Review: The Nameless City

Mythmere Games, who gave us Swords & Wizardry, have recently published a new adventure and I decided to download it.  I am very happy I did.

The Nameless City is built in the same vein of the old TSR S-Series, the same that gave us Tomb of Horrors and The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.  The adventure is for higher level characters, 7 to 10, and the adventure is certainly a deadly one.

The adventure itself is something of a cross between a dungeon crawl and an H.P. Lovecraft story (the Nameless City in fact).   There are plenty of degenerate lizard men, a cult to a forgotten god ala Lair of the White Worm, undead galore and of course dinosaurs and crazy snake-people cultists.

While there is nothing per se new here, it is all put together in a rather interesting and fun way.  Yes this adventure is dangerous.  The first room is enough to kill most parties and they have not even gotten into the city yet.
There is a bit of "old school ecology" here, ie monsters seem to be here for the sole purpose to be killed, but that is fine really and the adventure does give reasons why everything is in the place it is in.
The maps are nice, but I like mine a bit larger, but that's fine.
The plot is thin, but more robust than most of the old school modules it emulates and it does, I think, exactly what it was setting out to do.

What do I like about this?
Well the obvious and acknowledged nod to both Lovecraft and the dungeon crawls of old are nice.
Killing undead is always a plus in my book.
Loved the desert setting.  Investigating pyramids is always a blast.
Snake-People as secretive cultist like bad guys pretty much moves anything to the top of my list.

So this adventure succeeds for me on many levels.

I would have liked some more art sure, but what is there is very useful and the rest I guess is up to me and m players.  Again, bigger maps would have been nice.

The Nameless City comes in two flavors, S&W Complete or Core Rules/OSRIC version and a S&W White Box Version.  The rules are the same, except where needed and the monster stat blocks differ.  Of course either version should work well with any version of D&D or it's clones you desire.  Heck even with a very, very minor amount of tweaking I bet it would work well with 4th Edition, Call of Cthulhu, Savage Worlds or even Ghosts of Albion.  If I were Mythmere games I'd be looking into a CoC version myself.

The Nameless City is fun adventure and one that can be run in an afternoon or so.  And for the price it is a steal.

• The Nameless City: Swords & Wizardry Complete or Core Rules/OSRIC version
• The Nameless City: Swords & Wizardry White Box version

5 out of 5 stars

Willow & Tara: Mutants & Masterminds 3rd Edition

Willow & Tara: Mutants & Masterminds 3rd Edition

I have been on a Mutants and Masterminds 3.0 kick of late.  I like M&M and I love the new 3rd Edition game.  So really it was only a matter of time before I tried out my favorite witches in the new system.

I have done Willow and Tara before for Mutants and Masterminds 2nd Ed. But my write-ups were straight conversions of Unisystem and that might not have worked as well as I thought.  So with this I went back to who and what the characters are and stated them up from the ground up.  I kept many of the same powers and skills, or at least tried to.

"Willow and Tara" by David Reynolds

I set the girls at PL 10.  I did PL 11 previously with 2nd ed and they ended up being really super-powered.  Granted, that is fine for me, but I wanted to see what I could do with PL 10 and going by the book.    Willow has more powers/spells under Witchcraft, but Tara still has her healing ability and minion in MKF II.

Given that this is for the 3rd edition version of M&M and I was working on a 3rd season for Willow and Tara called "Generation HEX" I am going to combine them together into one.  Only fair really since Generation HEX's genesis was in my attempt to add more M&M and BESM style play to my games.  In this case this Willow and Tara share a lot of the same history as the ones in my Unisystem games. It is 2011 and they are still together, celebrating 10 years as a couple.

Don't know if they are living in the same world as Justice, but I'd like to think so if I can figure out how, but they are certainly living in the same world with Tarot.

For the purposes of a game I would want them (or at least Tara) be teacher(s) at the local School for the Gifted.  For M&M 2nd ed this would be Claremont Academy and I still like that idea.

Willow Rosenberg
PL 10
Strength 0, Stamina 1, Agility 0, Dexterity 0, Fighting 0, Intellect 6, Awareness 4, Presence 2

Advantages
Artificer, Attractive 2, Benefit, Wealth 3 (millionare), Equipment 1, Extraordinary Effort, Inspire, Languages 4, Occult Library, Ritualist, Skill Mastery (Expertise (Magic)), Teamwork, Well-informed

Skills
Expertise (Magic) 14 (+20), Expertise (Science) 12 (+18), Insight 4 (+8), Investigation 4 (+10), Perception 2 (+6), Persuasion 1 (+3), Ranged Combat (Arcane Blast: Blast 10) 1 (+1), Sleight of Hand 1 (+1), Technology 10 (+16), Treatment 8 (+14), Vehicles 1 (+1)

Powers
Magickal Senses: Senses 8 (magic, Awareness: Magical, Counters Illusion: Magical, Detect: Magical 2 (ranged), Postcognition (Limited): Touch, Radius: Magical; Affects Insubstantial 2 (full rank))
Telekinesis: Move Object 4 (mystic, 800 lbs.; Concentration)
    Throw Object: Blast 2 (Alternate; magic, DC 17; Diminished Range)
Witchcraft: Magic 12 ([10 active, 30/38 PP, 3/r], DC 25; Affects Insubstantial 2 (full rank), Multiattack)
    Arcane Blast: Blast 10 (Alternate; DC 25; Distracting, Noticeable (Light flare))
    Astral Projection (Alternate; Activation: Move Action)
    Computer Link: Other Communication 5 (Alternate; Sense Type: Computer Link; Linked (Remote Sensing: Remote Sensing 13))
    Flight: Flight 10 (Alternate; Speed: 2000 miles/hour, 4 miles/round; Concentration)
    Forget: Mind Control 1 (Alternate; mind, DC 11)
    Glamour: Illusion 5 (Alternate; magic, Affects: All Sense Types, Area: 30 cft., DC 15)
    Magic Sheild: Force Field 20 (Alternate; +20 Toughness)
    Remote Sensing: Remote Sensing 13 (Alternate; Affects: 2 Types, inc. Visual - Vision and Hearing, Range: 30 miles; Linked (Magickal Senses: Senses 8) [4 extra ranks]; Concentration)
    Telepathy: Mental Communication 5 (Alternate; Advantages: Extended distance with Willow; Distracting)
    Teleport: Teleport 10 (Alternate; 4 miles in a move action, carrying 50 lbs.)
    Veil: Concealment 10 (Alternate; All Senses)

Equipment
Ritual Tools 1, Cell Phone (Smartphone), Computer

Offense
Initiative +0
Arcane Blast: Blast 10, +1 (DC 25)
Forget: Mind Control 1 (DC Will 11)
Grab, +0 (DC Spec 10)
Telekinesis: Move Object 4, +0 (DC 14)
Throw, +0 (DC 15)
Throw Object: Blast 2, +0 (DC 17)
Unarmed, +0 (DC 15)
Witchcraft: Magic 12, +0 (DC 25)

Complications
Prejudice: Jewish Lesbian Wicca
Relationship: Tara

Languages
English, French, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Russian

Defense
Dodge 3, Parry 0, Fortitude 5, Toughness 1, Will 7

Power Points
Abilities 26 + Powers 65 + Advantages 20 + Skills 29 (58 ranks) + Defenses 10 = 150


Tara Maclay
PL 10
Strength 1, Stamina 1, Agility 0, Dexterity 0, Fighting 0, Intellect 3, Awareness 5, Presence 2

Advantages
Animal Empathy, Artificer, Attractive, Benefit, Wealth (well-off), Equipment 3, Extraordinary Effort, Inspire, Languages 4, Minion 2, Occult Library, Ritualist, Skill Mastery (Expertise (Magic)), Teamwork, Well-informed

Skills
 Expertise (Horse Riding) 4 (+7), Expertise (Humanities) 8 (+11), Expertise (Magic) 10 (+13), Insight 8 (+13), Investigation 5 (+8), Perception 2 (+7), Persuasion 2 (+4), Ranged Combat (Arcane Blast: Blast 10) 2 (+2), Sleight of Hand 2 (+2), Technology 2 (+5), Treatment 8 (+11), Vehicles 1 (+1)

Powers
Magickal Senses: Senses 8 (magic, Awareness: Magical, Counters Illusion: Magical, Detect: Magical 2 (ranged), Postcognition (Limited): Touch, Radius: Magical; Affects Insubstantial 2 (full rank))
Mystic Healing: Healing 9 (Activation (move action), Limited (Touch only))
Telekinesis: Move Object 4 (mystic, 800 lbs.; Concentration)
    Throw Object: Blast 2 (Alternate; magic, DC 17; Diminished Range)
Witchcraft: Magic 11 ([9 active, 27/35 PP, 3/r], DC 24; Affects Insubstantial 2 (full rank), Multiattack)
    Arcane Blast: Blast 10 (Alternate; DC 25; Distracting, Noticeable (Light flare))
    Astral Projection (Alternate; Activation: Move Action)
    Flight: Flight 10 (Alternate; Speed: 2000 miles/hour, 4 miles/round; Concentration)
    Glamour: Illusion 5 (Alternate; magic, Affects: All Sense Types, Area: 30 cft., DC 15)
    Magic Sheild: Force Field 14 (Alternate; +14 Toughness)
    Remote Sensing: Remote Sensing 12 (Alternate; Affects: 2 Types, inc. Visual - Vision and Hearing, Range: 16 miles; Linked (Magickal Senses: Senses 8) [4 extra ranks]; Concentration)
    Telepathy: Mental Communication 5 (Alternate; Advantages: Extended distance with Willow; Distracting)
    Teleport: Teleport 10 (Alternate; 4 miles in a move action, carrying 50 lbs.)

Equipment
Apartment, Athame 1, Car, Cell Phone (Smartphone), Computer

Offense
Initiative +0
Arcane Blast: Blast 10, +2 (DC 25)
Grab, +0 (DC Spec 11)
Telekinesis: Move Object 4, +0 (DC 14)
Throw, +0 (DC 16)
Throw Object: Blast 2, +0 (DC 17)
Unarmed, +0 (DC 16)
Witchcraft: Magic 11, +0 (DC 24)

Complications
Prejudice: Lesbian Wicca
Relationship: Willow

Languages
English, French, Gaelic, Greek, Japanese, Latin

Defense
Dodge 4, Parry 0, Fortitude 4, Toughness 1, Will 8

Power Points
Abilities 24 + Powers 67 + Advantages 22 + Skills 27 (54 ranks) + Defenses 10 = 150


Minion - Miss Kitty Fantastico II - PL 10
Strength 0, Stamina 0, Agility 2, Dexterity 2, Fighting 1, Intellect 1, Awareness 1, Presence 1

Skills
Athletics 2 (+2), Close Combat (????) 1 (+2), Deception 1 (+2), Insight 1 (+2), Perception 3 (+4), Stealth 4 (+6)

Powers
Fly: Flight 2 (Speed: 8 miles/hour, 120 feet/round; Wings)  - MKF has wings that fold up on to her back and stay hidden unless she is using them.
Luck Control: Luck Control 1 (Negate Luck) - she is a black cat after all.
Mental Link: Mental Communication 1 (Sense Type: Telepathy; Limited (only with Willow and Tara))

Offense
Initiative +2
Grab, +1 (DC Spec 10)
Throw, +2 (DC 15)
Unarmed, +1 (DC 15)

Complications
Quirk: Lazy
Quirk: Curious

Languages
Cat, Telepathy

Defense
Dodge 2, Parry 1, Fortitude 0, Toughness 0, Will 1

Power Points
Abilities 16 + Powers 8 + Advantages 0 + Skills 6 (12 ranks) + Defenses 0 = 30

All in all I like them, but would like to hear what the experts have to say.

Tara gets the car (specially designed hybrid Subaru Outback), apartment and MKF II on her sheet to spread the points around.  Willow is brilliant and the most power witch on the planet maybe, but she considers Tara to be just as potent.  Both girls have Wealth, in my games Willow sold her software company, Red Witch, and remained on as their paid consultant.  This gives her freedom to work when she wants and still have money. Red Witch makes the world best computer security systems; and all have a back door that only Willow knows how to access.

In my WitchCraft game, Tara has more Essence or magical energy than Willow does, not sure how replicate that here.

Note: That fantastic bit of art up there is from David Reynolds, one half of the brilliant ShadowGirls comic team. 

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.