International Woman's Day

Note: I am cross-posting this on the Wonder Woman blog, Amazon Princess as well.

Today is International Woman's Day.

While I think that is great thing I have to ask why more than half of the population only gets one day?  Shouldn't women get Spring and Summer and men get Fall and Winter?  Anyway I am not here to debate. William Moulton Marston envisioned a world where women would be more highly regarded than they were in his own time (and even than they are now), but failing that at least we can honor his ideals on this day with a picture of one his greatest creations; Wonder Woman.

From the DC Women Kicking Ass and Girls Gone Geek.

Don't see Fire, Ice or Zatanna in the pic though. Oh well it is still awesome.

Finally got my Expert Set!

So here is a story and it is a familiar one.   Young boy in the early 80's playing Atari and listening to Thomas Dolby gets the gift that will change everything, the D&D Basic set.  Later, with his well earned and saved money he buys the D&D Expert set.  Life is pretty good.  Advanced books follow.  Boy becomes a young man and moves away to college.  Books are taken in some moves, left at parents in others, many years later that milk crate of D&D books, including those once prized Basic and Expert sets (and a crap ton of AD&D hardcovers) have disappeared.

Sad tale to be sure.

Well no more, because after years of looking (albeit not very hard) I finally got a decent looking Expert set.

The box has some wear, yes, but let's look inside.

The books themselves are in fantastic shape.  Almost mint I would go as far to say.

Much better than the one I had (bought a couple years back),

The box also had a near mint AD&D 1st ED DM's screen and a full booklet of AD&D NPC record sheets.

Of course now I have four copies of X1, Ilse of the Dread; three of them in near mint condition.

This was pretty much the last thing I wanted to buy.  Now my long lost collection is complete again.  Well, I don't have the Dungeon or Wilderness Survival Guides, but that's fine.

They Don't Write 'em Like that Anymore

Back when I was in college I got a call from my mom, she was at a yard sale and someone was selling all their old Dragon magazines.  It was a box just full of stuff from like issue #35 on to #140 or so. Most were there, but a couple were missing, all in all about 100 issues.  Asking price, 10 bucks.
A while later I was able to get my hands on some old White Dwarf magazines, issues #1 through #50.  Most of them were there as well but not all of them were in great shape.
But beyond the quality of the magazines and how much (or rather how little) I paid for them, reading them was pure joy.  Even if I was not actually playing the versions of the games they were talking about (this was during the 2nd Ed era and into the 3rd Ed one) they were still fantastic.  Some stuff was good, some was bad, but all of it was earnest and just plain fun to read.

I get that same feeling while reading Oubliette.

I just picked up Issue #5 and I have others, but this issue really gave me the same feeling as reading a newly discovered fan magazine from the late 70s. There is nothing that stands out as special to me in this issue, it is just the whole package that I enjoy.  It was interesting to see the Monstermark system again, having seen it in my collected issues of White Dwarf and still not getting it. I liked the "advanced" vampires too.

The art is very evocative of the old school style seen in Dragon, White Dwarf and The Dungeoneer magazines.

I hope we can see more from The Oubliette!

Exploring Characters

So one of the latest (or am I two weeks too late on this one) mantra is "We explore dungeons, not characters."  In the immortal words of Tony Stark from Iron Man "is it too much to ask for both?"

I like exploring characters.  I guess this means I am a "role-player" more than I am "Dungeon Crawler".  I like to explore my characters, figure out what makes them tick.  I'd rather loose to a monster in way that advances the plot or characterization than kill the monster and get the treasure in what was otherwise a roll of the dice.

I guess that is just one more hit to my old-school street cred.

Reviews: Can't Sleep, Clown Will Eat Me edition

Some reviews while I can't sleep.

Legends of Excalibur: Arthurian Adventures HC
I picked this up at the same time I did the True20 version.
This is one of the best Arthurian legends games I have read in a good long time. The text is very readable, the layout is very well done and the maps are fantastic.
The use of the d20 system here is nice, but lacks the elegance of the True20 version.
You do get a number of very good feats and prestige classes here though so that evens it out some.
If you are a fan of Arthur in any of it's many re-tellings then this is a fantastic game to own.
5 out of 5 stars.

Fantasy Women Clipart JPEG 7
20 clip art images to use in your games. All are 3D "poser" style computer images, so their utility for certain styles of play might be limited. But all in all they are not bad and the price is fine.
4 out of 5 stars.

Solid! The d20 Blaxploitation Experience
A very interesting take on a little traveled genre in RPGs. While the rules are firmly within the d20 Modern ruleset, there are bit of interesting crunch here and there to make it worthwhile. But where this game shines really is as a guide to the Blaxplotation film genre and history. If you want to run any type of game, regardless of the system, set in the 70’s then this is a good place to start.

Damnation Decade

I have a love/hate relationship with the 70s. I grew up in the 70s and have good memories of them. Loved classic rock, hated disco. Loved the new age occult revival, could have cared less about some of the other stuff. I grew up then, but consider myself a child of the 80s.

Damnation Decade though is the pure raw distillation of everything 70s, good and bad, into one awesome game. It is a historical game, in the same way Ghosts of Albion is about 1839. Damnation Decade takes a wrong turn in 1974 down a dead end. The world is sort of like ours, yet also very different in some key respects. Damnation Decade is also quite possibly the one RPG product to ever tacitly or implicitly illustrate that things under President Ford could have been a lot worse that what we really got. Reading through Damnation Decade is at the same time a trip down memory lane and an exercise in identifying puns and analogues to our real world. Green Ronin: did we really need a world where folk singer Edmund Fitzgerald sings about the Wreck of the Gordon Lightfoot? But I guess you are forgiven by giving us the first RPG product to feature a real Fantasy Island.

It reminds me of Solid!, which is also about the 70's. If Solid! is Parliament, then Damnation Decade is Grand Funk Railroad. Damnation Decade though gives something that Solid lacks; memorable NPCs. Sure if you can get past that most of them are amalgams of 4 or 5 70s figures, for example Humboldt Suede is not just a bad Hugh Heffner rip-off, he is part Hugh Hefner, Bob Guccione AND the Son of Satan. Though some are original enough to be useful outside the 70s atmosphere; Theramin Hunker for example could work well (maybe even better) in 21st Century games full of conspiracies.

Damnation Decade works great as a d20 game AND it has a True20 appendix that might even be better.
Plus that cover rocks.
5 out of 5 stars.

Bunnies And Burrows
The premier RPG of playing something other than a human or anything humanoid. It is basically "Watership Down" the role-playing game, but there is much more to it than that.
It would be disingenious to review it with modern eyes (it is nearly 35 years old now) but it has a very good skill system, and one of the first to be honest. Since the characters are rabbits, there is not much in the way of combat and instead a focus is placed on solving problems and role-playing.
5 out of 5 stars.

Dreaming Cities: Tri-Stat Urban Fantasy Genre

Dreaming Cities was one of the first attempts I had seen of putting together a good Urban Fantasy game that was not also trying to do horror. Sure we had Urban Arcana for d20 and a few others, but this one felt a bit different to me. At least at first. So the real feature of this game is the background information and how they make Urban Fantasy work for them.
The game system itself is Tri-Stat which at this point was mostly the same as BESM 2nd Ed-Revised and SAS. If you know the powers and rules for those you have the same things here.
The real meat for this game comes in only around page 70 when we see how to apply these character rules into archetypes to work in Urban Fantasy. Many seem cribbed from other versions of Tri-Stat/BESM/SAS games, but that is fine.
The rest of the book talks about how to make an Urban Fantasy game work. Like the treatment SAS gave the 70+ year history of comic book heroes, DC tells about the modern urban fantasy genre. There is a quite a bit of crunch mixed in with text on how a modern society deals with things like magic, pixies, zombies, demons and dragons and visa versa.
GoO and Tri-Stat are gone, sad to say, but this game is still worthwhile and has a lot going for it. If you play a modern horror game or a modern supernatural one where magic and supernatural are still hidden, then this is a refreshing little breather.
IT’s not D&D with guns and computers mind you. It is however something very fun.
The rules suffer the same pros and cons as SAS, BESM and the rest of the Tri-Stat family. There is not a lot here that is new in terms of rules, just new ways to use them.
The text is clear and the art is very good.
4 out of 5 stars.

ION Guard

Bash! Edition
ICONS Edition

If you need a reason to buy BASH or ICONS then this is it. At just about 60 pages this supplement presents the Intergalactic Ordinance Network Guard or ION Guard, an intergalatic police force defending the universe from all sorts of bad guys.
Yes we have seen this before, but the the presentation in this book is so enduring you ignore the obvious DNA of this product and just pull on your ION Fist, say your Oath and protect the Galaxy. NPCs are detailed as well as bad guys for you to fight. The layout of the book is awesome and I honestly can't say enough good about it.
Dislike: would have liked to see more bad guys.
5 out of 5 stars.

Zatannurday: Killing Joke

There are pivotal comics in in world.  Ones that change everything.  One such comic is "The Killing Joke".  It is the story of Batman and the Joker. But it is also the story of Barbara Gordon and how everything changed for her in one day.  How Batgirl was no more and paved the way for Oracle.

But take any game changing moment like that and it is ripe for others to want to look at it anew.

The "Brave and the Bold" banner is for various team ups from across the DC line.  One of last year's best was The Brave and the Bold #33, a team up of Z, Wonder Woman and Batgirl (Barbara Gordon).  OR My three top comicbook loves of all time.  Of course it is a powerful piece, but not in the way you expect.

Now I was never a fan of Babylon 5, but I have always sorta liked J. Michael Straczynski as a writer. He has given me reasons not to like him in the past, but this does not disappoint.

It takes place the day before Barbara's shooting and Zatanna has a vision.  We don't know that though.  We just know it Z and WW and they want to take Barbara for a girls night out of dancing.

You can see more here: http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/1855423.html

Obviously if you have not read The Killing Joke then the emotional impact will not be the same, but if you have then...well, you will have to read it for yourself I think.

-- Spoilers --

Honestly that is some pretty powerful stuff there.
Close up, http://www.dadsbigplan.com/2010/04/comic-rack-the-brave-and-the-bold-33/

Here are some reviews I found interesting, each having a slightly different take
http://allthiscrap.blogspot.com/2010/04/brave-and-bold-33-ladies-night-review.html
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=user_review&id=2155
http://acomicbookblog.com/channel/dc-comics-blog/the-brave-and-the-bold-33-review/

I had no problems with Zee and Wonder Woman not being able to help Babs.  Afterall Zatanna doesn't know when it will all happen anyway and she is sure that if she interferes it will only make things worse.  I also don't have an issue with her precognition; she is magical and weird stuff like that happens sometimes.

And because I can, here is a pic of Batgirl and Zatanna reading the comic.

Review: Haunts and Horrors

Haunts and Horrors

I love horror games. I love reading new ones, trying new ones and each time I try to do or learn something new. So it was is with great interest that I got the new “Haunts and Horrors” RPG (H+H RPG).

H+H RPG is a 126 page book. The art is predominantly public domain with some other pieces that are newer, but all are black and white. I bring this up for two reasons, first off the art is sparse which gives the book a “less than polished look” but the art is also thematically appropriate for the tone of the game. While I like newer art in a game, I think this works well for this game. The layout looks like a simple affair with clip-art borders.

H+H RPG is a fairly typical RPG, it starts out with “What is an RPG?” to Character Creation. I like the starting age effects starting XP section. It is an interesting take on how to deal with starting at different ages.

Points are given to buy attributes, skills and edges and disadvantages dependent on starting age.

Attributes are mentioned (Strength, Size, Willpower…) and then abbreviations are used (STR, SIZ, WIP) but nothing connecting the two. Granted a semi-experienced gamer could figure it out, but a novice will be scratching their head for a second or two. There are some generated secondary attributes as well, including something called “Killing Power Adjustment” which seems a bit off in a horror game; not that things don’t kill things, but often killing is not the focus, but I am fine with it. There is a section of previous experience which is interesting.

Lots of disadvantages (not sure why hay fever is worth more than partially deaf or partially blind, or why it was not just folded into Allergy). Though it does a much better job with the mental drawbacks than most games (eg it makes Multiple Personality Disorder different from Schizophrenia, a pet peeve of mine). Disadvantages are bought with points, any extra disadvantage points have to be bought off with experience points. I like that to be honest. It casts disadvantages in a different light. Instead of using disadvantages as a means to gain extra points, but rather as something that must be bought off. For a horror game it is a good model.

The skill system reminds of me a bit of Chill. Some will find this refreshingly “old school” others might find it “old” or “out moded”. I think given the atmosphere the game is trying go with I am going with “Classically oriented” and think it works fine for this game. There are a lot of skills too, which is also very old school in feel as opposed to more “cinematic” games that try to get more done with less skills.

There is a good section on Weapons which deals with a lot of standard weapons (guns, sticks, and archaic stuff).

The next section is on Psychic abilities and mention they can be bought by anyone with a high Perception, so a little different than saying buying a “psychic edge” and then buying the abilities.
The psychic abilities seem work fine and feel right here. Again, I am feeling a bit of Chill here, though the magic and psychic powers are not the same as Chill’s magic, it’s the overall vibe; more magic than Call of Cthulhu, less than C.J. Carella’s WitchCraft.

Next up is magic.
(Speaking of magic, on page 41 the formatting shifts down by an inch or so for the rest of the magic secction. Nothing is unreadable, but looks odd.)

Magic is divided up into traditions (like that) and talks about what a tradition is and how they have access to some spells, but not all (like that too). Each tradition also has various mechanical things that can happen to them via their magic, so each one does feel different than the other.

Spells are supposedly bought like Psychic abilities, but I have not found a guide anywhere in my reading.

Combat is next (odd that it is not with Weapons) along with misadventures, healing and diseases.

The chapters on creatures and their powers are next and it is full of the horror show mainstays and a few new ones. I like that there are multiple types of vampires for example.

A section on curses is also provided which would be useful for any game with curses.

All in all there are some interesting things in this game, though nothing terribly unique. I like some of the character creation options. The magic system has some neat points but not quite unique in and of itself really. My biggest issue with the game is that I expected more, and the layout is far below what I would have expected from an established game company. There are also a number distracting typos, while I normally would ignore these, but some made it difficult to understand the text.

The game itself looks like it would fun with the right mindset. There is a darker tone to it that puts it somewhere between Chill and Call of Cthulhu. Though it lacks a bit of focus; is it Victorian, is it Modern? And what do characters do in the game? The motivations of the characters are unclear too. What do they do, why are they doing it? I think this needs to be better defined.
I would have liked to see some character write-ups so we could see how characters look when done.