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Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/01/17/tabletop-review-hercyni
an-grimoire-vol-1-no-1castles-crusadeslabyrinth-lord/
So this was an interesting product I had to pick up. Hercynian Grimoire an irregular periodical covering Castles & Crusades but also includes Labyrinth Lord conversions for all new items, creatures and the like. There is absolutely no art in the piece to speak of and yet the issue has an extremely high price for the page count of ten dollars. The one-two punch of no art and sticker shock will no doubt keep a good portion of interested gamers away from this piece and I can’t blame them for that. However those that do pay the inflated cost will find a very well written collection of articles that will no doubt enhance your Castles & Crusades experience. Let’s take a look at what you get with this inaugural issue.
“Glowing Words” – a column by the main writer introducing the periodical. It also plugs the author’s upcoming Chronicles of Mhoriedh line. It’s short and sweet while conveying the tone and reason of the magazine.
“Gnolls – The Hyena Men” – this four page article is similar to the “Ecology of…” articles we used to see in TSR’s old Dragon magazine. It gives a description of the creature, racial abilities and the how Gnolls can be found in The Olden Lands (again, harkening back to the upcoming campaign setting) You’re also given stats, age categories and optional special abilities. It’s very well written and a great way to kick off the publication.
“Gnoles, the Mannish-Beasts” – a one page follow up to the previous column featuring human/Gnoll hybrids. Ick. It’s another well written piece but Gnoll on Human sex? What a terrible mental image.
“D66 Ferocious Fighters” – a three page table of random NPC fighters. I’ve never understood the point of randomized tables like these and never will.
“Spells Arcane and Occult –” an article about a single spell named “Alasadree’s Empowerment of the Ultranic Orb.” This spell has six different versions, ranging from healing to a orb based version of Tasha’s Uncontrollable Hideous Laughter” where you dance instead of cackle. It’s a very interesting spell but the problem is that it is listed as a Level One spell when the wide range of effects alone make that too powerful to be a potential “first ever spell” for a neophyte caste. Add in that each effect on their own is extremely powerful (wizards that can cast healing magic? That’s way too broken). This is the same author that wrote the completely unbalanced spells for Magificent Miscellaneum, so I’m not surprised that we’re got another article where the spells are overpowered and under-leveled. Interesting ideas, but utterly no sense of balance.
“Spell Songs of Salamacine” – three witch spells. One is a Level 4 spell, one is a Level 1 and one is a Level 2. The Level 4 spell, “Salamacine’s Malevolent Melody” is actually nicely balanced, which was a unexpected surprised. It’s basically a possession via remote control spell. “Motive Melody” is the Level 1 spell and allows a caste to animate one inanimate object per level plus an extra 1d6 to do simple, mundane tasks. Not a bad spell, but I’d excise the extra 1d6 as once again, it unbalances things.”Siren Song” is a Level 2 spell and it’s basically an enhanced Charm Person. It makes another balanced spell between power and casting level, so I was pretty happy with this article. It’s the first spell article between the two recent C&C publications I’ve reviewed where I haven’t wondered if the writer has his mages casting Wish as a fourth or fifth level spell.
“D66 Fairies and Nymphs” – another random chart, but this time it’s filled with fairies and nymphs instead of warriors. Blah. It also takes up a whopping SIX PAGES of the publication, which boggles my mind.
“Gnoll Encounter Table” – this keeps in with the theme of the first two articles and it’s a nicely laid out random encounter table. There are only two small problems. The first is that it probably should have been placed at the tail end of the two Gnoll based articles for a better flow of the magazine and the other is that the random chart talks about nine different maps without alluding where to find them or what the writer is talking about. My assumption is that these are maps that we will see in the forthcoming Chronicles of Mhoriedh campaign setting.
“Magical Miscellanea” – a one page article highlighting ten new magic items. They’re all interesting. Nothing you’ll want to base an adventure around, but also nothing that will break your game.
“Monstrous Menagerie” – This is a collection of various creatures and monsters to use against your players. There are three Hyena creatures, which I might have put as a separate article and moved towards the beginning of the Grimoire to keep all the related material together. You then get a set of ten “thunder beasts” which, again, I think could have had their own separate article instead of lumping this class of creatures and the hyenas into a single one.
“D666 Demonic and Devilish Traits” – a cute play on the D66 charts, but again, another chart of randomized bits no one really ever asks for or needs.
“D66 Underworld Oddities” – ANOTHER randomized chart. Sheesh.
“Olden Lands Preview: Alspadia” – this is most likely what will draw people to the Grimoire as it’s a sneak peak of the upcoming campaign setting the author has put together. It’s a very well done piece that reminds me of the excellent Ravenloft Gazetteers Sword & Sorcery put out in the 1990s. You get a nice amount of information of the cities, prominent locations and culture of Alspadia and it makes me want to learn more about the setting. Mission accomplished here.
“Olden Lands Preview: The Oldenwoods” – an article that is pretty similar to the previous one, but with a different location within the campaign setting. It’s only a page long but it’s also well done and serves its purpose here.
“Olden Lands Preview: The Blood God” – a third straight preview article about The Olden Lands, but this time it’s about a major deity rather than a location. It’s a pretty grim god, and the article gives you information about the hierarchy of its following along with information about how the deity conducts itself through its worshippers. A nice way to end the publication.
All in all, the first issue of Hercynian Grimoire is a fun one. Although I’d have reorganized things a bit and dropped all the random tables save for the Gnoll encounter one, this was a pretty strong first issue. I was happy to see the author did a better job with balancing spells than in his previous publication for Troll Lord Games, but I still think this is one area where his writing needs a bit of guidance. I loved the Olden Lands previews and the Gnoll articles and hope to see pieces like this will become the focus for future issues. At the end of the day I’m quite happy with the piece and wil;l be back for future issues, but price and art aren’t an issue for me. For everyone else, I have to give this a thumb’s in the middle due to the high cost (a better price point would probably be around five dollars – half of what is being charged here, especially with the lack of art) and the absence of any art. Still, a great first effort and I can’t wait to see what is next.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/01/16/tabletop-review-the-tal
isman-of-gorshan-pc/
The Talisman of Gorshan is what equates to a 30 page adventure but in an online format done with HTML and lots of very nice graphics and hyper-linking to make it easy to run with just a computer, even going as so far as to provide reliable links to a dice-roller and the SRD pages for Dungeons & Dragons 3.0/3.5 and Pathfinder as well as Osric. While it strives to be an online only adventure, there are a few snags. You can’t beat the price as it is free and is especially easy on the eyes, but in the end there’s little pay off except through GM or DM depending on your game choice, intervention. While this can spur off into a whole other set of adventures I would have liked to see a little bit more closure here as a standalone but could work nicely into an ongoing campaign.
The story is pretty simple, almost a standard fetch quest attached to a dungeon crawl, especially in that you can’t stop at just one place and things get overly complicated at the places you do go. The party is enjoying themselves at an inn when a mysterious group enters, sizes them up and then proceeds to offer them a job. It seems that Gorshan, a mage of apparently some wealth, has decided that he wants to retrieve a talisman that used to be his that was taken by Orcs and has been broken into three pieces and scattered, the pieces of which there’s a map already made for the party with locations, although not exact. From there it’s up to the party to decide where to go first and last, and what they’ll check out when they get there. Travel time alone will take a group roughly two weeks game time on foot not including exploring the locations, which to be honest, aren’t very big in and of themselves.
This is a decent interim adventure for the prescribed level of eight-ten and four to five players. It’s easily a productive group’s four hour session, or a non-productive group two of those sessions. I actually rolled up four Pathfinder characters at level eight to run through this using the medium experience leveling table and the Pathfinder SRD. I went with a mostly ‘classic’ group, with two humans, a Paladin and a Cleric, a Half-Elf Sorcerer, and an Elven Rogue, so I had my basics covered at least. While I ran through the adventure one of the big snags I ran into was the inclusion of an Umber Hulk. While this wouldn’t have been a problem for a party at eighth level, the Umber Hulk is not included in the SRD as it ties into Dungeons and Dragons specifically, so no stats are available through the OGL, legally, online. A quick Google search did pull up a questionable stat block for one, but I opted instead to dig further and some very helpful people years ago recommended a Grey Render in place of the Umber Hulk, so I used that instead.
For a group of four players starting at level eight, this is guaranteed to at least give them enough experience to level them at least once if they’re thorough, so if you’re in need of a leveling adventure to boost your players a bit before throwing them into something else, this’ll do for that. I found the loot you can acquire through the adventure isn’t terribly game-breaking either and is level appropriate for the most part. You shouldn’t be cringing later from anything your players pick up here, but don’t go in blind. One of the named swords you can pick up looks pretty potent so adjusting to your group might be necessary as always.
As a GM tool, this adventure being online like this functions much the same as a bookmarked PDF would, with a nice dice roller and links to the appropriate SRD’s and stat links for the standard D20 D&D SRD included. Took me a little more work with the Pathfinder SRD, but it’s minimal, and it’s organized fairly well, almost to the point where it’s just as easy as cracking open a book. It still took me longer than cracking my books but more from familiarity than anything else. Aside from not having stats available, technically, for one of the monsters, the adventure works pretty well. It manages to provide a decent mix of monsters which isn’t something that a lot of main supplements would do instead throwing the same mobs at you time and time again. The variety is nice and breaks things up, and even within the same areas it changes them up often enough so your players hopefully won’t be making slaying songs for a particular creature. I had one Fourth Edition adventure I’d converted to Pathfinder that I’d just grabbed real quick and did a quick and dirty monster conversion by simply looking it up in the Bestiary and every fight for almost half the adventure was freaking zombies. Yeah, boring as hell for both me and the players. That was the first and only time I’d pulled a random adventure off the shelf. I’m glad to see a variety here and some new critters to slay as well including an Assassin Golem, a Dragonhawk, and the Nightmare Dragon.
Using this with a players group is going to be problematic, however. While there is a player map provided, and there are decently detailed maps of the dungeons, everything is completely accessible to anyone looking at the site, meaning there is no real surprise for the players who happen to click through the links. There aren’t any print friendly versions of any of the maps either, which means any non-tech savvy GMs are going to have to muddle through with this for their players. You can just view the images, and then print that way, but I feel the quality would suffer and defeat the whole purpose of having an adventure where you need no books. Now you could pull the images to a separate device for viewing, but again you’re running into more prep work. This isn’t a huge downside as you can work around it, but a version for the players alone without any links would have been great.
Overall it’s a standard dungeon crawl affair with some very well done maps, a good selection of bad guys to throw at your players, and in the future, an evil and corrupt mage that they can take down if you take the time to stat him out for future use. It’s good if you need some filler around levels eight to ten and for a level eight group of four will definitely earn them at least a level. While I think it has a few issues, it’s definitely worth a look as it is free, and with a few tweaks, it’s a format I think more GMs at the table with a laptop, tablet or running over the internet through a voice chat program, could embrace if handled correctly, which for the most part it is here. The artwork is fantastic, and if this were a printed adventure I’d give it a thumbs up for purchase.
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Origially posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/01/15/tabletop-review-magnifi
cent-miscellaneum-volume-ii-castles-crusades/
I haven’t had the chance to review any Castles & Crusades products for a while, due to the end of the year glut and the Tabletop Gaming Awards write-up. However, with a new year I happened to find several new C&C products awaiting me, Magnificent Miscellaneum included. Magnificent Miscellaneum is a very short new periodical from Troll Lord games, covering only a few pages of content, but keeping the price between seventy-five cents and a dollar twenty-five, based on any sales going on. Out of the seven pages, only five are content, with one page being the cover and the second being the wordy OGL license and credits for the publication.
Now you’re probably wondering what all someone can pack into a mere five pages, unless it’s a short one shot adventure. Well, there is a surprising amount of content in this little pamphlet. Three pages are devoted to “White Box Menaces.” Of course, some people might not know what the White Box is. That’s the 1974 original edition of Dungeons & Dragons. I’m not sure why they call this section that, as I pulled out my own copy of the set and couldn’t find any of the creatures in this volume of MM betwixt the pages of the three D&D books that made up the White Box. That said, this section contains ten monsters with names that look like your cat walked across the computer keyboard . The effort to pronounce these alone will keep a decent portion of DMs away from using them. Still, there are ten brand new monsters to inflict upon your C&C gaming troupe here, with each one getting paragraph that describes them, and some very brief stats to let you use them. My personal favorite are the Gloedfoers, which are infernal sheep, and I know I’ve encountered them before now (albeit it under a different name) – I just can’t remember when and that’s driving me nuts. If you can get by tongue twisters like thûtuszlaks and mwizikili, you’ll find some really fun creatures to use in your homebrew adventures.
The next section is Potent Priestcraft, and it introduces four new spells for your cleric. There are two Level One and two Level Two spells, all of which are pretty powerful for what they do. Bonumcanis lets you summon a ghost dog to watch your back, while Choreamortis lets a Level One Priest animate a corpse as long as they concentrate on mentally commanding it. Luxbeata is a Level Two Cleric spell where you can do 2d8 damage to undead via holy searing light, while Good aligned creatures heal a point of damage and evil aligned non-undead must make a saving throw to keep from running in fear. This one’s definitely a bit overpowered. It’s neat, but probably should be a level higher. Malumcaligo is another overpowered spell, giving the caster an armour class bonus AND an bonus to his or her attack roll. One or the other is probably fine for a Level Two spell, but both? Ouch. There’s also a surprise penalty to anyone who tries to enter the fog to attack the caster. All of this shows the spell should be probably Level Four rather than Level Two. Basically ALL of the spells in this section needed either nerfing or having their spell levels raised.
Wondrous Wizardry is a similar section, but for mages instead of priests. Here you have four spells that are classified as “Eyebites.” This is NOT the same as the AD&D version of Eyebite, but rather a classification of spells, “that can potentially be cast out of initiative order and out of the caster’s normal turn in that order.” That alone is a powerful ability. However, like the Priest spells, these Eyebites are overpowered on their own, and when you factor in their bonus ability, means they are just too much for their Casting Level. Celeritous Sidestep is a Level Zero (!) spell where the caster can sidestep any one non-magical attack of any kind. A Level Zero spell? Seriously? That’s insanely powerful, and shouldn’t be the equivalent of a cantrip. Somnuscent Interjection is a Level Three spell that is a more powerful version of Sleep. This is the most balanced spell in the lot. Malefic Stuttering is a Level One spell, except it’s misspelled as Malific, and basically a lower leveled version of Tasha’s Uncontrollable Hideous Laughter. Eh. The final spell is Toxic Revelator and it’s a Level Two spell that feels like it should be a Priest spell instead. Basically every poisonous item within a fifty foot radius of the caster flies out, dances around the mage and begins to speak (it’s magic people) stating the type of poison it is and who applied it, or at least last touched the vial it is in. Again, a divination of this nature feels more clerical in nature, and probably should be Level Three due to the power of it. A low level mage should NOT be able to cast a spell like this that easily; otherwise there’d be no need for police or detectives. So yeah, both magic sections are neat, but the spells really needed to be retooled before being made canon by Troll Lord. They’re just way too unbalanced.
Finally we have “Mystic Magic Items and Amazing Artifacts,” which introduces four new items for players to find and use in their dungeon crawling adventures. You have such items as The Claw of the Lich (think rabbit’s foot, but humanoid), Eye of Gorgon, a necklace to petrify enemies, Ear of the Fish, a pearl earring to let the wielder communicate with fish, and Jar of Light, which feels like a candle based version of the Decanter of Endless Water, but not as flexible. All in all, not bad magic items.
So, a thumbs in the middle for this issue. It’s cheap and short and whether you’ll get your money’s worth or not is up to you. The monsters and magical items are nicely done, but the spells needed a lot of work before becoming official. They’re just too unbalanced and ill thought out. Still, I really enjoyed flipping through this piece, and I hope the Magnificent Miscellaneum becomes a regular release. It reminds me of a very short and unrefined old school TSR style magazine, and that’s a good thing.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/01/11/tabletop-review-barbari
ans-booze-battle-axes/
I suppose one of the worst things about most RPGs is that you simply can’t play them drunk. I mean, technically you could, but it would be a pain in the butt trying to read small print after the sixth shot.
BBB seems to have an answer to that problem. It uses a system so overtly simple as to make confusion all but impossible. Depending on what kind of player you are, this will either endear you to the system, or make it seem like child’s play.
Character creation is a cinch. A barbarian, which you must be, always comes equipped with the same starting stats. You get one point each in fighting, drinking, toughness, and “other stuff”. After that you get some gold to spend on equipment. Keeping up with the simple theme, you can only buy basic weapons and armor. There are no magical items or the like to further customize your character. The most customization you’ll get is in choosing your character’s name.
Each point you get in a stat allows you a roll of percentile dice to determine your score. So for example, having two points in fighting gives you two rolls. When deciding the outcome of an action, you take your highest roll, add in any bonuses, and then the highest number wins. When dealing damage, you deal the difference between these rolls. This is also quite simple, as you don’t have to make separate attack/damage rolls.
The drinking system is easily the most unique part of the game. Drinking is a full fledged mechanic, rather than something you do for lore’s sake and occasionally make a fortitude roll for. Basically, you partake in drinking contests, rolling the same dice you did for fighting. Losing a round gives you a drunk point. First to six loses. Interestingly enough, getting drunk can directly affect fighting. For the first few point, you actually get better in combat, but then things start to go downhill quite rapidly. For toughness and other stuff rolls, getting drunk is always a bad thing.
To go along with the drinking theme, the game includes three drinking games. Each of these can technically be used in game, but they’re mainly designed for the players to get trashed. After all, it would be a pain in the butt to roll dice to see what card you drew from a deck and then to calculate the alcohol percentage of the center cup when different people have been adding drinks to it.
The other two stats are kind of throwaways that will only get brought up in the more in depth campaigns. Toughness is basically a strength check that determines if you force open a door. It also serves as a fortitude score. Other stuff is simply a roll for anything else you might think you have to roll for.
Leveling up in the game is also quite simple. You get a set amount experience for each fight you win, each drinking contest you win, and each other roll you win. In order to level up a stat, you simply multiply your current level by one hundred, and that’s the experience you need. So it takes one hundred experience to level fighting up to two, and then it will take two hundred experience the second time you want to level it up. You can also spend a hundred experience to gain some extra HP. Again, this is a very simple system. The game even advises using index cards for character sheets as opposed to full blown pieces of paper. You simply don’t need that much room.
Finally, there is a solo adventure tacked onto the last couple of pages that’s meant to serve as an introduction to the game’s basic mechanics. It basically offers a couple of fights and choices in a short “choose your own adventure” type deal. It’s amusing, but won’t last more than a few minutes. Still, it gives an idea of how to play the game, which is nice.
If this game were more than a buck, I’d probably say it was a waste of time. It really seems like something anyone could make up in a couple of hours. It’s very simplistic, and won’t satisfy most players because of this. However, it might be fun to try it out during a drinking party with friends. For that reason alone, I’d say this game is worth a look. At the very least, it can be easily modified for more advanced play.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/01/10/tabletop-review-advance
d-fighting-fantasy-quickstart/
I am a huge fan of the Fighting Fantasy line of game books, even though I have only made it through the first ten and am working on the eleventh. All told, there are fifty-five of them in the original series, with most books after the tenth being written by authors other than the two that started it all: Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. I have eyed the Advanced Fighting Fantasy core books before, but could not bring myself to actually purchase them as I was unsure of what they did to the system to make it worth building a full game around. You see, the strength of the books lies on the way that the decisions play with the reader’s mind.
A book will present you with an innocuous peasant merely asking for a coin, and if you give this peasant a coin something awesome might happen, or they might turn out to be the lookout for a group of brigands behind the trees ready to rob you blind. Most of the time, you just never know. The weakness in the system, being more or less finalized as it was in 1984, was (is) its simplicity and reliance on die rolls. Most rolls in the game books are simply based on one of your character’s three attributes: Stamina, Skill, and Luck. Even your attributes are determined by adding a die roll to a base number, so it’s possible to start out with ridiculously low scores.
So, when I saw these sample rules up for free I grabbed them in order to get a picture of what Advanced Fighting Fantasy has to offer.
Basics Only
There are no character creation rules in this booklet, you simply get a handful of pre-gens (five) at the end to work with. As those who read my articles may know, this is totally fine with me. I would rather look through pre-gens and pick one that I like most of the time than roll up a new character. So, since there is no need to create characters, a group can just pick up these rules, read through the basic explanation of combat and tests and then start playing the introductory adventure included. This adventure, titled “The Well”, was the first adventure in the original Fighting Fantasy role-playing game (also from 1984, not a solo game book) and I have played it a few times with people just for kicks. This new version of the adventure is different, and missing some of the interesting mind games and social encounters of the old version, which is a shame.
Combat is as basic as ever, except there has been a change made that I really like. Let me explain how combat works first: you roll two six-sided dice and add the number to your Skill score, then the GM (the Director in this game) rolls two six-sided dice and adds the number to your opponent’s Skill score. Whoever has the highest number hits the other. Sounds simple and logical right? Well, in practice this simplistic and die-dependent mechanism can be really frustrating in combat. There are simply no tactical choices to make in a fight, it’s just die roll after die roll and hoping you come out on top (hint: you are much more likely to win and easily if your Skill is even a point higher than your opponent’s). So, besides the sad fact that this has not changed with the “advanced” version, they have introduced one interesting aspect. When someone hits with a weapon, they now roll a die and consult a table to see how good the hit was. If you roll a “6” after hitting, your weapon will do its best damage, the opposite with a “1”. In addition, the recipient of the blow will be able to roll a die for their armor and prevent an amount of damage depending on how well they roll. In the universe of Fighting Fantasy mechanisms, this is huge!
Another improvement they added is the attribute of Magic to characters. In the solo books, this was an additional attribute in The Citadel of Chaos, as well as being wonderfully implemented in the Sorcery! series in a very ingenious way. In Advanced Fighting Fantasy it seems that they have more or less opted for a standard magic system, using utilitarian descriptive names and costing the wizard Magic Points that will be replenished the next day. Seems like a necessary addition, I just really like the way it was implemented in some of the solo books and wish they could bring that ingenuity to this game. Looking at the character sheets, one can see that now heroes also have “Special Skills” that differentiate them from other heroes. Ah, but it’s starting to look more like a retro-clone all the time…
Advanced Fantasy, Simple Game
As I said earlier, the real magic in the solo books came from the brilliant writing and difficult adventures with a gritty feel. In Advanced Fighting Fantasy the game master has to become that brilliant and imaginative writer, or this will be just another simple fantasy RPG. Simply adding in more complex elements will not a great RPG make, but there is also a wealth of setting information in the source books Out of the Pit and Titan, which contain creatures and information about the world Fighting Fantasy is set in respectively. I love the world, I love the stories, and I really want to love Advanced Fighting Fantasy, but I would like to have seen some more innovation in the combat mechanisms, which are quite antiquated. If I do pursue this game in the future, and I plan to, then I will do some tinkering of my own to see if I can come up with a solution. Other than that, I do recommend these quick start rules, especially if you are looking to jump into a fantasy adventure right away with a small to medium group. Further to my delight, who else publishes the books but Cubicle 7 Entertainment?
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/01/10/tabletop-review-kuro-cu
bicle-7-entertainment/
Kuro is the latest in the line of interesting role-playing games put out by Cubicle 7 Entertainment, one of my favorite game companies. This game’s core thematic ideas have been compared, and rightly so, to the style of Japanese horror found in movies like The Ring or The Grudge. I am going to discuss the theme first, since that is really the meat of this game, and then of course I will discuss the way dice and characters factor in and the way the game plays.
It’s 2046, and things are messed up
In futuristic, dystopian Japan, there are strange and often terrible things happening. Bodies are found in alleyways, there is a blockade preventing people and goods from entering or leaving, and there is a general malaise over the population in the form of fear. When I read the introductory setting information for Kuro, I get that creeping feeling of dread that things have gone horribly wrong, yet no one knows exactly what is happening or what to do about it. While I felt that I had to suspend a bit of disbelief to get through the description of the eco-disaster future of the next 33 years (ice caps melt, oceans rise, energy crises, etc., I thought it sounded a little hysterical), once I got through the exposition I felt like I could enjoy the year 2046 as put forward by the book. The other thing I did not really buy was the description of international politics leading up to the nuclear launch that caused “the Kuro event”. In short, various alliances are formed and broken in Asia that lead to China launching a nuke at Japan which is intercepted by a strange electrical event. It seemed a bit fantastical to have these countries openly forming alliances and bickering about technology and trade agreements, including aggressive military action culminating in nuclear strikes. First, it all seems a bit like staged theatrics with a script for an action film. Second, if the future has androids and nanobots and clones … why are there still nukes and why would anyone launch them? Has the concept of mutually assured destruction disappeared?
Anyway, I found the setting exposition a bit tall, but it is easy to just read over it and accept that things got messed up, something drastic happened and now Japan is plunged into a strange darkness. To top it off, the event occurred during a contested election and the country is currently leaderless, dealing with an interior political crisis that leaves people just as confused by their government as they are with the strangeness around them. Add one dash of a blockade at the Japanese ports and around the perimeter of the country, and you have yourself a claustrophobic hotbed of supernatural horror.
So, what is the strangeness around them? Well, there are hints and overtures throughout the book. Sometimes the book is talking about spirits, ghosts, and the like. Other times, mentions of monsters, beasts and demons from Eastern mythology. Bodies are found having suffered a strange disfiguration, machines come to life and attack, technology is manipulated by the strange energy of the dead, strange noises are heard, and shadows flicker in the corners of eyes. Basically, whatever creepy thing you can think of or any trope from a horror movie is going to fit in here. Possession, haunting, poltergeists, demons, horrible Lovecraftian beasts, electronic interference, madness, all of that can have a home in 2046 Tokyo.
What Do People Do?
The idea for the players in Kuro is to have them be mostly ordinary people; they are used to living a regular life, going to work and living with whatever comforts are affordable or available, hanging out with friends, and in the midst of the Kuro event they are seeking a return to normalcy. While I’m sure it would be perfectly possible to play badass ghost hunters and demon killers, the game really doesn’t seem to encourage that line of thinking. This is more along the lines of supernatural and/or survival horror – think X-Files set in semi-hysterical, futuristic Tokyo. To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure how to imagine the level of alarm in the setting. Is everyone going crazy? Are people more or less living normally but with this oppressive fear kept under wraps? Is there constant evidence of the supernatural but some people dismiss it or ignore it and some embrace it? I think it is a mixture of all three. The book talks about spouters of end-of-the-world prophecies, cults, the wealthy living in isolated buildings that provide for all of their needs, various religious groups, those trying to capitalize monetarily on the tragedy, and the government being very quiet about it all except to reassure the populace that nothing is wrong.
Tokyo, now renamed Shin-Edo in the face of enemies (a tradition), is a divided city in more than just how people feel about the crisis. There are different districts where the disparate groups of people live. The very wealthy might live in one quarter, the influential businessmen and offices in another quarter, the less fortunate here, strip clubs there, etc. The book gives a nice description of each definable section of Shin-Edo, detailing the inhabitants and what typically goes on there. After reading this, the game master should have a good idea of what the different portions of Tokyo are like. The descriptions are not too short, dedicating about a page to each section depending on how much there is of note in the location. Following ward descriptions are a few pages about daily life: what to eat and drink, customs, currency, and the Shinto-Buddhist religion most people subscribe to. Not a lot of information here, but enough for a role-playing game. Anyone familiar with Japanese culture will probably learn little from this section, but those clueless about the nation will need this to help them add authenticity to the atmosphere.
Rollin’ Dice and Making a Tokyo-ite
Well folks, if what I have said has excited you thus far, I hope this doesn’t take anything away for you. As for me, I found the actual game mechanisms here functional but uninspiring. Basically, you take the number of dice (d6s) for the attribute related to what you are doing, add the level of the skill you are using, and then see if that meets or exceeds a target number set by the GM. Anyone familiar with other Cubicle 7 games like Qin and The One Ring will see similarities here. The differences are that there is an “exploding die” possibility, where a roll of “6” is rolled again and added to the total, and then (for a nice touch of flavor) a roll of “4” at any time counts as zero, because the word for “4” is the same as the word for “death”. Otherwise, that is pretty much it. It seems that Neko or whoever is responsible for setting the basic die mechanisms in Cubicle 7 games prefers to use six-sided dice with a twist thrown in somewhere. I can understand and respect that, I just would love to see something really interesting done with dice at some point in my role-playing life. I guess I keep hoping C7, since they seem to be the biggest professional company putting out games on interesting and non-tired subjects, will be the ones to invent those mechanisms.
Character creation is point-buy. You will be able to allocate points between your eight attributes (we’re talking single-digit, low attributes), and then allocate a certain amount of points between skills and skill specializations. One cool thing about skills is that once you specialize enough in a certain area of a skill you are allowed to choose what is called a “Gimikku” for that specialization. These Gimikku allow you to add bonus points to a roll, reroll dice, and other things that make your character very, very good at that one thing. The skill list covers a nice, general area without getting too deep. You still read through and think: “where is any character going to use his Jet Pilot skill?” So, while I personally think they could just eliminate a lot of these skills that probably would never crop up in a game set in futuristic, dark Tokyo, I guess it’s good to have them there just in case. For another example, you character can have the “Energy Technology” skill with a specialization in photovoltaic nanobatteries. Now, seriously, who is going to use this skill in-game? I’m not saying it is impossible, I’m just looking for an example of how a player who is highly specialized in photovoltaic nanobatteries is going to prove useful in the course of a game.
Without going into all the details of what is a fairly basic and standard combat system, I just want to point out something that I think is very cool with melee combat. There are three types of attacks: “Fast”, “Power”, and a normal attack. The normal attack is just your straightforward “to hit” roll, and the opponent can dodge if they have actions left. The “Power” and “Fast” attacks require you to invest a point of Strength or Reflexes respectively, and then provide various tradeoffs to damage and hitting depending on how much you invested. Now that’s interesting! This breathes a bit of tactical life into what is otherwise a pretty typical combat section. Now, if only something like this had been implemented for the heroes in The One Ring along with the tactical positioning…
Monsters and Terrible Things
I’m just going to describe one monster in the bestiary section, the one that gave me the most willies. It is the Tsuchigumo or “earth spider”. Awakened by the Kuro Incident, these large spiders look “like a sea spider, with a massive, whitish shell and a body with six long hooked legs”. Yeah. In addition to that, they like to live underground where they can remain undetected and hide in the dark. This was the worst part: “Incapable of coming out during the day without being noticed and by fear of the sunlight, this creature prefers to possess human beings with its eggs to make them obey without hesitation”. You also have the Kappa, a turtle-like humanoid with a beak and some sort of strange, salt-water brain (it’s hard to explain without just reading it over and over). There are also various demons and spirits here related to Japanese lore. It is by no means an exhaustive bestiary and does not contain much in the way of things a GM can pull out regularly for the characters unless the characters are really strong and the evil forces are really making a go of it.
Towards the end of the book are sections on gamemastering advice and a sample adventure for the group. Both of these are great, and give a lot of excellent information and examples on gameplay. The sample adventure seems really hard, and I don’t see how the characters could really survive it without at least one or two dying off. Basically, the players are trapped in a complex that has been locked down for security, and through the actions of some unwelcome intruders they will be forced even deeper in before the security really gets bad. However, the spirit of the recently-deceased lab director is there to help … but how much? I won’t spoil it for you, but the scenario given in this book is pretty freaky and intense.
Final Thoughts
Kuro nails one thing really well: theme. By making Tokyo (Shin-Edo) the setting and centering the game on it, then adding in all of these concrete and implied elements of Japanese horror, Kuro shines. Tokyo becomes like a pressure cooker, and all of these elements are added to the recipe to make a terrifying sauce for GMs to lovingly spoon over the story, topped with the player characters. Good place for food metaphors? Actually, few things could make me less hungry than the possible fear created by this game, in the hands of the right group. I’m not the biggest fan of fear, and I outright cannot stand senseless violence, but I do enjoy creepiness and supernatural happenings. This game can go full steam with both supernatural creep and gore elements, or it can just choose one of those two and focus on it. Want lots of dead people and violence? Kuro is ready for that. Want lots of creep, whispers, shadows, and that kind of stuff? Kuro is good for that too. Either way, the atmosphere of terrified Tokyo and the people within are ripe for a group to come and experience it. The crew at Cubicle 7 has made another excellent game on an interesting subject, and while I am not crazy about some aspects of the game like the lackluster test resolution and some convoluted rules, the feel is just too good to pass up.
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Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/01/08/tabletop-review-pathway
s-22-pathfinder/
I miss the golden age of TSR magazines. I have every issue of Dragon and Dungeon and I still flip through them, especially in electronic format (thanks to the rare and expensive CD-Rom collection from back in the day). Gaming magazines have taken a hit for a while now though. Kobold Quarterly finally died, The Unspeakable Oath is lucky to get an issue out per calendar year and these days, it feels like black and white fanzines have replaced the monthly or quarterly periodicals of the 80s, 90s and 00s. The good news is that, thanks to Rite Publishing, you have modern day Pathfinder magazines that are high quality and feature some top notch articles. In the case of Pathways, the magazines might be short (this one clocks in at only thrity-seven pages, a quarter of which are ads), but it’s free, and something every Pathfinder gamer should pick up, due to the myriad of articles that each issues contains.
This month features seven articles; four features, an editorial, an interview and some reviews. That’s a pretty nice selection for a free magazine. The question I’m sure you are asking at this point is, how good is the issue? After all, it may be free, but there’s a lot of freebies on DriveThruRPG.com that are pretty horrendous. So let’s take a look at each selection and if it’s worth your time.
1. Editorial. Dave Paul writes up an interesting piece about violence in RPGs in the wake of yet another school shooting in the States. It’s an interesting article, but I did find some thought about the context of the following two statements: “Another way that these topics are related is that the game that we all love and play is, frankly, full of violence.” and “I’m not going to argue for an RPG that gets rid of combat.” Both statements got me thinking about what games actually aren’t full of violence and can get by without combat. I know I’ve run several D&D adventures back in the day where combat never occurred. I’ve seen a few Castles & Crusades adventures where this is possible. Call of Cthulhu is another system where violence is the exception rather than the norm. Of course, these comments were in relation to Pathfinder, which is more hacky-slashy than the average tabletop game, but it was still worth trying to wrack my brain for adventures and systems where you don’t lop off someone’s limbs or shoot them full of bullets.
2. Divine Creature Champion Template. This is the feature of the issue, and it’s an extremely well done piece. Steve Russell has created a template that can be used with just about any creature or humanoid in the game. You get two full pages of mechanics on crafting a Divine Champion, followed by a one page stat block of an Ettercap with the Divine Champion template added to it. Very nicely done, and I’m surprised no one has done something like this sooner.
3. The Mutah. No, Keiji Mutoh has not been turned into a Pathfinder NPC, or has he? After all, this strange aquatic and aerial creature does spew a Poison Mist, with the colours and their effects matching up to the effects in professional wrestling when the Great Muta uses the same style attack. It also has an attack called the “Shining Wizard,” but alas, it doesn’t do moonsaults. It’s a very cute tribute to one of the best wrestlers of all time. I don’t think a lot of people will get the homage/in-joke, but to someone who watched Wrestle Kingdom 7 before reading this issue, it was all too apparent.
4. Grave of the Mad. This is a short little encounter, similar to the ones you find in the Pathfinder comic book, albeit without the map. This particular encounter has players dealing with two poltergeists on the edge of an unstable cliff. It’s good as a quick skirmish for players or as an added and unexpected piece or an adventure/campaign you are already running. It’s nothing you’ll find yourself running to the table to use, but it’s a well written encounter and fun to read even if you never play through it.
5. Sonic Foes. Just like the title of the article states, this piece is about enemies that have aural attacks. There are only two, but each creature gets a full page devoted to it. There is the Screaming, which is an odd little undead menace to plague your enemies, and the Discord, which is a twisted creature of pure sound created by a botched performance role, or a successful countersong. Again, interesting ideas, but nothing the average GM will go out of their way to use.
6. Twenty Questions With Dave Woodson. I have no idea who this guy is, and even after reading the interview, all I knew is that he has a small company called Abandoned Arts. I had to actually look up the company to see what they made, and it turned out it was the “Class Acts” and “Feats of…” series I get sent to my reviewer’s box regularly. I’ve never actually picked one up, due to the sheer number of review requests I get. Unfortunately, the interview doesn’t spend much time of Woodson’s own product line and instead has him talk about Paizo’s core product line, which really doesn’t do the reader or Woodson’s company any good. Only a few of the twenty questions asked are about his product line, and they’re vague, generic questions at best. If *I* was doing the interview, I would have tailored it towards what Abandoned Arts puts out and why the average Pathfinder fan should take note. Paizo doesn’t need the constant plug; it created Pathfinder, after all. Meanwhile, the little indie guys need ALL the attention they can get. The interview just isn’t done very well in my opinion, and Cthulhu knows I’ve had to do a ton of them for various publications over the years. You can really skip this piece.
7. Reviews. Unfortunately, this last piece in the issue is not only the worst, but the longest – coming in at six pages. In my review of other gaming mags, I’ve repeatedly stated that they shouldn’t be doing reviews in these. The quality of the reviews are generally terrible, and they come off as ads more than actual critiques of a publication. It’s really bad here though, with six products being reviewed here – one from Rising Swan, two from Rite Publishing (makers of this magazine!), two from Super Genius Games and one from Jon Brazer. I’m a little concerned about Rite reviewing two of its own offerings. That pretty much comes off as a paid for advertisement. I don’t honestly think it is meant to be, but gamers are a skeptical lot, and when you see a product by Publisher A being give a very positive rating by, well… Publisher A, you doubt the veracity of the claims. A lack of journalistic integrity is something the video game side of gaming is called out for a lot, and unfortunately, by including reviews of Rite Publishing products IN a Rite Publishing product, you hit a very moral and ethical grey area, if not an outright black one. It gets even worse when you realize one of the reviews is for the previous issue of Pathways, and that the reviewer is a contributor to that very issue. That right there is a dangerous precipice for any publication, as well as anyone who wants to be taken seriously as a product reviewer. I probably don’t need to add that Rising Swan also contributed to this issue, and had a review of one of its products as well. That’s, again, not a precedent you want to be setting with a publication. Finally, the reviews are too short to be considered quality or of use (This review of the magazine is the same length as four of the six reviews contained within it, for example. It’s not the fault of the reviewers necessarily, but a space constraint.), and they don’t come across as professionally done. The whole section just comes off tacky at best and highly unethical at worst.
Personally, I’d rather see these six pages go to something more useful. By the time a magazine has come out, you’ll have seen reviews for all of these products, if you want to, via blogs, DriveThruRPG and websites. If you’re going to devote six pages to reviews that come across more as ads (even if they aren’t meant to), I’d rather see that space devoted to, say, previews of upcoming publications. I mean, why not devote a page to what’s going to be in Adventure Quarterly #3? How about a sneak peak of The Secrets of Renegade Archetypes? Perhaps a look at what awaits us in The Toiling of Tears? Previews of future Rite Publishing products would be of far more use to gamers across the board, and it would be time and money better spent by the publisher. Hell, it doesn’t have to be just Rite Publishing products. Previews of any third party Pathfinder products would be great. The indie guys need all the press they can get, and I’m sure they’d be happy to have even a page or two of something that they have in the pipeline featured in Pathways. Come on Rite Publishing, make it happen!
So all in all, the latest issue of Pathways is pretty good. There are a few hiccups here and there, but hey, it’s FREE, so it’s silly to complain. Between the Divine Champion article and the homage to the Great Muta, this is well worth picking up. Throw in the neat encounter piece and you have something any self-respecting Pathfinder fan should be downloading as soon as they finish this – if they haven’t picked it up already.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/01/02/tabletop-review-deadlan
ds-noir-savage-worlds/
Although I always found Deadlands intriguing, I never got into the game. For one thing, the old west was never a setting that interested me. For another, my original impressions from reading the core rulebook back in the 90s seemed like the setting borrowed heavily from Shadowrun world-wise, but then put things in the Old West and made things more intentionally evil. Raven and his machinations = the Great Ghost dance, the CSA coming about, Native Americans reclaiming their lands, evil corporations abound. The other was that the rules set kept changing. You had the original rules, the revised rules, the Savage World rules, the d20 version and there was even a GURPS version of all things. Pinnacle was just too all over the place for my liking. Now that said, I thought the writing was fantastic, the mechanics were unique and very memorable and the art was pretty good. It just wasn’t my thing.
Well all that changed earlier this year when Deadlands Noir went up on Kickstarter as a crowd-funded project. I loved the concept and the teases we were given but I was still hesitant to join in, especially as I was funding so many other things at the time. In the end, I didn’t back Deadlands Noir, but I plugged the project heavily in my Kickstarter column and watched over eleven hundred people raise $117,000 for this thing. In late December, the official PDF version of the book was released to backers and via DriveThruRPG.com to people willing to fork over $14.99 for it. I eagerly snatched up a review copy when it was offered and have spent the past two weeks flipping through this, along with my copies of Savage Worlds and Deadlands: Reloaded to fill in mechanics and story gaps.
I should point out that Deadlands Noir is NOT a standalone product. You absolutely need a copy of Savage Worlds to use this book as it is the rules-set Deadlands games currently use. As well, you’ll probably want to be familiar with the Old West version of Deadlands as well to better understand the game and its backstory. You won’t need to know anything about Hell of Earth, the post-apocalyptic version of the game, which is a good thing. I admit that I wish Pinnacle had made this its own standalone book complete with rules ala Vampire: The Dark Ages, or similar products, as it would have brought in a lot more newcomers. Still this way, they make more money as newbies need to buy two or three books and veterans don’t need to wade through mechanics they already know by heart.
Deadlands Noir takes place around 1935 in the same universe that Deadlands: The Wild West/Deadlands:Reloaded takes place in. I know some would expect a Noir game to be set in the 1920s, but setting this game after the 1929 stock market crash and during the dust bowl makes perfect sense considering Deadlands is a depressing and dark game whose antagonists rely heavily on fear and negative emotions. The Roaring Twenties was a pretty upbeat time compared to the Great Depression, wouldn’t you say? The sourcebook talks a little bit about the universe’s history and how it diverges from our own, but for the most part you’ll need Deadlands: Reloaded to really understand the Deadlands universe. That said, you can just play Deadlands Noir with this book and the Savage Worlds core rulebook, but it’s best that the Marshall (system’s term for a DM/GM) is well acquainted with the history of the setting in all its forms. Deadlands Noir really only focuses on the city of New Orleans. In fact, it might have been better to title the book Deadlands Noir: New Orleans because the bulk of the book only covers that city. There is lip service paid to other areas, but you’re pretty much stuck with the Sodom and Gomorrah of the Mississipp’. Other books in the series will cover different locales like Chicago, but for now, this is all we get. So if you really have your heart set on playing Deadlands Noir in a different city, you’ll have to wait or make it up on your own.
Now just because Deadlands Noir focuses exclusively on a single city doesn’t make the book disappointing. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Pinnacle has put an amazing amount of detail into describing their New Orleans of 1935 in the Deadlands world – a feat that is all the more impressive when you realize the book includes new mechanics, a full campaign, several short adventures on top of the campaign, a ton of NPC and antagonist stat blocks and so much more. I was extremely impressed by the amount of content shoved into this one book. With only a fifteen dollar price tag, this is a shockingly good deal. While it’s not the best sourcebook to come out in 2012, it’s still one any Deadlands should pick up. Hell, I’ve only read Deadlands books here and there and I was still blown away by what lay betwixt both covers.
The first third of the book is for players and GMs alike. It covers sample character backgrounds, the house rules for the game that separate Deadlands from a standard Savage Worlds game, new Skills, Hindrances, Edges and gear ranging from guns to submarines. You then get a two page map of the city in its current state and a seven page introduction to New Orleans. After that the section for players rounds itself out with on how to roll detective work, and various forms of magic users (Grifters, Patent Scientists, Voodoo Practitioners and Harrowed) . After that the rest of the book is for GM’s eyes only.
The GM’s section is where things really get good though. That’s where you get to separate fact from fiction in this setting and learn just how severely screwed up the world is. You’ll get a more in-depth look at Fear Levels and also the darker side of magic use in Deadlands Noir. The real gem here though is “The GameMaster’s Guide To New Orleans” which is sixteen pages long and covers all sorts of things from key players to important locales in the city. The other really nice section is “Making Mysteries” which is a seven page guide on how to write a Noir adventure. It even includes a random adventure generator to boot. I tried it out a few times. For example, here’s one I rolled up:
A stranger with a fat wallet and a fatter gut approaches the players with an offer they can’t refuse. It seems a valuable MacGuffin was stolen from him and he wants it back. As the players search the scene of the crime and scour for clues, they’ll eventually discover an old rival of the client stole the MacGuffin believing t was a piece of a bigger puzzle even its original owner didn’t know about. They track down the thief to the Garden District of New Orleans, only to learn he was nothing but a patsy for the man who really wanted it – a congressman. Before the thief can finger the true guilty party, his brain pan gets some unexpected ventilation, leaving the detectives with questions rather than answered, but a recovered McaGuffin whose owner now knows there’s something more to it than meets the eye.
Deadlands Noir also contains an extreme large number of adventures. While none of the adventures are fully fleshed, there is enough meat here that a Marshall can easily run with them. Red Harvest is a campaign of six adventures (seven if you count where the gumshoes put all the pieces together) which really lets players get to know the Deadlands of the 1930s and New Orleans in particular. By the times the PCs are done, they’ve probably made some powerful enemies, but hopefully at least one powerful friend as well. The book also contains a whopping fourteen (that means twenty/twenty-one adventures in all!) “Savage Tales,” which are short little one shot adventures for players who love to huck dice but don’t have a lot of time. These adventures run the gambit from passable to extremely cool, but he fact there are so many adventures in this sourcebook blew me away. Honestly, as I re-read this review, it’s hard to believe Pinnacle’s staff fit all this content into just 145 pages!
Deadlands Noir finishes up with those aforementioned NPC collections, which ensures Marshalls will have all the characters and/or monsters they need to run any of the adventures in this book, or better yet, to help them get started on making adventures of their own. I have to admit I was really impressed by everything in this book and unlike the wild west setting, Deadlands Noir is a version of the game I could actually get my friends and colleagues to sit down and play. It carries on the spirit and feel of the original Deadlands while giving it a whole new fresh twist. I’m really kicking myself now that I didn’t partake in the Kickstarter and picked up some of those extras like the Noir Companion and the dime novel. Even for people new to Deadlands, or those that just have never had the chance to actually play a game of it, this is a really well done book and well worth reading. I can’t wait to see what else comes out for Deadlands Noir and I know I won’t be the only one.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/12/31/tabletop-review-age-of-
lords-campaign-setting-dungeons-dragonspathfinder/
Age of Lords is a campaign setting designed by Blackbyrne Publishing for use with either 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder. As 4th Edition is what I am familiar with, those are the books I took a look at, but I would imagine the only real difference between the two versions comes down to mechanics and little else. Being familiar with the core rules of each system (and having access to the core rule books for your respective game) is a must.
Age of Lords focuses on the world of Braugh and it’s main continent, Thallorand. The world of Braugh is one shaped almost exclusively from war; a battle between the God Brothers, Gorrand and Zorm, led to their imprisonment inside the planet by the Goddess of Balance, Threllion. Even imprisonment was not enough to put an end to their battle, and the two Gods exerted their power to bring about life on the planet. Threllion created the human race, while her opposite number, J’choral, the Goddess of Chaos, introduced monsters to the world. As the races of the world expanded across the continent of Thallorand, fiefdoms were established and war among the mortal races raged. It was only when the dark races invaded from across the sea that the continent banded together in The Uprising in order to protect themselves from annihilation. Following that brutal war, the Age of Lords begins proper. The continent has been divided into six kingdoms that survived the war, and while the borders of the kingdoms are respected for the most part, border crossing is only permissible with the express permission of one of the six lords. To gain permission, adventurers must compete in Pit Games, IE gladiatorial combat, and emerge victorious.
The campaign setting, outlined in both the Campaign Setting and Expedition Guide, is one full of conspiracies and peace held in check by only the thinnest margins. You’ll need a group of players interested in more than just the standard dungeon crawl. While there are opportunities for combat aplenty, both in the Pit Games and exploring dungeons once you’ve gained the permission of a lord, the politics of the realm will inevitably require a good deal of wit and subterfuge to fully take advantage of what these books offer.
Working from the 4th D&D rules, Age of Lords utilizes the core races, all the classes from the Player’s Handbook and the majority of the classes from Player’s Handbook 2 (information for Avengers, Invokers, Shamans, and Wardens are not included in the materials, but those classes and a few additional races are available at http://blackbyrnepublishing.com/SampleFlavor.html for those interested). In addition to the basics, two new classes (Ostorians and Half-Dark Elves) and one new class (Blade Conjurer) are added. Ostorians are half-breed human/bears cursed by Druids, primarily suited for primal and martial classes, and seem suited for tanking more than anything else. Half-Dark Elves are the result of unions between Dark Elves and other races, and more often than not are the product of rape and are born into slavery. The chance of a Half-Dark Elf being produced through consensual means is a “rare occurrence,” which, I don’t know, doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that I would ever want to work into one of my adventures, but the option is there if you want to pursue it. The race, should you decide you want to use it, is primarily suited to the Rogue class, with an occasional Sorcerer or Warlock. Neither of the new races seemed particularly interesting to me, but the added class, Blade Conjurer, is another matter.
Blade Conjurers can best be described as a Magic Knight; during The Uprising, wizards used Elvish magic to train soldiers how to imbue their weapons with arcane powers. The class is designed to function first as a Striker and secondly as a Defender. The powers attributed to the class will generally do damage to a target, followed by a secondary effect. These effects either tend grant the player the ability to shift as a result of their attack, slap a status effect on the enemy, or inflict ongoing damage until the enemy can make a saving throw.
The major game play mechanic introduced by the setting is the Pit Games. Pit Games generally pit the players against a single monster or a group of monsters, and not only require that the players survive the encounter, but scores them on actions that occur during the battle. For instance, a criticial hit will add +3 to your score, while using a second wind or reaching 0 hp is a -1. The GM will set the High Score needed to be successful, and you can tailor rewards based on how well your players do in combat.
Blackbyrne Publishing’s motto is “Story over Rules” and the books excel at this. The back story provided is quite interesting, and the creators do a good job to work all of the standard D&D classes and races into their own world without making them seem out of place. The Campaign Setting provides a wealth of information about the entire continent, the kingdoms that existed prior to the Uprising and the ones that still exist post-war, and the details provided for all the various locales is quite extensive and gives you plenty of areas for your players to explore. Each class is given new Paragon Paths exclusive to this setting and there are a handful of monsters created specifically for this setting. Possession of all the core D&D books is required, however, so this isn’t something you could just pick up and play on your own.
The actual presentation does leave a little to be desired. I reviewed the PDF versions of the texts so I couldn’t comment on the quality of the available hardbacks, but the information is nicely laid out and very accessible. Artwork in the books range from above average to merely serviceable. I did catch a few typos and grammatical errors, which certainly caused someone like me to shake my head every time I found one, but there is nothing bad enough to detract from the game itself. In the end, however, Age of Lords puts forth enough interesting ideas and usable content to be worth a read. Even if you’re just looking for some locations, monsters, or a new class to plug into your existing campaigns, Age of Lords is handy reference material.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/12/28/tabletop-review-cthulhu
-britannica-folklore-call-of-cthulhu/
Cthulhu Britannica has been a hit or miss line to me, despite the fact I’m a big fan of both Call of Cthulhu and Cubicle 7. I found the original Cthulhu Britannica piece lacking and The Ballad of Bass Rock was one of the most generic and overpriced adventures I’ve ever seen released for the system. At the same time, both Shadows Over Scotland and Avalon: The Country of Somerset blew me away with the high quality content, incredible artwork and wonderful adventures. However, after Shadows Over Scotland, the Cthulhu Britannica line seemed to dry up with Folklore being pushed back so many times, I didn’t actually think it would ever be released. However, less than a fortnight ago it was released and so here we are with our review of it. I’m going to shy away from the bits of drama that surrounded this piece such as writer changes and the like and concentrate purely on the quality of the book itself. That said, with a PDF price tag of only fifteen dollars, Folklore is an amazing deal that all Call of Cthulhu gamers should rush out to pick up. It’s not perfect, but you’re getting a sourcebook and nine adventures for a pittance of cash and that should make up for some of the lackluster adventures or minor issues I had with some of the content.
Folklore is 136 pages long, but that includes cover, ads and the like. You can divide the contents into two categories: a sourcebook on folklore and its relationship to the Cthulhu Mythos along with the Call of Cthulhu rules system, and a whopping nine adventures. It’s really well done and the areas where I nitpicked the book are only because I myself have, let’s say “a few” articles on folklore published, but they were minor errors you’d only pick up on if you wrote about the subject like your next meal depended on it. The vast majority of gamers won’t find anything at all to grumble about and will be able to use Folklore not only as a comprehensive guide to non Mythos creatures that one can use with Chaosium’s venerable system, but for other role playing systems as well. The mark of a true quality supplement or sourcebook is if you can take the content and use it easily with other system. Folklore is just such a book. Anyone can take the core creatures and concepts and move them to say, Shadowrun, Chill or any other RPG system set more or less in our world.
I should point out that Folklore is a comprehensive guide to the folklore of Great Britain only. If you were expecting folklore bits on say Native American, Egyptian or Asian culture, then I have to point out the word Britannica is in the full title of the book. For those looking for information on Ireland, I direct you to Chaosium’s monograph, Mysteries of Ireland. The book doesn’t touch on everything, say Arthurian legends, anything about Whitby or the like, but it’s still quite good. The focus on Folklore is on that of the fae and faerie folk of England and the other countries surrounding it. There are some odd inclusions like werewolves and vampires which are not only already in the core Call of Cthulhu rulebook, but they are done better in it. As well, Folklore gets some of the most basic premises about the folklore versions of these popular Hollywood-ized monsters wrong, which surprised and disappointed me. Again though, the core of the book itself is fantastic.
Folklore gives you a short little treatise on what exactly folklore is, along with a set of references in case you want to read more about the subject without gaming terminology and mechanics. For those wishing to play a folklorist in 1920s Call of Cthulhu, you’re given a basic occupation template that really does fit the stereotype to a T. I’d definitely use the package if playing one. From there the book goes on to discuss how to use folklore with Call of Cthulhu. Is the adventure purely grounded in folkloric creatures? Are the folkloric creatures just a guise for mythos creatures or a misinterpretation brought on by seeing what man was not meant to conceive nor understand? Does the folklore co-exist or run parallel to mythos creatures, meaning there is room for both in an adventure or campaign? These questions and more need to be answered by the Keeper before writing adventures or starting a campaign. After all, if the Keeper decides that there aren’t any actual folklore creatures and all folklore is brought about by misunderstanding mythos beings, players are going to have a hard time running through the recent Terror From the Skies campaign that Chaosium recently put out as players will potentially befriend a Hob and Deep Ones alike. I strongly recommend a thorough reading of folklore by anyone who is thinking about adding in creatures like fae, trolls, gnomes and whatever to their CoC campaign for both a better understanding of these creatures and their relationship with Mythos races.
There’s also a chapter on Folk Magic Vs. Mythos Magic and again, it is up to the Keeper if there is going to be a discernible difference or not. From there the book goes into a very long bestiary about different classifications of folkloric creatures. This is probably the weakest section of the book as it lumps creatures that normally wouldn’t be or shouldn’t be together and gives them a set stat package. In some cases, like Fairy Folk, this makes sense to so a lump generic package but for others like the Shapeshifters category, it just doesn’t work. Again, the Hollywood version of werewolves is in the book rather than the actual folklore one, which is odd. As well, the book makes little errors here like saying, “The vampires of folklore differ in some respects to the vampire as presented in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and early 20th century fiction—not having to return to its original soil or coffin, for example.” which is incorrect as both Dracula AND his folkloric predecessors had to do sleep in their native either but NEITHER had to actually sleep in a coffin. The widespread use of coffins didn’t come about until the 18th Century, while the belief in vampires in one form or another in Europe is centuries older. The need for a coffin came from the same origin point as sunlight being a fatal weakness to vampires – movies. It was also odd to see banshees included as shapeshifters instead of in the ghosts section. It would have been better to have a section on lycanthropic beings, undead and to properly break out the spectral apparitions rather than lumping all these different categories into “shapeshifters.” Aside from errors like these and some names of creatures being a bit off, the section is pretty good when all things are said and done and it was nice to see Screaming Skulls and other lesser known deviltries show up here.
The book also includes a calendar of special folklore related dates, a small section of appropriate Mythos gods and creatures in relation to actual folkloric creatures. Finally we have the nine adventures. These adventures run the gambit from good to bad, which is to be expected with any adventure compilation. However one thing that is gets an across the board thumb’s down for me is the formatting of the adventures. Instead of having a clean break between adventures (that is to say starting a new adventure on a new page as is industry standard), these adventures just run together without any real breaks, making it hard to find where one starts or to flip through them for specific information. I’m not sure who thought formatting an adventure collection as if it was one long section was a good idea, but this has to be one of the worst editorial decisions I’ve seen in a while. Thankfully the content is quite good and the fact you’re getting nine adventures for fifteen dollars in addition to a seventy or so page sourcebook is enough to mitigate this down to a minor complaint. So, let’s take a look at the adventures, shall we?
The Beast of Bodmin – this adventure has players coming in contact with one of the great black dogs of British folklore as it commits fouls deeds in the town of Bodmin. Of course, there is a Mythos twist to the Black Dog, which savvy CoC players should figure out immediately from the fact it’s a DOG. What’s not so easy to predict is what to do here. Just when the players think they are going down the correct road, it just might turn out they’re doing exactly what the Black Dog wanted them to. This is a really fun little adventure that can go a dozen different ways, so it’s best in the hands of a Keeper that is either prepared for everything, or knows how his players tend to react to things. 1 for 1.
Head Over Heels – this is a wonderful Screaming Skull oriented adventure. Players are hired by a Lord Blake to retrieve a skull of his ancestor that was obtained by an odd collector. As players progress they will discover there is something equally strange about the collector, the family that hired them and the object that binds them together. Another well done adventure. 2 for 2.
The Writhing Hill – There is a young insane Cthonian in the earth beneath an archeological dig. You can pretty much tell what happens just from that previous sentence. It’s a cute adventure, but very short and simple. Still, fun is what counts and this adventure certainly is that. 3 for 3.
The Horror Out of Time -This is the first adventure I didn’t care for simply because it was way too similar to the fun before it. There is an injured insane Flying Polyp in the earth beneath a farm. Predictability happens. I know Cubicle 7 is sometimes guilty of paint by numbers style generic adventures that feel like we’ve all played them numerous times before but to very similar adventures not only in the same book, but right next to each other is just sloppy. Sure one is on a farm and the other is at a dig site, but it’s the same core adventure. Disappointing. 3 for 4.
Daughters of the Seas – This is a fun adventure but once again it’s one that I know I’ve seen before, not only for Call of Cthulhu, but it’s almost the exact same adventure I wrote and ran for Dungeons and Dragons back in 2002. I’m ninety-nine percent sure it’s a coincidence though because the sheer amount of OGL stuff out there is impossible for any one man (or even a hundred) to wade through. Anyway, the adventure is about an ancient compact between a town of fishermen and a colony of Deep Ones. Over generations, the history of the compact was lost and by the time of the adventure, it is mostly pomp and circumstance where the villagers engage in quaint old superstitious beliefs. Too bad the Deep Ones haven’t forgotten. What makes the adventure more complicated is a witch’s coven that lurks within the town, one of whose members is a worshipper of Dagon and Hydra and thus knows the truth of the village’s ancient ways. Can the Investigators figure out how to keep this sleepy seaside hamlet from become a British Innsmouth? 4 for 5.
The Body Politic – This is just a weird adventure that doesn’t feel like it belongs in a Call of Cthulhu collection. It feels like it would be more at home in one of Cubicle 7′s other lines. Victoriana for example. It’s an adventure about a mad scientist who is trying to replicate Mi-Go science by engaging in some body snatching from local traveler/gypsy/romani tribes. The Investigators have been hired to clear one of the travelers of a crime and to expose the mad scientist and his mad machinations. This adventure just doesn’t work for me. It would be better set in the 1820s instead of the 1920s for one thing (a fact the adventure itself somewhat admits), and it’s just not very well written. Whatever Keeper runs this is really going to have to tighten things up, fill in large gaps of logic and plot and basically re-write the thing from scratch. Not for me. 4 for 6.
Wedded to the Deep – This is a second Deep One oriented adventure. I was hoping the writing and editing teams would have been able to be a bit more creative, especially as this adventure is just another one about a person being a Deep One hybrid and their subsequent loss of humanity. It’s basically the same adventure every Call of Cthulhu player has been put through at least once before, but with the added twist that the hybrid in question started to transform right before his wedding. Investigators are hired to figure out what happened to the poor groom but most CoC players will have the reveal figured out long before their characters do. At least the adventure complicates things a bit with a cult devoted to Mother Hydra that is trying to capture the poor hybrid for their own nefarious reasons. Still, this is another extremely generic adventure and that worries me a little about the future for the Cthulhu Britannica line. Granted after thirty-one years, it’s hard to come up with some truly original adventures for Call of Cthulhu, but as well written as this one is, it still feels like something I would have played or even come up with myself in middle school. The same will be true for many that read or experience it. 4 for 7.
The Company of Wolves – This is another Black Dog related adventure. I can’t believe that in a book with a subject as expansive as folklore, we have two adventures devoted to Black Dogs and two to Deep Ones. Run the gamut with your source material Cubicle 7! This adventure however is significantly different from the first one in the collection and it’s a pretty weird out there experience for your players to boot. It involved a guardian wolf spirit or two, a vengeful witch, a drunken hunter and a lot of murders. It’s the most intricate of the adventures in the collection and although it’s not very Lovecraftian so to speak, it’s still one that will engage your players. 5 for 8.
The Black Spring Gate – This, along with the previous adventure, are the only ones in the collection that are actually centered on folklore instead of being straight Mythos affairs. Even then you have an antagonist looking to corrupt a Fairy Gate so that it brings forth Mythos creatures instead of the fae. Of course, this is Call of Cthulhu, so you have to expect adventures to have some tie to the Mythos. For those who want a purely folkloric affair, the mythos content here is very light and can easily be retooled to a generic sorcerer. It’s a very weird but memorable affair. 6 for 9.
So all in all, Folklore isn’t perfect, but it’s an exceptionally solid read from beginning to end and even the adventures I gave a thumbs down to aren’t BAD; they’re just generic or trite while still being playable and fun in the hands of a good Keeper or inexperienced players that haven’t been through the usual rigmarole. With a price tag of only fifteen dollars ($25 for the print version), Folklore is an exceptional deal and one every Call of Cthulhu fan should consider investing in. It’s not the best Call of Cthulhu offering this year, but it IS a nice way to end the amazing year this thirty-one year old product line has had.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/12/24/tabletop-review-shadowr
un-montreal-2074/
Montreal 2074 is one of those Shadowrun releases I was really looking forward to. I love it when time and energy is devoted to locations other than the usual areas like Seattle, Berlin, Bogata, Chicago and Japan. As someone that has had running Quebec separatists jokes going since that fateful episode of “The Critic,” I’ve somehow stuck a comedic reference to Quebec liberation in far too many things (“Vive Jay Sherman! Vive Quebec!”) for my own good. Hell, I just did it in my Avengers: Battle For Earth review. So books devoted to locations most gamers don’t normally think of are of personal interest to me, even though I know they’re probably a niche product overall. As you can imagine, I was quite excited for Montreal 2074, even if the page count is a little thin. The good news is that, at only twenty-one pages, Montreal 2074 does an amazing job, covering pretty much everything you would want for running an adventure or full-blown campaign in Quebec’s number two city, save for a restaurant guide. The overall product was so good, I would LOVE to see this become a recurring line. Two dozen pages of interesting locations for five bucks or so. I’d love to see something similar for, say, Barbados, Paris, Miami, Cancun, and hell why not – Arkham, MA even though it’s not real. Hey we’re getting new versions of Shadowrun and Call of Cthulhu in 2013, why not have a fun little crossover?
So what do you get in Montreal 2074? Well, for starters, you get a VERY different city from the one in our own 2012 (soon to be 2013). When I think of Montreal personally, I think of the fact it’s got a very strong gothic-industrial subculture (Kinetik Festival anyone?) and it’s one of the best cities for gourmands in North America. It’s a very classy city all the way around. Well… not so much in 2074. In the Sixth World, Montreal is a wonderful example of “be careful what you wish for” as the entire city has fallen to pot since Quebec managed to successfully secede from their Anglophile oppressive overlords. The city has lost much of its wealth and industry to Quebec City, half the population is below the poverty level, and an alliance of Megacorps has come in to try and take over the city, thus reducing the population of Montreal to little more than placated work drones. There is a massive class divide (perhaps even a class war) and a realization that much of the Quebec province is all but controlled by the NAN (North America Nations). However, with the incoming attempts to control Montreal and all of Quebec by this large megacorp alliance, there’s potential for war between the Native Americas and the conglomerates who want to take control of the country, as they have so many others before it. Of course, with all this economical, political and corporate drama to be had, it means Montreal is an EXCELLENT city for shadowrunners. There is a lot of business to be had here, whether you’re a stone cold merc who only cares about the nuyen, or you’re one of the few idealists that works in the shadows, trying to make things ever so slightly better. There is so much adventure potential in this small supplement, that I would be shocked if someone actually picked this up and couldn’t come up with at least six potential hooks for their gaming crew.
Montreal 2074 starts off with a nice piece of fiction, but I do think it could have been better arranged at the end, as readers would be able to understand it more thoroughly after having read the supplement proper. From there, Traveler Jones gives you the history of Montreal, from Crash 2.0 and the death of Lucien Cross, to its current deplorable state. Traveler touches on the inherent xenophobia of the Republic, how to get in and out of Quebec, and the current corporate/political climate. It’s of note that, of the businesses that are still quite productive in Montreal, many build parts for the Matrix.
A full fourth of the book is devoted to the various districts/boroughs of Montreal. While it’s nowhere as in-depth as, say, the old “By Night” books White Wolf put out for Vampire: The Masquerade, it’s still chock full of information. In fact, while reading this, I also flipped through Black Dog’s Montreal By Night and found myself impressed by how well both pieces actually complimented each other. Personally, if I was going to run a Shadowrun campaign set in Montreal, I’d use Montreal 2074 as the overview, as it’s quite excellent, but then for locations, landmarks and other things left untouched by this book (it’s only twenty-one pages, give it a break!) I’d use Montreal by Night to fill in the blanks and gaps. I love how much detail they managed to cram into this section, and honestly, I’d love to see what Olivier Gagnon could have done with, say, double the page count.
From there we move on to a list of the various forces waging war, both covertly and blatantly, for Quebec’s soul. You’ve got the various biker gangs, Asian triads, a weakened mafia, and a bunch of weird little groups like the Failed, the Fallen (expect at least one GM or player per crew to get the two of those mixed up at some point) and the Black Mass. Of course, we can’t also forget the megacorps and local politicians. Each group is given a lot of background information, although I would have liked to have seen more, especially with Le Consortium Pour Le Development Du Quebec and La Gendarmerie. There’s so much that can be done with either group, and I see those two being the main focus of any campaign that takes place in Montreal.
Montreal 2074 then ends things with quick discussion of Quebecois Native Americans and the flora and fauna of the region. The last three pages of Montreal 2074 are devoted to in-game mechanics. More specifically, it’s three pages of stat blocks for various generic NPCs you will encounter within Montreal. There are nine different NPCs, and although I’d have rather seen these last few pages devoted to more information about the city proper, this is still a fine inclusion, especially for those that want stats.
All in all, Montreal 2074 is a great buy for gamers, like myself, who love to read about cities or locations in various systems. I love the city books Chaosium produces for Call of Cthulhu or the “By Night” books for the World of Darkness. Montreal 2074 is a much shorter (and far cheaper) equivalent for Shadowrun, and I’d love to see more books in this vein being released for the system. For those that just want mechanics or stats, you should probably look elsewhere, as you’re just getting twenty pages of fiction for your six dollars. Likewise, if that seems a bit expensive or you just like to pick up adventure compilations, Montreal 2074 probably isn’t for you either. Still, if you purchase Shadowrun books and supplements to read as much as you do to play, Montreal 2074 is a top-notch choice for you or any Sixth World fan you know.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/12/19/tabletop-review-shadowr
un-shadowbeat/
Shadowbeat was always an odd book and twenty years after its original release, it might be even odder. Shadowbeat is a collection of odds and ends from across the Sixth World that most gamers and their GM would never really thinking about needing to know or use in their Shadowrun campaign. However, the content within is so deep and well written (some might say overly anal retentive and rules-lawyery) that for those few who would actually want to know or use any of the information contained in Shadowbeat, this thing is a veritable cornucopia of content.
The key to remember with Shadowbeat is that it is a rulebook/supplement that covers everything BUT Shadowrunning. It’s meant to fill in the blanks of the Sixth World and also provide players and GMs alike a chance to run a character other than a Shadowrunner while still using FASA’s setting. The majority of the book is meat over mechanics, so it’s not too hard to covert the content contained in Shadowbeat to 20AE (the most recent edition) rules. Still a bit of the content is out of date since this takes place in the 2050s rather than the current 2070s time frame and a good chunk of what’s written here is out of date with today, such as where certain sports teams are located (Charlotte Hornets? Houston Oilers?) or changes in journalism over the past two decades. It’s not the book’s fault – it’s more a matter of the writers couldn’t predict the changes that would occur in real life, much like wireless internet would occur thus making the concept of decking a throwback or outdated (hence why CGL made things go wireless when they got the rights to the game). Because of this you’ll want to tweak things a bit even if you are playing a 2050s game so as to keep the nitpickers in your troupe quiet.
Shadowbeat can basically be divided into five topics: Music, TV, Journalism, Sports and Simsense. Each section gives information on how these industries work in the 2050s and give a lot of in-depth information on each. Some sections, like Journalism gives you page upon page of rules on how to play reporting in a mechanical sense, giving rules and rolls for investigating and interviews. This is a bit much for me as these are all things that could be handled by role-playing rather than roll-playing, but it’s pretty impressive that someone sat down and did this. The rules for recording/playing music are a little more realistic in terms of what you’d want players to roll rather than act out. After all, that elven rocker’s player might have a terrible voice IRL.
The section on music talks about the popular instruments of the 2050s, rock ‘n roll variants, the use of magic in music and how to run a character (or team) that is a musician and the type of rolls and mechanics that comes with that type of PC. You also get descriptions of various fame levels and what that corresponds to game-wise. After all, an indie rocker who just uploads his music to the Matrix can be an effective Shadowrunner. It’s quite another thing if you release a platinum trid every year and have to perform gigs every night.
The section on networks and popular trid shows was pretty interesting to me. It gives you a full list of the major networks, what they show and most importantly – who controls them. You also get information about smaller, indie stations and even pirate channels. You’re also given a list of the six most popular types of shows in the 2050s, along with examples of each. Of course, in the mid 2070s, where Shadowrun is currently taking place, most of these shows are off the air or would be on whatever passes for TV Land/Nick at Night. I found the bits on 2050s sitcoms and soap operas to be the most interesting.
Shadowbeat‘s section on journalism is both the longest and most in-depth in the book and it really feels like this was meant to be its own standalone supplement with how deep and detailed it is. It’s the only section to have specific information on playing a player character of this type and the sheer amount of mechanics. It’s only twenty pages long but honestly it feels like an entire other book that you’ll be slogging through. It’s a wonderful read if your eyes don’t glaze over at the sheer amount of mechanics you are expected to need/know as a reporter as generally news and the people who reported it are background NPCs or there just to push PCs in the right direction in the usual game of Shadowrun.
The sports area is where Shadowbeat is most interesting, but also the most outdated. As I mentioned at the beginning, a lot of the teams that survived the breaking up of the United States don’t actually exists today. Of course in 1993, who saw the Brewers moving to the National League and the Astros to the American League? Seriously! Fixing the names of teams and the like is pretty easy to do though (replace the aforementioned Oilers with the Texans for example) and it is pretty interesting to see what sports have thrived, died off or stayed about par for the course in the Sixth World. It’s also interesting to see what sports allow cyber-augmentation and why. Of course the most important part of this chapter is that it gives the history and full rules for Urban Brawl and Combat Biker, two big sports of the time period, although you really don’t see either mentioned much by CGL these days. Through this whole section I thought about how fun it would be to make a PC who was an ex Urban Brawl player or perhaps a baseball player for a Japanese team who goblinized at the peak of his career and thus was banned (Japan is even more racist than in real life in Shadowrun). Heck imagine playing an entire campaign about a Combat Biker team!
Finally we have Simsense. To someone who has never played Shadowrun think of simsense as a version of postcognition or psychometery, where one experiences something in the past that happened to someone else. It’s not like skillsoft where a person suddenly is able to know a language or perform a skill they wouldn’t normally know how to do. It’s memory rather than technical. It’s a very long and detailed read; perhaps more than you’d ever need to know about it. Of note is the addiction aspects and potential side effects from prolonged usage.
All in all, Shadowbeat is okay. I never had the desire or need for it back in the days of first and second edition. It just didn’t seem applicable to my, or any other Shadowrun games my friends were running back in the day. Now twenty years later, it’s still an odd duck, chock full of detailed information on outdated subjects that are only of use to a very niche audience. There aren’t a lot of people playing FASA style Shadowrun these days and those playing CGL style won’t get much use out of this. For those really interested in 2050s sports, TV and journalism though, this is a pretty good deal for eight dollars. For everyone else, this is a well written but easily unnecessary sourcebook.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/12/18/tabletop-review-castles
-crusades-right-under-our-noses/#undefined
I’m a big fan of Castles & Crusades, and for Troll Lord Games to put out a free adventure for the system is a wonderful thing, especially so close to the holidays. It’s a great way to try the system and see why it’s a favorite OSR system. Of course, there’s a bit of a catch. In order to truly make use of this adventure, you’ll need the Bluffside: City on the Edge campaign setting, in addition to the core Castles & Crusades rulebooks; otherwise, much of the adventure will read like gobblygook. The problem is that Bluffside isn’t out yet, so you can’t really do anything with the adventure save for reading it and putting together the nuances and changes inherent with the setting. Gnomes having blue skin is just one such example. I do remember Bluffside: City on the Edge being a 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons/OGL setting back in the early 00s, but I’m not sure what’s changed in the past decade, nor how compatible the original would be with C&C. So this is just odd all around, and Right Under Our Noses acts more as a preview of the setting or an attempt to whet your appetite for Bluffside. It’s just unfortunate that the entire adventure is written as if you already own and have taken in every aspect of the setting. Again, until Bluffside: City on the Edge actually comes out, it’s hard to say how good this adventure really is, but at least it’s a free Castles & Crusades adventure, right? A positive is a positive and you can’t go wrong with free C&C.
Right Under Our Noses is designed for a party of fourth level characters, but as there is very little combat to be had, lower level characters could pull a victory off without much of a problem. Most of the adventure is solved by diplomacy or some other form of mouth movement. The emphasis here is on role-playing over dice rolling. Don’t worry hack and slash fans: combat is still in the adventure. The problem is that nearly all of the monsters in the book are specific to the Bluffside campaign setting, so neither players nor GMs will know what the heck a Chiroptera or Balden looks, acts or fights like. You’re flying blind big time here, although once the campaign setting is released the adventure will make a lot more sense. Until then though, a smart GM will just switch out creatures with something more generic that makes sense in the context of the adventure. Perhaps Goblins or the like for the Chiroptera.
Right Under Our Noses is an odd but intriguing little adventure about politics, ecological polluting and the dangers of sanitation and sewers in a low tech, high fantasy world. The characters are called in (how exactly is up to the person running the adventure, as the text gives a few possible hooks) to find the source of a hideous smell emanating from the sewers that causes people to get sick and possibly die. Whether they are doing it for money, glory, or because it is the right thing to do depends on the party makeup. From there, the adventure is basically a showcase of what makes Bluffside unique. You’ll encounter races and situations specific to this setting that might not work anywhere else (ala, say, Planescape or Ravenloft). Characters will be crawling around in sewers, trying to parlay with steam gnomes (a new race for the setting; not sure if they can be player characters or not) and doing battle with creature hitherto unseen. Again, a lot of the adventure, from blackened lanterns to all the creatures in the adventure, require the Bluffside: City on the Edge campaign setting, so you’ll have to really tweak things to make this work without it. It’s nice to have a free adventure, but it would be nicer if all it requires were the core rulebooks and not another $20+ investment.
In the end the party may be uniting two sides (the steam gnomes and the Chiroptera) against a common enemy. The final threat is a bit underwhelming and easy if you’re more concerned about the combat side of things, but as I’ve stated earlier, this adventure is far more about talking and diplomacy that sticking sharp things through soft things that scream and bleed. There are many different ways for the adventure to end and several plot hooks to continue the storyline within Bluffside are given as well, in case the group of players are interested in sticking with this campaign setting. The last few pages of the adventure are appendixes for the DM, including stats for NPCs, a new location for Bluffside, stats for two beetle monsters and two new magic items.
All in all, this adventure is an odd one. Obviously, as it is free, it’s worth picking up, but it’s strange that Troll Lord Games would release this before the Bluffside setting comes out, especially as it can really only be played in conjunction with it. I can understand wanting to release a preview of some sort to get people excited, but in this case, it would have made more sense to release Bluffside first or at the same time as Right Under Our Noses. As of right now, people will just basically be sitting on this to see if Bluffside is a setting they actually want to use. Still, free is free and the adventure is well written (although the writer and editors alike should have said, “Hey, if this is coming out first, we should probably be a little more explanatory…”) which means anyone can and should download this. It’s a nice look at how well laid out Castles & Crusades adventures are, and it gives you an idea of what playing the system would be like.
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Originally Posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/12/17/tabletop-review-colonia
l-gothic-rulebook-second-edition/
Colonial Gothic: Rulebook Second Edition is part of an ongoing series of reviews for the game Colonial Gothic, which has just received another treatment of its core rules by Rogue Games founder Richard Iorio II.
For earlier reviews in this series, check out The Ross-Allen Letters, Organizations: The Templars, Locations, and The French-Indian War.
Twas a Few Weeks Before Christmas
Anyone who pays attention to the Rogue Games website may have noticed the “12/12/12 12:12:12” announcement that something was coming on that date. Well, my friends, that something was a splendid gift of the second edition of the core rules for Colonial Gothic. I must say that it looks great, and everything has been really nicely re-worked and situated as a whole. Clocking in at 284 pages, this version is actually a few pages less than the revised version of the first edition rulebook (released in 2009), however, it remains a bit larger than the first edition of the core rulebook (which I actually have in print) at 211 or so pages. I think one reason this second edition is a little smaller than the revised edition is because they removed Jennifer Brozek’s flavor text intro, which was extremely similar to the exchange found in The Ross-Allen Letters, and overall trimmed other unnecessary or odd bits here and there. Sections of rules have also been rearranged and organized differently.
Needless to say, I am quite pleased to see a second edition of the rules here, and the book shows how far Rogue Games has come since Colonial Gothic’s release in 2007. The table of contents is tighter, more succinct and professional-looking, and in the PDF is hyperlinked! That’s always nice. The layout is slick, I really like what they have done here. Headers have a nice font, and the body text is nice and readable. Each page has a textured background that is not at all intrusive or distracting, and the pages remain clean. I do have one gripe about the page background, but that will come later. You can read more about what Richard did with this edition at the Rogue Games blog, which includes a bit of an embarrassing tidbit about one of the reasons for this new edition: he couldn’t get the old layout files for the previous version to open. Well, Providence favors us this day, for one game designer’s computer issues have brought the gaming world a much improved product in the form of Colonial Gothic Rulebook Second Edition.
What Do I Like About Colonial Gothic?
Okay, so I’ve been doing a series on the game and ranting and raving about this and that, but why do I actually like this game and what are some cool things about the system? I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but I have a thing about dice. I like it when games use non-standard (i.e. non-D6) dice, and a role-playing game using regular six-sided dice just doesn’t feel as fun to me. I know, it’s stupid. FUDGE dice are okay, but they are still six-sided. It would be awesome if there were such a thing as “SUPER FUDGE” dice that had eight sides and some funky symbol on each side that could be as easily interpreted as the simple plus and minus symbols. My point is, Colonial Gothic uses not one, but two 12-sided dice. This mechanism of rolling 2d12s against a Target Number (you want to roll under the TN) is called “12 degrees” by Rogue Games. They are also using this system in their fantasy-themed game Shadow, Sword & Spell.
Another thing, and this is probably what I like the most about the game, is that it is full of theme, the theme is unique and interesting, and the design focuses on this theme. This is not a rulebook for a universal game system like GURPS or Palladium’s system, this is a book that is dedicated to a certain cause, and the game is stronger for it. The setting is from the Colonial period of America, a few hundred years before the Revolutionary War, to about forty years after the war. In the first edition of the rules, the time period was meant to be just before the war, when tensions were high and a lot was going on; this is mostly still the case, but it is up to the GM if they want to put the game somewhere else. I personally think the pre-war period is really an interesting and exciting time to set a game in, as there is just so much going on and so much opportunity for players to get mixed up in something.
The third thing that I would say tickles my phant’sy about the game is that it is not too crunchy. It has some math, some sort of archaic calculations and such, but lets a lot of little things go to discretion. There are not rules for every little thing, there are overall guidelines and structures. The book gives rules and information for helpful areas, then lets the GM come up with anything else that is needed. 2d12 is enough dice to be interesting without the dice pools and modifier complexity of, say, Burning Wheel.
So, those are the main things I like about the game. Mostly, I just really enjoy that there is a game dedicated to horror-tinged historical fiction in the Revolutionary Colonies.
It Puts the Chocolate in the Peanut Butter
Ah, but this is not simply a historical game. More precisely, this is a historical game that wants you to incorporate fictitious elements, thus making it a historical fiction game. Not only do you adventure in early America, you deal with the occult, the strange, the dangerous and the mysterious. You may help put down a Royalist uprising in Plymouth, or you may be pelting a horrendous beast that has just appeared from a dark forest with musket balls. You may be seeking an agent of a dangerous occult sect, or you may be running a letter accompanied by a vial filled with a strange substance from New York to Boston. Something weird is happening in the Colonies, and it is up to the GM and the players to decide what that is and how they deal with it. I really appreciate that the danger and wonder of the New World is mixed in with the danger and wonder of the supernatural in Colonial Gothic. Of course, how much all of it works depends on the imagination of the participants, and whether or not they are into historical situations and the Colonial period. Seriously though, who could not be interested in hanging out in the Colonies just before the Revolutionary War?
As far as character creation and game mechanisms go, it’s pretty simple, though Richard has added some mechanisms that have become popular in some games in the last few years. Characters have abilities and skills, like in many other games, though the names are a bit different and streamlined. For instance, abilities are Might, Nimble, Vigor, Reason, and Resolution. Characters also have a Sanity score which is basically how much strangeness they can handle before they start to suffer from disorders. Characters also have “Hooks” which are like Aspects in Dresden Files, little phrases or sentences that say something about who the character is or what they believe. Action Points are the in-game currency that anyone can use to help them pass a test in a pinch, even after they have failed the roll. Beyond that, when you make a test, you just add the skill you are using to the attribute tied to the skill, and then add or subtract any modifiers. That gives you your Target Number, then you roll the d12s and see whether you succeeded or failed and by how much. That’s basically it! Of course, as with most games, there are spells, equipment, a bestiary and all that stuff that give hard numbers for the players and GM to use. Really, the fun is in getting everyone into a story.
Other Cool Bits and Final Thoughts
Combat, physical and social
Combat is straightforward, you take the skill you are using (archery, brawling, melee, etc.) and then roll against that, plus the attribute, as your Target Number. If you succeed, you hit, and the degree of your success measures damage. However, there are conditions and tactics you can use to affect how hard it is to hit, and you can try to avoid damage. There are tactics like Charge, Aim, Defend, Take Cover, and a few others. Basic, but even those add a little flavor to combat instead of just whacking the opponent. The book says that combat is meant to be swift and deadly… and it definitely can be. I would personally disregard the short section on movement during combat, as it does not appear to make any sense, especially since earlier in the book Richard defines a round as a very amorphous time period (giving a rough definition of five seconds), however in the combat section a round seems to be quite long. How else could I move fifty feet in a round without running? I can’t say I’ve ever seen movement rules during combat that I liked AND that had hard numbers attached to them, and I don’t understand why this section seems so strict when many other parts of the book are free-flowing.
There are also rules for social combat, which were part of the Revised edition but have now been refined a little more. Essentially a person’s disposition toward you affects how difficult it is to use one of your social skills to influence them to your point of view. Dispositions now have modifiers attached to them, so that if you are trying to chat up someone who is antagonistic towards you, you will have a tougher time with them than if someone were simply unfriendly or neutral.
Magic and Alchemy
Naturally, in a world of the supernatural and the occult, there must be some strange practices occurring. These are largely going to fall into the realm of magic and alchemy. If you didn’t know, alchemy was a sort of mystical term for a long time before modern science. Alchemy involved everything from extracting the essence of a juniper berry to purifying precious metals. Alchemists might have sought legendary things like The Philosopher’s Stone or Solomon’s Gold, and some were crackpots and some were legitimate scientists. In Colonial Gothic, alchemy is very much a legitimate art that can yield chemicals and elixirs, the equivalent of potions.
Magic is rather self-explanatory. There is a list of spells in the book, put into Common and Arcane categories. Common spells are easier to learn and cast, and have a shorter duration with less powerful effects. Arcane spells are more powerful and long-lasting. Thematically, magic is not widely accepted in the Colonies, and everyone more or less knows of its existence. Unlike in Dresden Files, where most of the populace might not even be aware that the supernatural is happening around them, magic is accepted as being completely real but considered dangerous and largely repressed.
Setting Information and Gamemastering Advice
There is some information in this book about the Colonies, what was going on and where it was happening. Timelines of events, religion, even libraries are discussed. This is a great resource for the GM, especially one who doesn’t know a lot about the time period. Even if you do know, this section sums up a lot of information very nicely, as the series seems to do a lot. Still, it’s not exhaustive, and I would definitely recommend picking up other books in the Colonial Gothic line, like the Gazetteer (keep an eye out for a review upcoming). What is interesting is that there is a lot of information about the various Native American tribes, which is really great.
The other section that I really like is the section on being a Gamemaster. Richard has some great advice, and it is obvious that he has run his share of sessions. The curious GM will have pages and pages of advice to read through on various subjects, including history, villains, running a horror campaign, and just going with the flow. Even for veteran GMs this kind of stuff is always a good reminder.
Final Thoughts
Whew, there is a lot of stuff in here! I like almost all of it. Really, this manual will define Colonial Gothic for the next few years, if not more. I hope the production of this book carries through to future releases, as everything looks really great. Even the clipart and images that I have complained about in other books really look nice and sharp in this PDF version, and everything is laid out wonderfully. My one complaint about the background of the pages (did you think I forgot?) is that when I printed them out, they were way too dark! I was surprised, because the background looks so light on the screen, but even with only black and white settings and the fast draft option chosen and all that, the background looked like a dark gray with graphics in white boxes. I don’t know enough about digital publishing to know if that is a problem on my end or something with the PDF. I think it’s something with the PDF, since I just printed out a bunch of stuff for another game and it was totally fine.
Anyway, I will definitely try to get a print copy of this book when the softcover is released in a few weeks. I assume it is softcover, since Rogue Games focuses on affordability and none of their other products come in hardcover. By the way, did I mention there is a creature builder in the bestiary section? There is, and it is pretty cool. I’ve already made this article too long, but there is a lot to cover here. For any fan of the game, this book will probably be a must-have, but it is not strictly necessary if you already have the Revised first edition book. There are rules changes here and there, skill specializations are gone, and various other tweaks have been made in the re-write that Richard feels makes the game better and more streamlined. However, these are tweaks, not major revisions. Those still holding on to the first edition (not the Revised) should finally upgrade. You might expect a revised version of this book in a few years, but I think Colonial Gothic has finally reached a plateau of refinement and maturity. I just hope the production values in future books are consistent with the ones seen in this volume. Three cheers for Rogue Games and the team that supports it, you guys have worked hard to get this game to the community, and I’m sure they will be grateful!
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/12/14/tabletop-review-cthulhu
-britannica-the-ballad-of-bass-rock-call-of-cthulhu/
…and here I thought Terror From the Skies would be the last Call of Cthulhu release for 2012. Although it’s not Folklore, which has seem more publishing delays than a lot of video games, Cubicle 7 releases something for their Cthulhu Britannica line of products in this calendar year. I’m kind of glad because Call of Cthulhu has had such an incredible year and I was hoping Cubicle 7 would put something out for it, especially we haven’t seen anything from them since Shadows Over Scotland. Unfortunately what we get is a rather bland and generic short little adventure that is overpriced and underwhelming.
Now that’s not to say that the adventure is terrible or poorly written. The layout, writing and everything of that nature is just fine. It’s just the adventure is one that feels like someone just pulled it out of his or her ass and sat it upon their players on the fly instead of actually sitting down and coming up with something less paint by numbers and generic. I realize these comments are probably coming off much harsher than I intend them to, but the fact remains this adventure could literally have been a middle school child’s first attempt at writing an adventure for their gaming group instead of using a store bought adventure. The fact that this costs four dollars for only fourteen pages compared to things like say, Catalyst Game Lab’s Shadowrun Missions line which runs forty or so pages and is in full colour for the same price tag just makes The Ballad of Bass Rock all the more disheartening. Perhaps this was an excised adventure from a previous Cthulhu Britannica book and Cubicle 7 just threw it out there to see who would bite?
Basically the adventure is flawed from beginning to end. The crux of the story is that the Investigators are on a cruise when bad weather and luck alike cause their seafaring vessel to break up against some rocks. The investigators are able to get to a island with the ruins of an ancient castle and a relatively recent lighthouse (also in ruins) that has been ransacked by a very hungry shoggoth. The PCs then have to try and survive the night. If they do they are rescued. The end. See what I mean about how this adventure is not only painfully generic. It feels almost like it was put together via Mad Libs or a dart board.
Again, the technical aspects of the adventure are nicely done. You have some nice hands outs and everything is laid out wonderfully for the Keeper, but formatting is not what people play adventures for. It’s the actual content where things fall apart. Instead of just letting the Investigators get to the island more or less attack, there’s a superfluous series of rolls characters need to make or take large amounts of damage due to the rocky region and bad weather. In some cases this will be enough to kill a PC if they make some bad rolls. Why would anyone design an adventure for Call of Cthulhu where your characters can be killed in the very opening of the adventure leaving a player? I’m sorry, but that’s just stupid. Maybe 1-4 hit points damage max during this whole setup but not up to TWELVE points of damage. That’s enough to kill most characters outright. Call of Cthulhu is not meant to be Keeper Vs. Players. It’s meant to be a well told horror story that engages the entire party playing it. This adventure would be better off in the Dungeon Crawl Classics system in which the whole point of THAT game sometimes seems to be how horribly your character can be killed by the GM. This is just poor adventure design pure and simple. Limit the damage and save PC death until it actually matters. Bumping someone off for no real reason isn’t fun for anyone involved.
Then there’s the rest of the adventure. The Investigators wander around the island, wet and no doubt ready for their impending bout of hypothermia or some other malady brought on by being soaking wet and exhausted when they have to deal with a shoggoth – the most powerful creature in the game not a Outer God or Great Old One. Trapped on a small island with a creature that is faster, bigger, stronger AND knows the landscape of the region better than the players? This isn’t a challenge; it’s a slaughter. Again, there’s no fun in that. Call of Cthulhu is not a Friday the 13th style slasher flick and it’s certainly not meant to be an experience where the Keeper fiendishly picks off the players one by one as the adventure actually suggests you do(!). The adventure lacks any real means or chance for the Investigators to survive save for the remote possibility of a small cave, but the Shoggoth can just send a cephalopod down after the now trapped characters and yank them out one by one. It’s as if the people behind this adventure didn’t actually want to bother with writing a fully fleshed out scenario. They obviously haven’t thought about ways for PCs to get through this. This thing just feels half-assed, rushed and poorly conceived in all ways possible. It’s definitely the worst thing I’ve ever seen Cubicle 7 put out.
Now again, just because this is the worst thing I’ve seen from Cubicle 7 doesn’t mean this is the worst adventure of all time or anything like that. I’ve seen far worse Call of Cthulhu products in my life time. This isn’t a crime against the genre or even the system; it’s just there isn’t much positive to say about this piece. Again, this adventure just feels like a pre-teen wrote it, complete with all the gaps of logic and storytelling one would expect from someone in that age group. The art and layout is fine and the adventure is fleshed out in minor unimportant details – just not in the actually areas that would give The Ballad of Bass Rock the depth and substance the vast majority of gamers are looking for. If this was free or a dollar, I could see giving this thing a pass, but to be this poorly thought out and short and with a price tag higher than most adventure two to three times the page count that Ballad of Bass Rock has? Well, that’s inexcusable and I’m actually ashamed of Cubicle 7 for letting this thing be published. If I was worried about Folklore before, I’m doubly so now. Just remember, this is playable and it’s fine if you’re looking for a paint by numbers one shot adventure to play in two to three hours and everyone is brand spanking new to Call of Cthulhu (including the Keeper) as it could serve as a way to learn what to and not to do with the system, but for anyone with the slightest bit of knowledge about the system of the mood it’s meant to convey, The Ballad of Bass Rock is an overpriced insult.
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