Review: Better Mousetrap 3e

Taking a break right now from D&D related things.  My next "Order of the Platinum Dragon" game is not till Gen Con and I don't have anything yet for the "Dragonslayers".  So I wanted to go back to another idea I was playing around with; my limited run Supers game. I pretty much know what I want to do, vampires and what system I would like to use; M&M3/DC Adventures.  My choice would be to use Dracula, but I want someone or something that is far more of a threat.  Maybe not Darkseid or Mordru level threats, but close.   But in any case something stronger is needed.

Thankfully I have a copy of Better Mousetrap 3e.

Described as "the most extensive, largest third-party rules supplement for ... Mutants & Masterminds" this book lives up to the hype. At 293 pages (covers, ogl, and toc still leave this at 289 pages of solid content) calling it "supplement" undersells it.  Personally I prefer to think of it as "The Villain's Handbook".  Everything you need to create a super-villain (not just a villain), their lair, plenty of skills and gadgets and of course powers.   There is so much here really.

Chapter 1 covers skills.  Plenty of new uses for old skills.  Reading it over it seemed obvious that a lot of skill uses for ancient or immortal characters/villains/heroes.  So perfect for your Vandal Savage types or old vampires like Dracula.  There are some new skills as well.  Brainwashing is a nice one. But there are lot of good ones.  All in all about 25 pages worth of skills.

Chapter 2 gives us new Advantages. Ace is a nice one but there plenty here, including some Minion Advantages.  This is actually really nice.  I tend to gloss over minions.  Maybe all those years of watching the "Adam West" Batman series.  There are also Organization Advantages.

Chapter 3 has all the new Powers. And there are a lot here. There are new Power Effects and new  Power Builds.  There are also plenty of new Flaws. Needed for bad guys really.

Chapter 4 covers new rules.  This chapter is more utilitarian.  There are some car chase/combat rules and some mounted combat rules.  There are some limited Mecha rules too.

Chapter 5 gets into what I consider the meat of the book and the reason I like it; Making a Better Bad Guy.  This is what you need to make your villains into super-villains.  Some of this chapter covers the motivation of villains and (the best parts) their evil plans.  Some motivations are given ("The World Shall Be Mine!" and "The Voices Told Me to Do It" among others) which discusses why villains do what they do.   Motivations are also discussed based on when the villain got their start. For example A Silver Age Villain does things differently than a Golden-Age or Modern-Age Villain.
It is often said that a hero is only as good as their enemies.  Well this takes the opposite take, a villain is only as good as their enemies are evil. There is a good section on anti-heroes and even Arch-Enemies.  Every hero needs a good arch-enemy.
Several new villain archetypes are presented.  Many should be familiar since they pull on some strong archetypes or at least stereotypes, but that is perfect really.  Any of these can be filled out to a full blown villain.   Once you do that there are plenty of rank and file minions; brutes, troopers, pilots, infiltrators and cyber versions of all of them.

Chapter 6 includes Gadgets and Gear. This includes melee weapons and archaic weapons.  Again for our old immortal villains.  There are also plenty of guns and vehicles for the minions.

Chapter 7 is the Many Faces of Evil. This covers not just villains, but their organizations.
Chapter 8 covers Headquarters.  This covers where those organizations and villains will hide
out.   There is quite a lot of material here too.

Chapter 9, Evil to the Utmost, talks about how to use evil and villains.  There are even some villains detailed here.

All in all a really good product.  If you need to detail your villain and evil organization then this is the book you need.

Halfway, Fortunes of Ravenloft and the Foreshadowing

Got in a lot of gaming this weekend!

Saturday the Order of the Platinum Dragon found themselves still stuck in the mists.  They stumbled on to Halfway.  Here they met the Dealer and had the Fortunes of Ravenloft read.  We are not going to play Ravenloft till Gen Con, but I have 5 nights to run it.

I used Tarot cards for the Fortunes (because why not).  I have done that in the past, but I also found this AD&D1st Ed to D&D5 conversion of Ravenloft that also used Tarot cards.
With the PDF out I can print both of these out and run it from those.

Sunday we went "back in time" to the Dragonslayers.  They finished up their exploration of the Barrier Peaks.  Here they encountered, for the very first time, the Illithids.  Something that was not lost on my kids.

The "Order of the Platinum Dragon" characters are all the children or grand children of the "Dragonslayers".   So I am setting up the Mind Flayer threat a generation early.

I know what I have in store for the Order, I just need to figure out what is next for the Dragonslayers.

Zatannurday: Raven

Today is my birthday!
So I want to post one of my favorite DC magic-using characters, Raven.

Here is a collection of some of my recent favorite images of her.




Raven DC by MeganCoffey on DeviantArt


Raven I by MeganCoffey on DeviantArt


Nightwing and Raven by MeganCoffey on DeviantArt


A Greeting looking up by ChelzorTheDestroyer on DeviantArt


Raven Exposed Preview by ChelzorTheDestroyer on DeviantArt


Raven by JayEmEl on DeviantArt


Azarath Metrion... ZINTHOS! by DiegoAGM on DeviantArt


Raven Upper Profile by JayEmEl on DeviantArt


Raven by JayEmEl on DeviantArt


Raven by CeruleanRaven on DeviantArt


Raven by Peachykiki on DeviantArt


Raven - DC comics by Neferet-Cosplay on DeviantArt


Raven and white Raven Teen Titans Cosplay by AverageCosplays on DeviantArt


Comikaze 2014 Raven Titans Abby Normal Cosplay by wbmstr on DeviantArt


Raven by DarkKitteh on DeviantArt


Demon's Daughter by raymundlee on DeviantArt

Friday Night Videos: Rob Zombie

Welcome back to Friday Night Videos.

It's the night before my birthday!
So tonight I want to focus on one artist and what his music has done for my gaming.

Interesting tidbit. I have never bought a Rob Zombie or White Zombie album or CD.  I have always gotten them for my birthday.
Weird I know, but hey there must be something to that.

I was introduced to White Zombie while in college but I didn't really get into them till after grad school when I dug up a copy of  La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume One that had gotten for my birthday  back in 94 or so.  I listened to Thunder Kiss '65 and wrote the first version of Halfway.




I have mentioned this one before, but the original FNV used to show repeats too.  More Human Than Human and it's album Astro Creep: 2000 was a huge influence on all the material I wrote for the Buffy RPG and the games I was playing at the time.  I think I even had an adventure called More Human Than Human at one point.




Hellbilly Deluxe ranks as one of my favorite albums of all time.  Rob Zombie's first solo album he described it as an homage to the feel of the horror movies of the 70s.  So it's not really a surprise I like it so much.  Dragula is an ode to the car from the TV show The Munsters. But it is also a great song.




Like More Human than Human, Living Dead Girl was practically a soundtrack to my Buffy/WitchCraft games.  Listening to it now I can't help wanting to pull out my Unisystem books and getting back to some old friends.  ...What are you thinking about?...




Hell on Earth...This is the song that always gets me pumped up and psyched.  Strawberry Switchblade is the bastard daughter of this song.




One of my favorite movies and books (for different reasons) is "A Clockwork Orange".  The are a lot of reasons I like it. The commentary on violence and how society treats youths. Stanley Kibrick's direction. But mostly I think it is the performance of Malcolm McDowell who also has a birthday tomorrow.  So in honor of that here is another favorite Rob Zombie song, Never Gonna Stop (The Red Red Kroovy).



One of a couple of songs that came out while I was working on the early drafts of The Witch.  The American Witch is one of my favorite songs period. There are two versions of the video, but this one is the animated version by David Hartman.  This song's videos fits in with the "mythos" you see in a lot of Rob Zombie's work, that the monsters are the heroes.  Look for the guest appearance of the Living Dead Girl.





Lords of Salem is the "prequel" song and video to American Witch.  There is a solid Solomon Kane feel to this.  But like American Witch, the humans are the real monsters here.  Our heroine the American Witch appears here, but is captured.  The Lords of Salem went on to inspire my own "Lord Salem", the Big Bad for Season 2 of the Hex Girls.

Skylla: Adventurer Conqueror King & Players Companion

Trying to tie a few loose threads together and I noticed this was missing from my mix.
So here are some purposes this post serves for me.
- I wanted to go back and have another look at Skylla. In particular how this version compares to Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea.
- I wanted to go and have a look at the witch from the Adventurer Conqueror King System and the ACKs Player's Companion.
- I am gathering together some threads for my "Adventure Path" War of the Witch Queens.

When it comes to "Old School" Witch classes.  Adventurer Conqueror King System and Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea tie for second place in my mind.  Both are so close to what I like doing with witches.  There are plenty of great ones out there, but these are closest to how I like to play.

Adventurer Conqueror King System also limits characters in terms of levels.  While AS&SH goes to 12, ACKs tops off at 14.  ACKs is also closer to my favorite version of D&D, Moldvay Basic/Cook-Marsh Expert.  In fact all three systems do work pretty well together.  In fact I tend to think of the world used in ACKs as being just a little "south" of the world in AS&SH.  I have not spent as much time with ACKs as the other games, but what I have played I do like.

Like my witch the ACKs witch can belong to a Tradition.  In truth you could move traditions back and forth between the two with relative ease.  The problem here though is that none of the traditions really seem to fit the "knowledge at all costs" mentality I see Skylla as having.  Chthonic is the closest with Voudon coming in a close second.  In the end the powers and spells the Chthonic witch gets tips it into favor.

ACKs though also has a Warlock class. The warlock as described is a much better fit for Skylla than the witch is.  Since the warlock is an arcane spellcaster and the witch is more divine it also makes more sense to go with the warlock.  The Corrupted Scholar template from the Warlock is also a perfect fit.

Skylla, 7th Level Warlock (ACKS)
Template: Corrupted Scholar

Strength: 9
Dexterity: 11
Constitution: 10
Intelligence: 15
Wisdom: 11
Charisma: 12

Hit Points:  20
Alignment: Chaotic
AC: 4 (Ring of Protection AC 4)

Proficiencies: Alchemy, Loremastery, Knowledge (Occult)

Powers
1st level: Familiar (owl)
2nd level: Secrets of the Dark Arts (control Undead as a Chaotic Cleric 3)
4th level: Hex
6th level: Contact Dark Powers
7th level: Scribe Scrolls, Magic Reserach (minor)

Spells
First: (2+1) Charm Person, Light, Magic Missile
Second: (2) Detect Invisible, Levitate
Third: (1): Lightning Bolt

Magic Items
Ring of Protection AC 4, Dagger +1

This Skylla has less spells, but what makes her shine here is the same thing that makes ACKS shine and that is the proficiency system.

Christopher Lee: Farewell Good Knight

By now many of you have heard of the passing of the great Christopher Lee.
Very, very few actors have cut across so many of my interests quite like the way Sir Lee did.

If you have spent any time here whatsoever you know of my love of the Hammer Horror and of Lee's portrayal of Count Dracula.    But he also starred in other films that I equally enjoyed.

Not so well known is my love of the James Bond films.  But it's true, I love watching the Bond movies and some of my best birthday memories was going to see many of the Roger Moore bond movies in the theaters.  One of m favorite Bond villains was Francisco Scaramanga, played by Lee and written to be something like a Moriarty character to Bond.

Speaking of Moriarty and Holmes, Lee has played Sherlock, Mycroft and even Sir Henry Baskerville in three different Sherlock Holmes productions.  Playing Baskerville against Peter Cushing's Holmes was a treat.

Christopher Lee is most well known for his take on Dracula and maybe more so that any other actor he defined the role.  His verbal and physical sparring with best friend Peter Cushing as various members of the Van Helsing family made these movies extremely popular.  Lee and Cushing would star in several movies together even outside of the Dracula ones.  One of my favorites is still "The Creeping Death".

Christopher Lee would go one to be featured in over 200 movies.
Here are a  few of my favorites.
"The Wikerman", not the god-awful Nicholas Cage movie, gut the original creepy pagan one featuring Lee as Lord Summerisle.   "To the Devil A Daughter" which has Lee battling Richard Widmark over the soul of Nastassja Kinski. Yes in case you are wondering, Lee's character wants her for the Devil.
Lee also gave a great (to me) performance as Dr. Gannon in Disney's "Return to Witch Mountain".  I remember him freaking me out in this.

It was Lee's performances as Saruman in Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" and the "Hobbit" movies that made him well know to a younger generation.  Lee gave Jackson's film an air of authenticity.  Christopher Lee knew Tolkien, he had read Lord of the Rings many times. He was very, very particular about how you pronounce everything.  He once said "if a man spends time creating and entire language then you must be careful to say everything correctly." or something to that effect.

He also played Count Dokku in the Star Wars Pre-olgy films. While the role was done as a means to honor his legacy as Dracula, I could not but help to see the ghost of Peter Cushing there.  Tarkin and Dokku had no screen time together, but I think it is fitting that Cushing and Lee could share this film series together.

Casting him as a dentist in the newer Willy Wonka movie is exactly the type of twisted joke I come to expect from Tim Burton and Lee did not disappoint.

Christopher Lee once said of his friend Peter Cushing that "he died because he was too good for this world".  I say Lee died because there was nothing left for him to do.

This meme makes it's way around the net right around his birthday, I think it is appropriate here as well.

I want to end with this.  I have a new project coming up. Nothing I want to talk about right now, but this will be the dedication in the book.

This book is dedicated to memory of Christopher Lee (1922 - 2015).  His contributions to my horror and fantasy education could begin and end with Dracula and that would be enough. But few people have cut across so much of my own fandom. He was Lord Summerilse, Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, Francisco Scaramanga, Saruman, Count Dokku, Death, Dr. Victor Gannon, Father Michael Rayner and yes, he was Dracula.  So much of this book would not be possible if it were not for him.

He was much more as a man than any of these characters. But that is how I knew him the best.

To quote his fellow countrywoman, J.K. Rowling:

"And then he greeted Death as an old friend, and went with him gladly, and, equals, they departed this life."

For your consideration, here is my Christopher Lee inspired stats for Dracula for Mutants & Masterrminds.

Saga of the Witch Queen

I did not get to go to North Texas RPG con this year.  It is a shame really since there is always something really cool happening.   In the past I have been able to pick up copies of things that were sold there after the fact; Palace of the Vampire Queen comes to mind.  But this year had something really special.  This year +Goodman Games was reprinting +Harley Stroh's "Saga of the Witch Queen" and I had to have a copy.

Thankfully, a good friend and co-worker of 10 years was going.  And look what he brought back for me!

He even got it signed by +Jon Hershberger!

Yeah...that is the kind of friend I have!
Still though, thanks Scot! This is great.

You can read my review of the PDF here,  http://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2015/06/witch-adventures.html or here, http://www.rpgnow.com/product_reviews_info.php?affiliate_id=10748&reviews_id=126425&products_id=50480

Now I want to talk about the physical book.

The book is 80 pages and printed on very heavy paper.  It is softcover, but the binding looks good. With the heavy paper and glossy cover I expect this to hold up to wear and tear.  The cover is bound on, so no taking it off to use as a GM screen with maps.  I am glad I have this as a PDF too to print out the maps and the handouts.  I am really, really happy with this module.

NOTE:  I can't get to http://goodman-games.com/ while I am at work (we have a lot of sites blocked) but I bet there are some things that you can download for free for this adventure.

But for my own use, here is a conversion of Kyleth, the Witch Queen using the "Advanced Options" from The Witch.

Lady Kyleth, The Witch Queen
"A slender half-elf with sharp features, midnight hair and icy blue eyes." - Saga of the Witch Queen, p. 19

8th Level Witch (Malefic Tradition)
Female Half-elf, Chaotic Evil

AC Base: 3* (will typically have Death Armor, Elemental Armor and Intangible Cloak of Shadows cast)
Movement 12”
HD 8d6, HP 35
No. of Attacks 1
Damage per Attack 1-6+1/1-8+1 (+1 spear)
Special Attacks spell use,
Special Defenses Infravision, MR 30% resistance to charm and sleep, Regenerate 1 hp extra per day.

STR 7, DEX 16, CON 13, INT 17, WIS 10, CHA 17,

Possessions: bracers of defense AC 5, ring of protection +1, spear +1, nigh hag’s heartstone, Crown
of Sett (see p. 65), Ars Maleficus (her Book of Shadows) (see p. 71).

Occult Powers: 
1st Level: Familiar ("Loki", Imp)
7th Level: Evil's Touch

Witch Spells Known (spells per day: 5/5/3/3 [includes CHA spell bonuses equivalent to
WIS spell bonuses]):
Cantrips: Alarm Ward, Black Flame, Blur, Flare, Inflict Minor Wounds
1st Level: Charm Person, Darkness, Detect Magic, Blindness, Magical Circle Against Evil
2nd Level: Burning Gaze, Death Armor, Identify, Minor Image, Scare
3rd Level: Arctic Grasp, Dispel Magic, Fly
4th Level: Elemental Armor, Emotion, Intangible Cloak of Shadows

Not quite as powerful as her magic-user counterpart in terms of spells.  But that is easily fixed with some scrolls or raise her to 9th level.   In any case this will be fun.