Books

Minireview: Clash of the Kingslayers (S1) (Pathfinder)

Clash of the Kingslayers is written by Christine Schneider, winner of Paizo’s “RPG Superstar” contest (intended to give amateur game designers a shot at fame). While not perfect, it’s not bad – I think it has some missed opportunities, but to be fair some of that is probably due to page count restrictions.

The plot has the PCs getting semi-accidentally involved with a internal strife in the dwarven stronghold of Glimmerhold. Hailed as valued guests (or even heroes) due to an initial event, they are soon given the chance to do some (more) heroics in order to save the city. It seems that some sort of ancient evil is threatening the place… or so it seems at first, anyway. Things trace back to events in the past that some parties would much rather remained hidden. There are some quite cinematic scenes in here, though some GM embellishment may be needed in places.

The “missed opportunities” I referred to have mostly to do with the “mobile dungeon” the module throws at the players. While nifty in itself, I think more could have been done with the thing, and more emphasis placed on how movement becomes difficult and confusing. Also, I think the stock plots dumps the PCs away from the thing way too soon – I’d personally leave that detail up to PC actions and not try to force the issue. Detail given on Glimmerhold is meager at best, we’re not even given a rough map (though Paizo does provide that as a download from the module web page). This lack of detail is, of course, due to page count restrictions, so I can’t really fault the module for that.

I’d rate this one in the “pretty good” category. Not a must-buy, but reads like a fun adventure. […]

Minireview: Pathfinder #17, A Memory of Darkness

Ok, we’re nearing the end of the Second Darkness adventure path here. A Memory of Darkness (by J.D. Wiker) is the next-to-last episode… and unfortunately, it’s also easily the weakest so far.

Now, while I like the general idea of “adventure paths” (i.e. a set of linked adventures telling a bigger story), they have always had one big problem: they need to railroad quite a bit, due to the need of moving a plot along with a limited page count allocated for it. This is usually manageable, and can work fine with a good playgroup that understands that derailing the story “just because” isn’t cool. However, it remains a problem that the writers of these things often seem to assume the PCs will do some fairly unlikely and/or suicidal thing based on extremely flimsy clues. So… quite a bit of GM prepwork usually needed, to handle the “you want to do what?!?” scenarios.

Railroads can be fun, of course, if everyone is on the same map (so to speak). As the saying goes, “nobody minds a railroad as long as the scenery is interesting and the destination is Awesome City”.

Well, this thing is railroad-tastic, and not in any good way either. After having (somehow) survived their visit to Drow Town, the PCs find themselves disbelieved and sort-of betrayed by the guys who put them up to the whole thing: the damn pointy-eared elves. Now, at this point I can easily see the PCs doing a Cartman-style “screw you guys, we’re going home!”. They’ve just risked their lives to help the elven nation… and they get disdain and imprisonment as a reward? And it gets better… they get secretly manipulated by an uber-powerful NPC to “escape”, and to go on a senseless tour of Golarion (via elf gates) to look for some group of elven “bad guys”. Player choice in the matter? None, really, it’s just assumed they go for it, and assumed that they realize it’s all a clever double-think by aforesaid uber-NPC. The “elf gate” tour serves little purpose in the story. Then they meet the “bad guys”… who turn out to be pathetic losers. With one real “bad guy”, who is illustrated in such a cartoon “I’m evil!” fashion that he might as well wear a “League of Evil” t-shirt. This makes the illustrations of the Council members useless, since anyone seeing all the pictures will figure out who the bad guy is in under 3 seconds. Sigh.

It’s a mess. It’s one big railroad, with an untouchable uber-NPC running the train engine, waving happily. The scenery is mostly pointless, and the destination is not Awesome CIty. It’s not even the suburbs.

Oh, there are some cool bits here and there. The elven “prison” thingy is cool, and there are some fun encounters. But on the whole, this thing needs a lot of work in order to be usable. Or some extremely understanding players (bordering on the “saintly”). […]

Minireview: Storm Front, by Jim Butcher

Storm Front is the first book in Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series. I only heard about this series a bit over a year(?) ago, when the short-lived TV series came out. Watched it, found it fun enough but nothing all that special. After that, I heard that Fred Hicks (of Spirit of the Century fame, among other things) had started work on a Dresden Files roleplaying game. So the series apparently has its fans. I resolved to check the books out at some point.

Well, “at some point” is now, I got the first two books and just read the first. It’s pretty fun, and much what I expected to find: fairly lightweight but entertaining “modern occult/fantasy” stuff, a mix of “film noir” cliches and modern magic. The books feature Harry Dresden, a modern-day wizard trying to make a living as a private investigator. The world in the book has lots of occult elements and supernatural creatures (World of Darkness -style), but most people are unaware of them (also like WoD). Most of the “supernaturals” prefer to stay out of sight, and Harry gets no bonus points from them for advertising that he’s a wizard – of course, few believe him, and as a result his cash flow is… limited. Oh, and the local cabal of magic users, “The While Council”, has a death penalty hanging over Harry’s head, due to a death Harry apparently caused via magic when we was younger.

In true film noir fashion, the book starts with a lady in distress coming to Harry for some help. He is reluctant (for various reasons), but the fact that the rent is overdue helps tip his mind. In quick succession, a murder gets added into the mix, along with a local mobster and a vampiric brothel owner. Oh, and when more bodies start turning up, the White Council becomes convinced Harry himself is behind the murders.

It’s a fun mix of WoD and film noir detective stories. Pretty lightweight and a quick read, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Good “brain candy” reading. […]

Minireview: Disciples of the Dark Gods (Dark Heresy)

The Dark Heresy line continues to impress me. In Disciples of the Dark Gods the GM is presented with a collection of antagonist groups to use in his/her games. The title is a bit misleading… only some of these are worshippers of “dark gods” as such. Many are “just” human, with motivations either very twisted or quite understandable. In fact some of them have motivations that are quite benign by our standards (search for ancient knowledge, for example). That sort of thing just happens to be heresy, punishable by execution, in the DH world. No, it’s (still) not a happy, fluffy place. I guess that’s part of the twisted charm.

The antagonist groups are divided into sections, roughly by type. We have the human groups, the aliens, the demonics, and “internal dangers”, and others. To my mind, all the groups presented were interesting and very usable as antagonists and/or foils in a game. All are given motivations and typical methods of operation, making their inclusion in a game all that much easier. Anyone needing a cool set of “bad guys” for their DH game should be well served by this book… I think the main problem would be choosing which one(s) to use.

The book finishes off with an adventure, titled House of Dust and Ashes. It’s a bit gimmicky, but since it features such absolutely cool locations (airship, volcano, etc) and good NPCs, I’ll forgive it for containing some gimmicks – especially since the whole things reads like a very fun (if quite lethal) romp. The piece concerns an auction of some potentially dangerous/heretical items which belonged to (now deceased) Rogue Trader Erasmus Haarlock; the PCs are sent in as errand boys (of sorts) of an “allied” Inquisitor and need to watch their backs & gather information on who bids on what. Well, it’s not quite that simple. It never is…

Once again, excellent production values, good writing, good art… not much to complain about, even if I wanted to. Did catch a few typos and some missing page number references, but those were minor. […]

Minireview: Northern Leaguebook Two, United Mercantile Federation: The Price of Success (Heavy Gear)

In the second “Northern” leaguebook, United Mercantile Federation, we’re (unsurprisingly) given the full-details treatment on the UMF, the economic powerhouse of the North. Like most (all?) Heavy Gear societies, it’s modeled after real-world ones (or ideas) with a ton of extrapolation thrown in. In this case, the starting premise was “ultracapitalism”. How would a society without taxation (for instance) work? Or would it?

Here, the UMF is a nation run like a company (somewhat like their chief competitor, the Southern Mekong Dominion, but with different emphasis). There is no tax, but citizenship costs. Applying for a “public” position also costs, so in order to get “elected” one much have both cash and popularity. Unsurprisingly, all this has a dark side – those without cash have very little in the form of a safety net, and as a whole Mercantile society has little place for those unable to get and retain a career. Being poor is ok (to a point). Staying poor isn’t. Also, the power of corporations here is huge – in a sense, you can’t really separate the main corporations in the UMF from the state itself. It’s all intertwined.

One unusual facet is the fact that the government isn’t one huge entity. In fact, each city has historically been allowed to keep its own system of government, as long as they conform in the “big picture” details to the UMF ideals. So there is one city ruled by a honest-to-goodness king, via inheritance (!) while another city follows something almost resembling communism. As can be imagined, these differences cause no small amount of social stress to the system, and there are various internal terrorist groups fighting to get “their way of living” imposed on everyone else. It’s a big mess, but perhaps because of that it feels quite “alive”.

Like the Mekong Dominion, it’s neither a dystopia not a utopia. The citizens are generally content and proud of their nation, though the pressure to perform is high. Being a “dropout” from society has real and potentially lethal consequences, so those who can’t “make it” run a high suicide risk. It’s a “work hard, play harder” society.

As with all Heavy Gear supplements I’ve read to date, the quality and detail level is high. The society is mostly believable and very interesting, without being a complete stereotype. While the UMF isn’t maybe as “colorful” on the surface as many other Terra Novan nations, there’s a lot of local color in the internal affairs. […]

Minireview: Big Book of Bots (Paranoia XP)

Despite the title, the Big Book of Bots isn’t all that big. But it is about bots (i.e. robots) in the Paranoia game world. Up to now, these helpful machines have been mostly tools for the GM to cause (helpful and friendly) diversions for the PCs. In this case, “helpful” usually means “stupid and/or obstructionist” and “friendly” means “lethal and/or homicidal”. What this book provides is both an expanded listing of new and old bots (with skill listings), and a system for creating bot PCs. The Computer knows that you’ve always (secretly!) wanted to roleplay a scrubbot. Well, now you can! As an added bonus, bots can’t be traitors (according to the Computer), since they don’t have free will (according to the Computer) and are programmed to always look after the good of Alpha Complex (according to the Computer). Your reality may vary.

On the downside, it’s a fairly thin book and the editing & layout are slightly shoddy in places. On the plus side, it does have some fun extra crunch on bots and even includes a bot-centric adventure. An “ok” minor expansion book; not a must-buy by any means but contains some fun and/or useful stuff for the game. The system by which bots gain skills (via memcards) does lend itself to some evil ideas, if you happen to be an evil-minded GM. Not that any Paranoia GM would be that. […]

Minireview: A Feast for Crows (by George R.R. Martin)

Well, “they” were right, this latest (so far) installment in the A Song of Ice and Fire series isn’t quite as good as the previous three books. To be fair, the earlier books set an extremely high bar, so it’s easy to come off a bit wanting in comparison. This book isn’t bad by any means, it’s merely “good” where the earlier three were “fantastic”.

As the author notes in the afterword, A Feast for Crows is really part one of a bigger volume; he started writing and as some point realized that has too much text to publish as one book and decided to split it up. He also decided to do the split among the characters instead of along the timeline… so here we have certain events told from the viewpoint of one set of characters, with another set notable by their absence. No Tyrion here, or Dany. I’m not sure if that split was a wise choice or not… In any case, while there are good stories here, the whole does drag on a bit. It’s nowhere near Robert Jordan -level “nothing happens for 1000 pages” crap, but you do get the feeling that this could have been tightened up a bit. Maybe he just needs a more stringent editor.

The title does describe the book quite well. The big battles are done, and now the carrion birds settle down to fight over the scraps. Cersei, increasingly paranoid, tries to hold on to central power, while various bids for power are made in the smaller kingdoms – some successfully, some not. A lot of the spotlight is placed on Brienne, who is searching for Lady Catelyn’s lost daughter(s), and a somewhat-reformed Jaime also gets quite a few pages. Arya is off in Braavos, training to be… something. Maybe an assassin. There is a weird choice made here of describing some of the chapters with figurative names like “The Prophet “or “The Kraken’s Daughter” instead of the real character names (like in the previous book). Not sure why this is. Maybe Martin thought that people would be having problems remembering who is who without hints like that. Dunno, it seemed a bit superfluous to me. To be fair, the cast is starting to be quite large, maybe even a bit too large.

We’ll see. The next book will probably give indication of where this series is going, quality-wise. Might be that this is just a minor hiccup along the way, or maybe it’s the start of a slow decline. I hope it’s the former, obviously, I’ve really been enjoying this series – and this book too, even though it has some problems. […]

Minireview: Purge the Unclean (Dark Heresy)

I must admit, I’m getting more and more impressed with the Dark Heresy game line. While the game world is still a strange mix of overblown silliness, dystopia-turned-to-11 and gritty intrigue, the writing and production values of the game line have been excellent, so far. Purge the Unclean is no exception, being a collection of three linked adventure scenarios (all written by T.S. Luikhart). Damn good ones.

The first scenario, Rejoice For You Are True, is linked to the adventure in the core book via a clue potentially found by the PCs there – though that’s just a convenience, there is no other real link to that scenario here. It’s a very strong scenario, and perhaps the best one in the book. Mostly an investigative piece, it has the PCs investigating a seemingly benevolent and harmless cult on a hive world. While being quite freeform, there is an assumed escalation path and the whole thing is quite versatile, switching gears quite a few times. Though it’s no surprise that the cult in question isn’t quite as benevolent as people assume, there are lots of twists and turns here. Good stuff.

The second piece is Shades of Twilight, and forms the action-adventure part of this trilogy. An ancient space hulk has appeared on a collision course with a planet and the PCs are among the few within scramble range of intercepting the thing before it must be destroyed. Why intercept? Because the call code of a presumed-dead Inquisitor is being broadcast from the hulk. Cue space marines, aliens, and lots else besides. While this one is action-heavy, there is some (quite bizarre!) social interaction here as well.

Last off there is Baron Hopes, which ventures more into the angst and horror department. The PCs must look into ancient rebellion and heresy on a mining world, among throngs of serfs (=slaves) barely living in hellish work-camp surroundings. An order of mutants is plotting rebellion… maybe. Who are the good guys and who the bad? At this point, at the latest, it should dawn on the players that they are not necessarily on the side of “good” here (if not direct “evil”, either). Moral choices to be made, mutants to kill (or talk with), and lots of mud and squalor. There is one small twist at the end which really underscores the nihilistic nature of the game world and the types of people the PCs (probably) are. Won’t spoil it here, but it’s a nice – if grim – touch.

All three have memorable and “cinematic” settings, interesting NPCs, and at least a few surprises. All also feature multiple ways to resolve the “mission” – which is good, since all are quite challenging and risky.

The writing and plotting is very good on all three, and all have (obviously by intent) very different “feels” and themes to them. Extra bonus points for linking the first scenario with the (quite decent) one in the core book, so GMs have the option of running four quite different adventures as a linked set. There is a shadowy background antagonist group which is present in all three adventures, and which seems like it might get some continuation further on the game line – at least, things are left open on that front. The Warhammer (fantasy) line has reputation for excellent pregen adventures and that seems to hold true on the 40k side also. The only stinker so far is the first free demo adventure, which should be ignored by all sane sentien beings. The second free demo is much, much better, as are all these “commercial” ones so far.

To top things off, the production values are again top-notch. Nice art, solid layout, and competent editing. I wish other rpg companies would do as good a job as these guys have done. While the writing is of course the critical ingredient in all books like this, good production values do enhance the experience significantly. […]

Minireview: Colony Book One, Life on Caprice: The Gate World (Heavy Gear)

Up to this book, the Heavy Gear line has/had focused on events on Terra Nova, and on the South vs North conflict brewing there. Life on Caprice takes the first step in populating the rest of the HG universe, starting with the “gateway world”, Caprice.

I wasn’t expecting all that much here, truth be told. I mean, it’s an attempt to outline a whole world in just 90+ pages… that doesn’t leave room for much detail. Well, boy was I wrong. Sure, it helps that most of Caprice is contained in one (vast) city-complex, but still… there’s a ton of detail in here, and Caprice turned out to be a lot more interesting than I had expected.

In sum, it’s a harsh industrial world under occupation. Terran, in this case. Like Terra Nova, Caprice was abandoned by Earth way back when, but unlike Terra Nova was unprepared for the return of the now-imperialistic Earth CEF (Colonial Expeditionary Force). An extremely harsh planet, Caprice simply didn’t leave the inhabitants with enough resources to build up military strength, and neither did it give them (internal) reasons to do so… so when Earth returned, Caprice surrendered, knowing that the alternative would be annihilation. That’s not to say they gave up meekly, they just went directly into covert resistance mode, sabotaging various things to make operations difficult and slow for the CEF forces. To date it has worked quite well, though the resistance forces run huge risks every day of their lives and the patience of the CEF commanders is wearing extremely thin. The whole place is a powderkeg.

With most of the planet having unbreathable atmosphere, life is crammed into a huge somewhat-terraformed valley which is mostly full of… city. Access to sunlight and balconies!) is a valued resource, and everyone is used to living in the middle of a vast hive of machinery and people. It’s not a hellhole… there are parks and open spaces too, to keep the inhabitants sane. The “hellhole” designation goes to the overcrowded and brutally harsh prison complex built in the mountains, far away from civilization. Once a place to dump violent offenders, it’s now also the place where caught resistance fighters are sent (the ones not shot on sight). I can imagine some cool “break out of the ‘unescapable’ prison” games that could be run using just that place as the locale.

Overall, I found this book extremely cool and evocative. I hope the rest of the “colony books” are as interesting as this one. While it’s mainly meant for Heavy Gear, I can imagine this book finding use in other scifi games, too; it’s an industrial colony world under foreign military occupation, that sort of thing could fit into lots of games. […]