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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/12/14/tabletop-review-shadowr
un-dark-angel/
With due respect to Takeshi Kaga, if memory serves me correctly, Dark Angel was one of the very first published adventures for second edition Shadowrun, my favorite version of the game. I owned this adventure back in the day, but never had the chance to play it or run it. Back then I didn’t know anyone besides myself interested in Japanese language and culture, so this adventure would have gone over like a lead balloon with my gaming group. You see this adventure is exceptionally Yakuza heavy, even for an early Shadowrun product. Back in the days of yore the Yakuza was almost as powerful as a Megacorp. There was a real hard-on so to speak for Japanese organized crime over at FASA but over the years that has dissipated and the Yakuza has been diluted. Sure they still surface with adventures like the modern 99 Bottles, but CGL is focused far more on dragon politics and mega-corps relations than the Yakuza – one of the many things that separates their version of Shadowrun from the older, original version.
Like most first and second edition Shadowrun adventures, Dark Angel is anything but straight forward and there are more plot twists than you would find in a Vince Russo penned episode of WCW Monday Nitro (that reference is as dated as this adventure!). Of course the core of the adventure is all about greed and people wanting a piece (or the whole thing) of the pie, but it’s wrapped up in sex, drugs and rock n’ roll in a way we don’t usually see Shadowrun anymore – unless it’s in an adventure compendium like Jet Set. As such, it’s a fun read for those of us who have been with Shadowrun since the beginning, but younger gamers or those that have only played the CGL version of the game might be confused by the complexity of the plot and the power of the Yakuza here.
Dark Angel revolves around the late, great Jim Crull whose rock and roll stage name was Dark Angel. Crull was an outspoken elf musician who lived way below his means and was only too happy to be a living incarnation of the phrase, “Damn the man!” Unfortunately his death via BTL induced suicide showed that he didn’t always walk the walk even though he talked the talk. His music and all the money that went along with it ended up in the hands of a shady producer by the name of Dynamo Blue – mainly because Krull’s last will and testament allocated them to her. The PCs are hired by Krull’s scorned ex to get a piece of the profits as she feels the is owed something for her life with Dark Angel. Lill Ice, Krull’s steady squeeze, believes that Dynamo Blue had to use some sort of nefarious means to get possession of his music rights and she wants the runners to check it out.
Here’s where things go wildly off the rails. As the players investigate, it appears that Dynamo Blue did indeed have something to do with Krull’s untimely demise. However it’s far more complicated that suicide or a murder for cash and profits. As the runners dig through the history of Dark Angel’s last few days, they discover far more than they bargained for. There’s multiple family based betrayals, kidnapping, a grudge of unimaginable proportions, a truly horrific plot of revenge that was over a decade in the making, potential conflict with Lone Star, long drawn out encounters with the Yakuza and a truly massive and bizarre secret about Jim Krull that they players won’t ever see coming. It’s a pretty intense and fast paced adventure that really exemplifies of awesome Shadowrun was in the 90s and why it was considered one of the big three games (along with D&D and Call of Cthulhu) until the rise of White Wolf would occur a few years later.
The latter half of the adventure involves players figuring out how to deal with the Yakuza. If they kill a gang boss crucial to this plot, they set themselves up for a lifetime of retaliation and assassination attempts. They could actually make a deal with the member of the Yakuza behind the entire Dark Angel debacle in order to get Lill the rights to Krull’s music, but that will involve a lot of legwork and favors and many players probably don’t want to have their characters beholden to a Yakuza crime lord. Another option is to seek assassination sanction on this particular Yakuza member from a higher ranking Oyabun. No matter what route the runners take though, they will forever have a relationship with the Yakuza, be it adversarial or congenial. As such, this a GM really has to decide if they want to run this adventure as it will have both long and short term effects on the entire campaign they are running.
All in all, this is a really fun adventure. I really miss the old artwork styling of first and second edition Shadowrun and so it was fun to review this re-release just for that. It was also a nice blast of nostalgia to see condition monitors throughout this adventure. The adventure has a great story with a plot that the runners won’t be expecting and it’s definitely an adventure you and your friends will have fond memories of playing through. It’s got a lot of action, a cast of memorable characters and it’s a great example of all that second edition Shadowrun has to offer. At only four bucks, Dark Angel is well worth picking up for reading and the artwork, even if you never play it. It is after all, for a much older version of Shadowrun that doesn’t see a lot of use these days.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/10/24/tabletop-review-shadows
-of-esteren-book-0-prologue/
During the Shadows of Esteren Kickstarter, if you pledged high enough, you were entitled to a free copy of Book 0: Prologue which would act as an introduction to the system. Even better, you got the book months ahead of the general public. I purposely waited on my review of Book 1: Universe so that I could have both Shadows of Esteren reviews up in the same week. If you read that review, you know that I’m pretty impressed with the system that Shadows of Esteren uses, but that I find the world a bit too generic and shallow. Of course, the system has just started being translated into English, and only with time will we know if this is a minor complaint or an issue that plagues the franchise from beginning to end.
With Book 0: Prologue, you are getting a ten page overview of the Shadows of Estern universe and system, six premade characters to add to the ones from Book 1: Universe and three complete adventures to play through: Loch Varn, Poison, and Red Fall. That’s a pretty nice package, but until we know what Studio 2 Publishing plans to charge for either the hardcover or PDF version, I can’t say whether this will be a good deal or not. I can say that I really liked the introduction to the world/system, found one adventure to be terrible, one to be exceptional and one to be pretty good aside from one issue that I can’t believe no one caught and that is sure to be terribly confusing if you play through all of these adventures with your gaming troupe. Now, let’s take a look at what the eighty-three pages of Book 0: Prologue has to offer.
The “Origins” section of the book is an introduction to the system and world of Shadows of Esteren. It’s VERY different in style and tone from Book 1: Universe and I really liked that juxtaposition. All of the information about the world, its peoples, the culture and so on in Book 1: Universe is written in character. By a lot of different characters, each with their own outlook and opinions. I really liked that, but it did make it hard to disseminate fact from fiction or to have some base universal viewpoint. The way Book 1: Universe describes the world of SoE is going to be a little too esoteric for a chunk of gamers, and so Book 0: Prologue will be of great use to them. The information about the Tri-Kazel peninsula is written out of character in the third person, so it’s more like most RPGs where the writers are explaining both the world and system to you without any artistry of fiction intermingled with substance. Because of that, you can really see what the developers are going for in terms of mood and tone. You get that nice baseline that a lot of DMs (or “Leaders” in the Shadows of Esteren system) want in order to make a game run smoothly. Now this doesn’t mean that one way of explaining the world SoE takes place in is better than another. One gives you vivid imagery but is also vague and sometimes contradictory. The other is textbook RPG writing, which makes it easier to grasp what the writers are going for, but it also looses a bit of the uniqueness that you find with the other format. In truth, I find both compliment each other nicely. If you have trouble getting what you need from Book 1, you might be able to get it from Prologue and vice versa. Now that’s not to say you get the sheer amount of content in the Prologue that you do from Book 1, but it will be a great help to those that don’t want to read two hundred pages of fiction, and only have that as an option, in order to get a feel for the game world.
The Origins section gives you history on the world and really talks about the supernatural and psychological aspects of the game. You’ll be able to read this small section and known all the different factions, classes and cultures on the peninsula. You also get some quick start rules on the system itself, including six premade characters along with their full page gorgeous artwork. I know I mentioned this in my review of Book 1: Universe, but Shadows of Esteren has the best art I’ve seen in an RPG in years, if not decades. I haven’t been blown away by RPG art like this sine Timothy Bradstreet’s early Shadowrun and Vampire: The Masquerade work. Basically, a person can pick up Book 0: Prologue, read the rules section (but not the adventures!) and be able to walk away with enough understanding of the rules to PLAY the game with the help of a good Leader…albeit it not enough understanding to run the game itself. Think of Prologue as a very deep set of Quick Start Rules bundled with three adventures and six premade characters.
All three adventures contained in Book 0: Prologue revolve around the dangers of fossil Flux, a mysterious substances used to power scientific devices but that also can cause madness and sickness in living beings. In all three adventures it is suggested that players use the premade characters contained in either Prologue or Universe as those characters, hometowns and back story are intricately tied to the adventures. You can definitely play the adventures with characters made by the players, but if this is someone’s first experience with Shadows of Esteren, playing pre-generated characters might actually be the better choice in terms of learning how the rules – especially since SoE is more about the narrative than rolling dice.
“Loch Varn” is the first scenario and it’s by far my least favorite. I really didn’t like this at all. It’s not that the story is bad. The plot revolves around a ghost wanting revenge on those who wrong it and players having to make a tough decision between which side (the ghost or the one who murdered it when it was a mortal) is in the right. It’s how the adventure flows. “Loch Varn” involves a lot of flashbacks and blurring the line between what is dream and what is reality. It is bound to confuse players and Leaders alike…and not in a good way. Perhaps if this adventure is done by a Leader who knows the ins and outs of Shadows of Esteren AND you had players who had experience with the game under their belt, “Loch Varn” could be interesting and perhaps even fun to play through. However, for people brand new to the system, this adventure will not only fall flat on its face, but it will frustrate the entire troupe taking part and perhaps push people away from the system entirely.
There’s nothing I hate more than “It was all a dream” bits and “Loch Varn” uses this repeatedly. I get WHY, as it’s try to create a feeling of unease and make the PCs paranoid about what is real and what is not, but I’ve yet to meet anyone that likes this particular trope and to combine it with flashbacks is just going to leave newcomers to the system completely lost. “Oh you’re dead. Not really, it was a dream! OR WAS IT? Now you’re repeating the dream, but it’s in reality this time. OR IS IT?” Yuck. A good intro adventure should be somewhat simple and be a learning experience in terms of mechanics and the system’s world. “Loch Varn” just doesn’t do anything that an intro adventure should. Worse yet, the Leader will have to spend hours pretty much crafting this adventure into a very linear affair to make it work properly for newcomers and at that point, “Loch Varn” will be like roleplaying a visual novel. So this is definitely one adventure I would warn newcomers to steer the hell away from until both they and the people they are playing Shadows of Esteren really know what they are doing. Otherwise it’s like dropping Tomb of Horrors on someone whose only roleplaying experience has been linear turn based JRPGs.
Thankfully the second adventure in this package, “Poison,” is a PERFECT adventure for newcomers to Shadows of Esteren, be they player or Leader. You have a simple premise, players will have to flex their might and their minds to overcome obstacles and solve the problems and every aspect of the system gets a workout, but not so much that new players and Leaders become confused or have to look up how to do a particular ruling. The adventure definitely has a specific line of progress, but it never feels like it’s on-rails, so players have room to explore and try things out without feeling like they are holding up the story. It’s a good story too. The village of many (or all) of the PCs is plagued by a terrible sickness that wracks the sanity and flesh of those afflicted. Players have to figure out what is the cause of the disease and then try to find some way to stop it. There are lots of red herrings to keep the players guessing and the end battle gives you an option between a more mundane climax or one that leans to the supernatural/sci-fi. My advice is to take the more mundane one. It works better and it’s more realistic. You can even have a more depressing ending where, if the players don’t solve the mystery, the village erupts into pure chaos with the sick and diseased becoming completely psychotic, attacking anything living in their path. What I love most about this adventure is that it is horrific in terms of seeing friends, family and acquaintances becoming sick from an unknown malady, but the end result is never “a wizard did it” or something you’d see in a high fantasy game. No matter which climax you pick, the source of the poisoning and why it occurred it completely grounded in reality. This is definitely my favorite of the adventures and one I’d highly recommend to anyone who wants to play Shadows of Esteren. You won’t get a better feel for the system or the mood SoE is trying to express than right here.
The final adventure in Prologue is “Red Fall.” The one major problem I had with this adventure was that a major character that this entire adventure revolves around, Herven, has the same exact name as a major character which is integral to “Poison.” They are not the same character though and this will only serve to confuse players, especially as all three adventures in this book are meant to be played as a min-campaign of sorts. How hard is it to come up with a different name, especially for two very important characters in two very different adventures? This is just sloppy and I can’t believe no one involved with the editing process didn’t catch this. Thankfully this is an easy fix: CHANGE THE NAME OF ONE OF THE HERVENS! Still the sloppiness here has me a bit worried about the quality of things to come.
Aside from this one issue, “Red Fall” is a pretty good adventure, albeit it one that uses two very common tropes: amnesia and murder mystery. The marks the second adventure in this collection that uses amnesia as a core plot point to force PCs down the path the adventure wants them to take; the first being parts of “Loch Varn.” It bothers me that the same trope is used in two of the three introductory adventures as amnesia is up there with “it was all a dream” as something I tend to detest…and I know I’m not the only one. The murder mystery part is done especially well though as one of the PC wakes up by a lake, badly injured with the half eaten corpse of Herven beside him. He, and the other PCs have to figure out who killed Herven and why. The truth behind who killed him and why is somewhat unexpected (although a bit reminiscent of the old “WWE Higher Power” angle, if you get the reference) and that only leads to a bigger mystery that the PCs have to solve. The adventure does have a weird subplot about child abuse that the PCs and their players may never discover, but Leaders will find it an important plot point and help in the characterization of several NPCs and also in framing how the story unfolds. This is another adventure where the PCs might never discover the truth behind the murder or the bigger mystery behind that, leading to a definite interaction with the “supernatural.” I put supernatural in quotes even though the adventure itself does not, because once again, what happens here feels more sci-fi than mystical. That’s one of the things I like about Shadows of Esteren though. There’s the constant vibe of “Is it magic or science?” throughout nearly every aspect of the game. I’d definitely give “Red Fall” a thumb’s up. It’s not as good as “Poison,” but it is worlds better than “Loch Varn.”
So overall, I’m quite happy with Book 0: Prologue. I’m really digging Shadows of Esteren so far. I enjoyed the world and rules overview and I’m always blown away by the art. I have mixed feeling on the adventures. One was great, one was pretty good and one was not something I would ever recommend the use of unless everyone involved was well-versed in the system…which obviously isn’t going to happen stateside for quite some time. I’m a little worried about the overuse of memory loss as a plot hook, but I do like the constant use of mystery in each adventure and the need for characters to think their way out of situations first and foremost. Too many fantasy games, low OR high, are almost purely combat oriented and I want story when I play a tabletop RPG. If all I wanted was mindless killing, then I have plenty of video games to let me do that. I’m hoping that with further published adventures, we’ll see something else used to hook players into participating. Still, two out of three adventures are well worth experiencing and the overview bit is wonderfully done. If you pick up Book 1: Universe, you’ll want to pick up Book 0: Prologue as well, simply because of how useful a budding SoE Leader will find it.
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Originally written at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/10/22/tabletop-review-shadows
-of-esteren-book-1-universe/
I, along with 704 other backers, happily took part in the Shadows of Esteren Kickstarter campaign back in July of this year. I had been hoping for a while now that Shadows of Esteren would receive an English translation. Sure I read/write/speak French, but importing a hardcover RPG sourcebook of this size is not only cost-prohibitive, but as most of my friends aren’t francophones, playing the game would take a lot of work and even more patience. So when Studio 2 Publishing announced the Kickstarter, I was not only one of the first to throw money at them, but I was down for the $90 Limited Edition variant… which my pet rabbit has already managed to gnaw on, unfortunately.
In the original Kickstarter campaign, Studio 2 described the game as “somewhere between Ravenloft and Call of Cthulhu,” but I wouldn’t call that quite right. Shadows of Esteren does have a sanity meter, but it’s more akin to the old video game Eternal Darkness, as you can regain sanity in SoE after being exposed to forbidden magick and horrific creatures, where in Call of Cthulhu, your maximum possible sanity meter crumbles along with your current sanity pool. As well, Call of Cthulhu is far more research oriented, whereas Shadows of Esteren is more low fantasy adventure. As for the Ravenloft part, I can’t really say that is correct either. In Ravenloft, things are a lot more subtle. Players and NPCs might suspect there is something amiss, but a quality Ravenloft adventure/campaign tends to keep PCs in the dark about what sort of monstrosity is out there waiting to devour them. In Shadows of Esteren, every villager, nomad and town drunk knows that there are hideous creatures of all shapes and size waiting to do harm to humanity. These creatures are collectively known as Feondas. When everyone knows there are creepy crawlies out there, you don’t actually have a game with a horror/terror element. Instead, it’s just another fantasy game. After all, you can just replace Feondas with “orcs” or “mind flayers” and it’s roughly the same effect. So I will admit that I was disappointed that Shadows of Esteren is nothing like a “Ravenloft meets Call of Cthulhu type game, but I did find the book and the rules quite fascinating. If you’re looking for a more apt comparison for what this game feels like, think perhaps Vampire: The Dark Ages, except you’re playing as a mortal. It’s the same vibe, as neither game has a Masquerade between man and monsters. It’s just taken for granted in both that there are things that want to eat people out there. It’s just in SoE, you’re playing as the people. Another good game to compare SoE to would be Mayfair’s old Chill system, but set in the Dark Ages instead of modern times. Both games feature PCs trying to figure out the truth of the evil creatures that wish to do humanity harm, and both games let the PCs be able to fight back rather handily (again, unlike Call of Cthulhu). So think of Shadows of Esteren as that – Chill meets Vampire: The Dark Ages rather than Ravenloft meets Call of Cthulhu and you’ll go in with a better mental picture. That’s still a great combination too.
I will say this about Shadows of Esteren – it has the most amazing art I think I’ve ever seen in a tabletop book. I haven’t been this blown away by RPG art since I was a kid viewing Tim Bradstreet’s stuff in Shadowrun and Vampire: The Masquerade. There are about ten different artists that contributed to Shadows of Esteren and I can’t think of a better team that I’ve ever seen assembled for an RPG. Seriously. In any other RPG book that I’ve flipped through, there is always one or more artists whose style or work I find displeasing. It’s all opinion, but this is honestly the first book where I was consistently impressed by each and every piece of art doting my screen or book. My wife, who has never played a tabletop RPG in her life, also loved just flipping through the pages and gazing at the art. Even if you never play Shadows of Esteren, it’s worth picking up this first book for the pictures alone. Had I known that I was going to be this blown away by the visuals, I would have upped my pledge to the $250 or $1000 image and picked up some original commissioned work by the SoE team besides the limited edition version.
Another thing worth noting about Shadows of Esteren is that the game is story first and rules second. There is an exceptionally detailed and deep character generating system (character sheets are three pages long!), but the book is definitely about the land of Tri-Kazel and its inhabitants. 173 out of the 292 pages of the book are about the world rather than the systems. That’s roughly sixty percent of the book. As well, the parts of the book that describe the world of Shadows of Esteren are placed at the front, and only once that content is exhausted does the book start to talk about the systems and how the game is played. This really sets the tone that Shadows of Esteren is about the story the Leader (term for the GM/DM in the game) wants to tell WITH his player’s help rather than a system where die rolls determine how things flow. In fact, the game outright admonishes the use of dice unless absolutely necessary. It’s generally used for a dramatic moment where neither the player nor Leader can be sure if a character is able to actually pull off their action, or as punishment if a player is acting outside of the personality set down on the character sheet. This should probably help you decide whether or not this is the type of RPG you’d like to play or run, but there’s one other big aspect of the writing style that you should be aware of. The entirety of the story/world setting sections are all written “in-character” so to speak. Each chapter and section within the chapter reads as either first or third party descriptions of Tri-Kazel by various residents. The end result that the book reads like a jumble of short stories that may or may not give you the detail (or actual useful information) that you are looking for. On one hand, I really liked this, as it continued to enforce that Shadows of Esteren is about storytelling rather than rolling dice. I also liked that, because it was by specific citizens, the information that you are given is suspect at best, mainly because some of these people clearly have agendas or points of view.
Perhaps the weakest thing about Shadows of Esteren is the world itself. It’s extremely generic and feels like just about any other low fantasy world out there. You have humans and only humans, but you have different societies and races. You have magic-users (known as Demorthen) and clerics, although the effects of spells are more subtle than in high fantasy, where you have fireballs and disintegrates happening left and right. You have the Varigals, which are basically wanderers or gypsy style rogues, and there are Magientists, steampunk style scientists. The Magientists will probably get the most attention from gamers, as Steampunk in Western culture is about where it was in Japan in the mid 90s, but I really didn’t like this being thrown into the system. I mean, I love some quality Steampunk, Sakura Taisen for example, but you can’t have one aspect of the game being about a millennium ahead of the rest of the world and not expect things to rapidly become unbalanced. Do you remember the old (and awesome) video game Arcanum? Think that, but with tech being far more powerful and unbalanced compared to sword and sorcery. I just feel this could have been fine tuned along with the overall world of Tri-Kazel itself. It just feels like another generic low fantasy world in a Dark Ages setting, but with its own terminology for common tropes in order to make it feel less paint by numbers.
The character creation system is where Shadows of Esteren really shines, as quite simply, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever encountered before. Sure there are some similarities to other systems. It has the aforementioned sanity gauge, which is obviously inspired by Call of Cthulhu, but the character creation process and everything about it really stands out as unique and impressive at the same time. Instead of specific stats, you have five “Ways.” These ways are: Combativeness, Creativity, Empathy, Reason and Conviction. You can either have them numbered 1-5 in any order (as in Empathy with a Rating of 4, Reason a 2 and so on) or you can divide fifteen points between them. Neither higher nor lower is better in any particular score. Having a 5 in Empathy, for example, means you are exceptionally empathic, but it also means you are more susceptible to mind control or being duped by a good, albeit false, story. Meanwhile, a 1 in Empathy means that the character is probably cold, selfish, or a loner, but it also means they are in complete control of their emotions and can generally tell a falsehood being told. This is a really great way to do stats, as it forces players and Leaders to look at the negative aspects of having a high score in a particular quality as well as the advantages to a low score in a similar field. It also makes players flesh out their character’s personalities and backgrounds, which is never a bad thing.
There are eighteen sample “professions,” which would be the equivalent of a character class. The game allows players and Leaders to make up their own, but the eighteen here, ranging from Bard to Peasant, should cover most of your players’ needs. Each profession gives a PC their primary and secondary skill, netting them five points in for the former and three points for the latter. Once a character gets more than five points in a skill, they gain a Discipline, which is a more formalized version of the skill. For example, let’s say I decided to make a Merchant. My primary skill would be Relation, so I’d gain five points in that, while my secondary skill could be either Erudition or Craft. Then let’s say, during character creation, I get my Relation up to six points. I would then gain a Discipline from the Relation list. Those include Charm, Command, Diplomacy, Faction Knowledge, Etiquette, Intimidation, Sweet Talk and Persuasion. I’d probably take Persuasion, as I’d be doing a lot of haggling to keep my prices high. So on my character sheet, I would fill in all five bubbles for Relation, and then underneath I would note my Discipline of Persuasion is at Level 6. I’d get to add six to my point total any time I tried persuading someone, and five for any other time I could use Relation. I say point total instead of roll because the game doesn’t require you to roll. Let’s say I wanted to persuade someone. I’d use my six points in Persuade plus whatever my Empathy score is. Each skill has a Way attached to it. In this case, Relation is tied to Empathy. So my total score would be six plus Empathy. Let’s say for the sake of this example, my Merchant has a 4 in Empathy. So my point total would be 10. Thus, I would NEVER need to roll on any Difficulty Challenge (DC) of 10 or less. It would be an automatic success. If I ever needed a score HIGHER than ten, I could roll a D10 (ten sided die) and add that to my total. In this respect, the game is very much like third edition Dungeons & Dragons. However, Shadows of Esteren doesn’t require you to roll. If you can do a really good job roleplaying and/or describing your actions, you can get a success. Again, the key is telling a quality story rather than letting the dice decide everything.
Other stats include Strength, Armour and Defense, which are determined by cumulative totals in various Ways. There are Advantages and Disadvantages you can take, similar to Merits and Flaws from White Wolf games. You can even double stack most Advantages for a more powerful effect. For example, my Merchant would have 100 points to spend on advantages (more if he takes a disadvantage). I could take Charismatic (30 Points) which would give me +1 to Performance and Relations. I could take it a second time for a total of +2 to both skills, and then it would be called “Magnetic” instead of “Charismatic.” I could then spend the remaining 40 Points on Intuitive and give myself another +1 to Relation (total of 9 right now if you’re keeping track) along with Travel and Demorthen Mysteries. See how quickly things could add up?
Something else worth mentioning is that there are NO monster stats in the book. You are given a brief overview on Feondas, but it is completely on the Leader to design and develop antagonists from the ground up. Some players may absolutely adore this level of creative freedom, while some might be frustrated that there isn’t even a sample creature or a tutorial to help them make something. Again, it all just depends on what kind of gamer you are. I’m sure that future releases will delve more into Feondas and various examples of them, but this first book merely sets up the universe of Shadows of Esteren. With Book 0: Prologue having recently been made available to Kickstarter backers, and knowing that the line has at least Book 4: Secrets back in France, I’m sure we’ll be seeing a more fleshed out system in English sooner rather than later.
All in all, I’m a huge fan of Shadows of Esteren and it’s probably my favorite new system of 2012. It’s exceedingly rare that I purchase a physical copy of an RPG book these days. The last time I did so was the Call of Cthulhu 30th Anniversary Edition and the next time I’ll be getting one is the Horror on the Orient Express remake due out next August, so it’s a pretty big deal that I plopped down a large amount of cash for the Limited Edition. Aside from the slightly gnawed on cover, I’m glad I did, because the system is fantastic, the art is some of the best I’ve ever seen in an RPG, and the world, while generic, is extremely detailed and offers so much to an enterprising and creative Leader. I wouldn’t recommend this to someone as their first ever game or to someone who is used to a more structured system, but for everyone else, this is probably the best low fantasy game I’m ever come across, and I can’t wait for the rest of the system to be translated into English.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/12/13/tabletop-review-colonia
l-gothic-the-ross-allen-letters/
The Ross-Allen Letters is part of a continuing series of reviews of supplements for Colonial Gothic by Rogue Games. For earlier reviews in this series check out Organizations: The Templars, Locations, and The French-Indian War.
”My Dear Frederick,
I trust that this letter finds you in good health, and that you find your esteemed position in the northern colonies agreeable. I have no doubts that your expertise is estemmed [sic] as highly by your new associates as it is by the Society you left behind. I am eager for your opinion of your new surroundings. You must not think that I have never made the journey so far north from any lack of desire, and perhaps the lure of your company will help me find the time for such a journey. I am confident that the need will arise for meto [sic] visit your society for a matter of some import.”
These are the opening lines of the fictional correspondence known as Colonial Gothic: The Ross-Allen Letters. As you can tell, the theme is strong here, and indeed the whole of the document is a narrative meant to evoke this mysterious story set in the world of Colonial Gothic. In the introduction, some words about collaborative storytelling and using the letters in a game give the GM some ideas as to how this PDF might actually be useful to him or her. One suggestion is to have players write to each other in character, which immediately reminded me of De Profundis, a game I reviewed here quite a while ago. In De Profundis players create a narrative using some sort of medium other than simply talking to each other, usually just pen and paper. With The Ross-Allen Letters, the same sort of idea is used and demonstrated in what amounts to wonderful reading and mental preparation for the mysterious world of the game.
How Do I Use This In My Game?
These letters are tough to figure out, because they are great to read and all, but then what role do they play at the table? Some suggestions at the beginning of the book say that players can discover these letters and become part of the narrative. Maybe they stumble upon the first letter, then find a few more in the series, and eventually uncover enough that they get the whole story. In a way, this book can be turned into a really cool module by an enterprising GM. Picture this: the players are tasked with finding one of the letter-writers who has been missing, and in the process uncover the letters and the secrets they contain, along with weaving their own stories into the tapestry. Imagine handing your players the letters printed out on some rough paper and then hand-aged by Mr. Enterprising GM (coffee, holding them over a flame heat, etc.) as they find them.
Production Value
Expect typical Rogue Games production value here minus artwork: nicely formatted, sort of edited. There is no real artwork to speak of (or complain about for that matter). For some reason, I keep coming across RPG supplements written using Lucida Handwriting! It is very silly, since anyone can go to a fonts website and get any handwritten-looking font they can dig up. Why use the same word fonts that have been put in hilarious e-mails since 1997? [As an aside, I did some digging on the actual origin of Lucida Handwriting and this is the opening sentence of a description I found: “To a business world dominated by formal, traditional fonts, Lucida Handwriting brings a refreshing and modern informality.” Source.] Aaaand we’re back! Seriously though, anyone reading this and writing games should not use Lucida Handwriting. It looks lame and it makes it look like you are not trying. Please use a normal font, I promise to imagine that it is hand-written.
The writing is very nice; Brozek has proven to be a good producer for the game’s thematic content, even if it appears that either she doesn’t edit very well or her work goes straight to print without any editing. Right there in the initial paragraph of the first letter there are two typos. How does this happen? I would be reprimanded at my day job if I pulled crap like that. I don’t think Rogue Games should be held to any lower standard just because they are some sort of “indie” RPG company. Edit. Your freaking. Writing. I see one-person, no-name RPGs being sold on DriveThruRPG with more editing. Send me the manuscript I will edit it for you. I would really love to see a higher production value for this game, but right now fans must take what they can get.
Plot and Final Thoughts
I realize I have not actually said anything about the narrative as far as plot is concerned. Basically, there are to very polite gentlemen named Woodrow Ross and Frederick Allen, who happen to be interested in the fabled Philosopher’s Stone (rather confusingly, an element supposed to be able to turn lead into gold). This interest becomes more of a dangerous endeavor when death befalls a colleague involved in researching it’s existence. From there, the tale spins on to become more mysterious and a bit dark, ending with a solemn conclusion that I will not ruin for you.
If you want a good read and to get in the mood for Colonial Gothic, light some candles and read these letters. Use them in your game, give them to your players, make them real. Even with it’s faults, for 99 cents, this is a darn good deal.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/12/13/tabletop-review-shadowr
un-bottled-demon/
Well now. THIS is a blast from the past. I actually remember playing this adventure in 8th grade so it was great to see Catalyst Games Lab bring back this back in PDF form. Bottled Demon is a first edition Shadowrun back when it was the 2050s, FASA was still making the game and we had DECKERS, not hackers. It’s a fun little adventure that highlights the power of dragons (and dracoforms), the drama that can unfold when a run goes spectacularly wrong and also brings us back to the days where combat trumphed everything else. Bottle Demon is definitely an adventure for characters that can do massive amounts of damage and take hits as well as they dish them out. As the adventure itself points out, deckers aren’t really needed here, so Physical Adepts, Mages with Hellblast, Street Samurai and Riggers that have a tank or something equivalent are all more than welcome if you want to get through Bottled Demon alive.
The PCs are contacts by a haggard and seriously stressed out shaman by the name of Topal. He want to hire the runners to accompany him as bodyguards on a meeting with three elven scholars. Sounds like easy money, but Topal is purposely vague on details other than they need to travel separately. It’s a little sketchy, but with good reason. Topal has in his possession an ancient artifact that is of great power…and great evil. Being wiser than most people in the Sixth World, he wants to get rid of the artifact knowing that it will seek the ruin of whoever possesses it. Unfortunately the meet doesn’t go as planned. The elven scholars have been killed by a runner named Blackwing (who modern gamers might recognize from his appearance in Elven Blood who in turn is being hunted by the police due to how sloppy his kills were. The Police, runners, Topal, and Blackwing’s group all converge and as you might expect, all hell breaks loose. Topal is killed and the runners end up in possession of the briefcase the idol is locked in. They have no idea what the item is, the power it possesses or why their boss was killed (and thus their payday lost). To make things worse, Blackwing is still gunning for them as they have the idol, the police are after them because they think they are part of Blackwing’s group, the net is flying with rumours that they killed their own boss (which is a huge no-no in the 2050s, equivalent to triggering a blood hunt ala Vampire: The Masquerade) and Topal’s fellow magic users want revenge on the PCs too due to the rumour. Can we say royally screwed?
The rest of the adventure has players trying to figure out what the object is and how to get rid of it. Eventually they are guided to a source that claims they will be able to dispose of it but of course, things go horribly wrong. Yes, even MORE horribly wrong. The adventure then climaxes with one of the biggest battles in first edition Shadowrun where the players have to go dragon hunting. It’s as brutal as it sounds, even with a plethora of help on their side. If the players make it through alive (notice I didn’t say unscathed.), they have to deal with the aftermath of everything from international politics to clearing their name for a crime they didn’t commit (for once). It’s a pretty fun adventure and it really gives a nice cross section of all first edition Shadowrun had to offer. A run gone bad, dragons, Lone Star and an encounter with a Street Legend. It’s a pretty fun adventure all things considered and it will take several gaming sessions for your crew to get through this. All this, some player hands outs and a bunch of old school 90s era maps. Not bad for a measly four bucks, eh?
Because this is a first edition adventure, Bottled Demon won’t convert very well to fourth edition/SR20. Although I know a lot of people that prefer 1st/2nd edition over the current system (I like both for different reasons), the only reason to pick this up if you play the current version of the game is for historical purposes, or just to read for the fun of it. Older Shadowrun gamers will also find this of note because the original version had a low print run and it’s been long since out of print. One thing that Shadowrun gamers across the board , regardless of edition preference, will love is the art in Bottled Demon. As much as I really enjoy the 2070s game, I really miss the art from first and second edition. Seeing the dystopian future of the Sixth World drawn by guys like Timothy Bradstreet and Rick Harris makes me long for the old days and this PDF is worth picking up for the art alone. That’s not to say the art in the current version of Shadowrun is bad by any means, but pretty much anything pales in comparison to the art from when FASA held the reigns of this game.
In a nutshell, this is a long intense adventure that fans of the old version of Shadowrun will enjoy reading and playing while those who play 20AE will fall in love with the art, while enjoying the plot amidst trying to decipher the rules and mechanics.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/12/06/tabletop-review-barebon
es-fantasy/
Today’s selection is Barebones Fantasy a collaborative effort by two self-styled game designers with lots of ideas: Larry Moore and Bill Logan. The book is not huge but it does manage to cover a lot of topics and important points. The production is very nice, with a nice layout and typesetting, even illustrations nicely interspersed and situated beside the text. This core book contains little fluff, because it tries to create a whole fantasy RPG in less than 100 pages. Does it succeed?
Is It Really Barebones?
The main point I’m going to look at is right in the name: is this really bare-bones fantasy? Or is it just another fantasy RPG but with a selling point? Let’s go through a few things together and I’ll tell you my thoughts.
1. Character creation involves this:
- Rolling up four stats, picking a race (one of four basic races), selecting a skill set (a class basically) and calculating certain scores based on your choice
- Giving your character some descriptive words or phrases to help define what makes him/her unique, choosing a moral code (or ethics)
- Picking some equipment, then calculating a bunch of little numbers and recording them (like Initiative, Weapon Damage, MOV, Body points, etc.)
I condensed it a bit, but there are still several steps to making a character and lots of little numbers to calculate. I would say character creation is not barebones. It’s probably going to take 30 minutes to make a character, a bit less if you know exactly what you are doing. As far as I can tell, this isn’t too far from 1st ed. Dungeons & Dragons, so I would say the skinnied-down rules are not really found in character creation. It’s straightforward and there are not too many choices, but it is not barebones. However, read on, for the bones will show soon.
The Shortest Combat Section Ever
2. The combat rules are very short. Here are the key points of the 1/3 page that the combat section takes up: attacking, damaging, damage reduction. There you go, it doesn’t get much more barebones than that. You roll to hit, if you hit you roll to damage, and if the defender has armor it rolls to absorb damage. Done. I mean, what else do you want? Fancy moves and tactical maneuvers? Pssh.
What is interesting is that magic rules and descriptions of spells and scrolls and magic items still manage to take up a lot of real estate. It’s amazing to me that in nearly every game there are pages and pages of descriptions for any combination of gear, spells, special abilities, magic items, chants, and what-have-you. I mean, I guess this stuff is necessary to some degree, but even a game like Barebones Fantasy is waterlogged with lists of just stuff. Couldn’t GMs and players pretty much make up anything that can be owned or cast or purchased? Maybe as players and GMs we have to be “allowed” by the game to get ahold of certain things. In one way it makes sense, in another way it does not. But I digress. I should note, though, that the spell section is pretty small and focused, which is great. So many classic RPGs have these sprawling spells lists, it gets a little ridiculous.
Tables! Oh How I Love Tables!
3. Adventuring: I was pretty excited when I read through the adventure generation section. There are some awesome tables that would be good for just about any GM looking to pull some ideas out of thin air. This section even has a step-by-step process (as do most things in the book) for making an adventure seed. First you roll for the number of areas in the place, then roll for what those specific areas are (e.g. ruins, castle, desert), then roll a descriptive word for the area (e.g. dusty), an area objective and an area obstacle. Done! Pretty cool right? I must say, that is pretty pared down. Especially when compared to taking lots of precious time to think up whole campaigns, this can really get an adventure kickstarted if the GM has a knack for making stuff up or just does a small amount of work beforehand. Oh, there are also tables for random dungeon generation, trap generation, and other stuff.
4. Setting information: This is usually the part of a book that gets me, because it is long and full of so much information I do not necessarily care about. Most of the time it is good stuff, inspired and all that, I just don’t want to read it all unless I know I’m running a game in the setting and I need to be up on my lore. This book has just 7 pages of setting information, including two pages of maps. It’s like a tour guide who has just beer-bonged two Red Bulls is taking you on a Lear jet tour of the Keranak Kingdoms.
Tell Me What I Am Thinking
This looks like a great candidate for a beer-and-pretzels game that does not want to be known as a beer-and-pretzels game. Once you get through character creation, you just listen to the GM and go along for the ride. Play your character using the little tidbits of personality that you may have given them at creation, swing your sword at this and cast a spell at that, have a good time fighting things and taking their stuff. I’m just going to be straight because this game does not pretend to be something it is not: this is a standard fantasy game in the same vein as any retro-clone, except with a lot of stuff very streamlined. If you want a game that can take your character to standard monster hangouts where you fight baddies and laugh about the loot you grab from their bodies and tombs and dungeons and grandmother’s crawlspaces, then this is probably the game for you. If you want social mechanics, combat tactics, detailed settings, nuanced play…you see where I’m going with this.
Ten bucks gets you a .zip file with some nice stuff in it: a well-produced core rule-book, a player aid for character creation, character sheets, a development tracker, the Keranak map (one with hexes, one without), and an introductory adventure module. Not bad! You could do a LOT worse on DrivethruRPG for the same money. Still, the game is not for those looking for something deep. It’s going to be great for those looking for something nice and easy that they can play with others who aren’t going to be interested in a really deep or crunchy RPG, and it’s excellent production makes me give it a hearty recommendation for that crowd. It doesn’t interest me much at all, but if their target market is the more casual RPGer, then I would say they are more or less hitting the mark
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/12/05/tabletop-review-age-of-
cthulhu-the-timeless-sands-of-india-call-of-cthulhu/
Although Dungeon Crawl Classics springs to mind when you think of the publisher Goodman Games, as a long time Call of Cthulhu gamer, I have a lot of love for their Age of Cthulhu line. About twice a year Goodman Games releases adventures compatible with Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu system and I’ve yet to be disappointed by any of them. They take you from a Russian Winter to Ancient Egypt. My personal favorite in the series has been A Dream of Japan, which is one of the creepiest adventures I’ve seen released for Call of Cthulhu in a long time. Now we’re back with the seventh installment in the series: The Timeless Sands of India.
Unlike previous Age of Cthulhu releases, which really strove to capture the foreboding atmosphere and unimaginable horror that Lovecraft wrote about, this adventure uses the Mythos trappings but is more August Derleth than Providence’s favorite son. By this I mean it follows his writing style of the mythos rather than its progenitor. There are clearly defined sides of good and evil in this adventure instead of alien apathy or cosmic chaos. It’s a more optimistic story than the, “if not IF you will die, but when and how horribly” trappings one typically find in Lovecraft. It’s far more pulpy with action and a large hack and slash battle reminiscent of Dungeon Crawl Classics than one where Investigators will spend hours looking over forgotten tomes for that one piece of rare information that will help them save the day. This is neither bad nor good. However I do know that Derleth’s style and outlook on the Cthulhu Mythos (a term he actually coined) can be a sore spots for some Lovecraft fans so the fact this adventure is more pulp action than slow burning chiller may be enough to make some gamers pass this adventure up. So if the idea of engaging in a large scale battle against an entire cult and their legion of summoned Sand Dwellers while your Investigators are armed with Yithian designed lightning cannons turns your stomach, don’t waste your money on this; you’ll only be disappointed. If however, this sounds both psychedelic and awesome, than this will probably be your favorite Age of Cthulhu adventure yet.
The Timeless Sands of India uses the same modus operandi and plot hook that A Dream of Japan used. In both adventures players are wracked by strange, alien dreams and a desire to head to the East. Now this might sound distasteful to some, you have to understand that both adventures uses this trapping in a very different way. In A Dream of Japan, the Investigators are being manipulated by an evil malevolent force. In The Timeless Sands of India, it’s a benevolent force for good causing their dreams. Unfortunately, because the creature is so alien, these dreams that are meant to be messages from the past warning of global Armageddon are interpreted by the primitive human mind incorrectly and case terrible nightmares and sleep deprivation in all who receive them. As well, A Dream of Japan‘s use of horrible dreams and a deep seated need to travel abroad is left more or less up to the Keeper to use as just a hook to start the adventure. With Timeless Sands of India, it’s also a source of play mechanics. Investigators will be down roughly a dozen points from their starting sanity and due to sleep deprivation, they must roll every game day to see how it affects their skills and minds. While it’s unlikely that any PCs will be driven mad in this adventure from the lack of sleep their Investigators are suffering from, it’s nice to see mechanics to go along with this plot hook and a way to enforce the issues that come from monster induced insomnia.
The Timeless Sands of India unfolds across six scenes – five of which take place in India proper, while the very first takes place on a steam ship bound for the country. Investigators will not likely know each other at the beginning of the adventure (it will play better that way) and by the end, several Investigators will have learned new skills as well as have learned how to build alien technology. For this reason, the adventure is probably best as a one-shot or with pre-generated characters so that these new skills and story retcon doesn’t interfere or unbalance a campaign you are already running.
The crux of the adventure revolves around two sides. One is the army of a heroic Yithian from the dawn of time who has been manipulating events from eons to prevent a global catastrophe from occurring. The other is the Cult of the Black Scimitar, who worships and does the bidding of Nyarlathotep and is trying to undo the actions of the Yithian. The Yithian has chosen people from around the globe that have a similar trait in common, but one that only the Yithian knows and that Investigators will discover as they play through the adventure. At the same time, the Cult of the Black Scimitar is out to assassinate any who would aid the Yithian and have begun to pick off its allies one by one. The only problem is figuring out who they are.
The adventure is a nice mix of pulp action, your typical Call of Cthulhu investigation bits and a good dose of 1920s Indian culture. Players will be treated to the massively overcrowded Calcutta, experience both “White Town” and “Dark Town,” and have to deal with multiple attempts on their life. There aren’t a lot of encounters with Mythos creatures. There’s one Dimensional Shambler which players are meant to run from instead of engage, and a platoon of Sand Dwellers at the climax of the adventure, but for the most part, the adventure is a battle of wits between two opposing sides, each of which are guided by an otherworldly force.
I found The Timeless Sands of India to be a lot of fun in spite of the big battle at the end. Usually I hate when a Call of Cthulhu adventure hinges on violence over intelligence. It doesn’t fit the system or mood CoC tries to capture. Here though is one of the better examples of large scale combat using Chaosium’s system. In normal circumstances, PCs are able to be slaughtered by Sand Dwellers, but here they’ll have lightning cannons, which more than turn the tide in their favor…as long as they roll well. I’ll admit that like a lot of Cthulhu gamers, I hate when combat takes down major mythos creatures. Like in Dark Corners of the Earth, a Hall of Shame winning video game if ever there was one, has you KILL Father Dagon with a rocket launcher. Ick. Here though, you’re doing battle with Sand Dwellers, which are as close to a rank and file cannon fodder creature for the game as the system allows. Of course, a single Sand Dweller should be able to slaughter a solo Investigator, but again, that’s where the lightning cannons come into play. I’ll admit this big battle at the end didn’t sit well with me, as a slap in the face to not only intent of the Call of Cthulhu tabletop RPG, but Lovecraft himself. At the same time, out of all the big battles I’ve even seen written for the system, this one was one of the best done. It takes into consideration both sides, it acknowledge the insanity of trying have Investigators fight Mythos creatures early on in the adventure and then when the climax occurs, the PCs stand a chance because of involvement by benevolent creatures of similar power that give them insanely strong alien weaponry. So no, the battle at the end of The Timeless Sands of India in no way shape or form resembles anything Lovecraft would want to be a part of, but in terms of mechanics and written, it’s done very well. So as a critic, I have to give this battle a big thumbs up. but as a gamer with personal preferences, I have to admit that this sort of thing is not the type of thing I like to see in a CoC adventure. Basically, it’s where I know this isn’t my cup of tea, but I still respect what’s been done here. Go in expecting this to be more DCC than CoC at the climax and you should be okay.
When all is said and done, Age of Cthulhu: The Timeless Sands of India is another well done adventure put out by Goodman Games. It’s well written, the art is fabulous and it’s more Derleth or Indiana Jones than Lovecraft, so opinions may vary on how much fun this is to play through with your respective gaming group. I’d definitely recommend Age of Japan over this one, but with both the PDF and the print version costing under ten dollars, this is definitely worth the cost to any Call of Cthulhu fan to just pick up and read, even if you don’t actually play it.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/12/03/tabletop-review-shadowr
un-parageology/
Although the bulk of Shadowrun sourcebooks and adventures tend to be about corporate espionage and counter espionage, I tend to find the ones that explore other aspects of the Sixth World to be my favorites. Maybe it’s because the writers and publisher are taking a chance by talking about something else. Maybe it’s because it’s fleshing out the setting so that enterprising GMs can do more than the run of the mill run. Of these, the “ParaXYZ” books tend to be my favorites. Back in the 90s I think every good Shadowrun player had a copy of Paranormal Animals of North America. It was a lot of fun and is one of the more memorable FASA releases for the system. Earlier this year, Catalyst Game Labs gave us Parabotany, which I absolutely loved. Again, it added a whole new dimension to the Sixth World and really got players and GMs alike to think about how robust the setting can be.
Now we’re back with a similar concept. We’ve already covered animal and vegetable paranormals, so what does that leave? You guessed it: Minerals! Unlike the aforementioned releases, as well as Parazoology, which basically devoted a page (or half a page) to a specific creature complete with equal parts game mechanics and JackPoint snark, Parageology is written like one big JackPoint article, with only two pages and change devoted to how the various discussion topics work in-game for those that want to use them. This means that those looking for something stat oriented are probably going to want to look elsewhere. However, those that are more interested in story and the fleshing out of the Sixth World will probably love this. I say probably because even though I found Parageology to be a lot of fun, I can see a lot of gamers finding it dry and almost too clinical in its approach. Parageology reads more like a college lecture than your normal JackPoint article. Now I happen to like lectures, but I know that’s not the case for everyone. As well, because it’s thirty pages of discourse on ley lines, minerals and geomancy, not every GM will have a use for the topics at hand. Still, if you’re like me and you’re interested in the world at large in Shadowrun rather than just the latest Megacorp and Dragon gossip, you should find Parageology fascinating and a source of many a plot hook.
There are two other small issues that potential purchasers of Parageology might have with the book. The first is the art. If you go in thinking that this will have pictures similar to other Shadowrun releases, full of characters in full action shots, you’re going to be disappointed. This is about geology, after all. The art is nothing but pictures of maps with lines across them representing the types of mana lines in the Sixth World and where they run, or mockups of what an Awakened mineral looks like. I’m very happy with the art (although some maps could be less busy and/or bigger, like Europe’s), but as the art is very different in theme and style than most Shadowrun products, some gamers might walk away unhappy with what’s here. Of course, you have to wonder what they were expecting from a book entitled Parageology then.
The other small issue is the price point for the book. $7.99 for a thirty page PDF is a bit pricey, especially when you consider that the topic at hand is a niche one and that you can get Shadowrun releases with a larger page count for far less. Take the Shadowrun Missions adventures. Those are $3.95 and are about ten pages longer than Parageology on average. Elven Blood was FIVE adventures, and it cost only $6.99. Like Parabotany, this is a pretty expensive release for the page count, and considering it’s a niche product, gamers on a budget, even those that are interested in the topic at hand, may turn this down in order to get a bigger bang for their buck.
Now with those quibbles out of the way, I can honestly say I loved Parageology. You get a pretty intense discourse by Rockhound about everything you could possibly want to know about the geology of the Sixth World. The book is written in JackPoint style, which means you’ll see various shadowrunners comment, make addendums and drop snarky comments throughout the piece. The book starts off with a discussion about the three types of mana lines in the Sixth World (Dragon, Ley and Song) along with the Sha and Shen effects that might affect each line. Sha is when a mana line gets blocked by negative energy. Shen is the exact opposite, and refers to a massive surge in a mana line brought on by multiple lines converging when and where they aren’t supposed to. From there, the book launches into a thirteen page discourse on the major mana lines of the world, first broken down by continent, followed by breaking it down even further into specific locations. Each continent is given a map with all the lines of the three different types placed accordingly. It’s quite interesting to see where the locations are, as well as what physical landmarks CGL chose as important for mana. There are some contradictions between the map and the text though. For example, the maps don’t show any lines through Dee Cee (Washington D.C. to non Shadowrun players). I found that to be odd, especially after the text made such a big deal about how the architecture in the city has screwed things up big time for mana lines. Aside from a few odd bits like that, this section is very well done.
From there, Parageology dips into two other topics: True Elements and Awakened Minerals, both of which will be of interest to any campaign that is artifact hunting heavy or where players like to make their own foci and/or magical items. True Elements are unstable bits from the four core elemental planes made manifest on Earth. These True Elements are much sought after as magical reagents. True Fire and Water can also be used with metals to give them the Primal Forged quality.
Awakened Minerals are a bit different from what we think of with Awakened plants, animals or humanoids. These minerals aren’t self-aware or able to consciously use their inherent magical powers. Instead they’re just highly prized pieces of rock that have a noticeable effect on magic and are used in very expensive doo-dads. There are six minerals and five alloys discussed in this section. Their powers range from being able to reflect spells to detecting magic. Each one of these Awakened bits of earthen by-product has the potential to be a story hook or plot point for those GMs that prefer to make their own adventures.
The JackPoint part of the book then finishes off with a bit of a treatise on geomancy and geomasonry. It tells the difference between the two, along with some examples of structures made by either category. For those that play geomancers or geomasons, this section alone will be worth the cover price, but like the potential audience for Parageology as a whole, this is a pretty small group. After that, the final two pages of the book tell how to use all the information contained within in game terms. You get rules for each type of line, Sha and Shen events, some new Advanced Metamagics, cost of the True Elements and Awakened Minerals and more. They’ve crammed a lot of quality mechanics information into these last two pages, so for those that want rules rather than story from your sourcebooks, you’re still getting all you need on these topics in this sourcebook.
I have a hard time recommending Parageology. On one hand, it’s a topic I’ve been eagerly waiting for Catalyst Game Labs to get around to, and I really enjoyed reading it. On the other, Parageology is overpriced for what you are getting, it’s very dry compared to most Shadowrun products and there are places where the text not only contradicts other Shadowrun books, but where the maps and text in this same book don’t match up completely. It’s also a very niche topic that only a small amount of Shadowrun players will care about, and an even smaller amount will actually make use of in their own campaigns. If you are like me and are interested in the concept of parageology, then you’ll love this book devoted to it, in spite of its flaws. If the topic has never occurred to you and the idea of it doesn’t instantly have you brimming with ideas to throw at your gaming troupe, then this is a safe piece to skip. Let’s call it a thumb’s in the middle, as it’s a well done, if not flawed, book that will appeal to a very small targeted audience.
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Originally Posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/11/30/tabletop-review-colonia
l-gothic-locations/
Continuing the series of reviews of supplements for Colonial Gothic, today’s item is Locations. Be sure to check out The French & Indian War and The Templars as well.
This volume is large, clocking in at around 170 pages, and is chock-full of…what else? Theme!
A Tale of Towns
This book concerns itself with four towns in the New World: Plymouth, Elizabethtown, Savannah, and Charlotte Haven. Each town has an extensive writeup of the history, the notable people and locations (Real? Fictional?), events (fictional) that occurred in the town and when they occurred, a section detailing the people and circumstances behind the events, and some adventure seeds (called “Campaign Starts”).
The historical part of each section is, as usual, fascinating and a good summation of the general course of events in the place and how it may look at the current time (that is, somewhere between 1750 and 1800). The other parts are good as well, especially the one detailing how the town is situated and important buildings that the town contains. For me, the people around town are not as important, as I can just see the scenario in my head of players meeting someone important in town and then doing something ridiculous to/with them. Basically, I’d rather have players know the important people of the town just by their fame and not actually getting a chance to stand within arm’s length of them. Call me paranoid.
Adventures in a Colonial Wonderland
I don’t know if it’s just me, but I find adventure seeds to be hard to run with most of the time. In Locations this is no different. The first adventure seed in the book is about a local werewolf, and I just am not interested in werewolf-hunting. No, no, it’s not because of Twilight, it’s because I don’t like playing the game where the object is to defeat the “Big Bad”. Can’t we make roleplaying more interesting than that? I would certainly like to try. The last adventure seed? Fighting a pirate ghost over his treasure. I’m not saying I could do any better, but dang I wish I could do better. I wish someone else would show me how!
I’m particularly interested in the intrigue side of Colonial Gothic, and that is where the “Societies” section of each town really excites me. Each town has a section for each of the major societies that operate in it; some are benign, some are not. Some are malicious, some are merely powerful or power-hungry. For instance, The Women’s Quilting Circle in Elizabethtown? It’s sort of a gossip group, it might be a potential source of information, and it might be a cover for some witch’s coven that preys on the new folks in town. Of course, whether or not this innocent crafts group unsuspectingly holds a dark secret is up to the GM, but the descriptions of the societies in the book are detailed and give the reader great ideas for what people actually DO around here, and paint places for things to occur, such as secret witch’s covens.
The Good and the Bad
There isn’t much more to say about this volume except that it is full of information. It is a really great resource for GMs and players alike to get more familiar with the Colonial period of American history. Brozek does a great job of giving a feel for the place, though I feel like her writing is weak when it comes to adventure hooks. Just reading through the section for a town fills your head with so many things that can spice up and add detail to your Colonial Gothic game, I would recommend this for anyone who is having players spend some time in a town that isn’t one of the really major ones like Boston.
Production-wise, I continue to be disappointed that Rogue Games does not think it is important to add fresh and quality artwork to their books. It is a little disconcerting to see them charging $20+ (albeit for the print version) and using cliparts of varying quality that look like they either ripped them from Google Images or raided a library for old books and scanned the illustrations. Also, this book could use a little proofreading as I found more than a few typos and one place where it looked like information was cut and pasted, then changed slightly to accommodate the location. Besides that, if you are not on a tight budget and enjoy this game then I would definitely recommend this book, especially for GMs. I don’t know if I would pay what they are asking for the print version, but for the PDF I could spare eight bucks. Plus it’s good to support writers who make RPG content. As for Rogue Games…I don’t know what to do with you. I love your game, but the products you are putting out for it need more love and attention. Please take note.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/11/21/tabletop-review-shadowr
un-missions-election-day/
So here we are with the climax of this season of Shadowrun Missions. Throughout the season we’ve seen a slow build up to the vote on Proposition 23 aka “Project Freedom.” You had a good old fashioned set up in Rally Cry, helped Bull MacCallister get revenge for her murdered daughter in On a Silver Platter, helped catch a sabatoure in Burn, and most recently, cleared your name for the murder of a District Attorney in Assassin Nation. Now it’s time for the final leg of the Orc Underground saga in this season of Shadowrun Missions. Of course some people may say, “Why play Election Day? After all, Dirty Tricks came out ten days earlier and spoiled the results of the vote for everyone!” To that I say two things. The first is that Election Day does take place on well….Election Day, but it’s not about the results directly, so knowing how the vote goes won’t spoil playing this adventure. This is parallel to the actual vote itself. Second, if you tailor your campaign completely and utterly to the metaplot and don’t allow yourself to deviate in the slightest, then you’re probably not having any fun. It’s a game. The metaplot is OPTIONAL. Hell, if you want to run a world where the Big D is still alive and kicking it as President – YOU CAN. If some of your players have read Dirty Tricks, who cares? It won’t affect this adventure unless they are completely and utterly incapable of separating player knowledge from character knowledge.
Election Day spans seven scenes and forty pages, but not all of those forty pages are the adventure itself. The first six pages are an explanation of the Shadowrun Missions setup and back story on the season so far. The final seventeen are for the person running the adventure. Tables, NPC stats, legwork rolls and more. Three maps and full color handouts. That’s pretty intense for a $3.95 adventure, eh? Did I mention it’s in full colour (Well, mostly full colour. A lot more B&W art this time around.)? You’re getting all that for less than the cost of most comic books. Also, because it’s a digital files, your pets can’t tear it up. Take that Spider-Man!
So seventeen of the forty pages are the actual adventure and it’s a pretty weird adventure. In fact, I’d probably call it a collection of short inter-connected adventures rather than one large piece of work. First, the Shadowrunners are hired to start a small riot on Election Day outside a precinct. The problem is going to be getting the runners to take the mission. With a little legwork players will figure out it’s a precinct where the population is Pro-Prop 23. This means if this area is thrown into chaos, it positively affects the Anti-Prop 23 side. Because the entire season has had the players on the side of Prop 23 instead of against it, this may cause players to balk on doing it. Sure it’s easy money, but even though is supposed to be about shades of grey, players and their characters tend to be a little more white hat wearing than black or grey. Especially when they’ve spent several sessions working for a cause (even if they were working on it sheerly for money) and they’d hate to see their work undone, or their positive relationships with Pro-Prop 23 fixers ruined. For my own running of the adventure to prevent the adventure from stalling right out the gate, I changed it to an evenly mixed district but gave hints it might leans a little Anti-Prop 23. I was right to do this as the first three questions out of the team’s mouth were about how this run would affect the vote. So you might want to do the same if you know the moral compass of your troupe.
The fun is starting the riot. My players did so with a rousing homage to the movie PCU with things ranging from a chant of “We’re Not Going To Protest.” to finally getting fisticuffs started through meat hucking (Hey! Real meat is expensive in the Sixth World!). The catch is that the riot is actually a smokescreen to distract everyone from an assassination attempt on a person in the Governor’s employ. Of course, it doesn’t go as planned and the end result is a spiral escalation of wacky and seemingly unrelated events. I swear to god, at times I felt like I should have “The Curly Shuffle” or “Yakety Sax” as background music as my players dealt with an innocuous brief case, media extortion, having multiple organizations after them for nebulous reasons and eventually playing the game of “which Mr. Johnson that we have done work for previously in this adventure should we screw over to the point where they end up dead?” Although I don’t think it’s intended to be, Election Day can come off as an existential black comedy with the backdrop of potential race issues clouding the political system of Seattle for the next decade or so. In the end, my team sided with the same people they’ve made allies of throughout all of Season Four and the rare definite black hats got their comeuppance – all without actually affecting the voting result of Prop 23 at all. At the end of the day, I think anyone playing this will have a blast with it and will also learn a valuable lesson about black market commlinks. I don’t want to spoil thing more than that, but some weird alliances can be formed and at the end of the day Brackhaven is going to want to down an entire bottle of maximum strength migraine pills.
If this is the last of this season of Shadowrun Missions, it’s a great way to send things off. I know I said in my review of Dirty Tricks that I was surprised the election results of Prop 23 weren’t a Mission themselves, and I was doubly surprised by what the actual Election Day adventure ended up being. It’s a lot of fun and best of all Dirty Tricks and Election Day complement each other instead of creating a weird paradox or scenario where any of your more anal retentive players will come back a week later and say “Our results are totally incompatible with Dirty Tricks!.
Again, I really love the Shadowrun Missions format. Full colour adventures in PDF format for under four bucks are an amazing deal no matter how you look at it. Election Day wraps up an otherwise top notch season (save for Romero & Juliette and Burn), and you should definitely pick it up if you enjoy reading and.or playing published Shadowrun adventures. I’m eager to see where the next season goes, although my own personal preferences would be DeeCee, Saint Louis, Paris or a small but busy island like Barbados. No matter where CGL takes us next, I know I’ll be on board.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/11/20/book-review-shadowrun-n
eat/
Neat is a novella set in the Shadowrun universe featuring the exploits of burned-out mage Jimmy Kincaid. Now, CHL puts out a lot of fiction for Shadowrun, but usually it’s very short stories or sourcebooks like the recent Dirty Tricks, written almost purely in JackPoint prose. It’s been a while, though, since there has been an actual novel devoted to the Shadowrun universe. Before Neat , the closest we had was a nineteen page short story entitled Another Rainy Night, and it’s been years since I could actually pick up a brand new book based on the franchise at my local brick and mortar store, or even on Amazon. So it was nice to see CGL releasing this in .epub and .mobi format instead of in PDF. It may be a digital only novella, but at least that means it’s built specifically for e-readers and thus FEELS like reading a book rather than a PDF. It looks great on my Kindle, by the way.
Jimmy Kincaid is a detective, and as such, Neat is a blend of 20s style noir with 2070s futuristic mega-corporation oligarchy. It’s an odd juxtaposition, but the book makes it work. Aside from a light use of magic, the novella fits into similar genres like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Neuromancer, and other works by Phillip K. Dick and William Gibson. While Neat isn’t as seminal a work as anything by those two authors, or even the stuff Robert Charrette put out in the 90s, it’s still a fun read for hardcore fans of the Shadowrun license. Now, for those that are new to this particular line of games and fiction, you’ll probably be a little lost, as NOTHING is explained, so you’ll never know what JackPoint is or any of the franchise-specific vernacular.
The plot of Neat is both your basic Noir and your basic Shadowrun plot. Alluring and well to do dame Ms. Johnson (A Johnson is the nom de plume of someone hiring your character for corporate espionage or other “runs” in Shadowrun) offers Jimmy Kincaid a large sum of money to track down a young girl who was kidnapped out of her car. Of course, tracking down this young girl is nowhere near as cut and dry as Kincaid would expect, but then, it wouldn’t be a detective/mystery tale if a few curve balls weren’t thrown at the protagonist, right? Kincaid ends up in a few firefights, causes a minor feud between the Yakuza and Mafia and pretty much earns his credstick on this. It’s an interesting read full of well fleshed out characters with believable motivations, and fans of Shadowrun will enjoy the first long meaty piece of fiction set in the universe in some years. I know I did. The mark of a good detective story is whether or not you can actually piece everything together before you get to the end. Now, I don’t mean solve it yourself, but that you can go back and re-read the story with the ending in mind and catch things that you didn’t notice before or realize that some details presented as throw-away text were actually quite important. Neat does all that, and so it fits all the benchmarks of a well-written detective piece.
There are only two problems I had with the story. One is very minor, in that Neat is not very accessible to newcomers. We already talked about that, but suffice it to say, this probably shouldn’t be your first foray into the Sixth World. The other is the twist -slash- “Whodunit” aspect of the story. Don’t get me wrong it’s well done, and it wouldn’t be Noir OR Shadowrun without Kincaid’s employer having ulterior motivations. It all makes sense in the story. The small problem I had is that Kincaid’s job would have not only been a lot easier had Ms. Johnson been completely honest with him from the get-go, but Kincaid himself would have probably tackled the mission with a lot more gusto and positivity simply because this is one of the few cases in Shadowrun where someone would have been wearing a white hat instead of grey or black. All she had to do was speak the truth and things wouldn’t have become as convoluted OR as violent as they did. But then, there would have been no mystery about “Why was person X taken?” and the story would have been MUCH shorter. Still, the conclusion of the story and the “big reveal” will irk some people. It won’t ruin their sense of disbelief or make the story any less fun, but you will probably be sitting there going, “So much of this could have been avoided with honesty.” Basically it’s the Catch-22 of both genres being combined into one novella here. You wouldn’t have a story without the lack of honesty, and yet, you will be annoyed by what could have been come chapter ten. Of course, if honesty wasn’t such a rarity in the Sixth World, shadowrunning wouldn’t be such a lucrative profession, now would it?
So a big thumb’s up here for Neat IF you are a long time fan of Shadowrun. Newcomers should probably read some of the 90s fiction or the core rulebook first. Otherwise, a lot of the tale will be gobblygook and jargon. At only three dollars, Neat is definitely a story well worth picking up for your e-reader. It never drags, and it’s great to see CGL testing the waters for longer pieces of Shadowrun fiction. Maybe at some point we’ll get an omnibus reprint of the old books, or we’ll see Kincaid in the upcoming Shadowrun Returns anthology. I know I’d like to see that myself.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/11/16/tabletop-review-left-ha
nd-path-mage-the-awakening/
It’s been a while since White Wolf released something for Mage: The Awakening. I think the last piece was Imperial Mysteries back in January. It’s too bad, because M:TA has been my favorite branch of the New World of Darkness. Also releases for M:TA are sporadic at best, they tend to be high quality and Left Hand Path is no exception. This book lets you see how the other half lives, doing the same for Left Handed mages that the Sabbat books did for the Camarilla’s archenemy back in second edition Vampire: The Masquerade. Now Storytellers and players alike can learn more about corrupted legacies, Mad Ones, and all the other different Nefandi out there. I should make it clear that unlike the aforementioned Sabbat, Left Handed mages are not organized by any means. Sure there are some groups out there like the Tremere, but for the most part they aren’t large clutches. It tends to be small groups or solo mages that have gone their own way for a myriad of reason, even good intentioned ones. Even more importantly for the Storyteller, you can see how someone can be Left handed to a degree and yet still an active member of the Consilium.
For those who have never played Mage: The Awakening, I realize that first paragraph probably read like gobblygook. Basically a Left Handed mage (Or Nefandi, in vulgar argot) is a mage who has lost their way. Perhaps they’ve left the large collective of Mages because they didn’t like the rules, because they went mad, because they were a psychopath, or even had good intentions that could only be achieved by breaking the laws of their specific Legacy. The spiraling road down to Left Handedness is a very diverse one. There is no one particular path. Each Left Handed mage has a story all their own, and although they can fit into a neat little stereotype, like a Scelesti, that doesn’t mean they are all the same. A Good Storyteller will use Left Hand Path to help aid them in creating memorable antagonists and excellent stories. Remember, the best “bad guys” are those that believe they are right. This book does more for Mage: The Awakening in terms of helping one understand the Antagonists of this system than anything else yet released for the system.
So what do you get in Left Hand Path? Well there are four chapters, a fiction story to start off the book and a long introduction that’s as long as some of the other chapters so it really should count as one in its own right. The fiction story is terrible, although there is a wonderful piece of art to start it off. It’s badly written and quite dull, so skip it and get to the good stuff.
The introduction is oddly the true meat of the book, where you get explinations and an in-depth discussion of what it means to be “Nefandi.” You are given a rough background on terminology, various groups that Left Handed mages can fit into and how some are more tolerable than others. You are given Storytelling advice on how to play various Left Handed mages and a very important reminder that this doesn’t necessarily make them evil or even antagonists. Honestly the entire intro should be required reading for anyone running a M:TA chronicle.
Chapter One is entitled “Heretics and Apostates.” These are the Left Handed mages that are on the fringe of the Consilium. The ones that are still in it actually. These tend to be the mages that disagree with bits of the order or feel certain rules don’t apply to them. Its their own personal Hubris that brings them down. These aren’t the guys that will be devouring souls or making deals with demons…yet. This chapter goes into great detail about what starts a person down the road to Nefandi and their eventual break with their order. You also get some new merits, flaws and backgrounds for Left Handed mages and some sample characters.
Chapter Two, “The Mad Ones” is about exactly what you think – insane mages. Of course, insanity is relative and some of the Mad Ones are convinced of their sanity, as are others, until that one crucial moment when their façade drops. Being insane doesn’t mean being like those terrible Malkavians we’ve all encountered at one point. Madness takes many different forms and this chapter is VERY clear on that. You have three core types: Malefactors, Savants, and Walkers, but a antagonist Mad One doesn’t necessarily have to fit into one of these categories. As well, you’re given the sample characters and some mechanics for these guys as well.
Chapter Three is “The Scelesti.” If you’re new to Mage: The Awakened, these are the equivalent of your demon worshipping mages. Scelesti have a particularly perverse relationship with the Abyss and they definitely are considered evil. These guys are NOT meant to be player characters and the book even has a sidebar devoted to the fact that playing a Scelesti (or allowing it in your campaign as a PC) is borderline stupid. This chapter is best left for the Storyteller or simply to help a player flesh out the world his character lives in. There’s some great information here and honestly, this chapter could easily have been its own sourcebook. There’s so much more that could have been covered.
Finally we come to Chapter Four, “Reapers.” This is the chapter Mage players will be most familiar with due to the Tremere. I should add a caveat to Old World of Darkness (aka The Onyx Path these days) that these are NOT the Tremere from Vampire: The Masquerade. Same name, somewhat similar core concept, but a completely different delivery. These are basically Liches, mages kept alive through magical absorbing the souls of others. As the Tremere are the most common antagonists in M:TA, players and Storytellers alike should be well familiar with them. Because of that you’re probably wondering why there is a full chapter on Reapers. Well, Tremere aren’t the only Reapers out there. You’re given a look at several kind of Reapers, information on how to deal with soul loss and so much more. In regards to the Tremere, you get a lot more information on them and in a nod to V:TM, there’s even a way to crossover the Tremere from Mage: The Awakening with Vampire: The Requiem. Fans of both versions of the World of Darkness will love the Tremere back story here and how one will see shades of the other in it.
All in all, Left Hand Path is by far the best supplement for Mage: The Awakening I’ve come across. The one black spot on the book, besides the terrible fiction at the beginning, is that it is littered with typographical errors. Words or even whole phrases are missing from sentences at times. The good news is your brain fills in the missing bits, but when you read the book with an editor/reviewer’s eye, you find far more than should be in any professional publication. Aside from that, Left Hand Path is a must buy for any fan of Mage: The Awakening and even V:TR players can get a good amount of use out of Chapter Four. Definitely consider picking this one up.
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Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/11/14/tabletop-review-shadowr
un-dirty-tricks/
Dirty Tricks is the latest Shadowrun sourcebook from Catalyst Game Labs. Appropriately enough, this 162 page tome on political bribery and scandals was released on Election Day for the United States. At first I was surprised that Dirty Tricks was going to be this big. After all, at the end of 2011, they released Conspiracy Theories. It seemed like there would be a lot of overlap. Indeed there is a degree of that; something the book makes mention of several times. However Dirty Tricks fleshes out a lot of things I felt were unpolished in Conspiracy Theories, giving you far more detail so that newcomers to the game can get something out of this book (although it is still best in the hands of Sixth World veterans). In a perfect world, both books would have been one complete text, but who knows? Maybe I can convince CGL to do a “buy one, get one half off” or some or sort of bundling of the two over at DriveThruRpg.com, as both books paint a complete picture on the wacky political spectrum of a world where corporations have more rights than humans, were trolls can run for public office and Slow Loris Shamans can dictate public policy (Please actually make a Slow Loris Shaman someone…)
One thing you need to know about Dirty Tricks is that it is 98% fiction. Only the last ten pages or so are going to give you actual stats and data that is applicable to your tabletop game. Everything else is either short fiction stories or metaplot doled out in the old JackPoint forum style. This doesn’t mean there isn’t valuable information for your own personal Shadowrun campaign. Just the opposite in fact. It’s just you’re not getting rules, stat blocks and numbers for how to run a political scandal in your game. That’s really how it should be. Something like this needs to be acted out, not decided by the roll of a die. So I love the way the book handles this topic, but you are going to have to read through a lot of fiction and remember that due to the JackPoint format, some of what you are hearing is fact, some is exaggeration and some is outright falsehood (albeit not necessarily purposeful on the part of the speaker). An enterprise GM will walk away from this book with a good idea of how to do a run where players are trying to dig up dirt on a political candidate/incumbent (or suppress it), but they’ll still need to actually write the adventure themselves. The most help you’ll get in that regard from this book are twenty-seven individual paragraphs, each of which are plot hooks for different potential adventures.
There are fifteen chapters in Dirty Tricks. As mentioned earlier, fourteen of which are fiction and one is a chapter for the GM with a little bit of info on how to run an adventure where politics in the focal point. The fictional pieces are well done. One is about the attack on Aztech’s food processing facility by Sirrurg (ouch!) while another features Jimmy Kincaid (last seen in The Twilight Horizon sourcebook) in a rare positive and uplifiting Sixth World tale where good wins out over evil. Remember kids, just because Shadowrun is a darker world than our own, it doesn’t mean every story has to be gloom and doom. Then we might as well be reading Warhammer 40,000 stuff. As always the fiction is a lot of fun and helps set the mood for the rest of the book. The only story I’d give a thumb’s down to was “Memory in Time.” I didn’t care for the plot, pacing or writing.
Of course though, it’s the JackPoint segments that make up the bulk of the book and what you want to hear about. I’m happy to say all of it is pretty good. There are a few minor quibbles I had regarding the writing of the book as there were some errors about culture, local, voting demographics and the like that don’t quite match up with reality and that could have been fixed/rewritten with a little research. One example is that the section of Maine read like it was odd or rare that they have an Independent holding a Senate seat during the 2070s. However, Maine has and always love political candidates that eschew parties. Just look at Angus King. He was Governor for Cthulhu knows how long and just became a Senator. Part of this could simply be the way this section was written, but whether it was poor verbiage or just the writing/editing team just not knowing Maine’s political history, this kind of threw me for a loop. Something similar happened with Minnesota. One of the candidates is Jesse Ventura III, meant to be the grandson of “The Body” himself. Well this is impossible. Jesse’s kids are Tyrell and Jade. He doesn’t have a son named after him and thus there’s no way to have a grandson who would pull a Hubert Humphrey the Third. This is pretty common knowledge and also easily found via something like reading about Jesse in a book or via the internet, so as much as I appreciated the shout-out to a man I worked for whilst I was in college, this just felt sloppy to me. Now, little quibbles like this aside, 99.99% of the people who pick this up aren’t going to catch these errors and so they won’t care. It’s still a VERY entertaining read. It’s just CGL’s bad luck that the main Shadowrun reviewer out there worked on Ventura campaign in the late 90s, lives in Washington D.C., has two Political Science degrees and thus notices little things like these errors and inaccuracies all too easily. What are the odds?
Some of the things you’ll find in Dirty Tricks include:
Kay St. Irregular talking about how one obtains (and holds onto ) power through not-so-legal and outright illegal means. The dead even rise and vote Republican – just not for Bob Terwilliger.
How to properly intimidate voters and commit obscene acts of fraud.
Sunshine breaking down just how a scandal explodes.
SeaTAC Sweetie gives a lecture on the sexual appetites of politicians (my favorite section in the book)
What it’s like on the opposite side of a political based Shadowrun.
A look at all the major political offices up for re-election in the CAS and UCAS along with a detailed look about each state (and some specific cities) and the people running. Wonderfully done, but as I said earlier, it has a few inaccuracies throughout it regarding our mutual shared pasts (ours being reality and the Sixth World).
The history and result (!) of Proposition 23, which has been a focal point for much of the Shadowrun Missions line of adventures this season. I was a bit surprised the result was revealed here, but it makes sense since this IS a book about politics. I guess I was partly expecting it to play out in an adventure. Twenty-two pages alone is devoted to this, making it the longest topic in the book, but hey, it’s Shadowrun and it’s a Seattle focal point, of course it’s this in-depth.
A whole section devoted to Tsimshian. This was probably the worst section in the book. It wasn’t bad, just very dull and this is the one area where newcombers to Shadowrun will be the most perplexed. It’s not given any real history like other bits. You’re just kind of thrown in to the current status of the nation.
Winterhawk, The Smiling Bandit and newcomer Chainmaker lead us on a merry romp through the politics of the United Kingdom. This is another chapter where people won’t know what is going on unless they’re really been reading sourcebooks on the UK. Otherwise they won’t know who the Lord Protector was (in terms of title and perhaps living state….Blah!) or what’s up with the mysterious figure known as the Pendragon. Another place where background information could have been very useful for newbies, but at least it’s not as bad as Conspiracy Theories in this regard.
In my second favorite bit in the book, Plan 9 leads us through a look at the Black Lodge and also how he systematically checks things out. It turns out there is a method to the madness of everyone’s favorite conspiracy theorist. I loved this look into the research patterns of my favorite JackPointer, as well as a look at my favorite mysterious faction in the game. No mention of Killer BOB or Laura Palmer though.
There are a few other things here and there. Danielle De La Mar is brought up for some reason. She is a relatively obscure character save for the appearance in Jet Set so her being brought up ever so slightly in an indicator that the character is about to get some big time exposure, especially with her “censor the Matrix” campaign. There are also hints that FastJack still isn’t quite right (Shedim? Dead and a Matrix ghost now? Senility setting in? You decide!) and that someone big is still after Snopes (but why and who?) . The vast majority of the book is a solid and entertaining read from beginning to end. The price point ($25 for a PDF) might be too high for some, especially when compared to things like Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition which for five bucks more, gives you a full colour PDF and nearly four times the page count, but for hardcore fans of the system, this is one of the better books CGL has released this year. If you have the money to spare, definitely considering picking up Dirty Tricks, especially if you are remotely interested in politics or need some inspiration for something other than the usual run on evil mega-corporations.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/11/09/tabletop-review-dungeon
s-a-solo-adventure-game/
To some, it might seem that playing a tabletop game by yourself reeks of loneliness and despair. However, when you consider the millions (if not billions) of games of Solitaire played each year, I hardly think choosing to play a more involved solo game is the saddest thing you can do.
I’ve had some experience with solo tabletop games. I’ve played a couple of Fighting Fantasy games as they got released on the PSP. I enjoyed them enough that the idea of a similar game seemed like something that would be fun. Enter Dungeons: A Solo Adventure Game.
It all starts with choosing a hero. There are four in the book to choose from. These are barbarian, dwarf, elf, and mage. They come pre-equipped and have all of their stats written out, making it easy to jump right into a game.
The stats included are combat dice, armor, wounds, magic dice, and speed. Combat dice represent the number of six-sided dice that character rolls when determining damage. Armor represents the lowest possible roll that lands a hit, wounds is basically health points, magic dice equal the number of dice rolled when trying to cast a spell, and speed determines attack order.
Barbarians use brute force to quickly dispatch opponents. They are the only heroes that use three combat dice, and they have the highest starting health in the game. However, they don’t have any armor to start with, and have a low speed that gets them in trouble. Since they have no armor, there’s a good chance that a quicker enemy will be able to deal damage. Still, if you can keep a barbarian alive long enough to get some better equipment, they are well positioned to win most fights.
Dwarves are probably the weakest character in my opinion. They have a respectable two combat dice, and start off with heavy armor that requires an enemy to roll at least a five to hit. They have the second highest wounds stat as well. What kills them? They have the lowest speed rating in the game. This means that they will always be attacked first. Plus, since most enemies have at least three health points, that means the dwarf can’t one shot them. This means that most encounters will result in the dwarf getting attacked at least twice. That’s a lot of extra dice rolls that could easily penetrate that tough armor. I have never had a dwarf make it out of the first campaign.
My favorite hero is the elf. Elves have two combat dice, start off with light armor, and are tied for the lowest health points in the game. More importantly, they have a base speed of three. This is as good or better than most of the enemies in the game. In addition, elves come equipped with a long range weapon at the start. Long range weapons allow you to get an attack in before starting normal combat. With the high speed, this means that an elf will be able to get two attacks in before an opponent in most circumstances. I’ve had a fairly high percentage of battles end quickly this way. Elves can also use magic. While that single die roll isn’t ideal, it can come in handy in a pitch. This makes the elf the most versatile character in the game. My most successful games have been with elves.
Finally, we have the mage. They have low HP, only attack with one die, and don’t start off with any armor. However, they get two magic dice. This means they have a much greater chance of successfully casting spells. This allows them to boost defense, boost strength, or just outright deal damage with a high success rate. The fourth spell allows you to roll for a chance to recover one health point at the end of each area. With two dice to roll, I had a high success rate here. The catch is that the mage has a medium speed, which means faster enemies have a good chance of wreaking havoc on that low health count. The key to using a mage is find items that increase his odds of avoiding that early onslaught. Boosting his speed is a good option, but so is picking up a suit of light armor.
The way the game works is simple. Most everything is decided by the roll of a die. You roll to pick the type of adventure you run, what you do in each area, during combat, and also when you earn treasure. There are six adventures. Each comes with a basic setup, a generic monster that you’ll likely face, and a final encounter you’ll have to overcome to complete the quest. After that, you roll a die again to decide what happens in the first area. You’ll either encounter an enemy, take part in an event, or simply find an empty room. Once you’ve completed twelve areas, you can move on to the final part of the quest.
It may sound like the game is too random, but there is a good deal of decisions to be made by the player. For starters, most of the events offer you choices. For example, you could come across a fallen soldier. The game offers you three different items that can be found on the body, and you’ve got to choose one. Another example is a fountain. If you choose, you may drink from the fountain. This could heal you, do nothing, or even poison you. If you need the health, it just might be worth the risk. At the end of each quest, you’re allowed to spend gold in order to purchase new equipment. Do you get better armor, save up for that powerful ranged weapon, or simply by some restorative items?
Character progression is done through finding treasure for the most part. Every time you successfully beat an enemy, you make a treasure roll. More than likely, you’ll just earn some gold. However, you can also find potions or magical items as well. At the end of each quest, you make a roll to determine your quest reward. You’re most likely to earn bonus health, but you could also earn a skill. If you get a skill, there’s a list of various options to choose from. This could make you faster, more deadly with a particular weapon, allow you to reroll some dice, or even shorten the length of subsequent dungeons. It’s always interesting to earn that reward.
The key to success in Dungeons is to get past the first few quests. At the start, the game is brutal and unforgiving. More than half of my characters never made it past the first quest. In general, the game gets easier as it goes. Your character gets more powerful, and everything else stays the same. Sure, you’re outgunned for the grand majority of the game, but it’s much more manageable when you can at least take care of the riff raff without a problem.
The game isn’t perfect by any means. There are so many dice rolls that my wrist was starting to hurt after a couple of games. Also, there is no story to keep you interested. You’ll have to use your imagination for pretty much everything. However, this game is very open for customization. You could easily create your own hero classes, monsters, events, and quests. The game is very light on rules. Therefore, it’s easier to customize it your play style. If things start to get too easy, simply increase the stats of your opponents. Make it so that lowly orc can suddenly cast spells. There’s a lot here to play around with.
For a measly two dollars, Dungeons presents an amusing solo game that can easily be modded and/or adjusted to fit your play style. If you can deal with the lack of story, it is certainly worth a try.
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Publisher Reply: |
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Thanks for the review!
In regards to dice rolls, we have added print-and-play cards to lessen the amount of dice rolling required. Hope you find it makes things easier! |
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Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/11/08/tabletop-review-colonia
l-gothic-the-templars/
Continuing the series of reviews of supplements for Colonial Gothic, today’s item is The Templars. Be sure to check out The French & Indian War as well. This book about the Templars is the first in a series being released by Rogue Games regarding various organizations, many of which we are familiar with through movies like National Treasure and The Da Vinci Code if not through our own interest in historical strangeness.
Touch Solomon’s Junk
The first section gives you the general history of the Templars: where they originated and how, and then their growth and dissolution a few hundred years later. As you may know, after the Templars go underground is when things get interesting for them. They are not supported as openly by the church or the ruling power, now they are a rogue organization…kinda. In some places they are kicked out and unwelcome but in other places, like Scotland, they flourish. It is here where the legends and myths begin.
The Templars have, or are thought to have, lots of secrets. That makes them an interesting subject for Colonial Gothic and fits in very well with the setting. Some of those secrets involve the finding or keeping of stuff like Solomon’s knowledge, the Holy Grail, vast sums of money, secrets of architecture, even drugs. This is all in the second and third chapters; various legends and things about the Templars, some that are made up for the purposes of the game and some that were actually reported. The third chapter in particular discusses the various incarnations and machinations of the order as they faced persecution and dislocation. Basically these chapters are informational, giving you an idea of the history and characteristics of the Templars. Colonial Gothic books tend to be good on informing you of the history, which I like a lot.
Late Knight Meetings
Chapter 4 begins giving us actual in-game information on how the players can interact with the Templars: be caught up in some of their doings, having to track one of them down, being asked to perform a task for them, etc. Each of the little sections in this chapter about the order’s situation in the colonies has a few adventure seeds in it, which is always great for a GM to at least look over and maybe get inspired. The chapter also describes the forces other than the Knights Templar who are working to make the Colonies into the sovereignty they want: the Mandoag, Knights of Malta, the Inquisition, etc. This chapter gives the GM and players a lot of different factions to play with, and potentially a lot of intrigue to enact.
The next chapter gives rules for a Templar character, while at the same time cautioning that a Templar is not your normal character type. I personally would resist a Templar character, as if I’m going to use them as a secretive organization I can’t have a player sitting at the table who knows the secrets! You can always have the player be a lower-rank Templar though, in which case they probably would not be privy to all of the knowledge and power of the higher-ups. This chapter gives several options for different ranks of Templar character, and very helpful notes about each one. While not exhaustive about the rankings and what the day-to-day workings of the organization might be, it’s good enough to give an idea of what the character might be like and what they might do.
This Last Part is, Literally, a Book
I, too, think that heading is silly and nonsensical. This next part appears to be an excerpt from a book, but I can’t tell if it is real or not! I’ve written plenty of research papers, and by all the markings this looks and reads like a real book, plus it is clearly stated at the beginning of the section that it is an excerpt from such-and-such book. Well, my fellow RPGers, the last section of this supplement is some period prose for you. It describes many different things about the Templars, from the point of view of this 19th century scholar focusing on their habits, rules, idols, ways of worship, rituals, and so on. It’s a pretty interesting read, although it is a bit weird to have it appended the way it is to the back of this supplement. I don’t know what else to say about it, it’s basically just a chapter from some book.
All in all, this supplement reads more like a history digest, but it does give the GM and players a little bit of actual rules and such to work with. I think the intention was more to inform and excite the imagination than to heap on any more rules, which I am completely fine with. The book does seem to cover all of the legends of the Templar pretty well, and it also sheds a little light on a lot of other organizations in the Colonies that the players and/or the Templars could get mixed up with. Really, the whole milieu of secret orders is pretty fascinating. I would suggest this book if you are interested in playing Colonial Gothic in a game with a lot of intrigue and mystery. It’s just ripe with that kind of stuff.
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