Books

Minireview: Treasure of Chimera Cove (LB2)

Treasure of Chimera Cove continues (loosely) the story begun in Tower of the Last Baron. To be honest, the connection is very loose; this is a totally separate standalone adventure by a different author (Anson Caralya), with some plot hooks included to make connecting the two modules together easy(ish).

This was a slight disappointment after Tower, but perhaps that is because that module was just so good. This is more normal fare, in the form of maritime exploration and some dungeon crawl. Assuming the PCs are continuing from Tower, they will arrive at the tiny old pirate port of Chimera Cove trying to trace down a “weapon” that is supposed to be hidden there. What that weapon actually is proves to be a nice surprise, and there are some nice locations and scenes here.

While this does pale in comparison with the first part, it’s still a solid enough piraty adventure thing. If you want to put some “yarr!” into your game, you could do worse than this. As noted, the connections with the “first part” are so loose that running this standalone should be no problem – all you need is some motivation for the PCs to arrive at Chimera Cove, armed with some clues. Perhaps the ever-dependable mysterious stranger at the inn, if you’re feeling really old-school… […]

Minireview: Pathfinder #14, Children of the Void

Children of the Void (written by Mike McArtor) is the second part of the “Second Darkness” adventure path. In it, the PCs are expected to launch an exploration expedition to the site of a recent meteor crash (an island some ways off), based on recent evens and some clues encountered in the first installment. This might take some railroading… but probably not. Convincing players to run after treasure is usually not all that hard.

Needless to say, there are complications. In addition to pirates (yarr!), the PCs will also encounter some alien creatures which may or may not be related to the meteor. There are people to save, some treasure to be found, and an island to explore… and of course, some clues that will point PCs toward the next adventure.

The book(let) also contains some info about the solar system Paizo’s game world of Golarion exists in. Interesting stuff, and a bit unusual for a D&D game.

I have mixed feeling on this adventure path, so far. The first part was pretty interesting, as is this one – but they feel very loosely connected. I have the feeling that the continuation story may have problems with players going “why should we do that?”. The players are expected to run off again after this, while they may well feel that they’d rather stay put and keep their collective noses out of other races’ businesses. So… some railroading may be needed. I guess that’s my problem with the “adventure path” concept in general: they tend to be very linear, with sometimes quite minimal support for players doing Something Totally Different.

While I did like this installment, it did contain one real “wtf?” moment: a spacefaring race (one that lives in vacuum, to boot) which communicates partly by smell. Anyone see problems with this? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? […]

Minireview: The Terror, by Dan Simmons

A couple of things, first off: It’s no accident that I read this right after The Walker in the Wastes; one of my reasons for buying this book was the fact that the basic plot centers around the same subject. Secondly, The Terror is one of the best books I’ve read this year.

I might class it as a “historical horror story”. In a way it’s a Cthulhu story without actually being a Cthulhu story, in the sense that the best tales of “Lovecraftian horror” tend to center around the theme of man versus a hostile and totally uncaring universe. That theme is very strong here.

The book takes the story of the lost Franklin Expedition, keeping quite close to known historical details, and then continues with what might have happened out on the ice after the known facts stop. There is a supernatural menace involved, but much of the horror comes from the (extremely) hostile environment: after getting trapped in the ice due to bad command decisions, the crew are harassed by poisonous food supplies, inadaquate equipment, crushing ice, and the constant freezing cold. Add in a… thing that (also) wants to kill them, and things become grim, fast.

It’s an extensively researched book, the amount of period detail is impressive. Told in unlinear fashion, the tale jumps from an “in medias res” beginning where the crew is already trapped to earlier times when the expedition is still in the process of starting off, then back again. In the hands of a lesser author things might have become confusing, but here the tale flows along and gains solidity despite jumping back and forth in time while switching the narrator voice with each jump. The characters are well-realized – I have no idea how well they correspond to the actual historical people in the personality department, but it doesn’t really matter; this is a work of fiction, not a history book. Franklin himself is portrayed as being hopelessly incompetent for the task assigned to him, though he is shown in somewhat positive light in past flashbacks. Sadly, this “leaders are incompetent and arrogant fools” theme seems to have been a real-life reality for much of the history of British arctic exploration (with some notable exceptions).

This is a thick book, both in page count and in content. It’s also quite brutal and dark. With those disclaimers, I can easily recommend this one. As noted, it was one of the best books of 2008 for me. […]

Minireview: Walker in the Wastes

Walker in the Wastes is the first big Cthulhu campaign published by Pagan, and it can be quite difficult to find nowadays. I hunted eBay for quite a while before finding my copy, and it wasn’t exactly cheap. I do wish Pagan would do a reprint of this one…

Besides “rare”, what, then, is it? Well, it’s a huge “classic era” (1928 to be exact) campaign for Call of Cthulhu, kicking off with an expedition to the same area where the legendary lost Franklin Expedition vanished in the ice and the wind, 80 years previously. While extensive historical research points to the expedition having perished to a combination of starvation, scurvy, exposure and lead poisoning, this scenario posits that there may have been something more to that list of horrors. What starts off as a fairly mundane scientific expedition slowly becomes more sinister in true Cthulhu fashion. Something dangerous and non-human stalks the icy wastes, and the native “Eskimo” tribes on the ice aren’t talking much and aren’t necessarily all that friendly either.

The first expedition to the ice is intended to kick off a series of escalating events, some of which require the players to go globetrotting in search of clues. Clues to what? Why, a cult that wants to awaken an ancient god, of course! This is Cthulhu, after all, gotta have those cultists! I do have to say that the cult here is quite intelligently portrayed, and is quite far from the stereotypical “bunch of morons in robes” scene. I’d expect the body count on the PC side to rise fast, unless they are very careful.

This campaign will require a lot of GM prep to run. While it’s interesting and contains a lot of stuff (it’s over 200 pages long), the scope of this one is just so huge that those 200 pages are nowhere enough. Don’t expect to just pick this one up and run it… the author (John H. Crowe III) says that about four years of research went into writing this thing, and while you won’t need four years of GM prep in addition to that, you will need to do some amount of work. The campaign says it’s intended for “experienced Keepers and players”, and that’s a fair enough warning. I think this would be a really cool game to run or to play in, though, so I think that prepwork will probably be very much worth it.

After a fairly linear start the campaign becomes extremely freeform. At times I had trouble figuring out why exactly the PCs would go to a given remote corner of the globe – but to the author’s credit, the campaign doesn’t assume all the leads will be uncovered or followed. The end will be less likely to result in a total party kill if most leads are followed – but I can see this one branching in lots of different directions. Most of them deadly to the PCs, of course.

In sum… a huge, complex and demanding campaign, but one which probably rewards effort put into it. This and Beyond the Mountains of Madness are the two big arctic-focused Cthulhu campaigns that exist… and both are justly famous.

Oh, and this one has zeppelins in it. Can’t go wrong with those. […]

Minireview: Dust Devils

It’s an older indie game from 2002, but partly because of that age it’s also apparently been an inspiration to many Forge-style game writers… so when I heard that Matt Snyder’s Dust Devils was going out of print in the near future, I decided to pick up a copy.

It’s an interesting, compact game. Like most modern(ish) indie games, it’s focused on telling one specific type of story; in this case, a Western. The rules mechanics are very light but have the fun twist of using poker hands to resolve conflicts – something that fits thematically quite well with the theme. It’s a not a campaign game; the story is intended to have a very specific end, you’re expected to bring your character’s story to a Western-appropriate conclusion. Maybe you need to kill the man why killed your sister, and you do it while dying yourself in the attempt. Stuff like that. I can see why this game has been an influence, it’s very compact but still manages to do what it sets out to do.

The current “reloaded” edition also contains a short appendix with variant games the same mechanics could also be used with. We’re given the frameworks for an agent/spy game, a samurai tale, and a “film noir” setting. Sure, they are just quick sketches, but they are still fun ideas. […]

Minireview: Heavy Gear Campaign Setting One: The New Breed, Battle Before The Storm

This is a pretty cool book. It’s a tie-in / companion of sorts to Activision’s (first) Heavy Gear game, which was published at the same time this book came out. Instead of being some sort of game tactical manual or strategy guide, The New Breed is something much more interesting: an rpg campaign setting based on the scenario and events outlined in the game. I haven’t played the game (it was apparently pretty buggy), but it was set aboard one of two huge landships, one Northern and one South. I get the impression that in the game, you could play either side – and if not, at least here you can.

The book is split into two halves. One details the Northern Vigilance, with NPC details, maps and overview of the ship, and finally a campaign that has the players doing a lot of interesting things as crewmembers. The other half details the Southern Draco, and gives a counterpoint campaign – same events, but seen from the other side. If nothing else, this approach is interesting in that the book works as a starter for either a Northern or Southern campaign.

I was pretty sceptical about this book, computer game tie-ins have a spotty record. I was happy to be proved wrong and ended up liking this thing quite a bit. There aren’t all that many campaign settings for Heavy Gear, anyway.

[…]

Minireview: War of Ages

War of Ages collects two old (1st edition) Vampire: the Masquerade sourcebooks, Elysium and The Anarch Cookbook, into one compilation.

Elysium is a soucebook for playing and running Elder characters in a Vampire chronicle. Now, these are pretty damn difficult characters to play – most of them have been “alive” for hundreds of years, and have (quite static) worldviews that are mostly quite alien to modern sensibilities. How do you play or run a creature like that? Answer: usually, not very well. Elders tend to become either overpowered cliches or overpowered monsters stealing away the limelight from the players. And what if one of the players is an Elder? Can he/she think about the character beyond “whee, I have tons of kewl powaz!”? All too often… no. While this book doesn’t give any real solutions to the above, it does outline how Elder society and society games differ from those of younger vampires, and gives some pointers on how to play them (many stolen directly from Machiavelli). While the book doesn’t contain a huge wealth of info and didn’t really give any new info to me (having helped run a Vampire LARP thingy for ten years)… it’s not bad.

Anarch Cookbook shows the other side of the coin, the (usually) younger generation who have left the Camarilla and who wage a war of sorts against the Elders. The book goes into why this is usually doomed to fail, but also highlights that it can work, now and then. There are notes on tactics, logistics, and on how to survive when an organization with lots of power is out to get you. Trust becomes a major issue, especially when you feature in things like a possible Blood Bond and the various Disciplines that may be used against you. There’s a small bit of silly emphasis on the words “Gothic-Punk”… but that’s forgivable, this is an old book from the era when Vampire really tried to be “Gothic-Punk”. Whatever that means.

When these books were written, Vampire was still something very new and different and the WoD metaplot hadn’t yet started to descend into the silly depths (mostly). Oh, I have a fondness for those silly levels myself – but these are from an earlier time, when the game was still figuring itself out. […]

Minireview: Sons of the Profits, by William Speidel

While touring the Pacific Northwest during our honeymoon some years back, we stopped by Seattle. Now, I have no idea why some people tend to diss the place, I kind of like Seattle myself. Sure, the weather is… temperamental and it does rain a lot – but so what. Anyway, we went to check out the Seattle Underground Tour, which proved to be a lot of fun. Due to the way the place was built (and due to various natural disasters), the old sections of the town have multiple layers, with the current buildings having been built on top of older ones – and the tour goes in and out of old cellars, some of which used to be streets. I found it very interesting – though, as some drunk has commented, “I have no idea why these folks come here to root through our dirty cellars”. Like most tours, it ended up at a gift shop, where among other things they had a book on sale on the history of the city, written by the founder of the “underground tour” thing. Bought a copy.

Sons of the Profits (subtitled “There’s No Business Like Grow Business – the Seattle Story 1851-1901”) does what it says on the tin. Focused mainly on economics and business ventures (some more sane than others), it outlines how greed and the race after the allmighty “profit” created the city and made it one of the bigger cities in the Northwest. Here “greed” isn’t seen as a bad thing as such, more as a defining characteristic of the “founding fathers” of the city. It’s an entertaining tale, especially the beginning parts, and told in a folksy tone as if everyone were sitting in the living room after a good meal, and some old guy was telling stories from his younger days. It works pretty well, most of the time. Towards the end the book gets bogged down in a lot of (to me) less interesting moneytary details, but parts of all that (especially the fights with and amongst the “railroad barons”) is interesting.

A fun look at Seattle local history, and gets bonus points for not painting the “city fathers” in an undeservedly favorable light. Some are called “bastards”, quite unashamedly, while some others are praised while not forgetting their less glorious moments. It seems quite even-handed, though of course it’s impossible to know for sure. […]

Minireview: Houses of the Blooded

Ok, now I’ve finally read it. Houses of the Blooded is huge, complex, intimidating, weird and quite fascinating. John Wick wrote a game that he would like to play himself, and the end result features betrayal, social status games in an alien society, bloody duels and romance (which always ends badly). And opera. Which also always ends badly.

It’s a weird game. Quite clearly a labor of love, it’s written in a very strong authorial tone. Unlike Luke Crane’s Burning Wheel, though, the tone here does not annoy me a bit, it just lends flavor.

So, what’s it about? Well, the players are all “Ven”, and “Blooded”. Members of an ancient race of beings originally created as slaves/servants to a now-dead race of sorcerer-kings, they do everything by extremes. All players are nobles, and all control land and are lords over a large population of lesser Ven – land serfs, essentially. Non-Blooded Ven are essentially property, and non-Ven are even less: they are collectively called “orks” and treated as unintelligent animals. The Ven are xenophobes and elitists in the extreme, and laugh at our weak “modern” ideas of equality and moral relativity. Players belong to (or claim association with) various animal-themed factions… one might be Blooded of the Elk, another Blooded of the Bear. This matters, in various ways.

There is sorcery, but it’s illegal. Everyone does it. There are rules, which are strict. Everyone breaks them. The words for “love” and “revenge” are almost identical, and this is extended into the mindset of the Ven – love is seen as a dangerous obsession, a weakness which often leads to bloodshed. Still, almost everyone chases after it. The color of your clothes matters. Nobody wears black, by choice. Some are forced to.

Mechanically, it uses an “Aspects” -based system (modelled after Spirit of the Century) with tons of clever bits tacked on. The winner of a (mechanical) test does not necessarily win the current challenge; he/she gets to decide what happens, and how. This is an important difference. There are no levels and no hit points, none of that crap. Combat is lethal, so you want to avoid it – until you can’t, when someone challenges you to a duel or insults you. Which happens, more often or not.

The Ven don’t die of old age, they retreat into cocoons, and whisper in the dreams of their children.

This is one of the more impressive “indie-style” games I’ve encountered in a while. It has so many neat things that I don’t really know where to start. It’s also a bit intimidating, I do have a small “well, what do I do with it?” problem. There is a very good Narrator section on the book, though, which helps out a lot in this regard. The characters actually age, and must make land-rule decisions in a small resource-management minigame of its own. John has said it’s a sort of an “anti-D&D” game: dungeon crawling is for peasants, this game is about all the bits D&D is not about. Including opera.

The game is very strongly player-loaded, and players are expected to develop a large part of the game world as the game progresses. This will not work for more passive game groups which are used to the GM providing the entertainment, here the players absolutely must chip in. It’s also (optionally) a slightly player-vs-player game – the PCs are expected to plot against each other, at times. This may not be suitable for some play groups, so it can also be left out.

If you’re at all interested in unusual fantasy games, get this game/book and read it. It will give you ideas about gaming, even if you never run it. I’m still not sure if I’m brave enough to give it a try.

I have a few small niggles. The layout is a bit chaotic, with rules scattered all over the (big) book. A more clear “rules section” and “fluff section” might have been better. Also, while the conceit in the book that the Ven were a real, historical race and that the book is based on actual archeological research is fun in a way, it gets a bit old. I would have kept that stuff in the player section, and left them out of the GM-only parts. […]