wine. And then probably plotted his next moves - licit or otherwise - over a few more cups of wine with friends, allies and henchmen.
I can imagine holding this one up to the players when introducing them to a Guildmaster or Governor, someone of middle-range importance in whatever township they happen to be. A personage that it might be in their best interests to be courteous to, at least to his face (even if they decide to plot his downfall later...). Perhaps a patron or sponsor for their planned exploits, or someone whose permission they need to get for something.
Or indeed maybe he is a crime boss. Up to you!
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Everyone says my reviews are too long and nobody reads them. So here's my two paragraph summary first:
Want to see an amazing game that nails down a very slippery and specific genre and consistently and effectively pursues it? Buy this game.
Want a game that is mechanically well-balanced and won't lead you into crazy problems? Give it a pass.
Now for the lengthy/verbose/nonsensical analysis.
It seems hard to imagine at this late date, when if you wanted to watch every James Bond movie it would take two uninterrupted days, when the deliberate but tense 1970s Bourne novels have been made into a visceral action series, and when Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy can sucker us in with the professionalism of lying, but there was a time in history when espionage and counter-espionage was just coming into pop culture. Of course The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad was a 19th century venture into the popular spy novel (and modern readers will appreciate terrorism as its central conflict instead of the Cold War), but in the 1950s and 60s, the spy-as-hero jumped into prominence, and a good deal of it was an almost countercultural espionage - the spy not as defender of the stodgy status quo, but the swinger, the con artist, Mr. Suave, the femme fatale, and of course, the only person who could tell that the whole Cold War was a sham, a big crazy lie, man.
To some extent this was because the other arm of visible authority, the police officer, was engaged, quite publicly, in a heart-wrenching shift from primarily being concerned with order to primarily being concerned with law. Cops knew as much as everyone else that when they saw fire hoses turned on voting rights activists in Selma that being a police officer had to change. So in addition to the cop who was in touch with the kids, we gained the spy who didn't play by any rules. And sometimes these spy stories were lighthearted action romps - fantasies about what we'd do if we were trained to the top of our abilities and turned loose in the world with a gun, a quip and some cool gadget nobody else had.
It's hard to remember this now when we can count James Bond's genuine smiles since 1992 on one hand, but Austin Powers is a parody not of Bond but of the goofy/sexy spies that blossomed at the same time, but did not necessarily survive. (I have no idea why people chose to parody swingin' 60s spies in 1997. Why not parody balloonist adventure tales or picaresques about travelling to the Mysterious East? Those would be just as relevant. But that's far afield even for my normal rambling review style.)
It's this fantasy that Agents of SWING targets, and hits, dead on. Not the parody (though I guess you could use it for that) - this is not a satire game, this is a game about that lighthearted fantasy.
Your characters are in an implausible agency, given implausible covers, and must battle against implausible villains, while bedding their unbelievably attractive and somewhat reluctant lieutenants and sorting out ridiculous gadgets. All of these things are given a thorough once-over. The quick-moving FATE 3.0 system (with some changes, see below) is a great setup for this.
It's always a matter of walking a tightrope when replicating social attitudes of past times that might interfere with people's enjoyments - Agents of SWING, I feel, does a pretty decent job of emphasizing that players who are women will have opportunities for fun along with those that aren't. Because the agents are beyond the straitjacketed moralities of the (crumbling, it's 1967) square world they protect, they are able to forge their own way. You can even play up the tension by selecting Aspects that will emphasize this conflict - and you gain fate points when they cause problems for you, so you're actually encouraged to think about the issue and bring it to the table with your own spin on it. This game convinced me that FATE's Aspects (perhaps along with The Shadow of Yesterday's Keys) are an excellent mechanic for putting those issues into the hands of the players rather than having them feel imposed-upon by a GM or a group. There are a few examples of women characters who are not well-turned, but even if it's not a bullseye, this game gets a lot of credit from me for aiming at a difficult target and hitting at least within the first ring (to extend the metaphor.)
The game also replaces the normal FATE 3.0 "Spin" with a third "Swing Die" which you can earn, and then spend in future rolls. (It uses the d6-d6 FATE setup rather than Fate dice.) This is a pretty cool way of putting the application of Spin into the hands of the player and prevents something I've seen in other FATE games, which is people scratching their heads trying to figure out how to Spin something that doesn't really fit so that people don't feel like it's wasted. This is a really good solution to that - it shifts the probabilities significantly but doesn't necessarily make it a slam dunk. (You can put your Swing Die on top of your pile of Fate chips too - a nice stack of your player resources that you have available whenever you're planning for a roll.)
There are a number of ways this product could be improved:
For example, the stunt list doesn't hyperlink to the description of each stunt, so the list itself is pretty worthless.
There's no real explanation of what the NPCs are for or how you decide what NPC stats should be. The advice is just "try to keep it balanced with the player characters", which is sort of bad advice given that there's likely to be 3-4 player characters for each villain, and player characters may have a HUGE swing in their abilities to face off against the villain, since they can buy their skills all the way up to +8 from character creation. This is fine for the somewhat lighthearted/cartoony source material, but can easily lead to one or two characters walking off with the game and leaving others feeling useless without some clear guidance on how to create opposition (or tighter instructions at character creation).
I'm not super thrilled with the handouts. While it's nice to see them divided up, the monospace font makes it hard to work out/remember where things are. (I guess they're a good starting point and I'm glad they're there because all games should have handouts in their PDFs, what are you gonna do, make me go to your website? My mouse only clicks so many times per game, pal.) Also, the stunt section of the character sheet doesn't really give enough space to explain some of the more complicated stunts.
I actually rated this one a bit lower at first because of the difficulty in getting from the player characters to a workable scenario, but I have to reviewer tilt up one because it chases after something very specific, something rarely seen these days, and comes a lot closer than I thought it might when I first began reading the introduction. All in all, this is a pretty special game and it's one that I've returned to many times.
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This product provides a lot of value for the price: the battlemap, the tokens, the pregenerated characters and finally the adventure. This could easily be utilized for a convention game.
One challenge that I have is finding adventures that are interesting, yet compact enough to be played over the course of a single session. This one definitely succeeds in that requirement. The plot is simple, yet engaging enough, drawing the players in to find a pair of lovers missing in the swamp and ultimately confronting the big bad that resides within the swamp. I liked that the adventure afforded some role playing investigation work to discover where the lovers had gone and why. I liked how well the NPCs were described, both physically as well as their motives. I liked the artwork and writeup for the monsters. I felt this definitely was consistent with the atmosphere of weird fantasy and horror that makes LotFP distinct.
I am of mixed mind regarding the author injecting controversial cultural elements into the adventure. While in and of itself, these things shouldn't matter, the fact is that not all persons are of the same opinion regarding these issues. Honestly I game for fun and not to host culture war debates. I leave that to Facebook. I can't help but feel that the author was using the adventure to promote a particular viewpoint and though I am sympathetic to that viewpoint, it still comes across as preachy and heavy handed. In particular the comment that the author wrote regarding those who might want to change the same-sex relationship between two of the pregenerated characters was judgmental, implying that anyone not comfortable with role playing such a relationship is childish. Furthermore the author's crude language was both unprofessional and unnecessary. The author should be seeking to make a product that the customer feels comfortable using, not talking down to the customer particularly when it comes to something as inconsequential as a pregen, which has no bearing on the actual adventure.
I really want to like this product. I think the author went to a great deal of effort and delivers in many ways a very good product. Definitely worthy of four stars in terms of content. Unfortunately this is marred by the author's attitude regarding anyone who might dare to change the one pregenerated character. Talking down to your customers is not the way to go and for that I have to subtract a star.
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Like the Player's Guide I bought this when it first came out. And sadly, it shares many of the Player's Guide's faults (art, layout, lack of bookmarks for the index).
It also has the problem of not giving much advice on how to capture the feel the author is looking for. Lots of behind the scenes and historical material explaining things in the player's guide, _but_ not much on how to use it for what the author was shooting for. And sadly, this game needs a fair amount of advice. I'm an experienced GM and to me it needed the advice. I could write up my own material to make it useful to me, but isn't that what I paid for? For a start, advice on how to handle and use First Empire characters and technologies in the game would have been very useful.
Some better attention to world building, specifically how the gates are operated by the icons that seem to be largely controlled by the church and that has some interesting repercussions right there.
Anyway, again, I wanted to like this more (Arthurian space opera married to the FATE system), but it has some substantial flaws and would require major work by any purchaser to make it more useful for a GM.
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