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Minireview: City of Golden Death (Pathfinder)

City of Golden Death (written by Joshua J. Frost) is the finale of the three-part mini-campaign begun with Crypt of the Everflame and Masks of the Living God. I really liked those two, and this one does not disappoint either – all three are very different from each other in plot and tone, but still have links to each other and are designed to be run in sequence. It’s sort of like some the 1st edition AD&D series of modules, where the adventures were standalone but also a part of a series. In a way, this is something between a solo module and a larger “adventure path” series.

Of course, none of that matters is the adventures themselves are no good, or contain extremely weak links. No such problem here, City of Golden Death is a very nice finale to the series. Again, it’s quite different in tone to the previous two; here we have the PCs venturing into dangerous ancient ruins, trying to stop the plans of the main Bad Guy before it’s too late. It’s quite cinematic and “pulpy” in places, but in a good way. After the sneaky previous episode, the more straightforward plot here is probably a welcome change of pace. It’s assumed that the PCs will want to do their bit just because they are heroic, so the GM might need to dangle some additional carrots (or a big stick) to starts things off here. On the other hand, the previous adventure already assumed that the PCs had reason to act against the Cult of Razmir, so that motivation will probably just carry over to this one.

As for the “pulpy” bit… well, here the main locale is a place called (I kid you not) “Isle of Terror”. Subtle it’s not, and it’s also a bit cheesy… but hey, old D&D had the “Isle of Doom” (later also used in the Savage Tide adventure path), so it’s in good company.

If you’re looking for a nice mini-campaign for Pathfinder (or other D&D variant), you might want to check out this series of three adventures.

Tori @Pori

Missed seeing Tori at the Pori Jazz festival this weekend (due to Ropecon), but I just noticed that Undented has a collection of YouTube clips of the whole concert. Shortish gig and somewhat predictable “festival” setlist, but her voice is in great shape and I really liked some of the versions she sung here. “Hey Jupiter” (below) is a particularly cool version.

On the same(ish) note, here’s an awesome clip from a 1998 “Storytellers” session, with a short story prelude.

“Everybody knows I’m her man”

Survived vacation

Well, I’m back at work, after a (short) 2-week vacation. It’s nice and peaceful here, as opposed to the hectic (but very fun) vacation schedule. And the office has air conditioning, which is a win these days.

We spent the first weekend in Joensuu, at Isosaarirock. Very nice rock festival, and nice trip overall. The hotel was an “eco-hotel”, which proved to be bad on Friday when we arrived: “eco” meant no air conditioning and poor ventilation, resulting in a room temperature easily in the 30s (C). We finally managed to sleep without dying of overheating by (also) leaving the room door open to the corridor. The temps dropped a bit the next days so it wasn’t so bad, but… that place really wasn’t built to handle heat waves. Nice enough otherwise.

The festival itself was good. Nice selection of bands and a wide cross-section of genres. We listened to everything from big band jazz to heavy metal and (Finnish!) rap. I primarily went there to see Imogen Heap (she was good), but many other gigs were also very much worth seeing and listening to. My feet were killing me near the end; 12 hours or so of standing / bounding about in soleless shoes (Feelmax) starts to get to you. We got a bit of a sunburn, but nothing too bad… and the beach there was awesome. You could wade in the water or go for a swim, while seeing and hearing the band on stage at the same time.

Imogen Heap seemed happy about the very positive reception she got (she hasn’t been here before), so I’m hoping she’ll do a “proper” tour with a Finnish concert at some point. It would be great to see her in a more focused environment.

The following week our house started filling up with guests. A lot of EVE players were coming to Finland for Ropecon, and we housed some at our place. Actually, we still do, I think the last of them leaves tomorrow. We also got well-known VTES “celebrity” player over (I’ve met him before at ECs), who got crash space on the floor on a mattress since our guest bedroom and sofa were already occupied my others. Fun guys all, and it’s fun to have the house full of people. Well, now and then it is, anyway ;)

Last weekend was Ropecon, of course. I ran the big VTES tournament on Friday, and it went very well. Excellent turnout with 93 players, and we also had a record number of foreign players attending. The win went to Otso Saariluoma, with the final round ending around 3am. It was a good final round too, with lots of stuff happening all the time. I’ll write up a full tournament report during the next week or so, with details on all that.

On Saturday I played in the VTES draft (fun, but only got 1 VP total), then caught some random program events and finally stumbled home to sleep for an all-too-short while. Sunday back to the con area to listen to Guy Windsor’s traditional “Realities of Steel” thing, and then an 8-hour info desk shift. So the con went well, though this year most of it went towards VTES for me.

…and now it’s (slowly) back to normal routine. That’s not a bad thing, as such. The kittehs will miss having a million people around the house, though, they’ve grown used to always having a human around who has time to pet them.

Minireview: Rivers Run Red (Pathfinder #32)

Rivers Run Red is part two of the Kingmaker adventure path, the first Paizo adventure path where they try for a more “sandbox” play style instead of the more linear traditional model. So far, so good; this part adds more pieces to the toolkit. Where part one saw the PCs enter the Stolen Lands with writs authorizing them to “tame the land”, and saw them pitted against local bandits and other small-scale dangers, here they are faced with the beginnings of a kingdom – and need to make lots of decisions concerning that. So that things aren’t too easy, some of the more heavyweight monster tribes in the region are getting set up to raise some trouble.

In addition to the adventure itself, the book also contains rules for kingdom building; it’s a sort of simplified medieval Sim City ruleset, where the players decide who gets put in charge of what (choosing which NPCs to give power to is very important) and what gets built where. The intention here is that there is lots of downtime between events in this adventure path. Months, maybe even years. This means that the PCs get to start building their kingdom and they also get to see the results.

While most of the stuff here (the kingdom rules, the event-based adventure main plot itself, etc) would need actual play to see how it works in practice, at least on paper it looks good. Paizo is going for something a bit different here, and some of the mechanics here have an almost “indie” feel. Oh, it’s still D&D, but it’s a bit of an unusual variant – usually the PCs don’t actually become rulers, and if they do, they don’t need to make actual long-term decisions.

Minireview: Best New SF 22, edited by Gardner Dozois

Best New SF 22 is the UK edition of Gardner Dozois’ long-running yearly “best of” anthology, also published (confusingly enough) in the US as “The Year’s Best Science Fiction” with a different numbering scheme. They are the same anthology though, and as always quite brilliant – Dozois has an excellent taste in short stories (or at least one that’s very compatible with mine), and his picks tend to really contain the “best of” for a certain year.

This anthology documents the year 2008 in science fiction. Highlights for me were “The Six Directions of Space” (Alastair Reynolds), “The Political Prisoner” (Charles Coleman Finlay), “The Hero” (Karl Schroeder), “His Master’s Voice” (Hannu Rajaniemi) and “The Voyage Out” (Gwyneth Jones)… but really, pretty much all of the stories here deserve mention, the quality is extremely high. This is the first time that I’ve noticed a Finnish writer in this collection, and to top that his story was quite excellent. So… grats, Hannu, seems I need to read more of your stuff.

If you’re looking for excellent science fiction short stories, you really can’t go wrong with this series (or the alternate US printing).

Minireview: Ordo Dracul (Vampire: the Requiem)

The new Vampire (Vampire: the Requiem) gets rid of the old clan-based approach; there still are clans, but they no longer dictate your behavior to the old extent. More important are the groups the vampire belongs to… and here the Covenants step in. The Ordo Dracul book describes one of them, the insular and secretive Ordo Dracul.

When I read the Vampire core book I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the Ordo. They seemed a weird mix of the old Tremere and a random secret society (and/or the Freemasons), which claims to be founded by Dracula himself. This book describes what they really are and what they want to do – and it’s good stuff. The Ordo is actually a quite fascinating group.

At the core, it’s a vampiric transcendentalist group, with heavy influences from Freemasonism and suchlike. It has a strict hierarchy and chain of command (like the old Tremere), and the lowest-level applicants are actually called “Slaves”. However, it actually does strive for great things: the Ordo concentrates on rising above the vampiric condition, instead of trying to deny it they try to control it and reduce the negative effects. Most shockingly… they seem to be succeeding, at least to a point. A mental/body-control regimen called “The Coils” lets some of them bypass some very fundamental vampiric flaws. They can ignore (very limited amounts of) sunlight. They can control their frenzy reflex. They can stay awake during the day. Naturally enough, many other groups want to know how the hell they do it, but the Dragons (as they call themselves) aren’t talking.

The influences from Freemasonism are all over the place, though the scientific method largely replaces the reliance on mysticism. The Ordo consists of scholars and scientists, first and foremost. They have an elaborate system of coded names, with a certain scholar perhaps having the title “Invisible Philosopher of the Subtle Terror”. To another Dragon, this title tells a lot of important information. To an outsider, it’s nonsense. To add to the deliberate confusion, some titles are only used to mark spies and spread misinformation; using some certain code words in your title tells elder Dragons that “I’m a spy, and cannot be trusted”.

At the core, the Ordo is a group of transcendentalist (or “transhumanist”) amoral vampiric scientists, searching for a (semi) scientific solution to vampirism. Not to cure it, but to use it as the stepping stone in the next step of evolution. They use any and all means available. They do mass murder just because they want to see how the survivors react. They save random people from death, and then observe the cause-and-effect ripples that causes. They observe everything (especially themselves), endlessly. They are far from being “good guys” – but like the Tremere of old, they are quite fascinating.

The book is extremely well written and readable, and really brings a very weird group to life. This is an especially noteworthy feat since the Ordo and its goals are so very… strange. They have a method to their madness, and their layers upon layers of secrecy are mostly there for functional purposes. Yes, they are hard on the applicants who want to join, but they also offer (in their own mind) power that nobody else can offer. Once (and if) you’re accepted into the Ordo proper, you’re on the path to becoming a superbeing.

Or so they claim.

Minireview: Paranoia Black Missions (Paranoia)

Black Missions is a limited-run special edition of the newest base Paranoia game core rules (the “Paranoia Troubleshooters” edition). It’s extremely close to the previous “Paranoia XP” ruleset – the rules have been polished a bit, and the “classic” play style is now the only one covered by the main rules – the “Zap” and “Straight” styles have been moved to appendix options in the back of the book. While I don’t miss Zap, I really liked Straight so I think this is a bit of a pity… but on the other hand, the rules tweaks still exist (in the appendix) and the Classic mode is, of course, the most popular one. In any case, this is just a small revision of the rules; if you already own the previous version, you don’t really need this “Paranoia Troubleshooters” version.

…except that this edition contains an very cool extra, a CD-ROM containing a ton of stuff:

• Paranoia sound effects (laser zaps, warning sirens, etc)
• Various sound clips from the Computer, in both male and female voices.
• A Paranoia screen saver. Very amusing, I have it running on my netbook.
• Short video clip interviews with some of the designers.
• Almost the entire 2004- 2008 Paranoia XP support line, as PDFs. Missing are the reprint mission collections “Flashbacks” & “Flashbacks 2”, the equipment books “STUFF” and “STUFF 2”, and “The Little RED Book”, but otherwise you get pretty much the entire game line in PDF form. This is an awesome value, we’re talking well over 10 books here (don’t remember the exact count). Buying them separately would cost a lot.

So… should you get this? If you already have the previous version and don’t feel like the CD has stuff that interests you too much, there’s little reason to. However, if you don’t have the new Paranoia edition and are interested in it, this book gives you the latest core ruleset plus almost the whole earlier game line in PDF form; this is probably the best Paranoia core rules edition to pick up in that case.

Also, if you’re like me and have most of the earlier game line already, but still want the extra CD-ROM goodies: off to the game store you go. It’s Mandatory Bonus Fun Duty. This limited edition may be a bit tricky to get hold off nowadays, but some quality game stores (Fantasiapelit Helsinki, for example) still have copies available.

I personally think the CD-ROM is almost worth the price by itself. Having (almost) all the books in PDF form is fantastic, makes it easy to print out player handouts etc if needed.