Reviews: Titles from Sacrosanct Games

I picked up a few PDFs over the last couple of weeks for ideas for my big 5e game.  The rule system is 5e, but the adventures themselves are all 1st ed or Basic.  

In the process I noticed that I had picked up a few titles from Sacrosanct Games and I thought I would share what I found.

B1 Journey to Hell

This one grabbed this because I needed an adventure geared toward 18-20th level.  Also it is about Hell, so that got my attention.  I bought it on a whim based solely on level and "hell".
First off you get a lot of adventure for your buck. 45 pages of adventures and maps (granted it is the same adventure twice, but still).
The artwork is great, coming primarily from sources like The Inferno. This is quite fitting given that the adventure itself is quite reminiscent of Dante's great tale.  It does include some art from the Larry Elmore CD that was out years ago, but doesn't properly cite it in their OGL page.
It is dual stated for the OSRIC and Altus Adventum Role-Playing Game, always a plus in my book, but it can be played with any number of OSR systems or their fore-bearers.
4 out of 5 Stars

Classes of the Far East

Grabbed this because my youngest wants to play a ninja like character.  It has a ninja, as well as a monk, a mahoutsukai (spell caster that uses both magic user and cleric spells, and a lot of them), and the yokai which is a race as a class of animalistic humanoids, and of course the Samurai.
Weapons are listed (damage and cost) but no descriptions are given and no artwork of the weapons.  And that is pretty much it.  If you don't know what these weapons look like, then you are on your own really.
Looking over the mahoutsukai it is grossly overpowered. It basically advances as cleric and a magic user at the same time.  So by 14th level it has 12 each of 1st through 5th level spells, 7 6th level and 1 7th level.  It has limits, namely limited to the same arms and armor choices as a magic-user, limited to 14th level and can't turn undead.  But that is still a lot of spells.  Honestly it should one spell list that combines select magic-user and cleric spells and it should have some limits on what it can and cannot do.   Right now it is not a class I can recommend using.
3 out of 5 Stars

Reclaiming the Caves on the Borderlands

I picked this up because I do enjoy seeing what others can do with such well trodden ground as the Keep and the Caves of Chaos.  The cover claims to be 5th Edition compatible and uses the current OGL to get there.  Personally if I were a publisher I would be staying away from this.  It is murky legal ground right now and one I would not tread on.  But lets move on.
The cover is nice and drew me in right away.  The book is 24 pages, but minus 1 for cover, 1 for ogl, 1 for a blank page, 1 for an ad, 4 for maps and 1 more for a character sheet. So 15 pages of text.
The Good:  There is a good section on pages 4 and 5 on playing humanoid races such as orcs, bugbears, gnolls and so on.  Just the stats, nothing really on "how to play them" No big, these are the standard baddies for the last 40 years. We know them.
There is detail on how the caves are controlled and what can be the expected losses of the various groups of humanoids living in the caves over time.
The Not As Good For Me: The caves and the rooms themselves are not detailed.  There are blanks left for the DM to write in what is there from monsters to items.  The main conceit here is that the inhabitants of the Keep have taken over the Caves now.  It is all very sandboxy which is fine, but not what I was expecting.  I am perfectly fine with sandboxes, but that it not why I buy pdfs.  I buy graph paper for that.
The Bad: This PDF uses scanned images from the original map of the Caves of Chaos from B2.  It has been run through Photoshop and some alterations have been made, but I can overlay a scan of the blue/white Caves map and line it up perfectly (including grids) to the "Reclaiming" maps. Not very professional at all.
The Ugly:  Additionally there is a really bad scan of the old D&D Basic era Character sheet.  It has been edited (poorly) to make it more in line with 5th Edition, but honestly it is just plain ugly. The artist would have been better off starting from scratch and making a 5e sheet that looked a bit like the Basic one rather than include this. Better still would be not to include one at all.  It is just ugly, shows really poor Photoshop skills and a copyright infringement to boot.
So in the end, despite some promise and high hopes, this falls really flat.
2 out of 5 Stars 

Grimm

Have had a few colds or upper respiratory tract infections running through the house the last few days.  Not a big deal, but my efforts have been more focused on taking care of others rather than gaming.  But I did manage to get something fun in.
My wife, my youngest son and I have all been binge watching Grimm.  We burned through Season 1 and are not 3/4 ths of the way through Season 2.

It's great fun and my youngest (much like me at that age) loves all sorts of spooky, mystical stuff.

I was, as I typically do, working on some projects while watching.  I was also spending more time with my D&D 5 DMG.  It got me thinking about what sort of system would be the best for Grimm.

Typically if it is mystical or is modern monster hunting, then I first look to Unisystem; and Cinematic Unisystem at that.  After all, it is TV and I quickly figured out several Qualities and Drawbacks that the star Nick Burkhardt could have as a Grimm (Enhanced Senses, Honor, Increased Strength, Hard to Kill...and so on). It's not a difficult exercise.  But CineUnisystem, as much as I love it, is not really a perfect fit.
Despite some potions and some odd powers, there really is nothing along the lines (well yet) as magic as I defined it Ghosts of Albion or as was defined in Buffy/Angel.  Sure, Army Darkness might work but still not just right.

So I was thinking Chill and it's more modern cousins, Majus and Cryptworld.  I even know already there is a zombie episode coming up, so Rotworld is also in.
Why these games vs. the Unisystem line?  Well I believe that system strikes a tone with how you play.  Which is also why I ruled out Call of Cthulhu (despite how much I enjoy it).  People in the Grimm world are, well, regular people.   There are some monsters, some Wessen. But Cryptworld can deal with that. If I would opt to have Wessen as PCs then I can use some cues from Majus.

I thought about looking into the Fantasy Flight Games RPG "Grimm",  and it looks like it could work a little too.  But I don't own it and only know it through reputation.  Other than that there does not seem to be a Grimm tie in RPG.    I did a search and seems like most people would use Buffy/Angel/Ghosts of Albion, which does give me a bit of professional pride, even if I am not agreeing with them.

Does anyone watch the show? NO Spoilers please!  If so, what system would you use? What do you think about Chill vs. Unisystem.

Gen Con 2015

Chatted with the family and we are heading to Gen Con again this year.

So far we have no big plans.  Last year was dedicated to D&D5, this year no plans yet.
I might run something.  I have a couple of Ghosts of Albion games I would love to run.

The kids are thrilled.  I am excited.
Looking forward to it!

Zatannurday: Zatanna and Constantine

Last night was the return of Constantine to the small screen.  We still have no clear idea yet if it will be renewed for a 2nd season, but I am not getting my hopes up.
This certainly means we won't see John and Zee together on the screen anytime soon.

So here they are on the smaller screen.



Bleedin' Las Vegas by conjob1989 on DeviantArt


Zatanna and Constantine by m0nstersInside on DeviantArt


Constantine And Zatanna That old Black magic... by samayoa on DeviantArt


Surprise by armadillo-CDQ on DeviantArt


Justice League Dark Combo by elena-casagrande on DeviantArt


Commission - Deadman, Constantine, Zatanna by tyrannus on DeviantArt


Zatanna and John Constantine by montrosity on DeviantArt

Hope we get to see more!

Happy Anniversary Hero Press!

Today Tim Knight is celebrating 8 years of blogging with Hero Press!
http://heropresstwo.blogspot.com/2015/01/eight-years-of-heropress.html

A very worthy achievement.
You can see his first post here and it gives you no indication of how useful or how vital Hero Press has become.

For me Hero Press is usually where I hear about all things comic, movie, sci-fi television or gaming first.  All with a style and a quality that I think only Tim can bring to it.

Let's all be honest here, blogging is as much about personality as it is about content.  Sometime those personalities can be so grating that it drowns out the content.  This is not so with Tim Knight.
I always feel like the implied welcome is "come on in, have a pint, hey did I happen to tell you about this thing that has me really excited right now?..."
No one has ever said a bad thing about Tim Knight or Hero Press ever.
Yeah I know I was just railing against personality cults last night.  But it doesn't count if the person is a genuine nice guy.

So please join me in celebrating Tim's great accomplishment. Stop by Hero Press now and give Tim your congratulations.  

I want to hear more about the Acrobatic Flea and Barney the Bunny and how your kids are doing. Keep telling us more about the new TV shows you are getting before we do and visa versa.

You have kept us entertained and informed for 8 years.  Here is 8 more!

I Want My Own Cult

Seriously.  Where do I sign up for that?

I spent part of my day arguing with a group of people (non gamers) about something and despite overwhelming, demonstrable evidence to the contrary of their opinion I and my small band of like minded rationalists were overwhelmed by their cult like mentality.

I could not even get to click on one link to Snopes that destroyed their entire argument.

I left that after my wife told me to stop poking the zoo animals with pointy sticks.  I came back to it just an hour ago to find the situation far worse.  I did the only sensible thing. I gave up.

Come back here to the safe haven of RPGs only to see more Cult of Personality type behavior and the inexplicable fawning over people vs. ideas.

So while I am watching these two "cults" fight each other over who thought up what ever idea first I have decided I want my own cult.

It really shouldn't take much. I'll post like I always do. You just agree with what I say!  You don't even have to read what I posted!  I get a sense of self-worth, you get that nice warm feeling of belonging to something larger than yourself.   Best part is when I eventually do something really stupid you have deep conversations with people on what it was I was really saying or not.  And when I totally go off the deep end you can have a moment of clarity and talk about how you knew all along I was full of shit!

So how about it? Join my Cult of Personality. No weird initiations. No fees.  But if I get enough people then maybe we can have a secret handshake. Or a secret milkshake. Whatever.

Quagmire

This has been passed around a lot lately, but still an interesting read.
The development of the module Quagmire by Merle Rasmussen.

https://medium.com/@increment/quagmire-the-making-of-a-1980s-d-d-module-c30e788ea5f2

The article is less about module design than it is about commercial module development.  It is insightful on how things were created in the heyday of TSR. Also if you look hard enough you can even see the seeds of TSR's eventual demise here.

I post this though because it is an interest footnote to me.  I remember this adventure. I picked it up and completely gutted it because what I wanted was a swamp with a tower in it.  All that hard work detailed above and I chucked it all!

This article did make me want to pull my old copy out, but I remembered that it was one of the many pre-2e materials I lost back in the mid-90s. Thankfully I do have the PDF.  I might use it in my current game, but everything is so packed now I fear I will end up doing exactly what I did in the past; chuck the adventure and make it an interesting locale to stop over in.