Dracula: Lord of the Vampires, Threat Report

Mutants & Masterminds Threat Report #43: Dracula

I really like these M&M Threat Reports.  They are a quick and easy way to add a villain to your game in a second.
What I like about these is they remind me so much of the old Chill supplements and the Con X ones.  Not that I Am saying they are copies, far from it! But rather all three games went to the same well and each came back with something a little different, and each one was very cool for their own game.

So of course I had to get this one on my favorite villain of all time, Dracula.

The vampire lord is presented with stats for M&M3, as well as some plot hooks for adding him to your game.  Included is his "classical" history and personality profile.  His powers are also discussed, which is nice since the new M&M3 book does not have a Vampire Lord like the old 2nd ed book did.

My only complaint about this one.  Dracula in the books was immune to the effects of sunlight.  He should be unique in this regard.

I would have given him the complication Powerless during the day.  It would have added some nice flavor AND been a big surprise to the players. I have used Dracula in every game I have played and the look on player's faces when he walks out into the sunlight and then grabs them by throat is PRICELESS.

I like the Plot Hooks and the "Power in the Blood" is a great idea.  You could use it with Dracula or even some new vampire upstart.

Since M&M3 is the same system as DC Adventures then this is also perfect for that.

Also they should edit the boiler-plate credits and licensee page for this one. Dracula can't be Product Identity.  His history in the M&M universe is, but his "real world" history can't be.

But all in all a great product.

You can see my M&M 2nd Ed version here: http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2010/05/dracula-mutants-masterminds.html

October Challenge: Morgane et ses Nymphes

Ok this one is hard to properly classify.  It has many elements that make it horror.  Old castles, villagers warning the heroes away from the dark forest, an immortal witch and her slaves, torture and death.  It is also soft-core Euro-cinema and while there is nothing out and out scary about it, there is the nagging feeling that something not right is going on.

Morgane et ses Nymphes (1971)

Also known as the "Girl Slaves of Morgan le Fay" this is a very sureal movie.  It starts out with best friends Anna and Françoise, travelling the countryside. Both women are young a quite attractive.  They are warned to stay away from dark country side, which they ignore. They spend the next few hours driving on and on so they decide to sleep in a barn they find once it gets dark.  After a figurative and literal roll in the hay.  Françoise wakes up to find Anna gone.  Françoise eventually finds a boat and lead to island full of beautiful women and their leader Morganne.  Eventually Anna is found here and she and Françoise spend time enjoying the company of the other women of the island.  Sure there is this creepy dwarf Gurth and the bit about giving up their souls to Morganne so they can live forever.
The biggest problem comes in the form of Yael, who does not want Françoise to become Morganne's new favorite. She and the other favorites, Sarah and Sylviane work to get Françoise out of the picture.  Françoise tries to escape, only to learn she does not have the magic to summon the boat, but Gurth does.
During the final scene where Anna and Françoise are to give their souls to Morganne, Françoise decides to seduce Yael.  Afterwards Gurth gets lowered into the pit for having the girls perform on each other for his own amusement.  There is some twisted irony in there.
Françoise gets his ring to summon the boat and then a horse. But it doesn't matter because once Françoise sees an old woman and a dead one she realizes she would rather be young and beautiful forever.  She calls out to Morganne who comes to get her.  They walk back to the boat but stop by the farm house where Anna and she had spent the night.  Inside still sleeping she sees Anna and Yael (at least I think it is Yael) sleeping in each other's arms, happy.  Françoise smiles.

Ok so. Is this horror?
Again there are plenty of elements of horror even if the movie is not scary.  Françoise does give up her soul to stay immortal and live with Morganne forever.  Judging by the number of women here it seems she is not lacking in volunteers.  Morganne is not an unkind witch, she does let Anna and Yael go off to live their own "happily ever after".
The girls though are still victims of Morganne, or are they all co-dependent on each other. Morganne needs them to live and they need her so they can remain forever young; trapped even in a moment in time. In the end that might make more horrific than any number of monsters or slashers.

Many have commented on the surrealistic nature of this film, and that is true.   It is like Françoise has passed over into a mytic land.  Sort like Mist of Avalon, if Morganne had been a lesbian.

Tally 25 movies, 22 new.

Game ideas: Obviously Morgane Le Fey is still alive and living on the Isle of Avalon.  I would fix this with Mists of Avalon and even a bit of my own Daughters of the Flame to get some interesting.

October Challenge: Shower of Blood

I like cheesy horror movies, but they are very much a hit or miss affair.  I like little independent movies too.  They generally have more heart than budget and that will show in the enthusiasm of the actors.
but other times you get this.

Shower of Blood (2004)

I think the most telling bit here is that none of the actors have every gone on to do anything else, with a minor exception. The director also never went on to anything else.

So what do we have here?  Well five college kids are going on a weekend trip.  Lisa has an Uncle Marty she has not seen in 10 years and figures she can just pop in with her drunk and horny friends to spend the night.  Of course we are also supposed to buy that Lisa and Heather are virgins.  Casting tip: Girls with breast implants do not make convincing virgins. Trouble is Uncle Marty is a vampire and he wants Heather to be his new bride.

Well what is good about this movie?  The basic plot is not bad. The special effects are surprisingly well done. And there is plenty of flesh for all.

The bad points are, well pretty bad.  The acting is sub high school play, in fact I think many of the "actors" were purposely trying to be bad.  The sound editing is beyond terrible and into the amateur.  Adding burbs and farts to the actresses moving around is either stupid, mean spirited or both. While the basic plot is not bad, the execution of said plot is terrible.  Beyond it really.

Honest this is not the worse movie I have seen this challenge, but it is really, really close.

What I can't understand is how a sequel was made.  I might have to watch that one too.

Tally 24 movies, 21 new.

Wizard's Witch

Wizards of the Coast put up their preview of the new Witch class, er sub-class, for their Heroes of the Feywild.

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ex/20111024#76933

So far I like what I see.  The witch uses Intelligence and Wisdom as her primary abilities with high scores in Charisma and Constitution being favorable.  There seems quite a bit of overlap in the role (small r) of the witch and the warlock, but that only gives me a lot of ideas.
Witches do not gain the Ritual Caster as do Wizards, but given the way Essentials has downplayed the rituals I think that it might be fine.

There are some loosely defined covens (Dark Moon and Full Moon) which act mechanically like the Warlock Pacts, but thematically are different.

When the witch is out I want to start comparing it to the warlock and to my own witches.

I think the 4e witch is positioned to more of a direct competitor to the Pathfinder witch.

What I dislike about it is that the Witch is just a sub-class of the Wizard.  But I guess I shouldn't complain.  We are getting a witch afterall.

Lolth Love

I have always rather liked the Demon Queen of Spiders.  Sure she is totally the bad girl cliche, but I am only human.

Others share my love it seems and have also played on the Lolth/Lilith connection some.

Mythopoeic Ramblings has some good material on the Spider Queen, http://mythopoeicrambling.blogspot.com/2011/10/respinning-demon-queen.html

Lawful Indifferent also give us their take, http://lawfulindifferent.blogspot.com/2011/10/lolth-spider-bitch-of-abyss.html

Enjoy!

October Challenge: Sleepy Hollow

Looking for a change of pace I stumbled on this little gem last night. I think Tim Burton is fantastic.

Sleepy Hollow (1999)

The story of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman is one of the great American Horror stories.  The film versions though have to compete with the Disney classic version. This one is a worthy version.  Yes it takes a number of liberties with the story.  Yes it is exits in some weird Tim Burton alternate reality where all the leading men are played by Johnny Depp and all leading women are played by Helena Bonham Carter-er I mean Christina Ricci.
Ok so Depp's Ichabod is a detective for the NYPD in 1799.  He is sent to the village of Sleepy Hollow to investigate a murder.  His Ichabod is still a bit of coward and has a weak stomach, which I am glad they preserved, but is quite smart.  And apparently his mother was some sort of witch.
Christina Ricci is here and I'll be honest.  I think she is great, I love her in just about everything she does, but all her characters sound exactly the same.  Granted, I have not seen a lot of "Monster" but nearly everything else.
We get cameos and co-stars of some of the highest quality and number are (or will be) Burton alums.
I was particularly pleased to see Christopher Lee, Michael Gough, Martin Landau, and Michael Gambon.  Of course the award for biggest surprise casting goes to Christopher Waken as the Headless Horseman.
The actors are first rate and script is good too.
The effects looked a bit dated in some cases, even though it is only 10 years old, but still good enough.

I enjoyed the story in all it's supernatural spookiness. I think I was thinking that it was going to be a more mundane killer than a supernatural one, but instead we got both and that was kind of cool.

Tally 23 movies, 20 new.

More OSRIC Player's Guide woes

EDITED TO ADD:  I am getting a lot of links to this.  To be clear: WotC is NOT going after OSR blogs or books.  They asked 1 author to remove 1 product that had some clear violations of the OGL.

A while back I posted the tales of the OSRIC Player's Guides/References.

The first one I detailed here, http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2011/09/osric-players-guide-retraction.html
It was just a copy-paste job of the OSRIC rules and some stolen cover art.  The author claimed he did not know, which is fine, but then he turned around and did it AGAIN with Holmes Basic producing something called "Mazes & Perils", detailed here, http://theresdungeonsdownunder.blogspot.com/2011/10/ok-ill-keep-blog-open-3-reasons-why.html, http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2011/10/mini-review-mazes-perils-core-rules-osr.html and http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2011/10/fool-me-once-shame-on-you-fool-me-twice.html

Frankly that guy has lost all benefit of the doubt from me.

But that is not the tragedy today.

Today I want to mention the OSRIC Player's Guide, the one detailed here http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/2011/10/other-osric-players-guide.html and here http://underdarkgazette.blogspot.com/2011/10/osric-tale-of-two-players-books-and-no.html

This one was done by the same guy that ran the blog BreeYark!.  Unlike the first, this one had been in the works since Jan/Feb of 2011.  Unlike the first this one also was full of original art.  But like the first one, this one has also been taken down from OneBookShelf and the BreeYark! blog is now gone.

I am not going to speculate as to why.  There was a C&D order issued and you can read some more at the K&KA forum, http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=8038
I just think it is too bad really that all the work that went into it was lost.

I guess the learning point here is if you are going to publish something and put it up on DriveThru/RPGNow/OBS then you better be sure you know what you are doing.  Make sure you understand the OGL (if you are using it), know where your art is coming from.  Though I'll admit I thought the OSRIC Player's Guide was fine as far as copyrights/trademarks are concerned.  Just goes to show you can't know everything.

I am reminded of something though Clark Peterson of Necromancer Games once said about OSRIC.  I won't detail it here, but I am wondering if the eye of Hasbro/WotC is becoming more focused on the OSR.  I know they read these blogs, they are gamers afterall.  And I am sure that the sales of legit products are nothing compared to what a multi-billion dollar company like Hasbro makes.  But all the same we have had some pretty spectacular screw-ups and it might not be long for that attention is on all of us.

I do hope the BreeYark! blog comes back tough.