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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/08/20/tabletop-review-teeth-o
f-the-storm-pathfinder/
I don’t really play or pick up a lot of Pathfinder products, but Teeth of the Storm intrigued me. Ravenloft was always my favorite setting for Dungeons & Dragons and since Wizards of the Coast has done nothing with the franchise save turn it into a board game, I pick up the few things Gothic-Fantasy items published in hopes that it recaptures some of that 90s magic. So far, all I’ve really found are the #30 Haunts series that Rite Publishing puts out. Still, I needed something to hold me over until Shadows of Esteren came out, and Teeth of the Storm looked like it would fit the bill. The end result was a very well written adventure that did indeed feel like it was ripped from the era of Second Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, albeit with a pretty punishing difficulty level. Although there aren’t a lot of monsters in the adventure, Teeth of the Storm‘s two big encounters are close to having constant one hit kills, one of which (a troll) neither fits the classic horror genre nor is an appropriate encounter for Level 1 characters. Still, the end result is a very memorable adventure and should set the tone wonderfully as the first adventure in a gothic-horror fantasy campaign for your Pathfinder playing pals.
The story starts off with the characters encountering a smashed carriage. There is only one survivor – the daughter of a wealthy merchant. As the players attempt to help her, the skeletons of the ravaged corpses tear forth from their once fleshy forms and begin to attack! That’s a pretty dramatic way to kick off an adventure, don’t you think? From there, the PCs discover the terrible curse of the ancient Klaustad family and are enlisted by the clan patriarch to dispatch the horror plaguing the countryside. Thrown in a troll with severe OCD stalking someone affiliated with the party and the characters have a two very touch opponents to deal with – especially since they are only first level in this adventure. Yes, you’re dealing with a troll and a creature with energy drain (possibly at the same time for an unlucky or slow witted group) which equals insta-death if the slightest blow is hit. Thankfully, the adventure does provide ways to cushion the mortality rate if needed, but at the same time, it also offers ways to dramatically increase it if you feel like being an extra cruel GM.
The adventure unfolds over eight acts, and seven of the eight are very well done, with pacing akin to what you would expect from a horror series or Hammer film like Captain Kronos. The only black mark on the adventure is the fifth act, and it’s a pretty big stinker. It’s this weird race thing where the players have to both outrun and outwit the very angry troll chasing them. It’s not very well laid out in the adventure, and in actual practice, it just doesn’t flow at all. It grinds the adventure to a halt and you end up roll-playing instead of role-playing. I thought it was terrible and my advice would be to chuck out this act entirely. Expurgate it like a Gannet from Olsen’s Standard Book of British Birds if you will.
Besides the adventure itself, Teeth of the Storm comes with five pregenerated characters and several maps to help enhance the overall experience. I’m not really a fan of pregens, but this is a good idea, as you can then use the adventure as a one-shot to test your gaming group and see if this is the sort of affair they’d like to see a whole campaign built around. The adventure also sports some really nice artwork. The character portraits for each NPC (and pregen) are well done, although the cover is a bit too cartoony for the seriousness of the adventure. I felt like the thing on the cover was about to go, “GARFIELD!!!!!”
Overall, Teeth of the Storm is an excellent adventure across the board. You’ll want to make sure whoever is running it, as well as the players, are looking for a more Gothic-oriented campaign though. Something like this doesn’t work as a one-off, especially if you play to have more fantastical than folkloric creatures doing battle with the team’s PCs. It’s also very much an adventure built on ambiance rather than combat or dungeon crawling, so if most of your friends just want to hack and slash their way through an adventure, this probably isn’t the best choice for them, as they will all die horribly. I personally found it to be a well told and gripping experience, and it was a fine substitute for the Ravenloft campaign setting. I’m definitely going to keep Run Amok Games on my radar thanks to Teeth of the Storm. Who knows? If they do enough of these, I might have the perfect Ravenloft substitute after all! With a price tag of only $5.99 for the electronic version, this is definitely a great way to see if you (and your friends) would enjoy a gothic-horror campaign that doesn’t involve a White Wolf system. This is one of the better Pathfinder adventures I’ve seen this year, and again, I’m hoping to see Run Amok continue making these types of adventures, as there is definitely a market for them
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/08/17/tabletop-review-kingdom
s-of-legend-ninja-attack-pathfinder/
“You are being attacked by ninjas, what do you do?”
“I attack the nearest ninja”
“You cannot attack that ninja. He’s a ninja!”
“I cast Dominate Person on one of them”
“The ninja re-ninjafies your spell and dominates you”
“I haven’t even rolled yet!”
In this review, you are being attacked by Kingdoms of Legend: Ninja Attack! a Pathfinder-friendly adventure about a team of ninjas (who are the characters that the players will play with) and the scallywag merchant they have been sent to eliminate (by another scallywag merchant!). This adventure takes place in the Kingdoms of Legend setting, “a medieval fantasy campaign setting … based on an alternate history Earth from the year 1415 CE…”. The players choose from a set of pre-generated ninjas to play and kick with.
Stop the review, you are being attacked! What do you do?
_ Read article
Ninjas do not read! Unless they have to! Then they just look at the symbols and instantly understand whatever is being said regardless of language! The attack has subsided for now.
Your team of ninjas is tasked with finding a way into the merchant’s compound, doing away with him, and drinking all of his iced tea. They drink it up! The merchant’s name is Kulal Pasha, and his compound is in Palmyra, located in what is now Syria. The players will learn this before the adventure even starts, as it is part of their briefing for the mission. If they are successful, a purse of 7,000 gp is theirs (however they do get half of that as a “signing bonus” so they can buy some gear and supplies).
Will you be prepared? You will have one page of map, one page of setting information, six character sheets, and roughly ten pages covering the adventure itself. My reading of this text leads me to the conclusion that it starts out as an infiltration that becomes a dungeon-crawly boss battle.
Enough describing, you will tell us the secrets of the adventure! How do the players find Kulal Pasha?
Alas, I cannot reveal the secrets, for there are many. The players will face deadly, dastardly dangers. It might seem easy to just slip over the wall and take care of business, but no no no no my friends… it is not nearly as easy as that.
Should the ninjas succeed in their task, they will have the option to continue on as assassins or thieves or whatever someone will hire them to do. Ninjas do not work for free!
Mortal Combat
The ninjas will need to fight. The only part of the adventure after initial infiltration that doesn’t involve fighting involves traps. Prepare to fight!
I have been pleased with the way this adventure was written: in blood! No not really, it’s simply typeset electronically. The author has taken care to let the GM know how things are likely to work out should the adventure go one way or the other. He provides box text and descriptions for different outcomes of the party’s efforts. Do not expect art, expecting much art in this module would be to fail, and to fail would be death. However, in the pen lies strength, and for the product as a whole I say well done.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/08/16/tabletop-review-shadowr
un-missions-assassin-nation/
I’ve said for some time that, pound for pound, Shadowrun Missions is the absolutely best gaming deal out there. For only $3.95 you get a complete one-shot adventure in full color. Best of all, the adventure is laid out in such a fashion that even someone completely new to Shadowrun can run the adventure for his or her friends and have a pretty positive experience. The Shadowrun Missions systems has sections for making each scene of the adventure easier/harder, depending on the players’ play style and character stats, as well as a troubleshooting section for when players go off the rails. All in all, these adventures are designed for a single four hour session and really highlight how to have a blast in the Sixth World. For those looking for more than a one-shot experience, the full season of Shadowrun Missions has several recurring characters whose relationship with your characters will ebb and flow based on the actions you take throughout the series. I can’t think of any other company putting out this level of consistent quality – and for a fraction of the cost of what adventures usually run to boot!
Assassin Nation manages to blow away even previous Shadowrun Missions from this season, clocking in at a full forty-one pages of PDF goodness. Most Shadowrun Missions clock in between the high twenties and at very low thirties, so you’re getting at least ten more pages than the average SM product. You’ll see why once you play the adventure as it’s ten full scenes of nonstop action and more intrigue and political machinations than a Vampire: The Masquerade LARP!
So what goes on in Assassin Nation? Well a lot actually. The PCs are hired to do a simple break-in for a client. Seems the Seattle district attorney has a cyberdeck with incriminating evidence the client would like to see disappear. He’s paying a lot of money since he needs the job done lickety-split. Unfortunately, when the PCs arrive, they find more than they were bargaining for – the corpse of the district attorney for one. The PCs are blamed for his death and they have to clear their name. Unfortunately, they are also framed for the killing of a lot of activists who want the Ork Underground to become an official district of Seattle. Now the runners are set on by two very large and power factions within the city and find themselves with a 50,000 nuyen bounty on their heads – EACH. Oh, bother. It’s up to the PCs to figure out who is behind the frame job and what the end game is. The end result is an exceptionally fun combination of detective work and extreme violence that is sure to make this adventure one of the most memorable Shadowrun excursions your group will play through. Add in the potential of a new big bad recurring villain for your party and this adventure has practically everything you could ask for. Hell, it even has a donut and coffee shop that might not as good as the Double R/Twedes a little outside of Seattle, but I’m sure you’ll get some Twin Peaks quotes from your more esoteric players while in that location.
Assassin Nation is well balanced, providing players with equal amounts of role-playing, rolling dice to simulate wanton violence, and testing the team’s thinking skills. Only eighteen of the forty-one pages make up the scenes, so what are the other twenty-three pages for? Well, it’s all GM/Keeper/Storyteller/whatever aids. You get a full synopsis, a two page introduction on how to run the adventure (remember, it’s extremely friendly to newcomers), post adventure bits like faction, money, and reputation modifiers along with charts, NPC stats, a lot of maps, and a debriefing log for those of you playing through the entire season of Shadowrun Missions. It’s all high quality stuff and with a price point of only $3.95, it costs less than a comic book.
If you’ve ever been curious about trying Shadowrun, picking up a copy of the Quick Start Rules is a great way to start. Likewise, the Shadowrun Missions are the best way to jump into running a game or story for the first time. Long time vets of Shadowrun or just roleplaying in general will also have a blast running Shadowrun Mission adventures and they are laid out perfectly and allow as much flexibility as a GM or party wants/needs. Assassin Nation is my favorite out of the season so far, but even if you start with this, trust me when I say you’ll want to go back and collect the whole season. What are you waiting for people? Go purchase this and get ready for some Sixth World hijinx with your friends!
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/08/15/tabletop-review-dungeon
-crawl-classics-71-the-13th-skull/
I’ve been a big fan of Dungeon Crawl Classics since it was using Wizards of the Coast’s Open Game license for Dungeons and Dragons 3.0/3.5. Since Goodman Games turned DCC into its own system, I’ve found I love it even more. The DCC system IS pretty prolific though as in the past month I’ve reviewed three other DCC adventures The Emerald Enchanter, Jewels of the Carnifax and the Free RPG Day release, and that doesn’t include adventures for the system put out by other publishers! I have no idea how they can churn so many of these out so quickly.
The 13th Skull especially caught my eye as the adventure bears the same name as a pretty popular point and click adventure/hidden object video game put out by Big Fish Games that I reviewed back in December of 2010. I thought that was a pretty odd coincidence and was curious to see what the two had in common besides the name. Aside from that, there really is nothing in common. The video game is set in modern times and involves a kidnapping and ghost pirates while Goodman Games’ adventure involves a kidnapping and a generation curse that condemns an entire family line to the 417th level of Hell. Ouch.
The gist of the The 13th Skull is that the progenitor of the Magnussen line, Magnussen I, has cheated death after a fashion thanks to a deal with a devil. Thirteen generations later, Madnussen I returns disguised as a hooded executioner and steals away the current Duke’s daughter in order to finally finish his pact with the devil. The player characters, after being offered a reward by the Duke, chase after the Duke, now known as The Silver Skull since well…that’s all he is –a silver plated skull. The adventure leads them into the Magnussen family crypt where horrors and adventure await.
The 13th Skull is a short adventure and is designed to be played in a single evening. That does not mean it is an EASY adventure however. In fact, it’s actually quite hard to achieve the adventure’s goal, which is to save the Duke’s daughter for a horrific fate. The adventure even states in its introduction that only one playtesting party ever managed to save her and that the mortality rate of characters widely varied. Now I’m fine with the amount of PC death in The 13th Skull. It is after all a Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure and like Lamentations of the Flame Princess or Call of Cthulhu, there is MEANT to be an extreme amount of player characters meeting grisly ends. It’s an inherent part of the system as well as part of the fun to be honest. Where I do have a problem is that only one playtesting party was able to save the damsel in distress and that the adventure proudly states that. To me, this means one of two things and neither of them are good. The first is that the adventure was playtested by some pretty poor gamers, which I really hope isn’t the case. The second is that the adventure is extremely unbalanced and should have been retooled. In all honestly, after reading through and fiddling with the adventure, a case can be made for either…or even both.
A good adventure doesn’t have the GM gleefully punishing PCs and making it all but impossible to accomplish their primary goal. Even with something like the aforementioned Call of Cthulhu where your character is guaranteed to die horribly or go insane at some point while playing them, being able to achieve the core mission of an adventure is always within the realm of possibility…even if the characters are then raped and eaten by Deep Ones or sucked into a horrible dimension of chaos and dementia. Not so with The 13th Skull. Players are stuck trying to save a 0th Level Human with a randomly rolled 1d4 Hit Points in a situation where everyone loses 1 HP per round. So with a bad roll, if you actually want to go that route, there isn’t even a chance to save her. The text also encourages the GM to outright kill her if the PCs are screwing around or are simply too slow/dense to properly protect their meal ticket. If it was up to me, I would run this encounter very different from how it was written in order to give PCs a chance to save the duke’s daughter. Honestly though, my first instinct would have been to rush up and prevent her sacrifice or, if playing a character with spells, give her some sort of protection to buy the other characters time to kill the devil trying to ritually disembowel her. Either way, this part of the adventure set off several red flags for me and, if I was the one publishing it, I would have either reworked this section, or questioned the quality of my playtesters.
Overall, The 13th Skull isn’t a bad adventure. It’s a very memorable one with an especially creepy antagonist and players get to not just go through a dungeon crawl, but they get to go to hell and back to boot! The penultimate encounter could have been done a lot better, but the actually final battle against The Silver Skull is a fun one. Even if the PCs meet defeat in their primary goal, they can still accomplish the secondary one and that’s something at least
But Wait –there’s more!
Sorry for the Ron Popeil impression, but you’re actually getting two adventures for the price of one with this Dungeon Crawl Classics release! The second adventure in this collection is called The Balance Blade and it’s meant to be a one-shot or convention piece as it eventually boils down to inter party fighting with either one character dying or everyone else dying. It just depends on how the dice roll. Usually I abhor the idea of any adventure where the sole purpose is to get characters to kill each other as it can often lead to hurt feelings, especially when younger gamers are involved. The best adventures are those where players work together instead of sniping at each other with plans of betrayal. The only exception I’ve ever seen to this is in a large scale Vampire: The Masquerade campaign. Unfortunately, The Balance Blade is no exception and the entire affair hinges on forcing an unsuspecting PC to turn on his or her teammates and futily try and kill them all (which they should fail at miserably due to the numbers against them). Because this IS a one-shot however, it’s a little more palatable as it’s not like any of the characters involved would ever be played again.
The adventure itself is a typical dungeon crawl where players proceed through an exceptionally linear dungeon, avoiding traps and solving puzzles along the way until the climax where the one of the PCs tries to kill the others. It’s a pretty straightforward and unimpressive affair. Most of the puzzles revolve around alignment or finding some hidden traps. It wasn’t a terrible adventure by any means, but I can definitely see why it was included as extra padding for The 13th Skull. On its own, it’s not something I could recommend for purchase, but as a two for one deal, it’s a decent little add-on that you can play provided you have enough prep time to put this together because it requires a few extras…props shall we say.
Basically the two adventures contained in Dungeon Crawl Classics #71 aren’t the best. They’re decent but flawed adventures that would probably leave a gamer feel unsatisfied had they paid full retail price for one or the other. As a two for one offer, you’re getting a pretty good deal. Think of it as two decent, but not great adventures for three to five bucks each. That’s definitely something I can live with. The 13th Skull is by far the better and more memorable of the two, but there is fun to be had with both. It’d be a thumbs in the middle for either adventure, but getting two for the price in one lets me give this a mild recommendation – albeit with the stipulation that there are many better DCC adventures out there that you can purchase instead.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/08/15/tabletop-review-never-u
nprepared-the-complete-game-masters-guide-to-session-prep/r />
Never Unprepared is a book that offers Game Masters (GMs) of all levels, from the brand new to the grizzled, advice from seasoned GM and self-described lover of organization and preparation Phil Vecchione. Is it good stuff or is it a bunch of crap?
Prep yourself before you wreck yourself
As might be expected from a GMing tome, a lot of the advice is about prep. This is great, because a lot of the GM’s job is about prep. Phil has a lot of good stuff to say about getting your ideas together and making them come to life. He advises you not to just sit down and start writing without ideas. Instead, the preparation cycle begins with brainstorming several ideas and then working out the ones that have staying power. After that, there are a few more stages that an idea will probably go through before it has metamorphosed into a full session or campaign. Phil outlines all of these stages, and then goes into them in detail so that anyone can see a clear line of development from conception to implementation.
Now, examining and taking apart the process of turning your idea into a working session may not sound like much fun, or maybe it takes the magic out of GMing a bit, but I think the goal of looking at prep this way is to give you tools and structure to work with so that you can make the methods your own according to your own work habits. And, if your work habits happen to be not very good at the moment (as happens a lot, let’s be honest), there are plenty of suggestions from Phil to help get you in the mindset to really construct a session for your players, and enjoy it too.
This prep is juuuuuust right…
One problem that the book deals with a lot is the idea of over- or under-prepping. It’s happened to anybody who has GMed several times: you’ve ended up with more than the players ever bothered to even explore, or you’ve ended up with not enough stuff and the players deviated slightly from the plan, leaving you struggling for ideas. Phil tries to help GMs assess how much prep they need for the game they are running through things like checklists and questions, such as what kind of players do I have? Will they get really involved in the details or will they skim over everything looking for what’s next? Do I have the general plot of the story covered from beginning to end? Do I have enough of my NPCs statted out? He gives a few examples of what can happen when we’re underprepared, like moving the players from place to place with no apparent connection (“wait, we were just in the Emperor’s throne room, now we’re being rescued from a prison cell?”).
One of the phases in the prep process is the “Selection” phase, where you decide what stays and what goes. The object is to get weak ideas out, and strong ones in and tied together. This is part of having the right prep level: if you don’t get selective about ideas then you can easily end up with too much material and you might end up using what turn out to be the weakest ideas. On the other hand, if you cut out nearly all the ideas for whatever reason, what are you going to craft a session out of? Phil advises keeping ideas that you cut somewhere nearby in case you are struggling for some more material and that idea you threw away yesterday starts to stir your imagination today.
Am I hot or not?
This book gives the GM several opportunities to take stock of their own skills and preparedness. You can read over the questions and give yourself an honest appraisal: how often do I conceptualize? How well do I put my story together? Admittedly, it feels a little arrogant to rate yourself highly, but hey if you’ve got most of this stuff down you might as well admit it.
One of the best parts of the book is the section on the Review phase. In this phase Phil asks you to take a look at your session material from three different perspectives: the Proofreader, the Director, and the Playtester. That is, look at it for general errors like leaving stuff out or grammar, then look at it from a cinematic view imagining how the story and the session flows, then look at it from the perspective of a player and what it will be like to be in your game. This is great, because in the game you can know that you looked at the session from all of these angles, and it is more likely that you will know what a player might do or how a certain scene might work out. In addition to that it just gives you such a great handle on the material you can feel more confident at the table, and your players will probably pick that up and get more into the game.
Space…the only frontier
The latter sections of the book deal a lot with how you work. Phil goes over his love of office supplies (which I totally empathize with) and finding out which tools work for you. Is it as simple as a notebook and a pencil? Great. Do you want your stuff organized with tabs and post-its and binders? Cool, get yourself to the office supply store! I would even add techniques like mind-mapping (Google it), and other less linear methods of writing ideas. Again, Phil emphasizes getting organized.
He mentions that finding prep-time can be difficult if you have a busy home or work life (or both). In those cases, he has some great suggestions for working out when you can work on your session material. They are generally centered on the particulars of his life but you will get the idea, which is basically that you have to make time. It takes dedication, sure, but if you’ve got a group ready and have a game planned, that should be enough to get you motivated. Many of his tips can be applied to just about any objective you are working toward in your spare time, you just do it when you can.
One really cool thing addressed in this book is finding out how to work with your creative cycles. As a creative person, I totally understand the idea of creative periods and the whole cyclical nature of being able to do great work on a project one day and have nothing good come the next. There are some great ideas and tools included in the pages of this section to help an eager GM find the best times to work, and find out how to cultivate their creativity.
Wait, you don’t want to spend that much time on prep, don’t want to figure out your namby-pamby “creative cycles” etc.? Well, Phil has some good suggestions for doing light prep. This is another excellent section of the book, giving examples on simplifying NPC stats and maps into things that you don’t have to look up and pore over.
So? Is it good stuff or crap?
This is good stuff! Admittedly, there are some things in here that experienced GMs are going to read and say “duh!”, but then this book really comes at this Game Mastering thing from all kinds of angles. It wrestles GM duties like Paul Bunyan wrestling a whale shark. Even folks who have been running games for a long time will find something in here that they look at and say “hey, that’s not a bad idea”. This guy is serious about his GM-ing, and he wants you to be too, if you have the will. This book will be great for those who have a group where they are struggling to come up with material on a regular basis. For people who have no pressure on them to create, well, they might read it and give the old “not bad” and keep it in mind for the next time they need to run a session. If you know you are the kind of GM who doesn’t like to prep, doesn’t like to be told how to GM, etc. then don’t bother reading this book. It’s got a lot of good ideas in it, but really we all know next time we sit down with you, oh GM-deity, you will just run it the same way you always do (and hey, sometimes that’s why we love you [or hate you]). Check out more of Phil’s work and more GM advice at Gnome Stew.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/08/15/tabletop-review-shadowr
un-the-clutch-of-dragons/
If you’ve been paying attention to the metagame story that’s been going through the Sixth World over the past few years then you know that metahumanity’s relationship with dragons has become…strained. What’s more is that inter-dragon relationships have been pushed to the breaking point as well, with three factions developing. You have Lofwyr, the Loremaster of the dragons, and his faction that believes his race is above humanity and should be viewed with awe, respect and deference by all. You have Hestaby’s faction, which believes more or less view that metahumanity and dragons should be working together rather than engaging in petty squabbles. The third faction is that of Alamais, who basically believes humans are rather tasty and are best left as either snacks or for inflicting heaping amounts of mental and physical abuse on. Basically side three is the Sabbat from Vampire: The Masquerade. Catalyst Game Labs has been on a slow burn with this large subplot, but it all comes to the forefront with this newest supplement for Shadowrun: The Clutch of Dragons.
For those who might expect The Clutch of Dragons to be a set of adventures revolving around a core theme similar to Jet Set or Hazard Pay, you’ll be disappointed as there isn’t a single adventure in the book (although there are plenty of potential ones that enterprising GM can easily make after reading this book). As well, if you’re the type of gamer who wants stats, mechanics and “crunch,” then you too will likely be disappointed as the only stats in the book start on page 133 and only last for twelve pages. Much of what is in those twelve pages are stats for some big name players in the metagame including Harlequin,albeit it his are just a reprint of what can be found in Street Legends Supplemental.
So with all that in mind you’re probably wonder what you’re getting with The Clutch of Dragons. Well, it’s all in-game fiction and flavor text. In fact, aside from the actual Shadowrun novels that have been released throughout the years, this is probably the largest amount of straight fiction I’ve ever seen released in a Shadowrun product. So basically, if you don’t care about CGL’s Sixth World and just use the setting and mechanics to do your own thing, The Clutch of Dragons is going to be close to worthless for you. For everyone else though, you are going to absolute love this book. I know I personally have loved the Shadowrun fiction released in the past few years and CGL has done an amazing job with this book here. Of course, compared to a Shadowrun novel, you’re getting half the page count for two to three (or more!) times the cost, but true Shadowrun fans won’t care as they’re getting a ton of new revelations about the Sixth World, some high quality fiction, and a nice oversized book (or PDF, depending on how you buy this) that will keep them entertained from beginning to end.
By now you’re probably wondering what’s actually in this book, right? Well, there are nineteen sections to the book but each falls under one of two categories (although one, as mentioned, is twelve pages on mechanics and stats). The first could be classified as JackPoint articles. For those new to Shadowrun JackPoint is the most common way CGL talks about in-game happenings. It’s a chat-room of sorts for the best Shadowrunners in the Sixth World. It’s where they gossip, trade information, and snark on each other. The second category would be short fictional stories. We’ll cover the JackPoint articles first because they make up the majority of the book.
“War at 10,000 Meters” is a basic overview of the state of the Sixth World in regards to dragons, their politics and their outlook on metahumanity. It’s the longest section in the book and contains information on the four biggest name dragons: Sirrurg, Ghostwalker, Hesaby, and Lofwyr. The article contains lots of commentary by members of JackPoint and helps to introduce newcomers to these big four great dragons while also refreshing veteran gamers of what’s all been going on in regards to these fire-breathing reptiles. “Echoing the Roar” offers the flip side – metahumans who are big players in this growing conflict between mortals and dragons. You get a nice look are Harlequin, Quicksilver, Nadja Daviar, the UCAS government, Johnny Spinrad, and finally the Corporate Court and a quick general overview of Megacorps. “Trickle Down Effects” is about various groups that have their own agenda in the divide between dragons and how they how to manipulate pawns (and thus Shadowrunners) to make things go in their favour. The most interesting thing about this chapter is how it looks at various Shadowrun tropes like doing wetworks, stealing, extracting and the like and hopw they might be given a new twist by this new onslaught of intrigue.
From there, the JackPoint articles are focused on specific dragons. Each article covers that singular dragon, their motives, motivations, allies, enemies and potential end games. You’ll get to read about Aiden, Celedya, Henequen, Damon, Fucanglong, Kalanya, Naheka, Perianwyr, Urubia, and my personal favorite Great Dragon…The Sea Dragon. None of the above dragons are as famous/infamous in Shadowrun lore as the “Big Four” (Although Lung might make it a “Big Five”), and so it’s totally understandable if even a longtime Shadowrun fan doesn’t recognize one of those ten dragons, and double so if they can’t pronounce them. That’s the truly great thing about this book. You get to look at a lot of mid-card or up and coming dragons that might not have had the spotlight thrust on them in your campaign or much of CGL’s metagame, but all that’s over now. With these ten chapters, you can really get to know these dragons and decide how much of an impact you want them to have in your campaign. They are a pretty varied sort and I loved reading about them instead of the same old, same old dragons. I really loved seeing people on JackPoint speculate that perhaps The Sea Dragon is actually the most powerful dragon in the Sixth World and how she’s by far set up to be the most dominant if WWD (World War Dragon) ever does take place. Good for her. As I said, she’s always been my favorite.
Now to look at the fiction within The Clutch of Dragons. The first story is “Enter the Dragon,” which is about a Shadowrun team being set up by a dragon. Not in a bad way, but rather tested to see if they would make suitable allies/pawns for him. It’s a pretty good read, although it can come off somewhat disjointed the first time you flip through it, due to characters just showing up in the narrative without any introduction. “War at 10,000 Meters,” although firmly a JackPoint article, begins with a one page story about a talismonger being butchered by some drakes. “The Things We Do For Love” is a two part story about Harlequin, although other big players in the Sixth World such as Ghostwalker make an appearance. As a story, it would have probably flowed better if united as one, but in the context of the book as a whole, it makes sense as to why it was divided into two parts (one in the middle of the book and one at the tail end). This story sets some big things in motion and my guess is that by the end of 2075, either Ghostwalker or Harlequin will be having a hard time with simple concepts like breathing and blinking. It’s an odd choice to go this route (although Harlequin was originally conceived of as a dragonslayer back in the day) and Harlequin actually comes off more than a little unhinged and as the antagonist in his own story. It’ll be interesting to see where they are going with this. Nice Chris Jericho reference in this one too.
The final piece of fiction is entitled “War Room” and it probably deserves its own paragraph. It’s a peek inside a meeting of Lofwyr’s dragon allies as they discuss what to do about Hestaby, Alamais and Sirrurg. I found it particularly interesting because Lofwyr comes off as especially ineffectual here and seems to only hold on to any position of power within the dragon community because he’s arguably the most physically threatening of the dragons. I never really got that feel from Lofwyr before this and I’m not sure that’s what CGL actually was going for. If it was, it really changes the dynamic of how SR fans view the head of Saeder-Krupp. It also appears that Lofwyr’s side is extremely undivided unlike the pro-metahumanity side of the Dragon race, which appears pretty solidly united. Honestly, if anything, it made me feel like Lofwyr isn’t long for his role as Loremaster, which I doubt is actually going to be the case, but man, as good as the story was, the biggest and baddest dragon in the game felt rather…sub-par amongst his own kind here.
All in all, I loved The Clutch of Dragons, but that’s because I really love the metagame story Catalyst Game Labs has been putting out for the past few years. When I actually PLAY Shadowrun, I rarely make note of or use the metagame though, preferring to tell my own weird stories and not make my players feel like they have to read (or buy) everything that comes out for the system to stay on top of what’s going on in the game. White Wolf tried to make their metagame canon and required reading back in the days of the OWoD and it damn near killed the company, which is why I like that CGL uses the metagame primarily for flavor text and then optional content like this. Again, if you don’t care for CGL’s fictional narratives, you probably won’t want to bother with this book at all, as it’s 95% of the content here. If you’re also looking for stats and mechanics, this really isn’t worth your $18/$29.99 because it’s not what you are looking for. If, however, you love reading about the Sixth World along with the cast and characters of that dwell within it, then this is more than likely the book for you. It’s a really great read that you won’t want to put down (Of course, due to the sixe and page length, reading this in one sitting is not recommended.) Basically if you want the roll-playing, this isn’t worth your time or money, but if you’re all about the role-playing, this is one of the best books CGL has put out for Shadowrun this year.
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Originally posted at http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/08/10/tabletop-review-the-uns
peakable-oath-issue-21/
Wow, I can’t believe it’s been over a year since the last issue of The Unspeakable Oath came out! The last one came out in July of 2011 and then…nothing. I remember reviewing Issue #20 and really enjoyed it. Hell, it was even on tap to win our “Best Gaming Magazine” award in 2011. Then when it disappeared, we had to assume when the same way as similar publications like Starry Wisdom. Thankfully though it’s back and chock full of the same great content Unspeakable Oath fans are used to. Let’s take a look at what’s all in this issue, separate the good from the bad and cross our fingers that TUO will return to quarterly printing instead of yearly.
First up is “The Dread Page of Azathoth,” which is Shane Ivey’s opening column in every issue. This one is devoted to WHY there’s been such a gap between issues and it’s a worthwhile read. I know from my time in both tabletop and electronic gaming that fans tend to be unforgiving when there is a delay or the release date of a product is pushed back – even when there is a very good reason for it. Shane lists the personal reasons regarding what happened in the past year and I can utterly identify with him. For the past five months my pet has had a mystery disease and we’ve spent well over twelve grand on the poor little guy and it took going to a celebrity vet who has his own NPR program to diagnose the exceptionally rare disease he has. Shane had something similar hit him and then far more to boot, so it’s no wonder it took this long for TUO to come out. As a fellow Editor-in-Chief who has had a similar year, this article was eerily relatable (not something you ever want to say when you’re talking about a product geared toward eldritch insanities and alien monstrosities…). Best of all, Ivey manages to tie his personal story back to the world of CoC gaming, and that’s the real key here. Wonderful article.
“Saucer Attack 1928! The Dunwich ‘Horror’” is the first of several “Mysterious Manuscripts” in this issue to The Unspeakable Oath. It’s a very funny idea for a book that definitely is outside the box from the usual worn leather-bound and moth-eaten tomes we think of turning up in a Lovecraftian related story or game. Basically the book is by a nutty conspiracy theorist who discovers bits and pieces of the events in The Dunwich Horror and in his fragmented mind, puts them together as an alien cover-up by the government. I loved the idea of the book, even if I’m not sure I’d ever use it (I rarely play in or run modern era games of COC. Delta Green though…). Still this is exactly what COC needs after thirty-one years: things that stay true to the old conventions while giving them a new twist rather than relying on the clichéd trappings.
I have never liked The Eye of Light and Darkness section of The Unspeakable Oath and I’m sad to say I still don’t. It’s eight pages that could be used in so many better ways. For those that don’t know this section, it’s basically product reviews that aren’t necessarily Lovecraft related. The reviews are too short and not detailed enough for my liking (A typical review is a fifth of THIS review, if not less) and they tend to focus on products that have been out for a while. Since TUO is being read by diehard CoC fans, anyone who wants these books/supplements/etc have already picked them up. Why not use this space to do newer reviews. Things like the Cthulhu Invictus Companion or the new Mysteries of Ireland monograph. I’m sure Chaosium, Pelgrane Press, Goodman Games and other Cthulhu gaming publishers would happily give Arc Dream some advance review copies in exchange for honest well-written reviews. Nyarlathotep knows we get them here so you would think it would be all too possible for companies that print the stuff! I will say that The Poisoner’s Handbook review is the longest and most in-depth review I’ve seen in an issue of TUO, so that’s something positive I can say about this section. Still, I’d rather see those eight pages devoted to actually new Cthulhu based products rather than things released a year or more ago. Heck, those eight pages could have been used as previews of two upcoming CoC releases. Pagan Publishing’s Bumps in the Night and Arc Dream’s own The Sense of the Sleight of Hand Man. Just a thought about a wasted opportunity.
I’ll be honest. I dislike Trail of Cthulhu. Gumshoe has never impressed me as a system, the game is too hand-holding for my liking, the Stability piece is horribly implemented but worst of all tend to be the published adventures for it. Not only to they tend to be complete drek, but the authors tend to have little regard or understand of the various Mythos writers in general. Take The Repairer of Reputations for example. If we had given out a worst adventure award for 2011, Robin Laws’ horrible middle finger to Robert Chambers would have been our front runner and sadly, by ToC standards, there have actually been WORSE. I honestly doubted there would ever be a truly good Trail of Cthulhu adventure but with the publication of Sukakpak in this issue my mind has changed. Sure there are a few typos and many a Mythos writer would roll their eyes at the use of “fucking” as an adjective, but it’s still better than everything else for the system I’ve read. Hell, it actually managed to catch the dread and forbearance of encountering thing beyond human description and understanding. Better yet, the adventure gives ways to adapt it to other Cthulhu oriented systems (Not Cthulhutech though…duh.). It’s a wonderful adventure set in the mid 1970s with a simple premise and a very alien presence. SomeONE wants a road built through the wilderness near Sukapak Mountain. SomeTHING doesn’t. Guess who gets caught in the middle? That’s right – the PCs. Although I dislike Trail of Cthulhu, I’m glad to see The Unspeakable Oath getting some material for more than just Delta Green and Chaosium’s classic. Who knows? With more adventures like this, I may just change my mind about the system!
“Engines Underground” is another “Mysterious Manuscript” with a premise that sets it apart from the other grimoires you tend to encounter in a Lovecraft-oriented game. Much like The King in Yellow, “Engines Underground” is a novel rather than a non-fiction collection of tomes and insidious truths. It’s a pretty dull novel same for the fact the sub-plot between two characters changes depending on who reads it. It’s as if this book tailors itself to whoever is flipping through its pages. That’s the only unsettling thing about the book and apparently, even its own author is oblivious to this aspect of his creation. Man, there are so many ways to take just this kernel of a plot, I don’t even know where to begin. I really love this idea. So simple, yet so original at the same time.
” Ein Konto der Hexeraserei im Lindheim” is the third and final “Mysterious Manuscript” in this issue. It’s also the second Trail For Cthulhu article in here. It’s an odd little book that oddly enough is very similar to the Cthulhu Dark Ages adventure you can find in Mythic Iceland. That’s a very odd coincidence. It’s an interesting idea for a book but a little more by the numbers than the previous two in this collection with causes it to be overshadowed.
” Das Teufelherz” is the “Arcane Artifact” for the issue and it’s directly connected to the Ein Konto grimoire. In fact, it is the very object the book speaks of and it against is eerily similar to the DAC adventure in Mythic Iceland right down to the Norse Gods and the creepy heart bits. I called that adventure paint-by-numbers then and so I’d be remiss not to do so here as well. When two authors have very similar ideas for a similar system published at nearly the same time, it’s kind of a hint that not only is the idea not new, but probably done to death.
“The Mock Auction” is a short adventure seed by the author of the previous two articles. While those two were a bit humdrum, “The Mock Auction” is a beautifully done idea. It takes an actual real world scam and puts a POSSIBLE supernatural (albeit it not necessarily Mythos related one) twist on it. Any enterprising GM/DM/Keeper/Storyteller/whatever can turn this one page piece on getting conned in a faux auction into a full length memorable adventure for their gaming troupe. Lots of fun potential here.
” Unaussprechlichen Klutzen” is a weird choice for an article. It’s basically a Cthulhu-esque scenario for Fiasco. I’m torn. On one hand I’m glad to see an article that gives you a Cthulhu based adventure for a NON-Cthulhu oriented system but on the other, this isn’t really a Mythos based adventure and it works just as well with Robeasts from Voltron or some Kaiju. (“Oh No! Guiron! Where is Gamera? I want a Coke!). Because of that I’m a bit disappointed that six pages of this issue were given to this piece, even though I think Fiasco can be quite hilarious. There are so many other Lovecraft oriented systems that never get so much as a single article written about them in TUO, that it almost feels like a slap in the face to them to have this here instead. Also, “Unaussprechlichen Klutzen” is pretty much gibberish if you don’t already own Fiasco and know the rules by heart. Boo.
The next piece in this issue of The Unspeakable Oath is a full length Call of Cthulhu adventure entitled “The Man With a Thousand Faces.” The adventure takes up almost half of the magazine but oh my Azathoth, is it worth the cover price and then some. This adventure takes place in California and has the Investigators discovering just why one of the biggest starts of silent films has become a reclusive hermit at the peak of his career. What players will discover is a creepy little mystery that basically pits them against a Mythos version of Zartan from G.I. Joe. It sounds a bit silly when I put it that way, but the adventure is quite creepy, well written and is a great reminder of how things actually worked in Hollywoodland back in the day. There’s not much of a chance of PCs dying horribly or going permanently insane, but that’s okay because not every adventure has to be focused on that (nor should they). This is definitely I would like to try out with a group of players as it definitely lacks any of the major tropes that the system has developed (stopping cultists, unearthing some ancient evil artifact, keeping a monstrous God from awakening, etc) and yet still feels like it could easily fit into an issue of Weird Tales. This was just a wonderful adventure in all respects and again, it’s well worth your money to buy this issue of The Unspeakable Oath just for this adventure. The fact the vast majority of the issue is quality as well is just a bonus.
Every issue has a Delta Green column called “Directives From A-Cell and this time around, it talks about the Tradecraft skill. If you haven’t played Delta Green, you probably haven’t heard of this skill and even if you had, you might not have encountered it unless you own Countdown, which was out of print for a long time (now available on PDF though!). Basically the article just talks about how the skill works and how to use it in a game. Nothing fancy or elaborate; just reviving a somewhat long lost option.
The issue concludes with a short piece of fiction “She Had Everything,” which is a first person story about a serial killer running afoul of an even greater evil. It’s…okay. It’s nicely written. I just hate first person stories where the character dies horribly because I’m always like, “Then how did he write it?” What can I say? I’m a non-fiction writer/folklorist. I can suspend my disbelief for a giant winged cephalopod that lives under the sea, but not a vantage point for story’s sake.
All in all, it might have been thirteen months since our last foray into the pages of The Unspeakable Oath, but it was worth the wait. It’s not perfect, but what magazine is? There’s always a few articles that won’t appeal to readers and some that will be adored. I do feel Arc Dream missed a big chance to plug the hell out of their upcoming Dreamlands based campaign by Dennis Detwiller and Pagan’s Bumps in the Night as both are due out quite soon and this could have helped to create extra buzz for them. Ah well, I’ll be reviewing them myself shortly (BitN much sooner that Sleight of Had Man though) so look for those here at Diehard GameFAN in the next few weeks to months.
If you’re at all a fan of Call of Cthulhu and the many aspects of the RPG industry that have spun off because of Chaosium’s thirty-one year old system, definitely snag a copy of The Unspeakable Oath, Issue #21, either in print or in pdf format. You won’t be sorry for a second.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/08/10/tabletop-review-mythic-
iceland-chaosium-basic-roleplayingcthulhu-dark-ages/
Let me start off this review with one statement: Mythic Iceland is perhaps the most intense supplement I have ever encountered in my life. It’s less a supplement than a mammoth text of information with enough of the core Basic Roleplaying rules system included that you can almost use this book on its own. I went into this thinking it would be like Cubicle 7′s Shadows Over Scotland where it’s mainly flavor text about the location coupled with a few adventures. Well, Mythic Iceland is like that but a whole lot more. It took me forever to wade through text. Not because it was dry or dull, but because there was so much information that it was almost sensory overload. It’s like the old Enclycopedia Britannica commercial where the kid gets a B+ for putting in too much information. So know what you are in for when you pick up this mammoth text. You’re not just getting a little history on Iceland – you’re getting character creation rules, a massive history, a set of new monsters, story seeds, a full adventure, information about other lands and even a Cthulhu Dark Ages supplement and adventure. Holy crap. Now, with that out of the way, let’s take a look at what all you get.
I should stress that Mythic Iceland is a blend of true Icelandic history, folklore and stuff the author made up to fill in the blanks. The book starts with an Introduction covering just this fact, along with the time period being covered (930-1050) and an Icelandic Alphabet guide. I thought this last bit was very cool and was the first indication that Mythic Iceland was going to be more a college textbook for gaming than your usual campaign setting book.
The next section is “History of Mythic Iceland,” which covers several creation myths (The world, the Norse Gods, Iceland itself and mankind)which is then followed up by a list of the various cultures that discovered, explored and eventually settled Iceland. I loved this section as I’m a big history buff and I found the blending of folklore and actual Icelandic history to be quite a fun read. I realize it won’t be for everyone, but each page gave me new ideas for adventures – not just for the BRP setting, but any game that uses real world settings. I had thoughts of Hidden World zombies for All Flesh Must Be Eaten to recovering artifacts with my Shadowrun chummers.
“Character Creation” is just what you think it’s about. When I first saw this I was surprised a chapter was devoted to the concept because hey, I already have several BRP books. Why would I need this? Well, it’s because Mythic Iceland has several new things that it brings to the table in regards to character creation ranging from Runic Magic to religious affiliation. Now you will still need both books in order to create a character, which is a bit of a downer because of the cost (almost $80 for physical copies!) involved. However because I love this book so much I’m going to help you out. Just get this and then download the free Basic Roleplaying Quick Start Rules directly from Chaosium. Problem solved. I also found it interesting how important status and family were in character creation. These are two things you don’t see brought up in the process by most RPGs. Finally, this chapter ends with some new skills, lists of Icelandic names and a two page character sheet.
“Life in Saga-Age Iceland” is another chapter devoted to historical flavor in a level of detail I’ve never really seen from a campaign setting before. Sure this chapter covers geography, climate, flora, fauna, cost of items and the other things you’ll find in most high quality campaign supplements, but Mythic Iceland continues to take things farther than I’ve ever seen before. You get essays on family life, social status, burial rights and so much more.
The following chapter is even MORE in-depth as you get fifteen pages of just “Law and Government.” Do you want to know how to probably engage in a duel with someone that has wronged you? It’s in here. Do you want to know all the districts of Iceland in the 10th and 11th Century? It doesn’t matter as the book will tell you anyway! You are given a systematic look at the courts, crimes, punishments, inheritance laws, and even how to run a full court proceeding within the BRP system mechanics. This is both awesome and crazy – I’m just not sure which it’s leaning to more. There is so much here, this will either become one of your favorite RPG books or all time to read…or you’ll burn out before you’re even a fraction of the way done with it!
The next twenty or so pages comprise the chapter on Religion. Here you are given a look at the major Norse gods and goddesses and how worshiping one can affect your character. Basically you are given a stat that measures your faith towards a particular Norse God with is directly contrasted by your stat towards Loki. As your ties towards a particular god strengthens, you’ll find your character is blessed with new abilities. The key, of course, is to make sure your deity of choice continues to look upon your4 character favorably. You’re also given a large section of Christianity and what this religion did to Iceland for both good and ill.
“Magic in Mythic Ireland” is the chapter you may want to pay the most attention to if you’re only into game mechanics. The magic section here is vastly different from every other Chaosium setting I’ve ever read or played. It’s the magic that also helps to truly make this setting come to alive in regards to hucking dice and scribbling on character sheets. Of course, few characters will be able to use magic due to the POW requirements, but it’s still as intricate as it is important to the setting.
Like with any good Norse based game, magic is primarily done through runes. Mythic Iceland gives you not only a “history” of Norse magic, but also a list of each rune, how many you start with, rules for how to actually cast magic, how to gain new spells and increase the power of ones your character already knows. The rules for runic magic are thirty-three pages long, which probably shocks you to read that. The good news is that most of those pages are the detailed description of each rune and what you can do with them, similar to a list of spells in a D&D Player’s Handbook. Basically, a runecaster just needs to combine three runes to form a spell. It’s a pretty open ended system with no specifics on what to combine to make a spell. It’s pretty much common sense. You wouldn’t have a rune for Ice (Iss) to create a rainbow coloured beaver for example. You could however take the runes Sol (sun), Elgur (defensive protection) and Dagur (Day & unexpected joy) to create a ray of sunlight to do damage to an undead creature though. The book gives examples of various combinations for certain effects, but otherwise it’s wide open for the player and Keeper, which I like.
“A Traveller’s Guide to Mythic Iceland” lists thirty-five different major locations on the island, complete with a bit of history behind the area, some mythology to compliment it and an adventure seed based on the previous myth for you to flesh out and then unleash on your players. You can pretty much have several campaigns worth of adventures just from this chapter. Whether it’s accidentally killing a troll’s beloved pet sheep in Skafti’s Mountains or being haunted by ghosts in Goose Sands, there’s so much stuff to throw at PCs, you’ll never have to worry about coming up with your own adventures.
“Elves and the Hidden People” is a chapter you’ll really want to read as Norse elves are not the tall thin pale pointy ear elves we see in most fantasy. No, these elves look just like humans; it’s just they reside on another plane of existence. You get details on why the average person can’t see the Hidden People and why even exceptional people can only see them for a limited amount of time. You’re given information on their culture, family life, what happens if a Hidden Person mates with a human and so on. You’re even given NPC stats. The one thing missing is that the book neither dissuades or promoted the idea of Hidden People as player characters. Obviously someone is going to try to do this, and it really doesn’t work. I wish there had been a sidebar or something that was to the effect of “Don’t allow this race as PCs because…”"Alfheimur” is another chapter, albeit a short one about elves. Unlike the previous chapter which were about elves that left their homeland to settle in Iceland, this chapter is about the actual land elves come from.
“The Lands to the West” was my favorite chapter in Mythic Iceland. This chapter alone is one of the best resource materials I’ve seen in a very long time. This very long and extensive chapter gives you a look at other countries/lands/regions that you can use. Maybe your characters get exiled from Iceland or just get restless. The two areas that can be found in this chapter are Greenland and Wine-Land, the latter being made up of eastern Canada and the United States. You’re given a specific breakdown of each country, such as locations, creatures and travelling by vessel to reach them. You’re even given information about the White-Fur and Dark Fur Skraelingar AKA Native Americans. Again the book is neutral on whether you can or even should make a PC Skraelingar, but as they are just humans, it might be a fun idea to have one as a guide if the other players are exploring say, the Slab-Land region of Wine-Land for reasons of riches and glory. Special note goes out to the awesome monsters you’ll find in what we know as North America like the race known as the One-Legged. I also loved the Thunderbird and how much the art looks like the Pokémon Zapdos. Although I’m sure it’s totally unintentional, it’s very telling as Zapdos is based on Thunderbird. Nice to see the unconscious collective at work here. Honestly, “The Lands to the West” is the best chapter in the book and it’s the one I know I’ll get the most use out of.
“The Wide World” is a chapter that simply talks about what is going on in the rest of the world during the time frame Mythic Iceland is set in. You get timelines and several paragraphs on each nation or island and although it’s nowhere in depth as “The Lands to the West,” it’s still a very fun read. “Going Viking” is about well…going Viking. It gives you information on Viking vessels, how to pilot them, the preferred weaponry one would carry and how to properly run a raid on a village or monastery. Very fun. “Running a Game of Mythic Iceland” is the all GM chapter in the book. It’s basically advice on how to run a game, ways to properly dole out various rewards such as experience, status, luck, magical items and religious allegiance points. I really liked the part on how to us a PCs prophecy power (if one has this ability) to keep the adventure flowing in the way you want it to go. Yeah for a built-in sidetracking prevention. This chapter also contains tables for inclement weather and alcohol effects.
“Creatures of Mythic Iceland” is just what you suppose. I do think Gms will get a bit lost looking for monsters since they are spread between this chapter and “Lands to the West.” People will probably look for wendigo or trolls in the wrong chapter. It might have been better layout wise had the book just had a pure chapter on monsters, but this is a minor nitpick on my part.
The final chapter in Mythic Iceland is an adventure entitled, “The Trouble With Neighbors.” It’s a long convoluted affair which has PCs being tricked by their neighbor into doing battle with trolls and then being railroaded by the ancient Icelandic legal system, forcing them to do battle not with sword and shield, but lawyers. Of course, every lawyer the party can pick from wants something in return for their services… The adventure is well written and laid out, but it felt like it was more Mythic Phoenix Wright than an adventure about stalwart Norse warriors. I actually felt most of the adventure seeds earlier in the book were more interesting than this one. While not a bad adventure, it did feel like a mediocre one and it isn’t one I’d ever run myself.
Mythic Iceland has three appendices – two of which are related to the Call of CthulhuL spin off: Cthulhu Dark Ages. Each of these appendices are quite long – more so that even some of the chapters in the main book. I was pleasantly surprised to see over twenty pages devoted to a different (but far more popular) Chaosium setting than Basic Roleplayingh; if only because of the differences in the two. That said, the inclusion of Cthulhu Dark Ages material was the original impetus for my picking up Mythic Iceland and I’m happy to say that the CoC bits are no less impressive than the rest of the book.
“Cthulhu Dark Ages Iceland” is the primary chapter CoC players will want to read. It gives you a more fantastical history of Iceland that the rest of the book in order to keep things in tone with the Lovecraftian history of the world. Elves and trolls are slightly different in appearance and demeanor, and you are given stats for both. You’re told about various cults, given sanity loss information about the monsters that appeared earlier in the book and quite a few new tomes and spells native to Iceland. Interestingly enough this section includes information on magic staves, which isn’t mentioned in the core Mythic Iceland book.
The second appendix is “Cthulhu Dark Ages Scenario,” which pretty much tells you what it is. Like the BRP adventure, this one is a little lacking and dull for my tastes. It’s your run of the mill, “Oh no! Relative of upstanding citizen X is actually Kai En Tai style EEEEEVIL (Indeed!). ” The adventure does highlight a special monster and spell from the book, but other than that, it’s a pretty cookie cutter affair. Again, it’s not bad, and it definitely works as a first ever adventure for people new to CoC, but for veterans of the system it’s a little week.
The third and final appendix is a wonderful bibliography by the way.
So there you go. 2,500+ words on why Mythic Iceland is one of the most in-depth and detailed roleplaying books I’ve ever read. Unfortunately I don’t think I’ll ever be able to use it as it was designed as I don’t know anyone that plays BRP and I only own a few pieces from the system/ That said, I’ll definitely be adapting the book to everything from Call of Cthulhu and Vampire: Dark Ages to things like Shadowrun and even a D&D or Pathfinder game. There is SO MUCH information and material in Mythic Iceland that it might be a little too overwhelming for some gamers. It can be hard to remember where something was the first few times you go through it and there’s so much here it’ll take you a few days (or even weeks) to get through it the first time. For gamers that love to just read RPG related books or who love flavor text and background info rather than hard system mechanics, you’ll probably devour Mythic Iceland the same way I did. I will be shocked if this doesn’t win some sort of award at the end of the year from us here at Diehard GameFAN. Chaosium has been releasing some truly amazing stuff this year and Mythic Iceland is no exception.
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Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/08/09/tabletop-review-skaar-c
ity-of-orcs-legend/
One of the potential drawbacks of a game like Legend, from Mongoose Publishing, is that like many other “generic” systems, the GM is called upon to create his entire game world either from existing mythology, from a published setting like Deus Vult or the Age of Treason, or entirely from the depths of his own fevered brain. Mongoose, understanding this issue might be a cause for some concern, has begun releasing a series of materials under the umbrella category of Cities of Legend, the first of which is the brutal Skaar: City of Orcs.
Originally a dwarven city from which the dwarves were driven, Skaar is a complete city in most every sense. The materials cover some of the ancient history of how it came to be, and how it came to be a center of commerce and corruption for the orcs. It’s from this captured city that the orcs continue to raid the surrounding countryside, a potential hook for your players to find themselves with a need to visit Skaar.
The current government is based around a particularly conniving and devious orc named Cylus Groon. He’s big, fat and lazy, but he has a gift for governing, and for using other orcs against one another in power plays and deception that’s kept him in control of the city while other orcs, far greater in personal power than Groon, keep raiding instead. A fine balance is maintained between the various personality cults that grow around these warlords, leaving Skaar as an excellent location for a game that relies heavily on intrigue and internecine warfare or a more subtle, if not exactly delicate, nature.
Several sections are dedicated to life in Skaar, from the governmental processes and laws there, to the ecology and day to day life in the city. Commerce is discussed to some degree, as it is a center for commerce, both to bring in supplies for the inhabitants of the city and to send out goods that were brought in by the hordes of raiders in exchange for hard currency and more luxury items like alcohol.
While a good section of the book is dedicated to the lot in life of the average orc in Skaar, and the ecology of the area, it’s the section on the religious life of the orcs that is the most compelling portion of the book. Instead of taking the more common, short-cut approach of a single, monolithic religion that is followed by all orcs in lock-step, this book gives you three different religious cults to which any given orc can belong.
The majority worship the Maimed Lord, Alodai the Nine Fingered. His area of influence and expertise is in pain and the infliction of pain, and his followers practice a limited form of self-flagellation (sometimes supplemented by being flayed by their priests if the general public appears to be too reluctant to do it themselves), his shrines home to chains and beating sticks just for such occasions. In addition to this common faith, there are worshipers of Kharkus, a demon who strove against Alodai, seeking to take over his cult and the reason for the loss of that god’s left thumb. These folk have to worship in secret, and without an ounce of proof of the truth of their claims, hold Kharkus to be the mightier. Finally there are a group a necromancers who worship a water elemental under the surface of the underground lake near the city. All of this, to me, provides more grist for my mill than all of the warlords and their political maneuverings.
That’s not to say that there isn’t plenty to be had in those factions as well, however! Every major warlord is named, and along with him an allied shaman, an accounting of how many orcs fall under his command, any auxiliary troops – goblins, hobgoblins, trolls and siege engines, primarily – as well as his allegiances, plots and intrigues. Just enough information is provided for these warlords to give them flavor, and make them unique and memorable when interacting with your players.
This is followed up by a very well defined tour of the city, indicating points of interest to the players, as well as occasional sidebars about the flora and fauna, often nasty, of the city and the tunnels underneath.
After all of this exposition – fluff, for many – we get to the meat of the book, with each of the main NPCs, the movers and shakers, laid out in standard Legend format, from the orcish leadership to a dwarven warlord intent on freeing the city from the orcs, and even the statistics on Kharkus, the demon himself. Most of them are accompanied by lovingly drawn line-art pictures of the individuals in question, a fantastic tool for providing additional flare to these already larger than life characters. Add in general stats for the types of orcs that reside in and around Skaar, and you’re all set mechanically for fights at most any scale.
The rest of the book is dedicated to how you can insert Skaar into your campaign with relative ease. Here you’ll find a handful of general campaign overviews (wilderness survival, trade, or liberation of the city) along with a specific example scenario for each.
The material is well laid out, with only a few of the production errors that have become such a commonplace with Mongoose published materials. It provides more information than some GMs and player groups will ever care to know about orcs, perhaps providing enough information to begin to humanize them, to make them into more than the standard two-dimensional cardboard villains they are in most games. If this sort of depth is interesting to you, I think you’ll enjoy Skaar, City of Orcs, and your game will be better for it.
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Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/08/07/tabletop-review-falling
-scales-chapter-two-world-of-darkness/
I reviewed Falling Scales, Chapter One back in March and found it to be one of the better adventures I’ve seen for the New World of Darkness. I’ll freely admit that I’m one of those that feels the Old World of Darkness was better than White Wolf’s current one, but that’s why I have The Onyx Path that White Wolf started with the release of Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition. Falling Scales has you playing as human beings rather than supernatural creatures, albeit with the caveat that through the Chronicle, the PCs are made aware that there are, in fact, things that go bump in the night. PCs can (and probably will) get infected with a highly specialized virus that makes normal mortals aware of the supernatural, and sometimes even immune to the powers of WoD creatures. PCs will find themselves involved with an organization known as The Unmasked, which they will eventually take down with the why and how being up to how the adventure goes.
Now we’re back with the second and final part of Falling Scales, which surprised, me as Part One felt and read like it was going to be a multi-part series. You don’t need to have played Part One in order to get the full effect out of this adventure, but it will definitely help a lot. Characters will have more of an understanding of what is going on, certain events in the adventure will make more sense and the Storyteller won’t have to modify things to make the Chronicle flow smoothly. Again, it’s doable, but it’s worth your time to play through Falling Scales, Chapter One first, as it not only will fill in the blanks that are there in Part Two, but it’s a better adventure overall anyway.
Chapter Two brings back the PCs into a group a few months after the events of Chapter One. This time they are united to stop, and I kid you not, a nationwide government and pharmaceutical conspiracy to reveal the existence of monsters to the general public. Unfortunately, why they want to do this and who is actually behind the conspiracy is never spelled out in the adventure, which is not only a letdown, but makes things harder for the Storyteller. A chronicle needs a definite ending as well as a whodunit for players to feel satisfied. If you are a big NWoD fan with a lot of books, you CAN read between the lines to figure out who the big bad is, but for casual fans of the system or those that don’t devote themselves to anything and everything White Wolf puts out, it’s going to be hard to know who is behind it all. Here’s a hint though: He’s not an Antediluvian in the New World of Darkness, but he’s still around…
There are four big things I really liked about the adventure. The first is that White Wolf really did try to make it accessible to people who haven’t played/run Chapter One, right down to reprinting the full rules on the Mimetic Infection. That was a nice touch. The second is that the adventure includes a truly incredible flowchart that outlines all the possible ways the adventure can unfold and in what order scenes can occur. This thing is a blessing to any Storyteller thinking of running Falling Scales, Chapter Two, and it makes organizing the entire affair so much easier. The third is that the adventure gives you constant ways to use supernatural creatures instead of “mere mortals.” This means if you have a current World of Darkness campaign going for say, Vampire: The Requiem or Werewolf: The Forsaken, you can play Falling Scales while still letting players use the characters they have no doubt grown attached too. Finally, I love that Part Two is actually a few dollars less to buy than Part One, even though it has a slightly larger page count. More bang for your buck!
Of course, there are several big drawbacks to the adventure too, and this review would be remiss if we didn’t talk about them. The first is the layout. For some reason both Falling Scales adventures have been in landscape layout rather than portrait. This is really annoying, especially on an e-reader like the Kindle Fire or a Nook. I will admit it works okay if I read the PDF on my PC, but I very rarely do that. Trying to read the edges of Falling Scales will cause the PDF to advance to the next page on an e-reader, making this a bit annoying to go through on one.
The second big problem is the entire plot. I just really didn’t care for it. I’m fine with big, over the top adventures, especially for World of Darkness and Call of Cthulhu games, but Falling Scales, Chapter Two just fell flat on its face for me from beginning to end. The conspiracy isn’t handled very well, and the characters aren’t very believable, even for a universe where ghosts and golems walk freely amongst mankind. Perhaps it’s just because I live here in D.C. (where the adventure takes place) and I’ve got a background in politics, but there was so much about this adventure that I instantly found wrong, I think I spent more time picking it apart than actually enjoying it. Now, that doesn’t mean it will happen to everyone who reads this. It’s just a very political adventure set in D.C. written by a person who obviously doesn’t have a strong background in either, being reviewed by someone who does. I honestly think the average WoD fan will have fun with this for what it is without going, “Well, that’s not remotely possible because the system doesn’t work like that…” every five minutes. Just remember, it’s fantasy. I might like my intrigue a little more grounded, but that doesn’t make this adventure a complete bust.
The third and final problem are the antagonists. One of them really only works if you played Falling Scales, Chapter One, and then only if you played it in a very specific way. The adventure gives the excuse of saying, “Character XYZ is crazy and delusional now,” but that doesn’t work for me. I also didn’t really care for The Thief. He’s too ancient and too powerful a concept, yet horribly defined both in background and game mechanics. Finally there’s the fact that this is the last adventure in the chronicle, and nothing wraps up properly in terms of a big bad reveal. You never learn who was pulling what strings. For an adventure to end, that’s fine. Mystery is good most of the time. When the adventure is also the end of a full Chronicle… that’s not so good. Unless you’re playing a Cthulhu or Chill game, resolution and reveal, even if it’s out of character to explain to players the full story, is needed.
Overall, I give Falling Scales, Chapter Two a thumbs in the middle. For everything it does well, there’s a big red flag to balance things out. It’s definitely worth buying/reading/downloading if you have the first, but there is a noticeable drop-off in quality from Chapter One. You might be better off playing Chapter One as a one-shot rather than trying to do Chapter Two. If you do decide to run it, at least the adventure is nicely laid out and all the possible situations that might occur from PC actions are given to you, so even a novice Storyteller can run Falling Scales, Chapter Two rather smoothly. This isn’t an adventure that is going to win the New World of Darkness any converts or new players, but it should satisfy the more zealous fan of the system as well as those that loved the first Falling Scales so much that they are chomping at the bit for the second.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/08/06/ttbookofbeastslegendary
monsters1/
http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/08/06/ttbookofbeastslegen
darymonsters1/
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/08/02/tabletop-review-dungeon
-crawl-classics-70-jewels-of-the-carnifex/
Jewels of the Carnifex is the latest Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure put out by Goodman Games, creators of the system. Like most DCC adventures, there really isn’t a lot of setup for this hack and slash affair. You’re just given the hook of “Here’s a map to an ancient forgotten temple filled with treasure. Go to it.” As always, I’m disappointed that the creators of DCC adventures don’t put more of an impetus on why PCs are going through this dungeon but at least this particular DCC adventure steps up with a tremendous amount of back story for the DM to flesh things out to his or her own liking.
Jewels of the Cartnifex really turns the whole Law vs. Chaos concept on its head. Long ago, there was a godling known as Carnifex, whose followers embraced death, suffering and pain. The Carnifex became the patron goddess of executioners and torturers and was responsible for more than her fair share or hellish undertakings. Eventually a priest of light, life and law (alliteration!) stepped forwards to fell the foul cult of Carnifex. He and his swords of Pious were successful in imprisoning Carnifex within her own chthonic temple. However, it would turn out that this priest, Azazel of the Light was not quite as holy as he seemed as he and what remained of his warriors are now trapped within the Undertemple forced to guard over Carnifex until the end of days, the Carnifex is destroyed by a third party or the Swords of Pious are put down. It also doesn’t help that Azazel has become a living embodiment of life, causing living things within the Undertemple to grow massively in size as well as become covered in hideous tumours. The Knights of the Pious are completely mad at best and at worst, have become far worse than the Goddess of suffering they have entombed. Of course, the PCs have no idea any of this is coming. They’re just looking for treasure and a good battle. Little did they know they would be forced to take a side in an ancient battle between powers beyond their understanding.
I really liked the back story given throughout the adventure, along with the motivations of Carnifex and Azazel. It makes up for the lack of a PC hook and the further you get into the adventure, the more engrossed the Keeper and the PCs alike will become in what turns out to be far more than a simple ransacking. The whole alignment thing is thrown out the window with the Law side being backstabbing insane psychopaths and the chaotic goddess just wanting to be free…and get a little revenge on the side. PCs can choose to side with either or take them both out. It all comes down to who makes up the party.
Jewels of the Carnifex is written for six to ten Level 3 characters. That’s an insane number of PCs…unless you’re used to Dungeon Crawl Classics. These adventures ten to be both unforgiving and extremely harsh to player characters, almost to the point where the writers want there to be a “Keeper Vs. Players” conflict going on. It’s almost Call of Cthulhu-esque in that it’s a matter of how and when your character dies horribly, not if. So the more PCs you have, the more likely at least one of them is going to come out alive. As well, Dungeon Crawl Classics tends to suggest that players have more than one character each, although I find that when games do this, they become even more two-dimensional roll-laying sessions rather than role-playing. Still, it’s a convention of the system and when you realize six to ten characters means three to five players, it’s not as overwhelming and chaotic as it might first appear.
As I mentioned above, Jewels of the Carnifex is an exceptionally cruel adventure with several deathtraps from which there is little to no escape. It all comes down to luck and being overly paranoid that even the very walls of a dungeon are out to get you. I really enjoyed the final deathtrap as it definitely relied on players using their wits rather than hacking through things. You usually don’t see logic puzzles in a Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure, so, like the emphasis on story, this really helped make Jewels of the Carnifex stand out amongst the many other adventures in this line that are little more than dice hucking Monty Haul affairs.
Finally, I’d be remiss without mentioning the artwork in this adventure. From the cover art by Doug Kovacs to the interior art by five different talented artists, the adventure looks and feels like it has travelled through time from the 1970s Lake Geneva, WI. I’m a big fan of this art style and I especially love the maps that Dungeon Crawl Classics have with their adventurers. Jewels of the Carnifex is as much fun to read and to look at as it is to play through and that’s damn impressive.
All in all, this is one of the better Dungeon Crawl Classics adventurers since the series broke off from using the OGL to its own system of mechanics. I really enjoyed it and think it’s a definite must buy for fans of the DCC line. If your players require more of a setup or motivation than the old cliché of “Here’s a map, now go get the treasure.” You might have to spend a little time coming up with a better hook. Aside from that though, this is yet another hit for the Dungeon Crawl Classics system.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/08/01/tabletop-review-adventu
res-dark-and-deep-a-curious-volume-of-forgotten-lore/
Back in March of this year, I, along with 243 other Gygaxians took part in a Kickstarter to fund Adventures Dark and Deep: A Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore. It was quite successful, garnering Joseph (who I always want to call Robert) Bloch three times the money he was looking for. I’ll admit I’m not the most diehard D&D fan on the planet even though I’ve written for both the TSR and WotC versions of the game. I always gravitated more towards Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu and Vampire: The Masquerade as a kid, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t love D&D. I remember combing through old issues of Dragon magazine, reading the Wilderness Survival Guide and Oriental Adventures with apt fascination and enjoy the game books about D&D even though playing it wasn’t as fun as my big three (mainly due to who I knew that played each game as a kid). Adventures Dark & Deep became the first D&D based Kickstarter I’ve funded out of the eighty-odd projects I’ve given money to. I’m still not sure what drew me to it exactly. Perhaps it was the premise of Mr. Bloch trying to piece together things written by the late, great E. Gary Gygax to present what his version of Second Edition AD&D might look like had he not “left” TSR in 1985 that intrigued me. Perhaps I just liked the play on anagrams with both titles (Advanced Dungeons and Dragons/Adventures Dark and Deep = AD&D.). Whatever the reason, I knew I wanted to be a part of this project, even if it was just financially.
On July 27th, the PDF version of the book (which was the level I had backed at arrived by a link to RPGNow.com. By the evening of the 28th, I had read the entire book twice. I have to say that I’m looking forward to seeing the next few ADandD products Mr. Bloch puts out. Although there’s a lot in this book that I would never personally use in my own AD&D campaign and other information I felt was mostly retread or stuff that has already been covered repeatedly, Mr. Bloch’s writing style and the entire book really did look, feel and read like it was straight out the TSR brain trust in the late 70s/early 80s. So while a good part of the book isn’t something that will ever see the light of day in any D&D or OSR campaign that I personally partake in, it was still both entertaining and informative to read. I was definitely hit with strong waves of nostalgia through both my reads of this tome.
Before going into the content proper, I do want to state the artwork in A Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore, all done by Brian “Glad” Thomas” is excellent. Again, the images feel like they were ripped straight out of old TSR manuals (and even a bit of Dragonmirth from the old Dragon magazine). From the cover image that is both comical and dramatic to the black and white interior pictures, I was hit with images how D&D used to look and how much I missed that style. Kobolds reminiscent of dogs rather that dragonpeople? Beautiful. I especially loved Glad’s trolls as they were exactly the ones I remembered from my childhood. Bloch made a great choice for the artist and I really hope Brian Thomas returns for the other Adventures Dark and Deep books.
So what’s in Adventures Dark and Deep: A Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore? Well a lot. Besides a great deal of content, there are tables for everything the book covers. So many random tables! If you had any doubts that this book would be true to the spirit of 1e AD&D, all you need is to see the sheer volume of tables contained therein. There are also five new characters for the game: The Bard, The Jester, the Mountebank, the Mystic and the Savant. All of these classes are fairly interesting, but I can’t see too many people actually choosing one as their character class.
You might be stating to yourself, “but the Bard WAS in both first and second edition AD&D.” That’s true, but remember, First Edition’s Bard class was a terrible mess in every way possible and the Second Edition Bard isn’t necessarily in line with what Gygax’s retooling of the bard would be. Bloch’s Bard is still a mix of mage and thief classes, but with some new skills like Distract, Listen at Doors and Slight of Hand thrown in. As well, Bloch’s Bard has spells that are a mix of Druid, Mage, Illusionist and Cleric spells, making them a little more versatile. At the same time Bardic magic occurs through music, and so it is handled quite differently from the AD&D 2e Bard. Finally, Bards learn spells through listening to other bards, both friends and foe. This makes a rather unique way for studying magic.
The Jester was a class brought up once or twice in Dragon magazine, although generally as an April’s Fool’s joke. Although the magazine did contain full character class rules, like the Bard, Bloch has completely retooled the Jester for this book. Here the Jester is a sub-class of the Bard who engages in pranks and verbal banter. It’s a bit akin to the Thief-Acrobat from Unearthed Arcana but with more pratfalls. I like that two of the Jester’s equivalent to thief skills are Fire Breathing and Knife Throwing, but I can’t see the class really worth playing as and I especially didn’t like that the Jester can learn up to Fourth Level spells, including things like Fireball, Lightning Bolt and Stone to Flesh. These don’t fit the theme of the character (or any Jester really) at all.
The Mountebank is a specific type of thief, specifically a con man or trickster. It’s a nice change from the all-purpose Rogue, but it is a bit redundant. Still, it’s one of the two classes I liked best in the book and probably the one I’d be most likely to play. My big complaint is that like every class in this book, the Mountebank gets access to magic spells at some point. Every class shouldn’t be able to cast spells. There’s just too much magic being handed out to the new classes here.
The Mystic is a Cleric sub-class and the other class that I really like. It feels more like an Eastern holy person than the Western one typified by the usual Cleric. I also like how certain spells such as the Crystal Magic and Awaken Chakra series stack. It’s the most balanced class of the five and I especially enjoyed some of the optional abilities like taking a vow of silence in exchange for extra EX and losing the verbal requirement for all spells.
The final class introduced here is the Savant and it’s a really odd duck. First, the minimum starting age for a Savant is roughly twice all other classes in D&D games. Meaning you’re likely to have a First Level Savant be in their mid thirties to early forties when other characters are in their late teens are early twenties. I get that the savant is basically a sage, but the age restriction doesn’t make sense for what you get with the class. After all, a fifth level Magic-User will have more power and knowledge than a beginning Savant and a fraction of their age to boot. You’re definitely better off with the Magic-User or Illusionist if you’re playing a D&D game than with this class. The Savant is a pretty good idea, but it really needed to be retooled a bit as it really just feels like a weaker mage that can read Druid, Cleric and Mystic scrolls at higher levels. That’s not really all that impressive.
So two of the classic are quite good, one it a bust and two are…okay. Not bad all things considering.
Next up is a new version of Secondary Skills. In Second Edition AD&D, this was something optional that you rolled for on a chart and you basically had that knowledge and skill set starting out, never to be touched again. With Forgotten Lore, you don’t start with any secondary skill (then what did your character do before they became a mage or paladin?). Instead you purchase the skills with experience points, which I really detest the idea of. Perhaps it’s from childhood experience with the American version of Lunar 2 for the Sega-CD, but I’ve learned that any time you are forced to purchase something with experience points, it’s a bad thing. Especially when it’s something not necessarily all that helpful in-game like the version of secondary skills put forth here. Hmm, I could gain another level, or I could be slightly better at making armour or courtly intrigue. Considering early AD&D was more roll-playing than role-playing, this system doesn’t work for me. I do like the ability to gain new levels in Secondary Skills, but again, the spending of experience points is a concept I just really strongly dislike. Plus, how do you explain it in-game? “Well, my killing of this dragon meant that I was suddenly better at crafting necklaces rather than fighting?” It just doesn’t work for me at all. I do love the Secondary Skills presented here, but I’d definitely retool the system to have you start off with a level in one at Level 1 and then gain a new level in the skill you already have or a new one every three to five levels or so.
There are a lot of little concepts presented throughout the book that I had fun with, such as a reminder about cost of living upkeep for characters – which is something a lot of DMs forget about. This is ingrained in me as a Shadowrun player so whenever I’ve DM’d, I’d made this something my D&D players had to partake in. Bloch really does have a great eye for the little but still no less important details that so many gamers sadly overlook.
There’s a very long and detailed section of the book devoted to what is called an “Alternate Combat System,” but there’s nothing dramatically different from the usual “THACO” style of gameplay. There’s a bit devoted to helmets for AC, weapon proficiencies and two-weapon fighting, but all of these are things covered in TSR made D&D books, both 1e and 2e, so I’m not sure why Bloch devotes space to them here. Things like a giant list of melee weapons and detailed descriptions of them are already in Player Handbooks, so they weren’t really needed here. It’s all stuff gamers practically know by heart. I would have excised this entire section for something else. It’s almost as if this section was written for people that have never played D&D before AT ALL. I think we all know when to roll Saving Throws, that a scimitar does 1d8 damage and so on. I did like the Unarmed Combat bits as well as the adjusting armour class based on what type of weapon was being used against it, but the chart for the latter is a little too extreme. The idea works just as well if you simplified it to bludgeoning, slashing and piercing rather than a break out for several dozen different weapons.
I do like the concept and follow through of the “Alternate Treasure Method” which breaks hordes down into things like jewelry, paintings and more specific tangibles that force parties to think about what they are going to do. After all, it’s quite hard to carry out 10,000 copper pieces from the 10th level of a dungeon. It’s also hard in a different way to abscond with a large painting that is as fragile as it is valuable. This section has a ton of tables that detail everything from breaking down sundries to various furs. It’s so in-depth it’s a bit frightening. I also really liked how the game brings up that selling treasures generally doesn’t net you the full value of something. Ever sold something to a pawn shop or reseller? You don’t get what you paid for it, even if it’s in perfect condition. The same holds for going to a fencer in a fantasy game. Again, another incredible eye for detail that a lot of manuals and DMS both overlook.
The next section is a wonderful bit on waterborne travel, combat and encounters. I’ve always loved water based adventures so this was a real treat to me. That section is then followed up by a large compilation of new magic spells. It’s almost thirty pages long and details new magic spells for the five new character classes. From there we move on to “The Game Environment” which basically gives DM advice about various locales and situations. A lot of it is common sense that anyone who has dabbled in D&D should know, but I enjoyed the wilderness and underwater bits. I was a bit thrown by having leprosy being a worse disease than mummy rot or lycanthropy and that the bloody thing is almost untreatable. I’m not sure the reasoning behind doing this as I’m sure someone, somewhere will take offense. My favorite part of this section was the bits on natural disasters. Concepts like exploding volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, tidal waves and tornados are, once again, common enough real world events that most DMs never think about and so it’s nice to have something for them.
The penultimate section of the book is devoted to magic items. Almost all of this has been seen before. Many of these items are ripped straight from other D&D books and the section on intelligent weapons will be equally familiar to most of you. I’d rather have seen these pages devoted to all new magic items rather than a retread of items that already exist in the D&D world and reworked tables for them.
The final section is “Monsters” and I have to admit, although I liked the optional rule of giant (and larger) creatures doing additional damage, I was little creeped out by eight and a half pages being devoted to the Judeo-Christian angels. Now I don’t have a problem with the concept of angels in role playing games at all. It’s that Bloch uses actual Judeo-Christian angels like Gabriel, Metatron, Michael and more in the game. I think this is going to definitely offend someone, somewhere. I think religion in fantasy role-playing games are best left to either dead Earth religions or completely made-up ones. When you start having Jesus fighting Takhisis or act out a battle where Shiva and Allah are killed by Vecna, you are just opening a door to stupidity that is very hard to close. This was just an all-around very bad idea that would have the potential of earning itself a “Dark Dungeons” style Chick tract if this was a more mainstream release. Besides this major faux pas, the other monsters are interesting, but nothing groundbreaking. Some new giants, some poisonous coral (?!), a few new dragons, a lot of pages devoted to gnomes and men and a narwhal. Odd selections overall, but worth flipping through.
In all, Adventures Dark and Deep: A Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore is a fun read for any fan of old school AD&D and its retro-clone spin-offs. The mileage you will actually get from this book will vary greatly depending on who you game with and more importantly HOW you game. Even though I personally would only use a fraction of this book in an AD&D game that I’d run, it’s still a very well written book well worth the ten dollar asking price of the PDF. Even if you never use anything directly from A Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore, there are still some interesting ideas worth reading about (or debating/discussing with your gaming friends), some wonderful art to look at and some well thought out ideas that most campaigns never even think of, but probably should. At the end of the day, I’m glad I helped in some very small way to bring A Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore into print and if you’re a fan of games like Lamentations of the Flame Princess, OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord and any other homage/tribute/rip-off of first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, seriously consider picking up this first Adventures Dark and Deep offering. You won’t be disappointed and I’m really looking forward to seeing what comes next from BRW Games.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/07/27/tabletop-review-dungeon
-crawl-classics-free-rpg-day-2012/
I love the concept of Free RPG Day. It sprang from Free Comic Book Day and gives newcomers or those on a limited budget a chance to taste what tabletop gaming has to offer. Unlike Free Comic Book Day however, I’ve never personally picked anything up on Free RPG Day, mainly because I get so many free review copies sent to me that it feels a bit dirty taking more stuff for free. Instead I’d rather see those copies go to a younger gamer just getting into the hobby or someone who loves a system but can’t afford to buy a lot. The one thing I really wanted from this year was the Dungeon Crawl Classics offering, as it was two full adventures! Goodman Games always tends to be up there with Wizards of the Coast and Paizo in terms of the most impressive freebies, which is all the more notable as Goodman Games is a fraction of the size of either big company.
I will admit I was pleased to see a free review copy head my way a month after Free RPG Day, as I love the Dungeon Crawl Classics system. However, I was a bit shocked and dismayed to see Goodman Games is charging five bucks for what was originally free. That’s kind of a disservice to gamers who didn’t get out to Free RPG Day or worse, didn’t have a retailer anywhere near them that was participating. EVERYTHING else for Free RPG Day that is now available as a PDF online is still free, from Catalyst Game Labs’ Shadowrun Quick Start Rules to Eden Studios Conspiracy X Introductory Kit. Why Goodman Games is SELLING this is not only beyond me, but it also comes off more than a little slimy. I took Chaosium to task for doing the same thing with their Call of Cthulhu Quick Start Rules back in April (which also came with a full length adventure BTW), and Chaosium came right out, admitted they were wrong, apologized over at DriveThruRPG.com and made it free to everyone. Goodman Games really should follow suit and unfortunately until the price tag on this changes, I have to strongly recommend that NO ONE buy this because of the message that sends.
The good news is however, that in terms of actual quality, the two adventures in this Free RPG Day release are top notch and in fact the first one in the offering is my favorite adventure for the system so far! “The Undulating Corruption” is an adventure for four Level 5 characters. This is one of the higher level adventurers out there and if you’re a DCC fan, you know that reaching Level 5 is a pretty impressive feat. It’s great to see an adventure already made for characters that manage to survive long enough to hit this point. What makes the adventure even better is that it revolves around the ability to remove corruption from your characters! Corruption is a DCC aspect of magic where PCs will slowly be mentally and/or physically altered by their use of arcane forces. For those that haven’t played Dungeon Crawl Classics think of it as akin to a failed Ravenloft Powers Check or a large failed sanity roll in Call of Cthulhu. The fact that characters can be completely cleansed of their Corruption by going through this adventure makes it one that nearly all DCC players will want to experience once they are high enough to play this. That the adventure is exceptionally well done and a lot of fun to play makes it all the sweeter.
The crux of “The Undulating Corruption” is that an extra-planar creature known as the Night Worm has broken free from its ancient prison. This monstrosity, which feeds on the taint of corruption is not a benevolent creature on the side of good. Rather it is a purely chaotic creature that just happens to have a positive side effect…if you let it swallow you whole and defecate you out. PCs will have to track down the Night Worm and stop its trail of slime, devastation and horrible mutations as its very blood and ichor spawn horrible Corruption Beasts. Can the heroes slay the Night Worm, or is the possibility of magic free corruption too great a temptation that they will try to capture or subdue this ancient horror? There are many ways that this adventure can go, although the text does push the DM to try and have PCs kill the Night Worm. It’s a fairly straight forward linear adventure and one that features little to no dungeon crawling at all. It’s a nice change of pace from the average DCC adventure which tend to be, “Here’s a dungeon. Now go stab things.” Those are always fun for what they are, but a cross country-race against time to stop a rampaging abomination really stands out all the more against the bulk of DCC releases.
“The Jeweler That Dealt in Stardust” is the name of other adventure in this collection. It’s for Level 3 characters, but the amount of PCs needed is not listed. The adventure does suggest that at least one (with a preference towards ALL) of the PCs is a thief. The adventure is a heist, pure and simple, and this is another great idea that really stands out from the pack of hack and slash adventures out there. Pure heist adventures are so rare for a fantasy game, left more to systems like Shadowrun. Of course, like any good heist story, this one goes off the rails pretty quickly, leaving PCs to deal with one unexpected twist after another. In the case of this adventure, Boss Ogo, a premier fencer has not been seen in a month and people are assuming the worst has finally befallen him. As a fence, Ogo was privy to a lot of expensive and/or rare items and there’s no doubt that his home is not only full of these valuables, but is also ripe for the picking…once you get past a litany of deathtraps, that is. Can the PCs get in and out without any real issues, thus making a name for themselves amongst the thieves of the world? There’s a potential fortune to be had after all…
The truth of the adventure is that Boss Ogo is still alive and continues to dwell within his manor. It’s just that he has become the servant to a creature from beyond the stars known as the Spider-Mother, Ygiiz, and plans to open an inter-dimensional portal for Ygiiz and her children to come through and ravage our world. So maybe being dead would have been better for everyone else. To top it off, Ogo’s old crew has reorganized without him and are watching over the manor, making sure no one defiles it. So players will have to sneak past this guild of thieves, enter the manor, dealt with what awaits inside and stop Ogo and Ygiiz’s machinations. That’s a little bit more than a simple grab and go treasure hunt, eh?
“The Jeweler That Dealt In Stardust” is a fun little adventure that combines the usual hack and slash with an Ocean’s Eleven style twist. There’s not a lot of combat but when there is, it’s fairly intense. Like a good horror movie, this adventure throws one last combat situation at the PCs after the think everything is done and over with…which will most likely to lead several players saying adieu to their character as they are butchered horribly. It sounds mean, but Dungeon Crawl Classics is anything but kind to PCs.
Overall, this really was the best offering from Free RPG Day 2012 and it shows just why Dungeon Crawl Classics is as popular as it is in just its first full year of existence. Still, it feels more than a little slimy to charge five dollars for an electronic version of something that was given away for free, especially when all the other Free RPG 2012 offerings are out there, costing gamers nothing. If Goodman Games corrects this, then this is a must have for ANY gamer as it will surely suck you into the Dungeon Crawl Classics system. At five dollars though, you’re still getting two of the best adventures I’ve seen for the systems so far, but it’s hard to recommend something of even this quality knowing that it shouldn’t have a price tag at all.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/07/27/tabletop-review-shadowr
un-mil-tech-spec-2/
Mil Spec Tech 2 is another in Catalyst Game Lab’s line of Shadowrun stat block supplements. Much like Parabotany, Used Car Lot and Gun Heaven 2, you’re getting a bunch of stats with a running theme thrown slapped together in a little supplement with JackPoint flavor text and some full colour art to complete the deal. The theme of Mil Spec Tech 2 (not to be confused with Tech Specs from the old Generation One Transformers), is that Glitch (a famous Shadowrunner in the metagame) has acquired the newest Ares (a Megacorp) security catalog. What follows are twenty-nine pages from the catalog, coupled with commentary from the participants of JackPoint and of course, stat blocks for each item.
Remember that all the items in this supplement are high level military items that are expensive even for a small country, so PCs should rarely get a hold of any of them. Rather, they’re going to be on the receiving end. With one of the submarines even Kane (one of the more outlandish and badass Shadowrunners on JackPoint) remarks he wouldn’t think of stealing it as every corporation and government on Earth would try to kill you dead for doing so. Of course, some gamers are going to read that and in true powergaming/munchkin style want to steal one. If you’re the one running Shadowrun for your friends, try not to let the items contained within this supplement turn your campaign into a Monty Haul affair, because some players WILL try and do just that.
So what’s IN Mil Spec Tech 2? Well, at only thirty-one pages, not a lot, but at least what’s here is pretty interesting. You’ve got five drones (one air one robot, three land), two APCs (Armoured Personnel Carrier), an infantry carrier, two missile launching trucks, a VTOL, a stealth bomber, two fighter planes, a frigate, a submarine, a destroyer, three guns, a torpedo, a defense laser, and finally, eleven types of missiles. So that’s thirty-three exotic items that are, while interesting to read about, are things that the vast majority of PCs will never come in contact with unless you are doing a campaign revolving around the Aztlan-Amazonian war down in South America. So to really get any use out of this supplement (other than the joy of reading it), you’ll want to craft an adventure revolving around some of these. Perhaps breaking in to a military base to extract a person, or blow up the new 5.2 million frigate. It’ll take a bit of work to fit anything within Mil Tech Spec 2 into your Shadowrun campaign, but if you can come up with a quality adventure, then the results will be memorable.
At $7.95, it’s hard to recommend something like Mil Spec Tech 2Shadowrun player. While this is a very well written piece with some nice exotic equipment and armaments, the cost is just too high for what you’re getting – especially when this is a very niche product in the first place. When I look at things like the Shadowrun Missions that only cost $3.95 and are also in full colur and roughly the same page length at Mil Spec Tech 2, I find myself wondering why the more useful product is half the cost as a stat dump piece. I think CGL has sort of screwed themselves by offering so many high quality supplements and adventures at a far more affordable price. Then the stat dump pieces, which have far less content and mediocre art, become far less appealing when looked at discerningly. I think the sweet spot price-wise for something like this is going to be around $4.95. Otherwise you’re just paying too much for too little. This is definitely a step up from Used Car Lot in terms of quality, but it also has three less pages so checks and balances, I suppose. Parabotany is another great example of the stat dump concept done right by CGL. It’s the same idea, layout and blocking at Mil Tech Spec 2. It even has the same price point. Parabotany, however, has a page count of 51 compared to 31 and so you’re getting a much bigger bang for your buck there.
In all, I can’t really recommend this supplement unless you pick up everything CGL puts out for Shadowrun. It’s a nicely done piece, but the cost of Mil Tech Spec 2 doesn’t line up with what you’re actually getting – both in terms of page count and content. Wait for a price drop and then pick it up. You might not get much use out of it in an actual game, but it will be a fun read.
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