Coming Attractions

So what is on tap here at the Other Side post-Gen Con?  Well I'll do some blogging about Gen Con, especially if I buy something.  But here are my big plans.

Cortex
I like this little system ad want to do some more with it.  I especially want to look at Supernatural, Demon Hunters and Smallville.  I have already seen some really cool posts on somethings people are doing with Smallville.

Super Hero RPGs
I also want to spend some quality time with some of the new super hero RPGs I have or will have bought.  As a quick rundown I want to look at DC Adventures, ICONS, BASH, Villains and Vigilantes 2.1, and Smallville.

Since my goal will be similar in each I might spend one day each week covering the game in question, instead of a week to look at one game in depth.

Horror Games
Every so often I feel like I am neglecting my RPGs of choice; Horror.  So I want to also spend some quality time with Slasher Flick and Little Fears.

Putting my money where my mouth is...

So I spent a lot of time and text ripping into Outlaw Press, James Shipman and his art stealing ways.

See:

• http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2009/12/outlaw-press-uses-stolen-art-and.html
• http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2010/01/more-from-outlaw-press.html
• http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2010/06/outlaw-press-is-back-and-still-stealing.html 

So I have decided to put my money where my mouth is.
I am going to buy a copy of Tunnels and Trolls directly from Flying Buffalo this week at Gen Con.

I have no idea what edition, what book or anything.  But I want to show my support this way.  It looks like 7 (or 7.5) is the most up-to-date edition.  But maybe an older edition would be cool to have too.

If you are going to Gen Con and want to support one of the true pioneers of our hobby, then I suggest you do the same.

SyFy stealing Amber Benson's "Drones"?

Non-game post today.  Just something that has me all irritated.

Syfy (formerly "The SciFi Channel") has always been on the verge of falling into complete suck to me for a long time.

I used to love watching their shows a few years back.  "Farscape" was one of the coolest "space" shows ever and "Lexx",  well I am still not sure what Lexx was all about, but it was fun to watch.

Well now SyFy (and I do hate that new name) has a new show coming out called Human Relations.  Here is their blurb for it released last week:

"The Office meets Men In Black in this project featuring an office Temp who slowly discovers that his off-kilter and odd-ball bosses at the strange hi-tech "ad agency" where he works are really aliens working on plan to destroy the Earth."

Sound familiar? I thought so.
Here is the blurb for Amber Benson and Adam Busch's movie Drones,

"The Office meets The Day The Earth Stood Still...is about a guy who works in an office with a kooky, off-kilter boss/co-workers, who then discovers that he's really working with aliens who are plotting to blow-up the Earth."

I know stuff like this happens all the time, and sometimes it even is innocent enough.
This does not look like one of cases.

I would love it if you could all shoot SyFy an email to let them know that stealing ideas from indie film producers, while it may happen all the time, is still not cool.
Shoot them an email at feedback@syfy.com.(though their email seems to be clogged now).

If there is one thing I can't stand is when someone steals an idea (esp to make money) and pass it off as their own.  So regardless of how you feel about SyFy, Amber Benson, TV or indie movies, this is obviously wrong.

Links
Amber's Facebook Page, http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1235011957&ref=ts
Her Blog post, http://amberbensonwrotethis.blogspot.com/2010/07/drones-tv-show.html
Drones Website, http://dronesmovie.com/
Some reports from others:
http://airlockalpha.com/node/7676/is-syfy-original-series-not-so-original.html
http://www.fangirltastic.com/content/did-syfy-rip-amber-bensons-new-film-drones-you-decide
http://angrygreekdyke.blogspot.com/2010/07/oh-fuck-no-we-are-boycotting-syfy.html
http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/49514754.html?page=2

Ghosts of Albion and Gen Con

Good News, Bad News.

Let's do the bad first.
There will not be any copies of the Ghosts of Albion core rulebook at Gen Con afterall. 
To say I am disapointed is putting it rather mildly.  I am going to withhold my frustration about this, well, because I should.

I wish there was more to say on that, but there isn't.

Ok. Lets do the good news now.

I would LOVE to run another pickup game of Ghosts of Albion: Obession or even Blight if anyone wants to join me.  I am not sure what my bandwidth is going to be like, but I really would like to do this.

So.  If you are going to Gen Con and want to play and didn't get into the scheduled times, please email me at timothy.brannan@gmail.com and put "Ghosts" in your subject.  If I get enough people I'll run it.

Frankly. I am not sure I will be running Ghosts at Gen Con after this.  So this might be your last chance.

A Tale of Two Supermen

I have stated here in the past my preference for DC Comics heroes over that of Marvel.  Don't get me wrong, I read the hell out of Spiderman and X-Men as a kid, and reading The Tomb of Dracula was one of the things that got me into horror full scale.
But I have always liked DC's heroes more.  To me they were always more heroic than their Marvel counterparts.  So it should come as no shock that I am MAJORLY geeking out since I have not just one, but two DC-based RPGs out now.

 

I have seen both games now and I like them for very different reasons.  DCA is of course the sibling to the new Mutants and Masterminds 3.  It has some changes from the previous editions, most of which I am thinking are needed.  Abilities are rated different, and there are some new ones.  But all in all I like it.  

Smallville is Cortex but it is VERY different than previous versions of Cortex.  This is both good and bad.  I like the character creation system and it appeals to my desire to create a detailed character.  I like that the system has been opened up to play all sorts of different kinds of games now.  I can completely see how Leverage will work now.

Plus I still have Icons and BASH to look over, a full Cortex review to do.

I'd like to do up a character that works in all these systems.  I think I have the perfect choice too.  A while back we re-started our supers game and the world was a mixture of DC and Marvel.  Basically DC was Golden and some Silver age and Marvel was Silver and some modern age.  We were doing post modern.  Well I had read "Kingdom Come" and it dealt with Supes, Batman and Wonder Woman in a new age.   The final scenes dealt with Batman discovering that Wonder Woman and Superman were going to have a baby.  I thought wow, how power would that character be?  Half Kryptonian, half Amazon and Batman as a godfather?  Yes.  So that was my character.  Details to follow.

All of this will have to wait till after Gen Con of course.

BRP Witchcraft

Note: This has been sitting in my inbox for far too long. I wanted to get a review up much sooner than this.

I received a copy in the mail of BRP Witchcraft from the author Byron Alexander some time back.

I just got around to reading it and pour through it all and I like it. A lot.

The book itself is small, only about 72 pages, but really that is plenty for the topic. You need the latest version of the Basic Role-Playing System book from Chaosium since there is no character creation information in this book.

Introduction
We are given an introduction to witches and witchcraft and how they can fit into various game settings from Dark Ages to High Medieval to High Fantasy and Arabian Nights and Renaissance. What is mission of course is a Modern setting, but I think that might be assumed, given the nature of the BRP rules.

Caveat: It has been years since I have played any BRP game. I have the newest BRP rules set and I like them a lot, they are just far down on my list of go to games.

The nest section details the Witch Profession.

As a conceit of the monograph the author decides that witchcraft is an oral tradition and thus does not use a grimoire. I can live with this for the time periods mentioned above, but a Victorian age could, and a Modern age witch would most likely be literate and keep a Book of Shadows. This is only a minor quibble though.

There are skills detailed some new, others expanded.

Spirits or Demons details where a witch gets her power. I like this distinction since it gives a variety of types of witches; From your devil-bound or demon worshipping evil witch to the pagan or natural earth witch. To borrow an analogy it is roughly the same distinction made in the Rachel Morgan books by Kim Harrison. Earth magic would be this book's Pagan, Ley Line would be Neutral and Demonic is Infernal.

Given the history of the BRP game and taking a page from D&D4 it would not be difficult to imagine a "Mythos Witch" that gets her power much like the Infernal, only from the Lovecraftian beasties. With loss of SAN of course.

Coven and Sabbats cover the organizations a witch can belong to; Family groups, to supernatural ones to solitaries. Each of these can be expanded into various examples. The family groups could be something like Ann Rice's Mayfair witches or gypsy folk magic handed down mother to daughter.

The section on Witch's Magic is the meatiest. There is a mechanic for dealing with an oral tradition based magic system. It is nice and I like it for it simplicity and it's general common sense logic. It just looks like it works. Alterations for Familiars are mentioned as well.

There are a few new spells, but oddly enough I did not see one for Blindness, a rather iconic witch maleficia. But all look fine and fit the background material well.

In addition to spells we have new Witch's Sorceries and Witch's Potions.

I like the potion section the best of these last three since it is difficult to find good rules for witches making potions on the fly. In D&D 3 it takes way too long, but if you watch shows like Charmed or read books like the Dresden Files or the Rachel Morgan series their witches are brewing potions in hours, not weeks. Like the spells there is a good number of effects listed here. We also get Talisnans.

In Witches' Allegiance we see the differences between white and black magic and what the character gains (and looses) for their allegiance.

Mystic Artifacts details some of the unique magic items that are connected to witchcraft, Baba Yaga's Hut, the Hand of Glory and a couple of others. I would have liked to have seen Circe's Wand too, but that is just me.

There are some Sample Organizations which are flexible enough to work in any game really.

And finally we end with a number of Witch NPC Sample Characters.

Thoughts
This is a good book and if you want to play a witch in one of the BRP games then this is a great place to start. I could see these, as written, working in a Call of Cthulhu game or even an Elric one.

The book itself reminds me of the old Mayfair Games book on Witches for 1st Ed. AD&D. The tone and tenor is the same and there is plenty of text given to both sides of the witch persona; the good and the evil.

In terms of "playing a witch" I think this is the closest thing you can get in a BRP game. The author has clearly done his research and I am certain he knows there is so much more that he could have written.

I suppose the only issue I had with it was the lack of support for playing a modern age witch. Not that I don't already have a 1,000 games now that allow me to do that, I found their exclusion odd.

All in all I found this book to be an enjoyable read and looking forward to stating up a few witches using it.


Links

BRP Witchcraft at Chaosium's site, http://catalog.chaosium.com/product_info.php?products_id=5063
At DriveThruRPG, https://www.rpgnow.com/product/82087/BRP-Witchcraft?affiliate_id=10748

GEN CON Ghosts of Albion: Obsession

Ghosts of Albion: Obsession is the big game I am running at Gen Con this year.

Here are the details from the registration site:

There is trouble at the Plough Street Theatre. The Times reports that authorities have found the strangled body of prominent actress and performer, Miriam White. However Miss White has herself commented to The Times that she is in fact alive and well and has been seen not only on stage, but having lunch with her manager just outside the theatre.
You are requested by James V. Harold, owner of the Plough Street Theatre to discreetly investigate this matter.

The schedule is:

RPG1008374 Obsession 08/05/2010 08:00:00 Crowne Plaza, room Hay Market A, table 6
RPG1008375 Obsession 08/06/2010 08:00:00 Crowne Plaza, room Hay Market A, table 6

So if you are playing in this game (there are 16 of you now, maybe even more) then here are some files for you to download and print out.
Any player that brings these to the game will get a free Drama Point for their character!

First, the Letter to the Cast from James V. Harold, esq. Owner, Proprietor and Manager of the Plough Street Theatre.

Next, the Playbill for this evening's performance of Miriam "Mim" White.

And for later in the investigations, two newspaper clippings sent to you by Mr. Harold,

 

Looking forward to this!