Halloween Purchases

Every halloween I treat myself to a horror-themed RPG purchase.

This year was no different except I didn't limit myself to one.
So here are my Halloween RPG gifts to myself and what I thought of them.

Mutants & Masterminds Threat Report #43: Dracula
Drac is one of my favorite villains of all time and he is especially fun in a Supers game.  I really liked what they did here and the plot hooks are good ways to pull Dracula into your games quickly.

Savage Worlds Horror Companion
I am not a huge Savage Worlds fan, but you can't say I don't give the game a fair shake.  I also keep getting books for it in hopes that I begin to feel some of that same love that others do for this game.  I thought this one might do it.  But no.
Now don't get me wrong, this is a fine book.
There is a lot of meat here (145 pages).  There are new Hindrances and Edges for heroes (though a lot of the horror standards are in the main core book)  There are even ways to make monsters into friends (to quote the late, great Joey Ramone) or rather to make monsters into Player Characters.  I particularly like their Dhampyr and might yoink it for Unisystem.  There are new weapons, not as extensive as the listings in some other games, but still fine, though if you wanted to do "Savage Ghostbusters" or even "Savage Blade the Vampire Hunter" then everything you need is here.  There is an obligatory section on sanity. It is better than most, but I still don't like it (AGAIN that is more about me as a former QMHP than as a gamer).  There is a good section about Rituals and one about Magick (with a k) that does much in strengthening what I have always perceived as SW's greatest weakness, it's magic system. Lots and lots of great monsters too, much more than I expected. So this is a huge plus.   The book falls down a bit at the Game Mastering Section. But in it's defense what it does cover is perfectly suited to a Savage Worlds game.  So SW Gamemasters can start here and then move out to other sources to get more info. All in all this was a good purchase.

Rotworld
Believe it or not, I Am not a huge fan of Zombie games.  I love All Flesh Must Be Eaten, but as an addition to my WitchCraft/Ghosts of Albion games.  Rotworld will be similar.
Produced by Daniel Proctor of Labyrinth Lord and GORE fame, Rotworld capitalizes on the 5 billion dollar a year business of Zombies (As of October 2011).  RW uses the old Time Master system that Proctor bought from Pacesetter.  He did not however buy Chill, so he can't say it is compatible with Chill 1st Edition.  But with some work it is and that is why I picked it up.  I love Chill and plan to see what sort of goodness Rotworld could add to a Chill game.  OR the other way around.  Either way this small game (65 pages) packs a punch and shows that "Old School Gaming" is more than just making the next retro-clone of Holmes Basic or AD&D 1st ed.  I hope Rotworld is successful so Goblinoid Games does a generic horror game with this system.  There are not a lot of monsters in this book, outside of zombies, but there is plenty of  text on character creation, combat and skills.  There is a good Game Master section (Corpse Master) about how to setup and run a game.
Rotworld is a fine game.  It won't unseat AFMBE as the premiere Zombie survival game out there, but it is a lot of fun and great for an evening's distraction or even gathering up a bunch of friends with fond memories of gaming in the early 80s.

Darker Paths 1: The Necromancer
The Necromancer is the first in a set of alternate classes for the Adventures Dark and Deep RPG. Adventures Dark and Deep is an interesting "what if" experiment in gaming.  The what if here is "what if Gary Gygax had not left TSR and headed the development of the AD&D 2nd Edition rules. Based on interviews, publications of the man himself at the time, and a healthy dose of conjecture, we get a game that is familiar yet new at the same time.
The Necromancer is one of the more popular "alternate classes" developed for any fantasy RPG.  Almost always an alternate class and never a core one, the necromancer is the ultimate foe in many games or the ultimate PC in others.  But as long as horror and undead are popular in game, then the necromancer is right there with them.
Darker Paths 1: The Necromancer packs a lot of  punch in a small book. At only 24 pages, we get a new class, a "new" race and 75 new spells.  No small feat really. The material is for the Adventures Dark and Deep game, but it certainly can be used with any retro-clone, near-clone or any other game that emulate AD&D 1st ed or Basic D&D.  The art is mixed, but very evocative of the era.  Some new pieces and some public domain works (and it looks like the editor did his research too).
If you like Necromancers and play an older edition of the game, whether an honest older edition or a newer clone, then this is a good choice.

Darker Paths 2: The Witch
I am always a bit hesitant to review other peoples work on witch-related classes since I have products of my own out there. I fear of being too critical or too lax, each to out weigh the other.  In the end I think I just need to review the product as is.  Like DP1: The Necromancer this product is for the "Adventures Dark and Deep" RPG, OR any other near-clone of AD&D.  Also like the first Darker Path book this presents the witch as an evil character class; not the Earth loving priestess of old faiths or even the spiritual seeking witches of modern tales.  This must be recalled when reading the rest of this book.  These witches are more Baba Yaga and not Circe for example.  There is the obligatory disclaimer on Contemporary Witches and how this game is not that. (As an aside, as someone that has written these myself this one does seem more of a disclaimer of "don't email me" rather than a "I am not trying to offend", but that could just be me. EDITED: I did get an email clarification on this and the author was very much in the "I am not trying to offend, but these are different things" camp, which is cool by me.)
Witches in this game are all evil and their main ability is Wisdom.  Their Charisma must start high, but it degrades as the witch rises in level.  Interesting.  I am not sure I like that since it seems here that Charisma is used as an "Appearance" proxy and not as a "Force of Personality" one.  It would make it hard to make a character like Circe, who was evil, attractive and had a lot of force of personality, as a witch in these rules.  That is fine, she would have to be something else, but I do want to point it out.
Witches advance to 13th level; so reminiscent of the druid.  She has a nice variety of spells to choose from (more on this) and there are rules for her brewing potions and poisons.   Like other witches of folklore, this witch can also have multiple familiars.  A nice touch in my mind.
The spells are the real gem of this book.  Nearly 50 new spells there are a lot of classics here.  There are spells on Candle Magic (and done differently than my own) and nearly every base is covered (curses, storm summoning, afflicting others).
Like with DP1, the art is a mix of new and public domain art, but all of it is appropriate to the feel of the book.  In the end this is a very good evil witch class.  It does make me wonder how the author might do a good witch.

Happy Halloween!

Spellcraft & Swordplay: The Necromancer

The Necromancer

One of the most oft created sub class, new class or alternate class is the Necromancer.
Gamers in good campaigns look to them as the penultimate foe. Gamers in evil campaigns dream of controlling scores of undead.

The Monstrous Mayhem book for Spellcraft & Swordplay introduced the Necromancer Elite Path.  He is also featured in the Deluxe Core Rule book.

The Necromancer

Level 8
HD: 6+4 (36 hp)
Attacks: 5+3 (Staff, spells)
S: 10 D: 12: Con: 13 Int: 18 Wis: 16 Cha: 13
Bane of the Dead, Enhanced Undead, Skeletal Minion, Undead Apotheosis: +3
Spells:
First Level: Bane, Chill Ray, Detect Evil, Inflict Light Wounds
Second Level: Cause Fear, Death Knell, Hold Person, Protection from Good
Third Level: Curse, Speak with Dead, Unholy Blight
Fourth Level: Death Ward, Vampiric Killer
Fifth Level: Shadow Armor

The Necromancer prowls the night looking for crypts to raid or fresh corpses to use in his unholy experiments of the dead.

He is armed with a Skull Staff that gives him a +1 on his spellcasting rolls.

October Challenge: Spielberg Film Fest

Steven Spielberg is one of the best, if not the best director of the modern age. Say what you like about some of his movies, there is no doubt that he can do horror and suspense. I decided to end my October Horror Challenge with some really, really good movies. So this weekend I did some ones I have seen before.
There is different kind of horror here, and I'll go as far as to say was invented by Spielberg; the Suburban Horror film.  Look at his movies, Close Encounters, Poltergeist, and ET. He took something so innocuous and innocent made it the stage for aliens and ghosts.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

The movie that made Spielberg a household name.  If you ever read "The Demon Haunted World" by Carl Sagan he points out that while reports of ghosts, demons and angels have declined, reports of of alien abductions have risen.  Close Encounters captures this like no other film.  Here the aliens end up being benevolent there is no indication in the film till the end that this has to be the case.

Richard Dreyfus' descent into madness is key to this movie; the fear, uncertainty and doubt. We even have a final girl, in the form of Dreyfus.
I chose this movie because I had just picked it up on Blu-Ray and it holds up really, really well.  Even the bits that are dated seem fine and there is not a lot of those.  This movie could be released today and have just as much impact.
Though I wonder if these days the aliens might appear different, or if the inside of the spaceship might change.  Between this movie and now there is a whole lot of "Alien" culture that has happened.

Tally, 28 movies, 24 new


Poltergeist (1982)

While watching all the haunted house movies at the start of this challenge I kept thinking back to Poltergeist as the best haunted house movie ever. So I re-watched it over the weekend.  Man does it hold up really, really well. The pacing of the movie is perfect, the characters are interesting and the scares are top notch.  It is everything promised in CEot3K and more.  The family setting is perfect really, better than that of Close Encounters. While the events in CE destroy the family, the events in Poltergeist bring them together. One of the iconic scenes is Jobeth Williams kissing Craig T. Nelson in front of the closet before she goes in.  It works so well because Speilberg wrote the screenplay and he got a horror director, Tobe Hooper, to do the directing.  Everything you would want in a horror movie is here, save for gore and nudity.  But hey, the suspense and atmosphere of this film more than makes up for any perceived lacking.  In fact I'll set any scene of buckets of blood up against Carol Anne talking to the "TV People" and having a conversation with them where she tells them all sorts of things like her age. The movie really is a masterpiece.

And let us not forget the "Poltergeist Curse".

Tally, 29 movies, 24 new

Jaws (1975)

There are only a handful of movies that have ever scared me a on a deep, primal level.  The Exorcist is one and Jaws is another.  I am not alone in this.  Jaws has so deeply influenced our pop culture that people will regularly throw out "We'er gonna need a bigger boat.", watch "Shark week" on Discovery Channel and then there is the music.  The score of Jaws competes with the score of the Exorcist as the most easily recognized horror movie score.  Even the mere start of the "duh-dum, duh-dum, dum, dum oh wee-ooo!" and people know it.  Even if they have never seen the movie.  Again we take something familiar and safe, a day out on the beach, and turn it into a literal blood bath.
Like the first two this film is very nearly perfect in every respect.  Ok, so, some the things the shark does are a bit much, but it is still a shark and not a ghost or alien.
Roy Scheider, like Craig T. Nelson and Dreyfus of a later film, has tyified the role of the "Speilberg Dad". A role, oddly enough, missing from his Magnum Opus, E.T.  The Speilberg Dad though is strong, loves his family and is ready to do battle with the monsters, even if he has no idea what he is doing at all.  Dreyfus in CE is the dad that fails, but Scheider here and Nelson in Poltergeist are cut from the same cloth.
Like Poltergeist lets pretend the sequels don't exist ok?

Tally, 30 movies, 24 new

Jurassic Park (1993)

Jurassic Park combines everything from the previous movies into a new experience.  This is an age old tale of science and man's hubris gone wrong. Filled with the cutting edge tech of the day and all the right buzz words and pop-cultural refs, Jurassic Park could have been a much lesser movie in the hands of anyone else.  But instead we get Micheal Crichton's book as viewed through the eyes of Speilberg.   I mean even look at that movie poster, very subtle in the same ways that the Jaws one is.

In this movie we treated to breath taking views and wonders. Then the "screaming and blood" starts.
So much of this movie is right that it is easy to ignore what it gets wrong (those are Velociraptors, it should be called Cretaceous Park...), but none of that matters when there is a T-Rex chasing after you.

I can remember back in college my wife (then my girlfriend) had just finished reading this book and she was going on and on about how great of a movie it would make.  She was right.

Tally 31 movies, 24 new.

That is the final review for this Challenge!
I watched more new movies this year than last year and that was my personal goal.

More Spellcraft & Swordplay love

A couple more good posts on Spellcraft and Swordplay this fine Halloween morning.

A new post at newer blog (for me anyway), Adventures and Shopping.
http://adventuresandshopping.blogspot.com/2011/10/classic-old-school-rpg-spellcraft.html

And a mini-review from Tenkar's Tavern,
http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2011/10/mini-review-spellcraft-swordplay.html

Looking forward to seeing more.

Going back to School with Spellcraft & Swordplay

I was over at my regular DM's house this weekend helping get his new router up and running.  He mentioned that he wants a new fantasy game to run at the high school.  He is a high school football coach and he runs the D&D group.

I had just gotten a couple of copies of the Spellcraft & Swordplay core rules from Drivethru's Print on Demand service and I gave him a copy to try out.  Well he came back to me says he going to give it a try with his group.

You can read his blog here, http://rhoninsramblings.blogspot.com/2011/10/kids-in-agc-have-requested-fantasy-game.html, and check on his group's progress.

I am glad to see this game getting some more love!

OSR Publisher's List, Graphical Guide

There is a rather impressive list of many of the Old School products over at Dargon's Foot.

http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=51024

I suggest having a look!

October Challenge: Alone in the Dark (2005)

I really, really should know better. But I saw some names, and thought maybe, just maybe.
But no.  I got Boll'ed again.

Alone in the Dark (2005)

Well it had Christian Slater as a poor man's Nick Cage.  And some cool looking monsters, but I am thinking they are more from the video game than the mind of Boll.
The movie starts out good enough.  Ancient Native American artifacts.  Monsters that come from a world of darkness.  Shadowy government agency.  All the things you need for a cool movie.
The build up of combining the artifacts and half-human sleeper agents is also very cool.
In right up to the final battle at the gold mine everything was ok.  Slow, but ok.
Then the story just falls apart.  Christian Slater's rogue, neer-do-well character is brought back into the fold of the Government organization and then it all goes to crap.
We never learn why the bad guy was doing what he wanted to do, why some of the creatures were out but not all of them.  Why Slater's character's implant was "dead".  Why Tara Reid still gets work when she can't act for a damn.
These are questions that Uwe Boll will never answer for us.

The monsters were really cool though and that is something.

Tally 27 movies, 24 new.

Game ideas:  I should stat up the xenos (hate that name) but maybe I'll just take some of their powers for an advanced Displacer Beast like monster.