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Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/09/14/tabletop-review-dungeon
-crawl-classics-72-beyond-the-black-gate/
Man it sure seems like Goodman games puts out Dungeon Crawl Classics adventures at the same pace White Wolf released V:TM supplements in the mid to late 90s, eh? Here I am again with another DCC adventure, the fourth since late July (including the Free RPG release). That’s a pretty hectic schedule.
If you’re familiar with DCC adventures then you know they are low on plot and dialogue, but high on hack and slash dungeon crawling. It’s easy to say some of them have more roll-playing than role-playing, but there’s a definite audience for that. With Beyond the Black Gate, this is still true, but there’s a lot more of a story here than in most DCC adventures. In fact you’ll be going through two very different locations, dealing with three dungeons and a story that can unfold in many different ways – most of them horrific. The player characters start off in a bad situation and things quickly get even worse. Their sailing vessel is destroyed by a terrible storm and those that survive are enlisted by a cantankerous crone to enter another dimension known as the Thrice-Tenth Kingdom. There the PCs will have to battle their way through an apocalyptic Iceland, do battle with triclops-style ice giants and retrieve the horned crown of the Horned King for the hag. Unfortunately it’s even harder than it sounds, but players will be richly rewarded for completing this quest, whether they betray the witch and merely set the Horned King free from his otherworldly trap, or they slay him and take the crown as their own.
I really enjoyed Beyond the Black Gate, but there are three issues I have with it. The first is that like most DCC adventures, this is made for WAY too many characters. Beyond the Black Gate is designed for between six and ten 5th Level characters. How often do you get a game of that size going? That’s way too many characters. I know Dungeon Crawl Classics wants people to play multiple characters, but even if you have an group of four players (which seems to be the most common game size of any system), that’s still 2.5 character PER PLAYER. When this happens, the personality of characters as well as their individual quirks can be lost and the party becomes a collective of bland murdering machines. Again, some people like that and it’s a trope of the system, but I like memorable characters and situations. My advice is to run Beyond the Black Gate for less characters but at a higher level as it will be far more rewarding. There are some great roleplaying opportunities here – from deciding what to do with the Horned King to how to deal with a certain mad dwarven fool.
Another issue I had with this particular adventure is it’s almost too lethal. DCC adventures tend to be written from the perspective of “Let’s get a TPK (total party kill)!” However, Beyond the Black Gate has several instances where it you are making a saving throw versus instant death. Whether it’s being drowned by a storm or buried by an avalanche, there will be some players that die before the first combat of the adventure and that’s…a little harah in my book. There’s also the fact that the adventure tells the DM that players simply won’t be able to hack and slash their way through this adventure and they’ll have to think their way through or be murdered by an ice giant onslaught. However…MINDLESS DUNGEON CRAWL STYLE SLAUGHTER IS WHAT DUNGEON CRAWL CLASSICS IS PRIMARILY ABOUT AS A SYSTEM! Arrrrgh! You can’t sit there and say, “Each adventure is 100% good, solid dungeon crawl” in the opening of this very adventure when the statement doesn’t actually ring true. This is more a “sneak, run and strike from behind” adventure than the dungeon hack. I’m fine with that, but don’t promote the adventure as something it actually ISN’T. Finally, the adventure just ends at the climax; at least in terms of laying out what happens. You’re there with the Horned King, you make your choice as what to do with him and then a horde of giants hits the throne room. Then…nothing. The adventure gives no advice or information as to how to run this combat or any idea of how the PCs can get out of it…especially since the adventure was designed up to this point with enemies they can’t be through pure brute strength. This is really bad and I can’t believe this aspect of the adventure made it through the editing process, especially as Goodman himself is usually very particular about this sort of thing. A good DM can deal with this poorly written climax, but those with less experience are going to have a lot of trouble running this thing.
Now that’s not to say the whole adventure is bad. It’s not. Far from it, in fact. Beyond the Black Gate has a truly memorable setup, a very cool plot, some great antagonists for the party to deal with and some truly big decisions to make. The adventure also boasts some incredible artwork by the always awesome Doug Kovacs. Like all DCC adventures, Beyond the Black Gate boasts some of the best maps in the history of the business and definitely the best out of any currently published system. Hell, sometimes I just want to recommend the adventures just for the quality of the maps! It’s just the adventure not only falls apart at the climax but it highlights the two biggest problems with a lot of Dungeon Crawl Classics adventures…and then exacerbates them. With the help of a good editor, this could have been a lot better. As it stands, it’s merely an okay affair; something that only gets a thumb’s in the middle. As I’ve said though, an enterprising and experienced DM can rewrite this thing so that it works a lot better from the climax on through and someone like that could really make Beyond the Black Gate a highlight of a DCC campaign.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/09/14/tabletop-review-shadowr
un-the-land-of-promise/
Back in the days of Second Edition, before I was old enough to vote (and at one point drive), FASA released a book called Tir Tairngire, a 158 page guide to the elven nation of the same name. Now Catalyst Game Labs has revived the topic with The Land of Promise. Unfortunately this guide is nowhere as long, deep, or informative. It does clock in at only twenty-four pages after all, nineteen of which are all fiction rather than things for a Gamemaster to outright use. The price point of $5.95 isn’t bad considering this is in full colour and it’s fun to read, but for only two dollars more you can get the 2050s book on the same topic with far more content. Sure, it’s outdated, but for those just looking for a more in-depth look at the locale, it might be a better investment.
So what are you getting for your six dollars? Well, as I said, it’s mostly fiction. You get a four page fiction story about a beat cop and his encounter with some of the Tir princes. Then it’s JackPoint regulars talking about the movers and shakers within the Tir. This is done in a pretty amusing fashion through the use of a Tir Tairngire marketing piece complete with “Grimmy the Grimoire” who reminds me a lot of the old paperclip with Microsoft Word that we all knew and despised. This JackPoint section goes on for thirteen pages and it mostly goes into the various princes and the main city of Portland/Cara’Sir. I really enjoyed the bit on the princes, but as always with a purely JackPoint article, it’s impossible to separate the in-game facts from the rumours and outright misinformation. As such, Gamemasters need to pick and choose what they want to take from this section. I like this as it lets you decide what’s “real” for your campaign, at least until CGL comes out with another supplement or adventure that confirms what is the truth in the meta-game. I will say that my one problem with this section is that it doesn’t feel like it was written by anyone who has actually lived (or even visited?) Portland. As an ex-resident of Portland, I found the bits on the actual city to read more like names were pulled from a Google search or Wikipedia which were then inserted haphazardly as opposed to any real research of the city. I had the same problem with the section on DeeCee (where I currently live) in Conspiracy Theories. I guess whenever I read a supplement or sourcebook on a location I want things to live up to the quality of White Wolf’s “By Night” books from Second Edition Vampire: The Masquerade. Still, if you’re a fan of Sixth World fiction, this is a really fun read.
The last five pages of the book are stats and mechanics for your Shadowrun campaign. If you’re not into the meta-game fiction, than that means you’re paying six bucks for four pages of content that you’ll actually use. Which is, suffice to say, not worth the asking price. I, however, really enjoy the fiction CGL puts out (sometimes more so than the actual crunch!), so I’m just happy to have both here! There’s a page of plot hooks, but it’s primarily a plug for Elven Blood, a series of five adventures that isn’t even out yet unless you went to PAX or GenCon. Personally I would have put the fiction in this supplement with the adventures of that con exclusive PDF to make a bigger book, but that’s just me. I do feel the plug for Elven Blood feels a bit odd, but at least they give you eleven plot hooks, even if they aren’t the best ones. From there we get three pages of NPC stats for easy use and then a third of a page on a magical society known as “The Moonlight Thorns.”
So all, in all, you’re not getting a lot for your six dollars. If you’re not a big fan of Shadowrun fiction, you can easily pass on this supplement. Fans of the Tir though may want to pick it up just to read the JackPoint bits and see if there is anything that they can glean out of it for their own campaign or even just a single adventure. It’s well written and you do get hints of things to come like the 2075 election and even a cameo by Harlequin. However, I can’t help being a bit disappointed considering Second Edition’s look at the same region and the fact this probably should have been bundled with Eleven Blood to make a larger, more useful sourcebook. Let’s call it a thumb’s in the middle. The Land of Promise is entertaining and a wonderful read if nothing else.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/09/13/tabletop-review-hackmas
ter-basic/
I think Hackmaster falls pretty firmly in the retro-clone category. Seeing as it basically began as a parody of Dungeons and Dragons and then grew from that, it’s kind of hard to classify it as anything else. If retro-clone has negative connotations for you, it shouldn’t! Hackmaster seems like a great take on classic fantasy-based roleplaying.
The Tome of Hackmaster Basic
Hackmaster is known for having a lot of material available, and sometimes that material comes in strange shapes and sizes. This particular volume is over 200 pages of free game that feels like someone ripped the important parts out of several 2nd and 1st ed. D&D books and then bound them together. Basically what the book does is give you a little introduction to the game, then it thrusts a bunch of character sheets in your face with pre-gen characters on them (which is great, I am a huge proponent of pre-gens). After multiple (and I mean multiple) pages the basic attributes are explained. If you’ve played any standard RPG, I don’t have to explain these to you at all; you’ve got your standard Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, etc. The only novel and cool addition is Honor. Honor is tied to several things, enough so that it actually has its own chapter. How you role-play your character, your bravery, adherence to your alignment, and so on is all honor.
Ok, bring on the character adornment. Pick a class, then pick your stuff. You’ve got weapons and armor, spells for every magic class, abilities for other classes, all the fun stuff that makes character creation interesting (and also makes it take up a full session, remember how I liked pre-gens?). This takes up an enormous chunk of the book. And guess how much I care to relate it all to you? Not at all really. Spell and item lists concern me very, very little.
How to Hack
Jack knew how to hack. He hacked a track back to his shack, then he whacked a plaque celebrating the birth of his nephew Mac before tripping on a crack and falling in a sack. Combat, do you speak it?
Imagine you are playing Hackmaster with your golf team, and suddenly Benjamin gets a wild hare and decides to take a swing at some Orc you’ve been sweet-talking into letting you through the gate. Does he just role-play the event out and let everyone at the table decide how he did? Heck no! He’s got to roll the dice like everybody else. But in Hackmaster, he’s also got to decide his move and then when the GM “counts up” to his initiative, take it. Yes, the GM literally counts from 1 (the first second, as the action moves in seconds) and goes on up until the initiative roll for each person in the encounter is reached. If you are attacked by someone or something before your initiative is counted to, consider yourself surprised. I expect it will hurt. But what does Benjamin roll? A d20 of course! This wouldn’t be a decent retro-clone if you didn’t roll d20s.
Once you’ve been attacked, you get a defensive roll, imagine that. If you don’t have a shield or some defensive item, you’ll be rolling at a disadvantage. Even if you do have a shield, if you fail to defend well enough, the attacker is going to get through and smack you, hard.
Ok, all irreverence aside, combat feels like a more elegant Dungeons and Dragons with one of the differences being your weapon’s speed being taken into account for how many times you can attack in a battle (i.e. on how many “counts” you get to take a shot). The second-by-second action really feels tactical. At this point the combat is explained by an awesome Knights of the Dinner Table comic. I must say, it is quite enjoyable, and it’s a nice combat example.
Included near the back of the book are two low-level adventures, which are a bit short and not terribly fleshed out, but they’ll service. You’ve got your GM advice, monsters, treasure tables, and such all crammed into the back of the book with ads and various other inserts. Which brings me to my next point…
This book has been hacked
The book is a gosh-darned mess. However, that’s not really detrimental to its usefulness. The sections are nice and self-contained, usually not too long. It has a bit of a “wall of text” feel to it most of the time and I get the feeling that if I had to look for a specific rule I would be lost reading paragraphs for a while until I found it. You’ve got full-color Hacklopedia of Beasts mixed in with the basic monsters; various color inserts, comics, and what look like the back covers of various books at the end of chapters or sections; a general tossed-about feeling; and no index! But hey, this is the free version so you get what you pay for. Real fans will pay, and who knows what you might get then? More classes, character advancement, races, heck there’s a nice spreadsheet on page 18 letting you know what cold, hard cash gets you.
Retro-what? Why do I care?
Listen, I’ve been a bit silly with this book, and it’s partly because it all seems so familiar to me (and I don’t want to exhaust you, the reader, with all of the countless details in such a large volume). I’ve played enough D&D and enough RPGs (tabletop, computer, whatever) to where this is another variation of the same ol’ thing. And that’s fine. I think there are some really cool ideas in here, and things that would be great for the person looking for a classic feel with some nice crunch that isn’t ridiculous to churn through. Have you played classic D&D? If not, and you are interested, this is pretty darn close. For the price of free, it’s definitely worth a look.
One of the reasons I’m not really interested in it is because it is another combat-centric, loot-acquiring platform. I mean, that’s pretty much what classic RPGs are about and that can make them really enjoyable, I’m just saying I’m not really interested.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/09/11/tabletop-review-30-stav
es/
Introduction: This twelve page supplement by Rite Publishing introduces a “slew” of staves for a GM to introduce into a fantasy RPG mainly Pathfinder but with little or no change, can be used in any fantasy RPG of any edition. My two Pathfinder gaming groups found the staves contained within this product to be very original and they will certainly add flavor to the game depending which ones are allowed to be found as treasure or whatever venue makes them available.
Contents: The contents of this supplement is concentrated on magical staves of various levels of power whether it be a wondrous magical item, a stave used as a weapon, staves of legendary status and of course, staves as artifacts. The authors of this supplement have used a diverse flavor of colorful names designated with each stave and that alone really made the supplement stick. No longer are they just staves of power or staves of fire. It is now a Staff of Banishment, the Staff of the Liberator, Staff of the Fearmonger, Staff of Feast and Famine, and many others. Artwork is spread throughout the supplement to give the staves some type of visual representation and they were done very well. A feat is contained for those players who wish to create lesser staves in the event a player desires to do so and the GM allows. There is a bit of added content concerning the creation of other types of staves that are legendary and how to destroy them if it is needed. The information contained in this supplement will give staves the true reputation they deserve.
Positive Notes: Very excellent supplement that can really add a lot of dimension to a GM’s game with the use of staves. Some of the staves contained are certainly extremely powerful but they can be utilized as an item that must be recovered before the enemy can capture it or it can be a staff where the player has no clue of its true power. The players who reviewed some of this product with me found it to be very deserving of praise and as usual I agree. They noted to me that most players of RPG’s usually do not consider staves as weapons and this product has brought that into the light that they are exceptional if used as weapons. There is no doubt in my mind that some of these items will eventually find a way into my Pathfinder games in the future. The artwork contained was well done and provided excellent visual examples of the staves presented in this supplement. After reviewing this product the past few days, it is certainly a “homerun”
Negative Notes: None at all.
Overall Review: This product is a must have at a GM’s table. If a GM allows the use of such magical items, then this is the product to own. It will provide many an item that can be used for the benefit of the party or as a tool by the enemy to defeat them. The supplement is well written and the art contained very worthy. Well done job and certainly gets a thumbs up from me and my two pathfinder groups I host at my residence.
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Originally posted at: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_reviews_write.php?prod
ucts_id=103476
Introduction: This excellent and well presented supplement brings into the game battle standards such as cavalry guidons, garrison flags, banners, pennons, infantry guidons, vexillums, and sashimonos. These battle standards will assist an adventuring party in a variety of ways, but usually in combat, whether it be offensively or defensively. The battle standards, depending on which one, can also assist fortifications as well. There are numerous examples of each type of battle standard and the unique ability(ies) they award the user if used appropriately.
Contents: Contained within this supplement are thirty different types of battle standards from various cultures that can be used in a campaign setting, primarily for Pathfinder, but with little or no conversion, can be used with other game systems. I found this supplement extremely helpful and very fulfilling, since a few players in my Pathfinder games and I like to play paladins and cavaliers, for which this product is primarily designed. Under each type of battle standard is a chart that will assist the GM with costs of the battle standards if a group of players wanted to purchase them. There is also a very detailed description of each standard covered, with the special abilities they convey to the party utilizing them correctly. The artwork and examples of the standards are exceptional and provide wonderful insight on how they look when fully created. The generalized feat “flagbearer” is provided to assist those players interested in picking this combat feat to allow for the use of battle standards in a campaign. There is also an interesting NPC provided as well to exemplify the role of a character with the “flagbearer” feat.
Positive Notes: After my reading of this supplement and review from my gaming group, we have found this product to be very worthwhile and certainly worth purchasing. This in turn has motivated 2 members of my group to really explore the possibilities of playing a class (especially the cavalier) and taking advantage of the benefits of carrying a battle standard into combat or whatever scenario might present itself. The artwork of the types of battle standards covered in the product is done very nicely. For those who have battle standards on miniatures, this is the supplement to own as these can be used to imprint upon the various standards on many a miniature carrying them.
Negative Notes: None at all.
Overall Review: I find this a must have item at a GM’s table who allows the use of battle standards in their game. The supplement was welcomed into my two gaming groups with open arms and they all generally agree with my assessment that this is a must have supplement. The use of the artwork can encompass more than just an RPG and be designed for miniatures and other such props to introduce in a game.
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Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/09/05/tabletop-review-cthulhu
-mythos-encyclopedia/
”CTHULHU MYTHOS ENCYCLOPEDIA, OR ENCYCLOPEDIA CTHULHIANA, BEING AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE MYTH-PATTERNS OF THE XOTHIC AND COMMORIOM LEGEND-CYCLES WITH NOTES ON THE ALHAZREDIC DEMONOLOGY, OR, A COMPENDIUM OF LORE RELATING TO THOSE BEINGS WHO ONCE RULED THE UNIVERSE AND THOSE WHO HAVE REVERED AND RENOUNCED THEM, AS EXPRESSED THROUGH THE MYTHOLOGY OF ALL CULTURES AND EXPLAINED IN THE WORKS OF H. P. LOVECRAFT AND OTHERS IN A MANNER THOUGHT TO BE FICTIONAL BY THE UNINITIATED AND RATIONAL”
– Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia, colophon
So this isn’t exactly your standard role-playing supplement, it’s not specific to a system or put out specifically for Arc Dream Publishing’s games. It’s really an encyclopedia, and it really kicks ass. This happens to be the third edition of it, which has gone through some pretty major revisions going by the author’s notes in the foreword. Arc Dream has another Lovecraftian publication, and that is The Unspeakable Oath which is a magazine dedicated to fiction and other things based on the Cthulhu Mythos.
I should note that the format of this book is for the Nook, Sony, or other e-reader and so it is an E-pub. This tripped me up at first since I don’t own one of those handy devices, but I soon discovered that Firefox has a nifty add-on that will let you read E-pubs, so there you go.
First off, the foreword is awesome, as Daniel Harms gives the reader the straight facts (distilled) about Lovecraft, what his inspirations might have been, what the Mythos means and what various authors have done with it, how other authors have contributed to Lovecraft’s body of work, etc. He really covers a lot of ground and tackles various topics with admirable objectivity.
Encyclopedic Chtulhification: What’s in this thing anyway?
As a little preview, here is an example entry from the C’s:
CRYSTALLIZER OF DREAMS
Yellow egg-shaped item that periodically emits a whistling noise. The Revelations of Glaaki states that the Crystallizer can be used to view far-off places (such as the world of Tond) in dreams, as well as allowing its possessor to perceive higher dimensions. According to some, the Crystallizer allows its user to bring items or creatures back from the Dreamlands to the waking world for a brief while. The user must always be cautious to avoid the Crystallizer’s guardian, a creature like a translucent jellyfish that is a servant of Hypnos.
See Revelations of Glaaki; Tond. (“Mysterious Manuscripts”, Aniolowski et. al.; “The Inhabitant of the Lake”, Campbell (O); “The Render of the Veils”, Campbell; H. P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands, Petersen et. al..)
The encyclopedia itself is exactly what you would expect: entries on the various things contained in and referenced by the Cthulhu Mythos. It is laid out well and referenced with the story (or stories) where the entry occurs. The only real problems I have with the encyclopedia seem to be technical. There are a few occurrences where an entry seems to appear twice, such as the “Queen In Red” entry which appears in the middle of one page and then again at the top of the next page. It also seems that whenever I click on the table of contents to the left it does not take me to the entry I clicked on, but just sort of moves me near it, but I don’t know if this is a failing of the E-pub or the Firefox add-on. It may be that the E-pub went through this third revision and the quick links were never updated to the new page numbers. Speaking of page numbers, I can’t see any! I don’t know if this is the add-on or what, but I have no idea how many pages are in this thing. Even looking on DriveThruRPG which usually lists the pages gives me nothing. Well, rest assured, there are a lot.
I would not hesitate to say that this would be awesome for anyone who is interested in writing Mythos fiction or looking for inspiration for a Call of Cthulhu game (or perhaps De Profundis). I personally would rather have a hardbound version, but an E-pub is nice and portable especially for those with the proper equipment. Just leafing through this tome sparks the imagination, or is that just the fringes of my sanity fading away?
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/09/04/tabletop-review-pocket-
troll-0-tunnels-trolls/
“I’ve got something in my front pocket, for you…”
Look, I’m gonna be straight up honest with you right out of the gate: buying this microzine would be like buying one of those stories where each person writes a paragraph on a sheet of paper, except none of the paragraphs have anything to do with each other. It’s like these guys sat down in English class in a little workgroup and banged this out over the course of a period filled with horsing around, mom jokes, and crayon drawings. It’s terrible!
But look, to be fair, I don’t know much about Tunnels & Trolls except that it is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek classic RPG, much in the style of Dungeons and Dragons. So I can’t completely judge it on what it would add to my T&T experience, but I can read and I have played games before.
Anyway, here’s what you get:
- A hand-drawn map from the author of Tunnels & Trolls, Ken St. Andre, that is from his earlier days.
- A brief article that tells you it’s OK to use talents in a solo game.
- A “Big Ass Bullfrog” creature who is, basically, a giant bullfrog, and has the ability to swallow characters or stun them with its mighty croak.
- A Pocket Troll race that comes from some strange affliction that occurs in pixies who eat young trolls.
- Space Balls. Giant spheres that are called Leviathans and supposedly swallow ships out in the reaches of space… but really, they are Space Balls.
- The lair of a dragon. This is the strongest and the longest article in the microzine (clocking in at 1.5 micro-pages), it seems to actually attempt to make a cohesive, coherent, and possibly useful location. Everything else in the ‘zine is useless for practical purposes, and only good for a few seconds of novelty contemplation.
But wait there’s more! On the other side of the ‘zine is a solo adventure! Now this is the real reason I wanted to check out this item, because I am a huge fan of solo adventures. Basically, you fall down a pit and wander around down there trying not to get killed by a Pocket Troll until you either find a way out or die. Not the best thing ever, but still a little enjoyable. As the adventure states, you can put it into any other solo adventure or just play it by itself.
Wait there’s more! *BURP* No just kidding there is no more. Did I find the microzine enjoyable? Sort of, but really, it took me less than five minutes to browse the articles, and then another five to play the adventure. Is it worth ten minutes of mediocre entertainment? Eh, not really. Unless you’re a T&T completist, or just really curious, skip this altogether.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/08/30/tabletop-review-castles
-crusades-the-goblins-of-mount-shadow/
The Goblins of Mount Shadow is the first full length adventure we’ve seen for Castles and Crusades in some time. For the past few months, they’ve just been working on the lackluster episodic content Adventures on the Powder River. What makes this latest release all the more interesting isn’t that Goblins of Mount Shadow is the start of a brand new adventure path, but because it’s outside the usual Castles & Crusades default world. The adventure is heavily steeped in Celtic lord and Dark Ages folklore, making the adventure really stand out. The adventure does claim it can be dropped into any fantasy setting with ease, but considering just how Celt-oriented this is, I beg to differ. That said, the adventure is very well written and a lot of fun. I found it to be the best Castles & Crusades adventure in a very long time and anyone using the system will definitely be able to make a campaign out of this and have fun doing so.
The Goblins of Mount Shadow is designed for two to five characters ranging between levels 1 and 5. That’s a pretty big spread so DMs will want to really read over the adventure and see where they want the PCs to be at level and power wise before running this. I have to admit I strongly disagree with the notion of playing this adventure with Level 1 characters. There are night hags, an undead giant and treants in this which can kill a low level character in a single hit. You’re definitely better off doing this adventure with Level 3 to Level 5 characters unless you want a Total Party Kill.
The Grey King has risen. This mysterious being has united the tribes of the Dark Fey and, under his command, they are completely wiping out human villages. The player characters will come across ghost town after ghost town, completely bereft of life. Only after an exhaustive search will they find the Grey King’s keep and then the real challenge begins: sneaking in to the castle and slaying the lord of the dark fey. Of course, The Grey King has a super secret evil plan under way and unfortunately PCs won’t be able to stop it.
Like most Castles & Crusades adventures, the emphasis here is on roll-playing instead of roleplaying. This means there is very little narrative and a crapload of fighting. I honestly don’t think the people that write adventures for this system playtest them before hand, because players will have to kill at least a hundred creatures before the adventure is through, many of which are far too powerful for the low levels this adventure is supposedly designed for. First level character should not be dealing with undead giants, a legion or sorcerers, night hags, or hellhounds. There simply is no way for them to survive the sheer numbers or the fact the monsters out power them in every way. Combined, the adventure is guaranteed to slaughter low-level characters, which again, is why is strongly suggest the team be at least third level before undertaking this adventure. It’s exceptionally well done but the level range for what can get through this is so off, it’s shocking. The adventure tries to balance things out by providing a lot of opportunities for extremely powerful magical items, but to me this makes things worse, not better. Characters should face challenges appropriate to their levels, not high level monsters while earning items you normally don’t see until 9th+ level. 3 swords at first level just seems insane to me. If you’re giving Level 1 characters scrolls of fireballs, wands of lighting bolts, and cloaks of invisibility, then where do you go as they get higher? Fighting gods and arming them all with vorpal swords by the time they are Level 5? I know Castles & Crusades adventures tend to be Monty Haul hack and slash affairs, but as I keep saying, this is a wonderful adventure, but not for first level characters. It’s insane what you are fighting and how much loot you get while doing so.
Now with that paragraph of negativity out of the way, let me reinforce that this is one of the better Castles & Crusades published adventures out there. You have a wide range of enemies, a nice high fantasy storyline, and bits where the players have to think things through instead of charge in with spells and weapons going every which way. As well, there is a positive to many of the enemies being far too powerful for the suggested character level, and that’s the PCs will have to learn that discretion is sometimes the better part of valor – almost like encountering something in a Call of Cthulhu adventure. Playing through The Goblins of Mount Shadow should take multiple sessions just because of all the combat, making this a great value for the amount you purchase it for. By the time the adventure comes to a close, you and your friends with have dispatched one of the more memorable enemies to come out of Castles & Crusades and yet somehow….this is just the beginning.
The Goblins of Mount Shadow seems to be a wonderful start for The Crimson Pact adventure path (although I’m sure that name will change), but Adventures on the Powder River started off nicely too and the last few pieces have been lackluster at best. Still, I have hope that this is the start of a really well done adventure path. With some great art, a rich setting and some memorable foes, Goblins of Mount Shadow will be a great way to introduce your friends (or even yourself!) to the Castles & Crusades system. Just remember not to start off at Level 1.
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Originally published at http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/05/17/tabletop-review-vampire
-the-masquerade-20th-anniversary-edition-companion/
Note: this review was originally published in May of 2011 when the Kickstarter backers recieved their versions of the PDF
Back in 2011, White Wolf revived their slumbering franchise, Vampire: The Masquerade, and began releasing new content for it for the first time in nearly a decade. This revival of the original World of Darkness became known as “The Onyx Path.” In 2011, you could pre-order a copy of the core rulebook for a whopping $100, or wait until the end of the year and purchase a PDF or Print on Demand version. I thought V20, as it has come to be known, was merely okay. I loved the art and the fact the game was revived, but per my review, I was disappointed by a several of the changes, like the new rules for the physical Disciplines and I felt the layout was pretty terrible. I loved the artwork and the SHEER amount of content you were getting for your money. I was further impressed by the first (and only) adventure for V20 so far, Dust to Dust and it was one of the best adventures that I reviewed that year.
Come the end of the year, Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition won two Tabletop Gaming Awards from us: Best Remake/Re-Release and Best Art. So with all this in mind it’s probably no surprise to hear that I joined 1,134 other people in crowd-funding the Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition Companion over at Kickstarter. There were a lot of different reward options, but I just backed for a physical copy of the book and a PDF. The campaign was wildly successful and raised nearly $100,000 dollars, causing White Wolf to plan further Kickstarter campaigns, including Children of the Revolution which is currently ongoing. With an outpouring of love by V:TM fans and a dump truck full of money, everyone on all sides was expecting the V20 Companion to blow us away.
Unfortunately, when the PDF was released a few days ago, there was indeed a nigh unanimous reaction – but it wasn’t a positive one. In fact, if you read the comments from the backers, all but one is negative. Some are mildly disappointed about the page count, content, typos, and formatting issues while others are downright irate. The fact of the matter is that they SHOULD be upset on some level. White Wolf has released one of the most overpriced products they’ve ever put out, and what is here doesn’t really resemble what was promised at the start. In the condition that the book is currently in, I’m honestly a little embarrassed to have my name in the credits. In the days of Second Edition, a book of this size would have cost roughly ten to fifteen dollars (It’s the size of a Clanbook). Even with inflation, charging $50 for an eighty page book and $25 for a small PDF like this when that is the same cost for the 520 page core rulebook PDF is pretty much the equivalent of telling your fans to open their mouths and close their eyes and you’ll give them a nice surprise…which ends up being rancid diarrhea instead of something enjoyable. It’ll be interesting to see if the outcry of disappointment is as great as it appear to be, or if it’s mostly just sound and fury by a minority of backers. White Wolf was/is counting on Kickstarter to be a new business model for them, and it will be interesting to see if you actually have to deliver a quality product if you want to repeatedly use crowd funding or if people will blindly back a franchise via crowd-funding as they do with yet another movie/video game sequel. After all fool me once…
It’s also worth noting that White Wolf appears to be outright ignoring the complaints about the V20 Companion. They made an update on the 15th of May saying they will correct some typos and formatting issues, which is great as it’s better to catch the mistakes in the print version. It will be interesting to see if White Wolf takes the many criticisms about the quality and/or amount content to heart or if they’ll ignore the disgruntled. Will there be an apology to all the people who were expecting more in terms of page count and quality, and do the naysayers even deserve one? It’ll be fascinating to see how this plays out.
Now I won’t lie. I’m disappointed by what White Wolf put out as much as everyone else seems to be, but I’m still backing Children of the Revolution. Why? Because part of me is still optimistic that White Wolf will have learned its lesson from this faux pax and put out a really quality product. After all, the core rulebook was VERY pretty, even if I strongly disagreed with some rule changes and Dust to Dust was very well done. Maybe this was the one burp in the system. However as I look through this over and over for my review, I’m reminded of how much the “open development process” has become proof of the adage “Too many cooks spoil the broth.” I still have around three weeks to pull out of Children of the Revolution and the fact is, I will probably drastically lower my pledge if not pull out completely. For now though, let’s just focus on the V20 Companion itself and what went wrong.
Let’s start with the price. It’s not unheard of to have $25 PDFs or $50 books for a tabletop game. However, you’re generally getting far more content than you do with the V20 Companion. Here you’re getting eighty pages. Compare that to the core rulebook for V20, which is the same cost but 520 pages long. This is pretty skimpy for the cost. Even other companies that have $25 PDFs have a hell of a lot more content than this thing. Catalyst Game Labs just put out a $25 PDF for Shadowrun entitled Hazard Pay. That PDF is 170 pages long. The physical copy of the book is only $35 which means it’s slightly more than twice the length of the V20 Companion and only three-fourths the cost! That’s offensive to me, and it would seem, nearly everyone else. Even those that appear happy with the V20 Companion seem upset about what they got for the sticker cost. Another great cost comparison would be with Chaosium, makers of the Call of Cthulhu line of RPGs. Chaosium was well known for massively overpricing their PDFs until recently, when I wrote a commentary about them pricing themselves out of the digital marker, and they responded to me and the public at larging by dropping their PDF prices by 20%. This means something like Masks of Nyarlathotep which is 252 pages and considered to be one of the best adventures ever published in the industry regardless of system…is only $19.22 for the PDF. That’s over three times the length of the V20 Companion and a fraction of the cost, but it’s also a book on its fourth printing. We could also look at another recent PDF from Chaosium. Children of the Storm is eighty pages, just like the V20 Companion. It’s an exceptional supplement and adventure collection but the cost? Only $8.22 – a full THIRD of what the V20 Companion PDF costs. So as we see, people were expecting a hell of a lot more content for the price point because it’s what gamers are used to. White Wolf is now in a lose-lose scenario. If they lower the cost of the PDF for the general public when it is released, they will piss off the people who made the book possible EVEN Further and risk damaging their crowd-funding source to the point where this won’t be an option for them any longer. If they leave the book at the current price – people simply won’t buy it because it’s overpriced and the word of mouth on it is horrendous. Talk about your PR nightmare. White Wolf has pretty much blundered in every way possible from cost to content, but it’s also their first time using something like Kickstarter, so is this a one-time blunder or a quick cash grab? There’s no way to honestly know until we see Children of the Revolution.
So let’s look at the actual content now. What are in the eighty pages of the V20 Companion? Well, not much to be honest. The first ten pages aren’t even content. That means nearly 13% of the PDF is filler right off the bat. In these ten pages, you’re getting the cover, table of contents, a re-used piece of art from the early 90s and SEVEN pages of credits and acknowledgements. Now I’m fine with the backers getting their due and the usual White Wolf Credits page, but the pages thanking backers should have been in addition to content that were added on after everything was written. So if the book was planned to be eighty pages from the start, it should have been eighty pages of CONTENT and then White Wolf should have added on the acknowledgements as extra pages that they paid for above and beyond said content. God knows they raised enough money to do that and it’s what pretty much every other crowd-sourced RPG has done. Even worse is the formatting of the Kickstarter backers. It’s an eyesore to say the least. Proper formatting could have saved them half a page of room – at least. They could have used that half page for the standard credits and legal info and then voila! Another page of CONTENT. Sheesh. Thankfully this is being fixed in both the print copy and PDF, but man, what a bad first impression. Still, I’d rather see the errors caught and corrected in a soft release than in a mass one.
Besides this, the last three pages are devoted to what was cut and an explanation as to why. This is a complete waste of space that could have been a blog post. Instead it’s padding in a book that DESPERATELY needed content. All of the appendix is outright junk that could have been used in literally dozens of better ways. Then the last page of the book is a full page ad for upcoming Onyx Path products. Really? In a completely crowd funded project that is well aware of what is coming up, you’re going to waste a page on AN AD? If this doesn’t bother you on some level, than I don’t know what to tell you. So that means the first ten pages aren’t content and neither are the last four. That is a whopping EIGHTEEN PERCENT of the book that is padding instead of what people actually paid for. If you include full page art pieces as padding (which may or may not be your mindset), that jumps up to twenty pages of padding or a full fourth of the book. That’s horribly thought out and of the worst things I’ve seen in my nearly two decades writing for or about the tabletop industry. I personally don’t mind full page art in a book, especially V:TM as it tends to have some of the best art in the business, but honestly, when the page count is this small, these pages should have been put to better use. It also doesn’t help that said full art pieces are amongst the worst I’ve ever seen in a V:TM publication. Just…wow. I can’t believe that twenty-five percent of this book is padding. To put it another way, you’re basically paying eighty-three cents per page of content which is astronomical compared to pretty much every other RPG supplement well…EVER. Remember, that doesn’t even begin to touch on the pages that are one-third to one-half art in addition to content. Again, if this doesn’t make at least make you mildly disappointed my friend, than I don’t know what to tell you.
The rest of the book is divided into four sections: Titles, Prestation, Kindred and Technology and finally, A World of Darkness. Each section is of mild interest at best and it covers stuff that most V:TM players already know by heart (more or less). You may be asking yourself WHY White Wolf would publish a book for its most diehard fans that is full of content they already have or know by heart? Well, that’s a puzzler, isn’t it? The truth is that it’s not all a rehash. In fact, a lot of it is a new twist on old ideas. I applaud the concept, but not necessarily the end result.
“Titles” covers just that. They cover titles and what they mean in Kindred Society. You get a list of titles for the Camarilla, the Sabbat, the Anarchs and surprisingly the Tal’Mahe’Ra and the Inconnu. I’m really happy about the Black Hand titles as they’ve never really been covered in depth before. I’m a little disappointed they gave official titles and info on the Inconnu because they need to be mysterious and as open to interpretation as DC Comics’ The Phantom Stranger (which DC ruined recently anyway…). At least with the Inconnu, details about the organization as a whole aren’t given out and what’s here is vague enough to be interpreted in multiple ways, but there’s enough substance to make gamers know how to run one. The Cam, Sabbat, and Anarch titles have all been covered in depth repeatedly, so unless a gamer is new to V:TM as a whole, they probably don’t need this. Still, if you’re going to cover titles, at least you’re covering them all.
The big problem with the title section is the book gives rules for how to purchase them with EXPERIENCE POINTS. This revelation of course will annoy most fans of V:TM or the World of Darkness in general as it really goes against how the game is played and what it is all about. Titles are to be earned through role-playing, not purchased like a new power or enhanced skill. This actually made me a little ill to read. Thankfully the book talks about how to earn titles in-game but man, out of all the things to keep in, they kept in rules to obtain titles through experience expenditure? That’s just wrong. It’s mechanics that are neither needed nor wanted by most V:TM players. So the titles are a nice idea. The pages are through and descriptive, but you’ll be left baffled by the decision to let players purchase titles. Thankfully, most Storytellers will chuck that right out the window.
“Prestation” is a chapter that I’m still confused as to why it was put in the book. This section covers Boons, how to use them, transfer them, and get out of them. This is all standard stuff that any V:TM player should already know, so this amounted to little more than a dozen pages that could have been used better. Much like “Titles,” we get a list of how the different factions use boons and unfortunately, we also get optional rules for purchasing boons with experience points. Ugh. Again, I don’t know who would use these optional rules and I can see it pissing off a lot of V:TM fans who prefer the game for its light rules and emphasis on role-playing over character sheet micro-managing. I don’t know. On one hand, I think it’s nice that someone put a decent amount of effort into explaining boons in every way possible down to the most minute detail, but on the other hand, it’s a dozen pages that could have been put to better use as most fans of V:TM know this stuff like the back of their hand.
“Kindred and Technology” is my favorite section in the book as it’s not only the best written, but it’s the thing that most needed to be updated in game. Aftter all, VTM started two decades ago and the tech of 1991 is so vastly different from the tech of 2012 that it’s almost mind boggling to think about. Look at back then. The Sega Genesis was top notch in terms of video gaming. Cell phones were giant bulky things. Pagers were all the rage and how you contacted people in an emergency. Telephone booths were common-place. The internet was sparsely populated and BBCs were more frequently used. It was almost a different world entirely. This section of the book looks at those changes and what it means for the game. It talks about the use of trolling on the internet to protect/obscure Masquerade breaches, how a Kindred uses social networking, record and finance keeping with the cloud and other forms of digital storage (no more floppy disks!) and the like. I loved this section. If the entire V20 Companion was of this quality, people would be far happier with the product methinks. “Kindred and Technology” is a proper update, containing NEW information that longtime players and neophytes alike can make use of that hasn’t been covered elsewhere and is thankfully free of optional in-game mechanics (“It costs five experience points to buy a computer.”).
The final section, “A World of Darkness” is a good idea, but poorly written and badly implemented. It’s thirteen pages divided between twenty-five locations. That’s approximately three to four paragraphs per location. That’s nowhere enough room for a quality look at any of them. Several of these locations have been covered before in FAR greater detail, so it’s a bit insulting to see what we get here. If anything, each location should have had a full page to it, with greater detail and perhaps some story hooks or information about local Kindred. In truth, “A World of Darkness” should have been its own book, as it has been in the past, contained far more information about a great many more locations. To have it shoehorned in here with such sparse detail is an insult to the previous books by the same name and to the gamers that own them. Perhaps if you’re new this section won’t pale in comparison to what has previously been done, but how many people purchasing this will fall under that category?
All in all, the V20 Companion is one of the worst books (if not the worst) that White Wolf has ever put out in terms of getting what you pay for. In terms of actual content quality, it IS lackluster and a disappointment, but I honestly wonder if everyone who feels that way still would if the book had been stuck with a ten to fifteen dollar price tag. It’s the size of a Second Edition clanbook, but with less content and five times the price tag. What’s here is filled with typos (which White Wolf is already aware of and in the process of correcting) and lacks any real substance. Only one section is of any real quality (“Kindred and Technology”), while another (“Titles’) is equal parts good information and terrible ideas, and the other two sections are either not very useful or a pale mockery of things that have come before. I can see why quite a few backers are reacting to the Companion as if it was an insult to the Vampire: The Masquerade franchise and an even greater insult to the eleven hundred people who trusted and backed White Wolf in this endeavor.
To be honest, I can’t reccomend the V20 Companion at all, mainly due to the cost per page issue. There is no reason at all for anyone to buy a copy of this unless you absolutely must own anything and everything V:TM related. At best, the V20 Companion is a perfect example of how crowd-funding can go wrong. At worst, it makes you wonder what happened to the extra $50,000 White Wolf raised for the book (above and beyond the actual goal was), and what it was used for. Caveat Emptor indeed.
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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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