Good Evening, All:
My trip to Owl Con XXX was a great success. As I mentioned previously, I was scheduled to run two sessions of Stellar Quest, and they went pretty well. I ran the weaker adventure on Friday night, Mission to Carcerus III. The gamers went for a more slapstick approach to the setup, and I have to admit that I ran with it. We ended up turning the session into a Star Trek spoof, but they still resolved the challenges of the adventure and succeeded. We laughed, the bad guys cried, and in the end, they delivered their prisoner to the prison planet, as well as reporting another contact with the felinoid warrior race, the Kzinti.
My second stellar Quest adventure, In The Shadow Of Orion, went a bit more smoothly Sunday morning, with a few Star Trek fans in the group that really knew the canon. The adventure itself was the stronger of the two I wrote, and they worked through a number of options creating an exciting Star Trek experience that had its moments of fun, as well as "adrenalinized" pulse-bounding action. I particularly enjoyed the inventiveness of the group, as well as their conscious decision to choose the more "Star Trek"-inspired course of action when they evaluated their options.
In both cases, I picked up a few ideas and clarifications I want to make to the Stellar Quest rules. Playtest sessions like this one are excellent for such things, and achieving a successful and enjoyable game tells me that I'm on the right track. I can't wait to get this one done and out there, for those interested in Old School Star Trek.
Saturday was my day to play, and I chose games I don't normally get to experience here at home. My first session was Monte Cook's World of Darkness, a brilliant D20 adaptation of the World of Darkness Storyteller System set in the post-apocalyptic aftermath of a failed attempt of one dimension to intrude into our own, leaving a bizarre mix of creatures roaming the night, trying to complete the work that failed with the initial efforts of the Icconu. We played fast and loose with the rules, but the adventure was pretty solid. Our characters were Awakened (aka Hunters) who were trying to survive in Houston. We were investigating an issue where the sacred nature of our previous camp had somehow been violated, and we hit on a side trek that turned out to be the main adventure in disguise. Corrupted by the demoniac spirits released by the Iconnu's attempted incursion, a former televangelist was preparing to sacrifice non-baptized children and adults for his own nefarious purposes. Being the Good Guys that we were, we stepped in and stopped it, at great peril, of course. It was a good session, and I played my character to the hilt, complete with a bad Irish accent. I was in good company, for the other players roleplayed their characters equally well, and when the game was over, I felt we had accomplished a great deed. If I ever run a modern fantasy post-apocalyptic game, I will likely steal this adventure to work into my repertoire.
Saturday afternoon, I tried out the latest incarnation of Gamma World. It was based on the D&D 4E engine, and with the setting's unusual premise, I had high hopes that the system would lend itself well to the game. We played through three encounters of the adventure that came with the boxed set, using pregen characters. What I discovered was that, while Gamma World played well to the stronger elements of 4E, it also emphasized what I consider to be the weaker elements of 4E as well. In a game system where speed of play comes from rules mastery, when you change abilities with every encounter (and sometimes more frequently, as you change one of your "mutations" whenever you roll a natural one, as well), you tend to lose the ability to play quickly. When it was my turn, I had plenty to do, of course, and I kept my turns short intentionally. When it wasn't my turn, I was bored stiff. Still, the scenario was fun, and I feel good that we got three encounters in over the course of our four-hour session. I wasn't as happy with my experience here, but I got a chance to roleplay a telekinetic rat swarm, which was definitely an unusual yet entertaining challenge for me.
I had signed up for another session of Gamma World that evening, and I seriously considered switching to another game for that slot. However, Fate was a kind and fickle soul, and there were no slots open in anything I felt drawn to play, so I stuck it out and gave Gamma World another try. I'm really glad I did. The second GM walked us quickly through character creation and rolling randomly, I ended up with a yeti rat swarm, so I described my character as a swarm of miniature ewoks that acted with a hive mind. We started off in a gladiatorial scene, much like Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, and things just got better from there. Over the next four hours, we played out six encounters, including a small dungeon and a final "car" chase climax that brought out the true flavor potential of the setting itself. This was truly the best scenario I participated in at this year's Con, and I had an amazing amount of fun with it. I'm not sure how the GM ran things differently that removed the impact of rules mastery on playtime, but whatever he did, I was suitably impressed with the game. If Robert Anderson ever runs another scenario at a future Con, I urge everyone to jump at the chance to play in his games. Oh, and save a slot for me, too. :)
The dealer's room had some good deals going on, although there were not as many non-4E RPG books available as I would have liked. There were a lot of wargaming and board game materials present, though, as well as some great gamer goodies, in addition to a well-stocked anime booth and a fine assortment of T-shirts and bumper stickers. As always, Owl Con continues to be my favorite regional gaming convention. The staff is friendly, knowledgeable and well-organized. Other conventions could learn more than a lesson or two from these folks. Oh, and the prizes are pretty cool, too.
That about wraps up my report on Owl Con. If you have any questions, please let me know, and I'll do my best to answer them.
With Regards,
Flynn
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Monday, January 31, 2011
PDF
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Review: Tombs & Terrors...
Good Afternoon, All:
It's been a while since I posted a review on this blog, so today seems like a great day to get back on the bandwagon. For today, I've selected a relatively unknown and undiscussed Old School book that I think might be of interest to my readers. Tombs and Terrors: Old School Fantasy Roleplaying, by Simon Washbourne of Beyond Belief Games, is another Old School retro-variant with its origins found deep in Castles & Crusades. Here's the author's blurb on the book itself:
Appearance
While Tombs and Terrors is available in PDF and hard cover, this review is based on the perfect bound soft cover version of this product.
Tombs and Terrors is a 107 perfect bound paperback measuring 7.4 inches by 9.7 inches, in black and white. The front cover is a simple brick red affair with a public domain image of a warrior fighting a dragon in a cave appearing in an oval in the middle of the cover. It definitely provides an Old School feel to me, but I'm also a guy who uses public domain images in my own products, so take that as you will. With a title page, three pages dedicated to a table of contents, a one-page character sheet, two pages of OGL legal text and a page of advertisements, the remaining 99 pages are devoted to some great gaming goodness. The interior art is a mixture of "Old School" line art and public domain images, and appears with relative frequency, particularly in the first half of the book. Although art is not of great importance to me, I like its presentation in this book.
Content
Tombs and Terrors is divided into ten chapters and an Appendix. The overall content resembles the same basic organization used by many fantasy roleplaying rulebooks. That's probably because it works.
In three pages, Chapter One introduces the concepts of roleplaying, talks about dice, and describes in general what Tombs and Terrors is all about.
Chapter Two spends five pages providing the basic details on creating a character, describes ability scores and outlines the basic task resolution mechanic used for all non-combat activities (combat is resolved using a rules-light version of the basic D&D D20 system, but more on that later.) The author admits that his system was inspired by Castles & Crusades and it shows most obviously here. You determine your character's primary ability scores based on race and class. Tombs and Terrors adds an intermediary level by allowing you to somewhat specialize your character by selecting two other ability scores as secondary scores. The remaining two ability scores are your tertiary scores. When attempting to resolve a task, you roll a D20, add your level (if applicable), add your ability score modifier, and other modifiers that may be provided by the GM, or Tomb Master, as he is called in this system. If the result exceeds 18 for tertiary abilities, 15 for secondary abilities or 12 for primary abilities, then you succeed. (Notice the similarities to the SIEGE Engine used by Castles & Crusades?)
Chapter Three gives us some rules and insight into five character races: Dwarf, Elf, Giant-kin, Half-elf and Human. I noticed that there were no short races listed, which is both good (no gnomes, yay!) and bad (no halflings, boo!) The classic half-orc is also missing, replaced with a half-ogre stand-in. I imagine that's due to the author's preference, as he has said that he wrote these rules first to handle his own personal gaming needs. The system is easy enough, though, to add in any particular race that I might feel prone to including, and the racial rules are balanced and offer good racial flavor while being simple and easy to implement. Chapter Three covers five pages.
Chapter Four offers us six classes in fifteen pages. Four of them are the classic D&D core classes of Cleric, Fighter, Mage and Priest. Two other classes are offered as optional, the Barbarian and Troubador. In essence, these six classes gives us an option for a character with any single high ability score, from Strength to Charisma. Classes are reminiscent of various Old School character classes. Clerics turn undead and cast spells. Fighters have special combat-related abilities. Thieves have sneak attack and traps-related abilities. Mages cast spells. Barbarians gain rage, damage reduction, and other survival-related abilities. Troubadors also cast spells and have inspiration-based abilities. Each class also has a list of skills (which are better described later in the next chapter) to choose from, and after their initial selections, they can gain a new skill every three levels.
Chapter Five covers the skills used in Tombs and Terrors in seven pages. Twenty-six different skills, all pulled from the Revised D20 SRD, are covered with a paragraph or two each. I really appreciate that Hide and Move Silently were blended into Stealth, but I see that Spot and Listen are not (although Spot did get a name change to Notice).
Chapter Six offers the usual equipment lists in six pages. The seventh and final page of this chapter covers the basic encumbrance rules used by Tombs and Terrors.
Chapter Seven, Playing the Game, covers 16 pages, and includes saving throws, combat and other damage-based effects, such as falling and suffocation. Much of this section is pretty common stuff, being a distilled version of the D20 System to reflect a very Old School D&D-style combat system. Armor Class is ascending, and all in all, feels like Swords & Wizardry. Critical hits deal maximum damage, and Tombs and Terrors offers some fun Critical Hit and Critical Fumble tables.
Chapter Eight covers spells and magic over fourteen pages. The spell list is not extensive, but covers the basics, much like many of the retro-clones currently available on the market. The spells are not broken down by class or level, but are offered simply as an alphabetical list. The descriptions are rarely more than a sentence or two, encouraging a rules-light approach to resolving magic in and out of combat.
Chapter Nine is perhaps the biggest section of the entire book, covering fifty-nine creatures in 18 pages. This section also provides details on generating wandering monsters and treasure. The stat block for a monster is very short, having only six traits (AC, HD, attacks, movement, special and XP).
Chapter Ten, Running Adventures, spends four pages covering adventure planning, NPCs, rewards and gaining levels. Right after that, we see an adventure in seven pages that can be used to introduce players to the Tombs and Terrors system. This adventure is rather cliche, but truth be told, it works well. After meeting in a bar, you end up exploring a ruined structure, fighting creatures and finding treasure. You can't get more Old School than that!
The Appendix is only one page long, and it's a nice Tombs and Terrors character sheet. Short and simple, it does the job well and stands as a good testament to how uncomplicated and easy this system is to use.
My Thoughts
I'm very pleased to see the content of Tombs and Terrors. I think the system feels simple and easy to learn, and offers the same gaming experience as many Old School systems out there. It's a little simpler than what I am looking for, which is why I'm writing my own system, but I really appreciate the fact that Simon Washbourne effectively wrote Tombs and Terrors for the same reasons I'm writing MyD20 Lite. While there is little to distinguish it from other Old School retro-clones, I find it a fine example of the genre, and one that is receiving active support and development by its publisher. I would definitely recommend this system to anyone looking for a rules-light fantasy RPG, particularly if you have enjoys some of Mr. Washbourne's other products using the same system, Go Fer Yer Gun! and Medieval Mysteries. As nice as it is, though, I can't say that there's really anything that I find terribly exciting about it that I haven't seen elsewhere, but I do like how it has all been brought together into one system here. I definitely see that it is easy to translate other retro-clones and core D&D systems to Tombs and Terrors. While it's relatively easy to do so with other retro-clones, the simplicity of this game makes it almost trivial to do so. All in all, I feel that this is a very solid system, well worth checking out!
All in all, I'm going to give Tombs and Terrors a 7 out of 10.
Hope This Helps,
Flynn
It's been a while since I posted a review on this blog, so today seems like a great day to get back on the bandwagon. For today, I've selected a relatively unknown and undiscussed Old School book that I think might be of interest to my readers. Tombs and Terrors: Old School Fantasy Roleplaying, by Simon Washbourne of Beyond Belief Games, is another Old School retro-variant with its origins found deep in Castles & Crusades. Here's the author's blurb on the book itself:
Based on the rules first found in Go Fer Yer Gun! and seen later in Medieval Mysteries, Tombs & Terrors is an unashamedly familiar role playing game of delving into subterranean crypts and looting the treasure. Including 4 traditional character classes (Cleric, Fighter Mage and Thief) plus 2 "exotic" ones (Barbarian and Troubadour), and 5 races (Dwarf, Elf, Giant-kin, Half-elf and Human), this game is condensed for simplicity but covers ground that you will understand. Compatible (with some tweaking) with sourcebooks and supplements that you already have, this rpg provides another welcome alternative for your fantasy needs!
Appearance
While Tombs and Terrors is available in PDF and hard cover, this review is based on the perfect bound soft cover version of this product.
Tombs and Terrors is a 107 perfect bound paperback measuring 7.4 inches by 9.7 inches, in black and white. The front cover is a simple brick red affair with a public domain image of a warrior fighting a dragon in a cave appearing in an oval in the middle of the cover. It definitely provides an Old School feel to me, but I'm also a guy who uses public domain images in my own products, so take that as you will. With a title page, three pages dedicated to a table of contents, a one-page character sheet, two pages of OGL legal text and a page of advertisements, the remaining 99 pages are devoted to some great gaming goodness. The interior art is a mixture of "Old School" line art and public domain images, and appears with relative frequency, particularly in the first half of the book. Although art is not of great importance to me, I like its presentation in this book.
Content
Tombs and Terrors is divided into ten chapters and an Appendix. The overall content resembles the same basic organization used by many fantasy roleplaying rulebooks. That's probably because it works.
In three pages, Chapter One introduces the concepts of roleplaying, talks about dice, and describes in general what Tombs and Terrors is all about.
Chapter Two spends five pages providing the basic details on creating a character, describes ability scores and outlines the basic task resolution mechanic used for all non-combat activities (combat is resolved using a rules-light version of the basic D&D D20 system, but more on that later.) The author admits that his system was inspired by Castles & Crusades and it shows most obviously here. You determine your character's primary ability scores based on race and class. Tombs and Terrors adds an intermediary level by allowing you to somewhat specialize your character by selecting two other ability scores as secondary scores. The remaining two ability scores are your tertiary scores. When attempting to resolve a task, you roll a D20, add your level (if applicable), add your ability score modifier, and other modifiers that may be provided by the GM, or Tomb Master, as he is called in this system. If the result exceeds 18 for tertiary abilities, 15 for secondary abilities or 12 for primary abilities, then you succeed. (Notice the similarities to the SIEGE Engine used by Castles & Crusades?)
Chapter Three gives us some rules and insight into five character races: Dwarf, Elf, Giant-kin, Half-elf and Human. I noticed that there were no short races listed, which is both good (no gnomes, yay!) and bad (no halflings, boo!) The classic half-orc is also missing, replaced with a half-ogre stand-in. I imagine that's due to the author's preference, as he has said that he wrote these rules first to handle his own personal gaming needs. The system is easy enough, though, to add in any particular race that I might feel prone to including, and the racial rules are balanced and offer good racial flavor while being simple and easy to implement. Chapter Three covers five pages.
Chapter Four offers us six classes in fifteen pages. Four of them are the classic D&D core classes of Cleric, Fighter, Mage and Priest. Two other classes are offered as optional, the Barbarian and Troubador. In essence, these six classes gives us an option for a character with any single high ability score, from Strength to Charisma. Classes are reminiscent of various Old School character classes. Clerics turn undead and cast spells. Fighters have special combat-related abilities. Thieves have sneak attack and traps-related abilities. Mages cast spells. Barbarians gain rage, damage reduction, and other survival-related abilities. Troubadors also cast spells and have inspiration-based abilities. Each class also has a list of skills (which are better described later in the next chapter) to choose from, and after their initial selections, they can gain a new skill every three levels.
Chapter Five covers the skills used in Tombs and Terrors in seven pages. Twenty-six different skills, all pulled from the Revised D20 SRD, are covered with a paragraph or two each. I really appreciate that Hide and Move Silently were blended into Stealth, but I see that Spot and Listen are not (although Spot did get a name change to Notice).
Chapter Six offers the usual equipment lists in six pages. The seventh and final page of this chapter covers the basic encumbrance rules used by Tombs and Terrors.
Chapter Seven, Playing the Game, covers 16 pages, and includes saving throws, combat and other damage-based effects, such as falling and suffocation. Much of this section is pretty common stuff, being a distilled version of the D20 System to reflect a very Old School D&D-style combat system. Armor Class is ascending, and all in all, feels like Swords & Wizardry. Critical hits deal maximum damage, and Tombs and Terrors offers some fun Critical Hit and Critical Fumble tables.
Chapter Eight covers spells and magic over fourteen pages. The spell list is not extensive, but covers the basics, much like many of the retro-clones currently available on the market. The spells are not broken down by class or level, but are offered simply as an alphabetical list. The descriptions are rarely more than a sentence or two, encouraging a rules-light approach to resolving magic in and out of combat.
Chapter Nine is perhaps the biggest section of the entire book, covering fifty-nine creatures in 18 pages. This section also provides details on generating wandering monsters and treasure. The stat block for a monster is very short, having only six traits (AC, HD, attacks, movement, special and XP).
Chapter Ten, Running Adventures, spends four pages covering adventure planning, NPCs, rewards and gaining levels. Right after that, we see an adventure in seven pages that can be used to introduce players to the Tombs and Terrors system. This adventure is rather cliche, but truth be told, it works well. After meeting in a bar, you end up exploring a ruined structure, fighting creatures and finding treasure. You can't get more Old School than that!
The Appendix is only one page long, and it's a nice Tombs and Terrors character sheet. Short and simple, it does the job well and stands as a good testament to how uncomplicated and easy this system is to use.
My Thoughts
I'm very pleased to see the content of Tombs and Terrors. I think the system feels simple and easy to learn, and offers the same gaming experience as many Old School systems out there. It's a little simpler than what I am looking for, which is why I'm writing my own system, but I really appreciate the fact that Simon Washbourne effectively wrote Tombs and Terrors for the same reasons I'm writing MyD20 Lite. While there is little to distinguish it from other Old School retro-clones, I find it a fine example of the genre, and one that is receiving active support and development by its publisher. I would definitely recommend this system to anyone looking for a rules-light fantasy RPG, particularly if you have enjoys some of Mr. Washbourne's other products using the same system, Go Fer Yer Gun! and Medieval Mysteries. As nice as it is, though, I can't say that there's really anything that I find terribly exciting about it that I haven't seen elsewhere, but I do like how it has all been brought together into one system here. I definitely see that it is easy to translate other retro-clones and core D&D systems to Tombs and Terrors. While it's relatively easy to do so with other retro-clones, the simplicity of this game makes it almost trivial to do so. All in all, I feel that this is a very solid system, well worth checking out!
All in all, I'm going to give Tombs and Terrors a 7 out of 10.
Hope This Helps,
Flynn
Friday, June 11, 2010
A Review of MyD20 Lite Player's Guide...
Good Morning, All:
I had to share the first review I've gotten on Dragonsfoot for MyD20 Lite Player's Guide:
http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=43372
Thank you, James, for your kind words.
With Regards,
Flynn
I had to share the first review I've gotten on Dragonsfoot for MyD20 Lite Player's Guide:
http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=43372
Thank you, James, for your kind words.
With Regards,
Flynn
Monday, May 10, 2010
Review: Starships & Spacemen...
Good Evening, All:
Today, I wanted to review the recent re-release of Starships & Spacemen, now owned by Goblinoid Games. I had never heard of this simple sci-fi RPG until Goblinoid announced that they had purchased the rights. Based in creating a Star Trek-inspired gaming experience using rules similar to OD&D, this little game quickly piqued my interest. I went about the internet and read a few reviews here and there, and finally decided to splurge on the PDF, just to see what a rules-light Star Trek game looked like. Since I own Amarillo Design Bureau's D20 Prime Directive, which is built in their licensed Star Fleet Universe, I was curious to see how Starships & Spacemen stacked up. In the interest of full disclosure, I purchased this PDF on my own, and was not solicited to provide a review. In short, all of this was my idea.
Appearance
While Starships & Spacemen is available in perfect bound soft cover and in hard cover, the review focuses on the PDF (or softcopy) product.
The Starships & Spacemen PDF is a 93 page document in black & white. The front cover depicts a ship in orbit about a gas giant or large planet, and is evocative of science fiction roleplaying. The interior text is written in a very plain typewriter-style font (for those of you old enough to remember what a typewriter is, of course.) Aside from the front cover, the title page, a copyright page, one page of a table of contents, and a blank page at the end of the book, the rest is all gaming material. There are eight pieces of art in the document, four of which are evocative pieces and the other four are used to explain rules for starships and movement. The traditional pieces are nice, but the four rules-related pieces are quite amateurish (but still what you'd expect back in 1978, when this was first released.) While the presentation was probably state of the art back in the day, and is perfectly functional, it's not nearly as pretty as what we've come to expect by today's publication standards. Still, there are those that will feel that keeping the style of the original release in this PDF is nostalgic, and I can see where they are coming from here.
Content
The different sections of Starships & Spacemen are organized much like an outline. Section One is four pages long: the first page is a brief introduction to the concept of roleplaying games, followed by two pages of basic history on the setting against which the game is written. The last page details the equipment needed to play, namely dice, paper, the rules and imagination.
Section Two is fifteen and a half pages long, and focuses on Characters. Some of this is a little confusing, but in essence, there are eight ability scores: Marskmanship, Intelligence, Technical Skill, Contact Skill, Charisma, Strength, Psionic Potential and Loyalty. The first four are considered acquired skills, generated much like D&D characters and can be improved as the character advances in experience levels. The last four are considered inborn. Charisma and Strength are generated like D&D stats, but Psionic Potential and Loyalty are determined from a value based on your selection of race and class, plus a d6. Ability scores frequently represent a target number that must be rolled under in order to succeed, much like Non-Weapon Proficiencies from the late AD&D 1st Edition and 2nd Edition Eras. (In this regard, abilities in Starships & Spacemen represent a cross between ability scores and skills.) Psionics are abilities with a certain cost, and characters purchase their abilities during character creation, up to the value of their Psionic Potential.
After three pages on ability scores, Starships & Spacemen then proceeds with information on the various classes of the Space Fleet Service, which are built as classes. There are three core classes (Military Branch, Scientific Branch, and Technical Branch). Each core class has two or more subclasses (Military: Command, Security-Guard and Fire Control; Scientific: Alien Life and Medical; Technical: Communications, Navigation and Engineering.) Each class describes the circumstances under which they gain bonuses on certain rolls, and when they gain experience. That's right; combat is not how all of the classes gain XP. This little detail, in and of itself, probably encourages people to play their respective roles moreso than anything else in the book.
The book then spends a page discussing NPCs, and then goes into experience and ranking. Like the D20 System, all characters advance on a single advancement table. Each level gained grants a bonus to one of the four acquired ability scores, and allows the character to take more equipment during missions. Level also represents a character's rank, which impacts the size of ship they are assigned to, as well as other systems within the game.
Three pages on races provide some good background fluff and game mechanics to support characters from x different races. Options include Terrans (humans), Rigel (human-Zagrid hybrid mercenaries), Taurans (emotionless psionic heavyworlders, aka Vulcans), and Andromedans (small empathic blue "care bears"). Two NPC races, the Zagrids (angry cousins of the Taurans, aka Romulans), and the Vidani (religious zealots on a interstellar jihad), are not detailed in this section but elsewhere in the book.
The remainder of this section focuses on equipment. The list is perfectly functional for a Star Trek style game. Gear is picked based on a character's level, and reminded me of Spycraft's equipment package rules rather than shopping for equipment in exchange for gold coins. I think this works very well for the paramilitary nature of the Space Fleet Service background.
At thirteen and a half pages, Section Three focuses on Starships and all related matters. Six pages describe the different sections and capacities of a starship in the game, and how characters can use those capacities to aid them in their adventures. After a page of ship statistics, Starships & Spacemen describes the use of energy to power the various systems onboard a starship. A page and a half discusses Enemy Ships, and then wraps up this section with three and a half pages on Ship To Ship Combat.
Section Four is fourteen pages long, and focuses on Galactic and Planetary Adventures. This section discusses how to create a galactic map, discusses the time scale and play sequence for various stages of exploration, travel and adventure, provides details on galactic hazards, and introduces some random encounter tables. This section then discusses star system creation, time travel, diseases, and wraps up with starbases.
Section Five focuses on Alien Encounters, and spends twenty-five pages covering many different types of encounters on alien worlds. Three pages cover monster encounter tables, and then we get into specifics: two pages on humanoids (including details on the Zangids and Videni), six pages on animals, a page on plant creatures, a page on machines, two and a half pages on psionics, a page on miscellaneous creatures of an unusual origin, three and a half pages on alien artifacts, and then three pages on combat itself.
The Referee of the game, called the StarMaster or SM for short, is the star of Section Six. Four pages provide information to the SM, including general advice, details on experience points, and notes on inspirations and sources for the game.
The remainder of the book is bonus material that has been released since the original book was released back in 1978. First, we see some sample missions (four pages worth), followed by the Starships & Spacemen Expansion Kit. The Expansion Kit covers errata and clarifications, reference sheets, a simple character sheet and a character creation summary page.
My Thoughts
This book packs a lot into a small number of pages. The system is archaic, yes, but it's not far off from some of the retro-clones that are out there. I can see some elements of what I would call modern games present here. I love how earning experience is designed to emphasize the different roles of a character. The system itself is designed to create a strong feeling of engaging in Star Trek-esque missions of exploration.
The setting is simple, yet evocative enough to conjure a number of adventure ideas. Between those and the two chapters on adventures and encounters, there's plenty here to lend itself toward running a great Star Trek game. You can tell that this game is a labor of love by its creator. Personally, I found that the book inspires the urge to run such games in me, even though I have a few problems with the rules as they currently stand. I understand that Goblinoid Games is creating a Labyrinth Lord version of the system, and I'll definitely be picking that up, simply because it will marry rules that are closer to my D&D experience with a great setting and information that inspires a Star Trek style game.
I would definitely recommend this game to anyone looking for a rules-light science fiction RPG. The adventure and encounter system is very evocative and interesting. The rules are designed to be unobtrusive, and while they may take a little getting used to, they leave a lot for the GM to handle on the fly as needed. For $5, it's well worth it. I'm also looking forward to seeing the Labyrinth Lord version of this game. If I have to admit, though, that if you were only going to get one version of this game, you should probably consider waiting until the Labyrinth Lord version is available. However, for only five bucks, it won't hurt to pick up this PDF while you wait. The layout leaves a bit to be desired, but don't let that detract from your enjoyment of the material inside.
All in all, I'm going to give Starships & Spacemen a 7.5 out of 10.
Hope This Helps,
Flynn
Today, I wanted to review the recent re-release of Starships & Spacemen, now owned by Goblinoid Games. I had never heard of this simple sci-fi RPG until Goblinoid announced that they had purchased the rights. Based in creating a Star Trek-inspired gaming experience using rules similar to OD&D, this little game quickly piqued my interest. I went about the internet and read a few reviews here and there, and finally decided to splurge on the PDF, just to see what a rules-light Star Trek game looked like. Since I own Amarillo Design Bureau's D20 Prime Directive, which is built in their licensed Star Fleet Universe, I was curious to see how Starships & Spacemen stacked up. In the interest of full disclosure, I purchased this PDF on my own, and was not solicited to provide a review. In short, all of this was my idea.
Appearance
While Starships & Spacemen is available in perfect bound soft cover and in hard cover, the review focuses on the PDF (or softcopy) product.
The Starships & Spacemen PDF is a 93 page document in black & white. The front cover depicts a ship in orbit about a gas giant or large planet, and is evocative of science fiction roleplaying. The interior text is written in a very plain typewriter-style font (for those of you old enough to remember what a typewriter is, of course.) Aside from the front cover, the title page, a copyright page, one page of a table of contents, and a blank page at the end of the book, the rest is all gaming material. There are eight pieces of art in the document, four of which are evocative pieces and the other four are used to explain rules for starships and movement. The traditional pieces are nice, but the four rules-related pieces are quite amateurish (but still what you'd expect back in 1978, when this was first released.) While the presentation was probably state of the art back in the day, and is perfectly functional, it's not nearly as pretty as what we've come to expect by today's publication standards. Still, there are those that will feel that keeping the style of the original release in this PDF is nostalgic, and I can see where they are coming from here.
Content
The different sections of Starships & Spacemen are organized much like an outline. Section One is four pages long: the first page is a brief introduction to the concept of roleplaying games, followed by two pages of basic history on the setting against which the game is written. The last page details the equipment needed to play, namely dice, paper, the rules and imagination.
Section Two is fifteen and a half pages long, and focuses on Characters. Some of this is a little confusing, but in essence, there are eight ability scores: Marskmanship, Intelligence, Technical Skill, Contact Skill, Charisma, Strength, Psionic Potential and Loyalty. The first four are considered acquired skills, generated much like D&D characters and can be improved as the character advances in experience levels. The last four are considered inborn. Charisma and Strength are generated like D&D stats, but Psionic Potential and Loyalty are determined from a value based on your selection of race and class, plus a d6. Ability scores frequently represent a target number that must be rolled under in order to succeed, much like Non-Weapon Proficiencies from the late AD&D 1st Edition and 2nd Edition Eras. (In this regard, abilities in Starships & Spacemen represent a cross between ability scores and skills.) Psionics are abilities with a certain cost, and characters purchase their abilities during character creation, up to the value of their Psionic Potential.
After three pages on ability scores, Starships & Spacemen then proceeds with information on the various classes of the Space Fleet Service, which are built as classes. There are three core classes (Military Branch, Scientific Branch, and Technical Branch). Each core class has two or more subclasses (Military: Command, Security-Guard and Fire Control; Scientific: Alien Life and Medical; Technical: Communications, Navigation and Engineering.) Each class describes the circumstances under which they gain bonuses on certain rolls, and when they gain experience. That's right; combat is not how all of the classes gain XP. This little detail, in and of itself, probably encourages people to play their respective roles moreso than anything else in the book.
The book then spends a page discussing NPCs, and then goes into experience and ranking. Like the D20 System, all characters advance on a single advancement table. Each level gained grants a bonus to one of the four acquired ability scores, and allows the character to take more equipment during missions. Level also represents a character's rank, which impacts the size of ship they are assigned to, as well as other systems within the game.
Three pages on races provide some good background fluff and game mechanics to support characters from x different races. Options include Terrans (humans), Rigel (human-Zagrid hybrid mercenaries), Taurans (emotionless psionic heavyworlders, aka Vulcans), and Andromedans (small empathic blue "care bears"). Two NPC races, the Zagrids (angry cousins of the Taurans, aka Romulans), and the Vidani (religious zealots on a interstellar jihad), are not detailed in this section but elsewhere in the book.
The remainder of this section focuses on equipment. The list is perfectly functional for a Star Trek style game. Gear is picked based on a character's level, and reminded me of Spycraft's equipment package rules rather than shopping for equipment in exchange for gold coins. I think this works very well for the paramilitary nature of the Space Fleet Service background.
At thirteen and a half pages, Section Three focuses on Starships and all related matters. Six pages describe the different sections and capacities of a starship in the game, and how characters can use those capacities to aid them in their adventures. After a page of ship statistics, Starships & Spacemen describes the use of energy to power the various systems onboard a starship. A page and a half discusses Enemy Ships, and then wraps up this section with three and a half pages on Ship To Ship Combat.
Section Four is fourteen pages long, and focuses on Galactic and Planetary Adventures. This section discusses how to create a galactic map, discusses the time scale and play sequence for various stages of exploration, travel and adventure, provides details on galactic hazards, and introduces some random encounter tables. This section then discusses star system creation, time travel, diseases, and wraps up with starbases.
Section Five focuses on Alien Encounters, and spends twenty-five pages covering many different types of encounters on alien worlds. Three pages cover monster encounter tables, and then we get into specifics: two pages on humanoids (including details on the Zangids and Videni), six pages on animals, a page on plant creatures, a page on machines, two and a half pages on psionics, a page on miscellaneous creatures of an unusual origin, three and a half pages on alien artifacts, and then three pages on combat itself.
The Referee of the game, called the StarMaster or SM for short, is the star of Section Six. Four pages provide information to the SM, including general advice, details on experience points, and notes on inspirations and sources for the game.
The remainder of the book is bonus material that has been released since the original book was released back in 1978. First, we see some sample missions (four pages worth), followed by the Starships & Spacemen Expansion Kit. The Expansion Kit covers errata and clarifications, reference sheets, a simple character sheet and a character creation summary page.
My Thoughts
This book packs a lot into a small number of pages. The system is archaic, yes, but it's not far off from some of the retro-clones that are out there. I can see some elements of what I would call modern games present here. I love how earning experience is designed to emphasize the different roles of a character. The system itself is designed to create a strong feeling of engaging in Star Trek-esque missions of exploration.
The setting is simple, yet evocative enough to conjure a number of adventure ideas. Between those and the two chapters on adventures and encounters, there's plenty here to lend itself toward running a great Star Trek game. You can tell that this game is a labor of love by its creator. Personally, I found that the book inspires the urge to run such games in me, even though I have a few problems with the rules as they currently stand. I understand that Goblinoid Games is creating a Labyrinth Lord version of the system, and I'll definitely be picking that up, simply because it will marry rules that are closer to my D&D experience with a great setting and information that inspires a Star Trek style game.
I would definitely recommend this game to anyone looking for a rules-light science fiction RPG. The adventure and encounter system is very evocative and interesting. The rules are designed to be unobtrusive, and while they may take a little getting used to, they leave a lot for the GM to handle on the fly as needed. For $5, it's well worth it. I'm also looking forward to seeing the Labyrinth Lord version of this game. If I have to admit, though, that if you were only going to get one version of this game, you should probably consider waiting until the Labyrinth Lord version is available. However, for only five bucks, it won't hurt to pick up this PDF while you wait. The layout leaves a bit to be desired, but don't let that detract from your enjoyment of the material inside.
All in all, I'm going to give Starships & Spacemen a 7.5 out of 10.
Hope This Helps,
Flynn
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Review: World of Onn Core Rules...
Good Morning, All:
Back in December, I wrote a review of the World of Onn: Supplement I, by James E. Bobb of Fantasy Adventures Studios. Since then, Fantasy Adventure Studios has released an updated version entitled World of Onn: Core Rules, which contains additional campaign setting material as well as a complete rules system based on Swords & Wizardry for running games in the World of Onn. This is a review of the World of Onn: Core Rules. In the interests of full disclosure, I received a free copy of the PDF for review purposes. As this product shares a lot in common with the original Supplement One, I am going to mostly report on the differences, in terms of content.
Appearance
The PDF itself is 230 pages long, which is 84 pages more than the original supplement. The World of Onn Core Rules has a black front cover with white lettering and line art by Kimberly Nicholson that beautifully captures the fantasy flavor of the game. Once again, Kimberly Nicholson did the cover art and all of the interior black-and-white line art, keeping a consistent "old school" flavor to the artwork throughout the book. Her work has improved from the first supplement, with a slight change in style that translates into a stronger "Old School" appearance. Some of the images are recycled from the original supplement, so you can see the improvements between the older images and newer ones. I would like to give props to Kimberly for her ever-improving skills.
Although the PDF has 230 pages, nine are basically the front cover, back cover, title page, table of contents, legal text and one blank page. The rest is released as Open Game Content, and once again, there's a lot of great content there. The text is easy to read, and well presented. I had no problems reading it, at all.
Content
The author begins this book with a foreword, an explanation that, in his exuberance to get the original Supplement One out, he felt that he left some elements out that he later wished he could include. This product is an effort to create a more rounded introduction to the World of Onn, and also integrate his rules modifications with the existing Swords & Wizardy rules so that Referees would only need the one book to run games in this setting. Let's see how his book measures up to his purpose here.
After a brief introduction to roleplaying in general and dice, then dove into ability scores. Nothing new beyond what was covered in Supplement One here, but then we dive into races. Character races have been separated from class, and includes the common races of men, dwarves, elves, and halflings, as well as the Supplement One races of forged ones, giantkin, tigrans and trollkin. Also, this book introduces the endu (minotaurs), gnomes and gnolls, further expanding on options for character development.
The character classes of this book re-writes and reorganizes the nine classes/subclasses presented in Supplement One, and introduces a new character class as well, the Spellblade (a magic-user/fighting-man combination class that's very well executed, in my opinion). Bards are in a class by themselves instead of being a sub-class of Magic-User as per Supplement One, and the Spellblade falls under Warriors. I've noticed that the number of Fighting-Man Combat Options has increased, with some nice additions. In addition, the many options of Supplement One are repeated here. As I've said before, I like many of the options presented in this section, and feel that it creates a good flavor for gaming.
The section on equipment has been greatly expanded from Supplement One, with plent of detail on the items listed.
After that, we enter the section entitled "Playing the Game." Here, we find the rules on experience points and levels, hirelings, time and the adventurer, encounters, reactions, fleeing and escape.
Combat is next, and this section does a great job of integrating Swords & Wizardry with the material from Supplement One. The intiative system I had problems with in Supplement One, the Continuous Initiative System, has been moved to an optional rule in the appendices, giving way to a more traditionally inspired initiative system based on a blend of 3E and 1E rules. The combat options have been expanded, keeping the flavor of a rules-light game but covering elements that sometimes come up with people having previous exposure to more complex rules systems.
The Magic section is next, and it covers all the bases very well. I have noticed that there are a handful of new spells, even beyond those introduced in Supplement One. All are well written and do not appear to duplicate existing spell functionality. In addition, some spells have gained new functionality. For example, the curative spells now cover some of the conditions that systems like 3E address with restoration spells, keeping the number of spells low while improving the usability of existing spells. I think that some of these changes are quite innovative, and wish I'd thought of them myself before releasing the MyD20 Lite Player's Guide. The addition of a 4th level Magic-User spell Turn Undead was sheer genius.
That ends the Player's Section. The Referee's Section is next, and starts with some basic advice in a chapter entitled "Referee Information A to Z." Here, we find general information on designing an adventure, creating a campaign, extended ability scores, anti-clerics, bonus spells optional rules, conditional states, a simple task/skill resolution system, traps and hazards, damage reduction, more on awarding experience points, more information on hit dice and hit points, illusions, natural healing, raising the dead, summoning spells, weapon and armor proficiency, and adjudicating wishes.
Monsters is our next stop. There are 48 pages of monsters (about 206 of them, all told) in this tome, including the monsters from Supplement One and Swords & Wizardry. In addition, I saw a few more, including the Doom Orb (a replacement for the Beholder, I'm sure) and a few others that looked new to me. Following the monster descriptions themselves, there are rules for creating your own monsters, as well as world-specific encounter tables that take advantage of all the monsters described in World of Onn Core Rules (except for dragons, which are noted as needing to be placed by the Referee at their whim, not that of a random table).
Twenty-two pages of treasure really help to integrate the new spells, classes and races into a World of Onn game. I honestly couldn't tell you if anything new was added here, beyond items that built on the newly added elements to World of Onn Core Rules that were not found in Supplement One. However, I still like this section as much as I did in Supplement One.
From there, we dive directly into the World of Onn. The history section and maps for Ossus do not appear to have changed much from Supplement One, but after that, we get into the more specific campaign setting information. The lands of Ossus represent much of the same material we saw in Supplement One. However, that is followed by a section on the lands of Var-Ultar, including a new map and four more pages of kingdoms and locales. Like the rest of the book, this section is short and succinct but very well written, with lots of adventure ideas packed in the pages.
The Appendices of World of Onn Core Rules are interesting and varied. There's a one-page synopsis of the deities of the World of Onn, followed by three pages of optional character creation rules, including such concepts as multiclassing, race as class, and an extended skill system. After that, we spend two pages on golemcraft, two pages on rules for enchanting magic items, and two pages on familiars. There's one page on strongholds and followers, two pages on the continuous initiative system, one page on special materials, two great pages on random dungeons and finally a page on random wilderness generation.
As you can see, there's a lot to this book.
My Thoughts
All in all, I really like the flavor of the World of Onn Core Rules. Like Supplement One, there's a lot of good stuff in here, that's well integrated throughout and looks like a lot of fun to run and play. The World of Onn Core Rules definitely steps up here, with improved art and better organization than Supplement One. I really believe the author delivers on his intent here, presenting a well-rounded world setting and rules system that could easily support gaming just using the one book itself.
If you already have Supplement One, you can get by with the original supplement and Swords & Wizardry itself. However, if you haven't picked up Supplement One, or if you're just a collector like I am, I'd strongly urge you to consider World of Onn Core Rules over the original Supplement.
That all being said, I'd have to rate this product as an 8.5 out of 10.
So, for those of you who have picked up this book yourselves, what do you think of the book? As always, please feel free to leave a comment, and if you liked the review, I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts on that, too.
With Warm Regards,
Flynn
Back in December, I wrote a review of the World of Onn: Supplement I, by James E. Bobb of Fantasy Adventures Studios. Since then, Fantasy Adventure Studios has released an updated version entitled World of Onn: Core Rules, which contains additional campaign setting material as well as a complete rules system based on Swords & Wizardry for running games in the World of Onn. This is a review of the World of Onn: Core Rules. In the interests of full disclosure, I received a free copy of the PDF for review purposes. As this product shares a lot in common with the original Supplement One, I am going to mostly report on the differences, in terms of content.
Appearance
The PDF itself is 230 pages long, which is 84 pages more than the original supplement. The World of Onn Core Rules has a black front cover with white lettering and line art by Kimberly Nicholson that beautifully captures the fantasy flavor of the game. Once again, Kimberly Nicholson did the cover art and all of the interior black-and-white line art, keeping a consistent "old school" flavor to the artwork throughout the book. Her work has improved from the first supplement, with a slight change in style that translates into a stronger "Old School" appearance. Some of the images are recycled from the original supplement, so you can see the improvements between the older images and newer ones. I would like to give props to Kimberly for her ever-improving skills.
Although the PDF has 230 pages, nine are basically the front cover, back cover, title page, table of contents, legal text and one blank page. The rest is released as Open Game Content, and once again, there's a lot of great content there. The text is easy to read, and well presented. I had no problems reading it, at all.
Content
The author begins this book with a foreword, an explanation that, in his exuberance to get the original Supplement One out, he felt that he left some elements out that he later wished he could include. This product is an effort to create a more rounded introduction to the World of Onn, and also integrate his rules modifications with the existing Swords & Wizardy rules so that Referees would only need the one book to run games in this setting. Let's see how his book measures up to his purpose here.
After a brief introduction to roleplaying in general and dice, then dove into ability scores. Nothing new beyond what was covered in Supplement One here, but then we dive into races. Character races have been separated from class, and includes the common races of men, dwarves, elves, and halflings, as well as the Supplement One races of forged ones, giantkin, tigrans and trollkin. Also, this book introduces the endu (minotaurs), gnomes and gnolls, further expanding on options for character development.
The character classes of this book re-writes and reorganizes the nine classes/subclasses presented in Supplement One, and introduces a new character class as well, the Spellblade (a magic-user/fighting-man combination class that's very well executed, in my opinion). Bards are in a class by themselves instead of being a sub-class of Magic-User as per Supplement One, and the Spellblade falls under Warriors. I've noticed that the number of Fighting-Man Combat Options has increased, with some nice additions. In addition, the many options of Supplement One are repeated here. As I've said before, I like many of the options presented in this section, and feel that it creates a good flavor for gaming.
The section on equipment has been greatly expanded from Supplement One, with plent of detail on the items listed.
After that, we enter the section entitled "Playing the Game." Here, we find the rules on experience points and levels, hirelings, time and the adventurer, encounters, reactions, fleeing and escape.
Combat is next, and this section does a great job of integrating Swords & Wizardry with the material from Supplement One. The intiative system I had problems with in Supplement One, the Continuous Initiative System, has been moved to an optional rule in the appendices, giving way to a more traditionally inspired initiative system based on a blend of 3E and 1E rules. The combat options have been expanded, keeping the flavor of a rules-light game but covering elements that sometimes come up with people having previous exposure to more complex rules systems.
The Magic section is next, and it covers all the bases very well. I have noticed that there are a handful of new spells, even beyond those introduced in Supplement One. All are well written and do not appear to duplicate existing spell functionality. In addition, some spells have gained new functionality. For example, the curative spells now cover some of the conditions that systems like 3E address with restoration spells, keeping the number of spells low while improving the usability of existing spells. I think that some of these changes are quite innovative, and wish I'd thought of them myself before releasing the MyD20 Lite Player's Guide. The addition of a 4th level Magic-User spell Turn Undead was sheer genius.
That ends the Player's Section. The Referee's Section is next, and starts with some basic advice in a chapter entitled "Referee Information A to Z." Here, we find general information on designing an adventure, creating a campaign, extended ability scores, anti-clerics, bonus spells optional rules, conditional states, a simple task/skill resolution system, traps and hazards, damage reduction, more on awarding experience points, more information on hit dice and hit points, illusions, natural healing, raising the dead, summoning spells, weapon and armor proficiency, and adjudicating wishes.
Monsters is our next stop. There are 48 pages of monsters (about 206 of them, all told) in this tome, including the monsters from Supplement One and Swords & Wizardry. In addition, I saw a few more, including the Doom Orb (a replacement for the Beholder, I'm sure) and a few others that looked new to me. Following the monster descriptions themselves, there are rules for creating your own monsters, as well as world-specific encounter tables that take advantage of all the monsters described in World of Onn Core Rules (except for dragons, which are noted as needing to be placed by the Referee at their whim, not that of a random table).
Twenty-two pages of treasure really help to integrate the new spells, classes and races into a World of Onn game. I honestly couldn't tell you if anything new was added here, beyond items that built on the newly added elements to World of Onn Core Rules that were not found in Supplement One. However, I still like this section as much as I did in Supplement One.
From there, we dive directly into the World of Onn. The history section and maps for Ossus do not appear to have changed much from Supplement One, but after that, we get into the more specific campaign setting information. The lands of Ossus represent much of the same material we saw in Supplement One. However, that is followed by a section on the lands of Var-Ultar, including a new map and four more pages of kingdoms and locales. Like the rest of the book, this section is short and succinct but very well written, with lots of adventure ideas packed in the pages.
The Appendices of World of Onn Core Rules are interesting and varied. There's a one-page synopsis of the deities of the World of Onn, followed by three pages of optional character creation rules, including such concepts as multiclassing, race as class, and an extended skill system. After that, we spend two pages on golemcraft, two pages on rules for enchanting magic items, and two pages on familiars. There's one page on strongholds and followers, two pages on the continuous initiative system, one page on special materials, two great pages on random dungeons and finally a page on random wilderness generation.
As you can see, there's a lot to this book.
My Thoughts
All in all, I really like the flavor of the World of Onn Core Rules. Like Supplement One, there's a lot of good stuff in here, that's well integrated throughout and looks like a lot of fun to run and play. The World of Onn Core Rules definitely steps up here, with improved art and better organization than Supplement One. I really believe the author delivers on his intent here, presenting a well-rounded world setting and rules system that could easily support gaming just using the one book itself.
If you already have Supplement One, you can get by with the original supplement and Swords & Wizardry itself. However, if you haven't picked up Supplement One, or if you're just a collector like I am, I'd strongly urge you to consider World of Onn Core Rules over the original Supplement.
That all being said, I'd have to rate this product as an 8.5 out of 10.
So, for those of you who have picked up this book yourselves, what do you think of the book? As always, please feel free to leave a comment, and if you liked the review, I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts on that, too.
With Warm Regards,
Flynn
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Review: OwlCon 2010...
Good Evening, All:
In the midst of our first snowfall in over six years, I finally get to sit down and write up a brief report on my experience this last weekend at OwlCon. In short, I had a blast! While I got tired of eating the same food throughout the Con (there's really only the sandwich shop in the Student Center that serves anything I felt like eating), the non-stop gaming was fantastic.
I ran my first adventure for the Con on Friday night to a group of four gamers, including one that used to be in my Savage Worlds game before a new job took him from Austin to Houston. In Pavilion of the Dragon King, the goal was to escort a young prince to a magic throne within a hanging garden that had been warped by the blood of a fallen goddess. The party did pretty well in the warm-up combat against a slew of minions, Moss Men from the Fantasy Companion. Having conquered these plant-men mooks, the party made their way to the main gate of the overgrown garden, only to find a treant guarding the way. As one member of the party went to parlay with the tree-man, another climbed a nearby tree and decided to throw a lit torch at the guardian before I could even get to the riddle they were supposed to answer. Thus, the party had to deal with an irate creature much more powerful than they, and only the death of two of the party members provided an opportunity for the other half of the party to escape. It was touch and go for a little bit, but since the hour was late, I rounded out the story without too many additional complications, and the two survivors emerged victorious. Strangely twisted, yes, but victorious. The players had fun, though, and that's what counts.
Saturday, I got to play in three games. In the first game, I tried a system that I'd never picked up before, Hollow Earth Expedition. The setting the GM chose was based on the concepts behind Buckaroo Bonzai. Think New Wave music mixed with Doc Savage pulpy action, with a heavy dose of MTV videos and over-the-top action, and you have some idea of what we went through. I got to play a character based loosely on Billy Idol, and it was a blast. He had anger issues, and a not-so-secret love for the keyboardist in the rock band/secret agent cadre that was Arms Akimbo. We all had a great time, from our run-in with the "skyrates" (think Sky Pirates, and you'll get it) to the ninja assault during the news conference, from the secret labs of an evil corporate anti-aging super-spa (complete with brain-washing absolutely free) to the pyramid of an evil cult trying to summon a demon from the eighth dimension. It was a madcap, wild adventure, and I even won the roleplay award for that session (no doubt due to my really bad English accent and vivid portrayal of an angry British cricket player turned drummer). :)
The second game was a Deadlands Reloaded session, and it continued the trend of awesomeness. I played a Blessed preacher, and got to draw upon all those years growing up in a Southern Baptist church for inspiration. As before, I stayed in character throughout, this time with a thick Southern accent and perpetual condemnation of Satan. We resolved the roleplay award (and the prize that went with it) through random card draw instead of voting, and I lost, but I got several compliments saying that I made the game for several of the other players. That was some high praise, considering the talented roleplayers I was gaming with.
The third game that evening was a Necropolis session, which was awesome, but in a different way than the first two games I'd played in. This one had a very tactical "Vietnam War Meets Zombieland" vibe going for it, and didn't offer much in the way of character portrayal opportunities, but the game was fun and I could easily see the allure of the setting. I was starting to fall off the top of my game by this point, having little more than four hours of sleep and a full day of gaming, but it was still a blast. I even got to control some mooks on our side, which let me do some tactical stuff for the team, since half the players were new to the system and the setting. Again, we resolved the roleplay award through random card draw, and again I lost, but I still won in the "Having Fun" department.
Another night of short sleep got me through to Sunday morning, where I got to run my second adventure at the convention, The Cairn of the Blood God. I had one experienced Savage Worlds gamer (my friend that now lives in Houston), and three gamers new to the system, one of whom was a young girl probably around twelve years old. She was joined half-way through by her friend, and I was surprised with both of their ability to get into the game and keep up in terms of rules and such. The adventure centered around them exploring a small burial mound, looking for a large ruby called the Eye of the Blood God. They fought dungeon rats as a warm-up, and loved killing the beasts so that they could take my little miniatures (some rubber mice I picked up at Halloween) and tie their tales to their badges to make a necklace of their kills. I followed that up with a nasty fight with a giant scorpion straight out of the Fantasy Companion book, and then wrapped up the session with a final climactic fight against a Lasher Demon and some basic undead (using the Skeleton stats from the FC). We ran out of time, so we had to fast-track the ending, but the players enjoyed this session as well. Of the two, I think this session is probably more likely to gain more converts for Savage Worlds and some Old School flavored campaigning in the future.
All told, it was a great experience. OwlCon remains my favorite regional convention, with a heavy focus on gaming and good roleplay. I like the fact that they give prizes to the best player at each table, and how that seems to promote more involvement in the scenarios. Now, if they could only get some diversity in the food choices, I'd be one happy camper.
Hope This Helps,
Flynn
In the midst of our first snowfall in over six years, I finally get to sit down and write up a brief report on my experience this last weekend at OwlCon. In short, I had a blast! While I got tired of eating the same food throughout the Con (there's really only the sandwich shop in the Student Center that serves anything I felt like eating), the non-stop gaming was fantastic.
I ran my first adventure for the Con on Friday night to a group of four gamers, including one that used to be in my Savage Worlds game before a new job took him from Austin to Houston. In Pavilion of the Dragon King, the goal was to escort a young prince to a magic throne within a hanging garden that had been warped by the blood of a fallen goddess. The party did pretty well in the warm-up combat against a slew of minions, Moss Men from the Fantasy Companion. Having conquered these plant-men mooks, the party made their way to the main gate of the overgrown garden, only to find a treant guarding the way. As one member of the party went to parlay with the tree-man, another climbed a nearby tree and decided to throw a lit torch at the guardian before I could even get to the riddle they were supposed to answer. Thus, the party had to deal with an irate creature much more powerful than they, and only the death of two of the party members provided an opportunity for the other half of the party to escape. It was touch and go for a little bit, but since the hour was late, I rounded out the story without too many additional complications, and the two survivors emerged victorious. Strangely twisted, yes, but victorious. The players had fun, though, and that's what counts.
Saturday, I got to play in three games. In the first game, I tried a system that I'd never picked up before, Hollow Earth Expedition. The setting the GM chose was based on the concepts behind Buckaroo Bonzai. Think New Wave music mixed with Doc Savage pulpy action, with a heavy dose of MTV videos and over-the-top action, and you have some idea of what we went through. I got to play a character based loosely on Billy Idol, and it was a blast. He had anger issues, and a not-so-secret love for the keyboardist in the rock band/secret agent cadre that was Arms Akimbo. We all had a great time, from our run-in with the "skyrates" (think Sky Pirates, and you'll get it) to the ninja assault during the news conference, from the secret labs of an evil corporate anti-aging super-spa (complete with brain-washing absolutely free) to the pyramid of an evil cult trying to summon a demon from the eighth dimension. It was a madcap, wild adventure, and I even won the roleplay award for that session (no doubt due to my really bad English accent and vivid portrayal of an angry British cricket player turned drummer). :)
The second game was a Deadlands Reloaded session, and it continued the trend of awesomeness. I played a Blessed preacher, and got to draw upon all those years growing up in a Southern Baptist church for inspiration. As before, I stayed in character throughout, this time with a thick Southern accent and perpetual condemnation of Satan. We resolved the roleplay award (and the prize that went with it) through random card draw instead of voting, and I lost, but I got several compliments saying that I made the game for several of the other players. That was some high praise, considering the talented roleplayers I was gaming with.
The third game that evening was a Necropolis session, which was awesome, but in a different way than the first two games I'd played in. This one had a very tactical "Vietnam War Meets Zombieland" vibe going for it, and didn't offer much in the way of character portrayal opportunities, but the game was fun and I could easily see the allure of the setting. I was starting to fall off the top of my game by this point, having little more than four hours of sleep and a full day of gaming, but it was still a blast. I even got to control some mooks on our side, which let me do some tactical stuff for the team, since half the players were new to the system and the setting. Again, we resolved the roleplay award through random card draw, and again I lost, but I still won in the "Having Fun" department.
Another night of short sleep got me through to Sunday morning, where I got to run my second adventure at the convention, The Cairn of the Blood God. I had one experienced Savage Worlds gamer (my friend that now lives in Houston), and three gamers new to the system, one of whom was a young girl probably around twelve years old. She was joined half-way through by her friend, and I was surprised with both of their ability to get into the game and keep up in terms of rules and such. The adventure centered around them exploring a small burial mound, looking for a large ruby called the Eye of the Blood God. They fought dungeon rats as a warm-up, and loved killing the beasts so that they could take my little miniatures (some rubber mice I picked up at Halloween) and tie their tales to their badges to make a necklace of their kills. I followed that up with a nasty fight with a giant scorpion straight out of the Fantasy Companion book, and then wrapped up the session with a final climactic fight against a Lasher Demon and some basic undead (using the Skeleton stats from the FC). We ran out of time, so we had to fast-track the ending, but the players enjoyed this session as well. Of the two, I think this session is probably more likely to gain more converts for Savage Worlds and some Old School flavored campaigning in the future.
All told, it was a great experience. OwlCon remains my favorite regional convention, with a heavy focus on gaming and good roleplay. I like the fact that they give prizes to the best player at each table, and how that seems to promote more involvement in the scenarios. Now, if they could only get some diversity in the food choices, I'd be one happy camper.
Hope This Helps,
Flynn
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Review: Savage Swords of Athanor...
Good Evening, All:
Tonight, I'd like to review a rules supplement for Swords & Wizardry: White Box. This one is entitled Savage Swords of Athanor, by Doug Easterly. Savage Swords of Athanor is a science-fantasy setting with heavy tendencies towards the planetary romance genre, my literary genre of preference.
Appearance
I purchased my digest-sized softcover copy from the author's website on Lulu.com. The cover for this 64-page supplement is a basic white book roughly the size of one of the Old School Traveller Little Black Books. The front bears a series of silhouettes in orange and black that create the impression of a lost world, and the font used for the title is both evocative of the setting and readable. It hints of Golden Age sword and planet adventure to me, so I was eager to dive in.
Looking at the 64 pages within this book, I can see that Mr. Easterly does not waste much space for non-necessities. There's a title page, followed by a page that contains both the table of contents and a one-paragraph introduction, and the final page of the manuscript contains the OGL. That's 61 pages left for gaming goodness. The font size of the body of the book is easy to read, and well-formatted. There are only two images through the book, a map of the City-State of Zamora and a regional map of the area around Zamora proper.
Content
After the single paragraph that marks the introduction of Savage Swords of Athanor, the author organizes the contents in the classic three sections named after the three core books of the original version of the World's Most Popular Roleplaying Game. Throughout the text, I should note that there are a large number of typos, misspellings, skipped words and other editing issues. While this does not detract from my enjoyment of the material presented within, it does detract from the professionalism of the product. However, that said, the youthful enthusiasm and exuberance that Mr. Easterly brings to Savage Swords of Athanor make up for this distraction, in my mind.
The Men and Magic chapter is 15 pages long, and yet there's a lot of material packed in those pages. Under the Men and Magic chapter, we first encounter rules for the races that exist on the world of Athanor. It should be noted that, like the other products I've reviewed to date, Mr. Easterly separates race from class, a practice I support. The races detailed within this book are: Humans (in four sword-and-planet flavors of unusual skin coloration), Mal'Akkan (cactus-men), Alemanian (blue-shelled bug-men), Throon (humanoid fungus-men), and Earthmen (humans from worlds other than Athanor, presumably of Terran descent).
Next, Mr. Easterly talks about character classes. While we can play fighting men and magic-users, the cleric is not available as an option in the world of Athanor. Instead, the author introduces us to a new class, the rogue magic-user, or Rogue for short. The class has limited magical abilities, and poor combat abilities, but possesses slightly better hit points and great saves.
The next subsection of the Men and Magic chapter describes a very simple skill system. In general, you can attempt anything by making a saving throw. If you happen to be skilled at something, then you get to add four to your save. You basically get one or two skills for your character, which you select from a small set of broad skill groups, and you can spend money and time to learn new skills over the course of the campaign.
The section on Magic in Athanor describes the creation of scrolls, provides a chart for magical mishaps in the event that your spell is interrupted (or in case you interrupt the Big Bad Guy's spell), and wraps up with a list of spells by level. The spells on the list come from Swords & Wizardry, and are limited to those that represent psychic powers, as would be found in a planetary romance setting.
There's a small section on mutations, allowing the Referee to provide unusual abilities to PCs, NPCs and monsters alike should they become exposed to radiation through a variety of means. These range in power level, and avoid the outlandish powers that some mutation charts tend to hand out. All in all, I find them to be very evocative and many conjure up images that are easy to transform into adventures or encounter scenarios.
A brief paragraph and associated chart introduces the concept of the Clone Pits, where you might get a dead colleague resurrected for a pound of flesh and a thousand gold. Using the Clone Pits to cheat death, however, is not without risk, as this is one of the ways in which a character might gain a mutation or two.
The Men and Magic section wraps up with two pages of variant rules. Here's where you can find a variant on the Death's Door rules, binding wounds to restore lost hit points, the healing power of a good ale, parrying and two-weapon combat clarifications, and rules on disarming a foe. The mechanics are simple, functional and in keeping with the playability of Swords & Wizardry.
The second major section, Monsters and Treasure, is only 13 pages long, but the Referee can still find a lot of useful information in this section. The bestiary covers 32 monsters in 8 pages, including a wide range of dinosaurs, common planetary romance monster types, and a variety of monstrous antagonists related to the Zamora setting. Three more pages cover eleven "artifacts" of ancient technology, ranging from medical tech and weapons to defensive shields and a hand grenade of depression and woe. The last two pages discuss bound spirits, extradimensional essences that magic-users can summon and attempt to bend to their will. Herein lies the path to corruption and Cthulhu, I'm sure, but the abilities are very reasonable and in keeping with the flavor that's already been created by Mr. Easterly's presentation.
The third and final section, Underworld and Wilderness Adventures, forms the bulk of Savage Swords of Athanor, weighing in at 33 pages. We start off with four pages of random encounter tables for the various locations and terrain types found in the Zamora region. Seven pages describe the world of Athanor, with four of those pages devoted to the religious practices of the people. The rest includes details about the flora and fauna, climate, the two moons above, technology, travel, food and history.
Seven pages describe the City-State of Zamora. Among the local sites, persons of importance and power factions, Mr. Easterly has hidden a number of nice gems. Ramirez's, an inn within Zamora, is obviously an homage to the movie Highlander. The Lo Pan Society, as written, conjures thoughts Lo Pan's tong in Big Trouble In Little China. There are certainly other jewels within this section, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
After the section on the City-State, Mr. Easterly provides us with twelve adventure seeds and a series of charts the Referee can use to create their own planetary romance plot.
The last ten pages of the book contain a map of the Zamora region (with some of the hexes strangely misnumbered), and an amazing number of small entries describing the lairs, ruins and small adventures that await adventurers ready to explore this planetary romance sandbox. There's a wide variety of encounters, from killer robots and atmosphere factories to ancient bunkers and fallen meteorites, from mines and refugees to undead sorceresses in love and a lost astronaut from Earth. These entries definitely capture the flavor of a planetary romance setting, while making it easy and accessible to Referees interested in stepping outside the usual campaign settings and exploring the world of science fantasy.
Thoughts
All in all, I liked Savage Swords of Athanor. As an ardent fan of the sword-and-planet genre, I've looked long and hard for settings that capture that flavor. The World of Athanor is definitely one of them. Despite the typos and editing issues, the great depth and evocative nature of the writing more than makes up for the distraction I sometimes felt. Mr. Easterly does a great job of developing the world of Athanor and presenting it to the reader in a style and format that offers much in a surprisingly concise manner. I definitely hope that he continues to publish more works in this vein. I know that I would consider myself a fan of his work.
On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd have to rate Savage Swords of Athanor as an 8. For the planetary romance fan, I'd even bump it up a little higher. It's definitely worth checking out, and for only eight bucks (yes, I said $8), it's a steal!
With Regards,
Flynn
Tonight, I'd like to review a rules supplement for Swords & Wizardry: White Box. This one is entitled Savage Swords of Athanor, by Doug Easterly. Savage Swords of Athanor is a science-fantasy setting with heavy tendencies towards the planetary romance genre, my literary genre of preference.
Appearance
I purchased my digest-sized softcover copy from the author's website on Lulu.com. The cover for this 64-page supplement is a basic white book roughly the size of one of the Old School Traveller Little Black Books. The front bears a series of silhouettes in orange and black that create the impression of a lost world, and the font used for the title is both evocative of the setting and readable. It hints of Golden Age sword and planet adventure to me, so I was eager to dive in.
Looking at the 64 pages within this book, I can see that Mr. Easterly does not waste much space for non-necessities. There's a title page, followed by a page that contains both the table of contents and a one-paragraph introduction, and the final page of the manuscript contains the OGL. That's 61 pages left for gaming goodness. The font size of the body of the book is easy to read, and well-formatted. There are only two images through the book, a map of the City-State of Zamora and a regional map of the area around Zamora proper.
Content
After the single paragraph that marks the introduction of Savage Swords of Athanor, the author organizes the contents in the classic three sections named after the three core books of the original version of the World's Most Popular Roleplaying Game. Throughout the text, I should note that there are a large number of typos, misspellings, skipped words and other editing issues. While this does not detract from my enjoyment of the material presented within, it does detract from the professionalism of the product. However, that said, the youthful enthusiasm and exuberance that Mr. Easterly brings to Savage Swords of Athanor make up for this distraction, in my mind.
The Men and Magic chapter is 15 pages long, and yet there's a lot of material packed in those pages. Under the Men and Magic chapter, we first encounter rules for the races that exist on the world of Athanor. It should be noted that, like the other products I've reviewed to date, Mr. Easterly separates race from class, a practice I support. The races detailed within this book are: Humans (in four sword-and-planet flavors of unusual skin coloration), Mal'Akkan (cactus-men), Alemanian (blue-shelled bug-men), Throon (humanoid fungus-men), and Earthmen (humans from worlds other than Athanor, presumably of Terran descent).
Next, Mr. Easterly talks about character classes. While we can play fighting men and magic-users, the cleric is not available as an option in the world of Athanor. Instead, the author introduces us to a new class, the rogue magic-user, or Rogue for short. The class has limited magical abilities, and poor combat abilities, but possesses slightly better hit points and great saves.
The next subsection of the Men and Magic chapter describes a very simple skill system. In general, you can attempt anything by making a saving throw. If you happen to be skilled at something, then you get to add four to your save. You basically get one or two skills for your character, which you select from a small set of broad skill groups, and you can spend money and time to learn new skills over the course of the campaign.
The section on Magic in Athanor describes the creation of scrolls, provides a chart for magical mishaps in the event that your spell is interrupted (or in case you interrupt the Big Bad Guy's spell), and wraps up with a list of spells by level. The spells on the list come from Swords & Wizardry, and are limited to those that represent psychic powers, as would be found in a planetary romance setting.
There's a small section on mutations, allowing the Referee to provide unusual abilities to PCs, NPCs and monsters alike should they become exposed to radiation through a variety of means. These range in power level, and avoid the outlandish powers that some mutation charts tend to hand out. All in all, I find them to be very evocative and many conjure up images that are easy to transform into adventures or encounter scenarios.
A brief paragraph and associated chart introduces the concept of the Clone Pits, where you might get a dead colleague resurrected for a pound of flesh and a thousand gold. Using the Clone Pits to cheat death, however, is not without risk, as this is one of the ways in which a character might gain a mutation or two.
The Men and Magic section wraps up with two pages of variant rules. Here's where you can find a variant on the Death's Door rules, binding wounds to restore lost hit points, the healing power of a good ale, parrying and two-weapon combat clarifications, and rules on disarming a foe. The mechanics are simple, functional and in keeping with the playability of Swords & Wizardry.
The second major section, Monsters and Treasure, is only 13 pages long, but the Referee can still find a lot of useful information in this section. The bestiary covers 32 monsters in 8 pages, including a wide range of dinosaurs, common planetary romance monster types, and a variety of monstrous antagonists related to the Zamora setting. Three more pages cover eleven "artifacts" of ancient technology, ranging from medical tech and weapons to defensive shields and a hand grenade of depression and woe. The last two pages discuss bound spirits, extradimensional essences that magic-users can summon and attempt to bend to their will. Herein lies the path to corruption and Cthulhu, I'm sure, but the abilities are very reasonable and in keeping with the flavor that's already been created by Mr. Easterly's presentation.
The third and final section, Underworld and Wilderness Adventures, forms the bulk of Savage Swords of Athanor, weighing in at 33 pages. We start off with four pages of random encounter tables for the various locations and terrain types found in the Zamora region. Seven pages describe the world of Athanor, with four of those pages devoted to the religious practices of the people. The rest includes details about the flora and fauna, climate, the two moons above, technology, travel, food and history.
Seven pages describe the City-State of Zamora. Among the local sites, persons of importance and power factions, Mr. Easterly has hidden a number of nice gems. Ramirez's, an inn within Zamora, is obviously an homage to the movie Highlander. The Lo Pan Society, as written, conjures thoughts Lo Pan's tong in Big Trouble In Little China. There are certainly other jewels within this section, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
After the section on the City-State, Mr. Easterly provides us with twelve adventure seeds and a series of charts the Referee can use to create their own planetary romance plot.
The last ten pages of the book contain a map of the Zamora region (with some of the hexes strangely misnumbered), and an amazing number of small entries describing the lairs, ruins and small adventures that await adventurers ready to explore this planetary romance sandbox. There's a wide variety of encounters, from killer robots and atmosphere factories to ancient bunkers and fallen meteorites, from mines and refugees to undead sorceresses in love and a lost astronaut from Earth. These entries definitely capture the flavor of a planetary romance setting, while making it easy and accessible to Referees interested in stepping outside the usual campaign settings and exploring the world of science fantasy.
Thoughts
All in all, I liked Savage Swords of Athanor. As an ardent fan of the sword-and-planet genre, I've looked long and hard for settings that capture that flavor. The World of Athanor is definitely one of them. Despite the typos and editing issues, the great depth and evocative nature of the writing more than makes up for the distraction I sometimes felt. Mr. Easterly does a great job of developing the world of Athanor and presenting it to the reader in a style and format that offers much in a surprisingly concise manner. I definitely hope that he continues to publish more works in this vein. I know that I would consider myself a fan of his work.
On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd have to rate Savage Swords of Athanor as an 8. For the planetary romance fan, I'd even bump it up a little higher. It's definitely worth checking out, and for only eight bucks (yes, I said $8), it's a steal!
With Regards,
Flynn
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Review: Stonehell Dungeon, Down Night-Haunted Halls...
Good Afternoon, All:
I have finally completed reading through Stonehell Dungeon: Down Night-Haunted Halls, by Michael Curtis. Here's the basic blurb from the website, to give you an idea of what this book is all about:
As you can see, this product declares itself as the first half of a fully-detailed megadungeon, capturing six levels (plus the surface) inside 134 pages. This review contains my impressions of the product, in the hopes that you find this information of use to you when considering whether to pick this book up or not.
Appearance
I picked up the print version of this book. Stonehell Dungeon is a softcover RPG book, perfect bound, with 134 pages printed in black and white. The front and back cover are glossy black, with the occasional series of red splotches that may be intended to conjure images of blood splatter. The front cover also includes a line art drawing of a single adventurer raising a portcullis within the dungeon, a nice piece provided by J. A. D'Andrea. The product has a title page, a credits page, two pages for an index and a page for the legal licenses, leaving 129 pages for pure content. The typeface is easy to read, in a two column format save for the two pages that detail the map for each sublevel. The maps are black and white, as are the other illustrations found through the text. I found all of the art to be well drawn and appropriate to the setting and flavor of the book. All in all, I found the book to be well organized and well-written. I don't necessarily like the red splotches on the cover, but otherwise, I think it's very well produced.
Content
In terms of content, Stonehell Dungeon is very dense. Fortunately, Michael Curtis's writing style makes it a very interesting read, and the only places that really bogged me down were the room details are each sublevel. As begitting a product that calls itself a megadungeon, Stonehell strives to create a setting that could serve one or even more campaigns rather than create a site for a single, albeit large, adventure. Although all of the game mechanics presented in this tome are for Labyrinth Lord, it is presented in such a manner that this setting could be used with very minimal adjustments with any of the retro-clones or original editions of the World's Most Popular Roleplaying Game. With a little investment in creature and treasure conversion, I could see this product easily being used for a 3E/Pathfinder or even a 4E campaign.
After a brief introduction, Mr. Curtis dives right in with details on how to use the dungeon, followed by a simple two page history, Stonehell's secret, general dungeon features, common residents found in the dungeon, thoughts on changing the dungeon over time, how to customize the setting to make it your own, identifying those elements that he would leave up to the individual Referee to resolve, a list of adventure hooks and even some rumors. In eight pages, Mr. Curtis packs in a lot of great information, but I found it interesting to read and complete enough to start me mentally salivating over the prospects that might be found within.
After that, the true content of the megadungeon begins. This product details six major layers (the surface and the first five levels of the dungeon). The surface layer is comprised of three sections, and each of the five dungeon levels are made up of four sections or sublevels apiece. All told, that's 23 maps, complete with details on their contents and their own individually flavored populations, all in conflict with one another on some level.
Each major layer is detailed in the same manner, much like a chapter of the book. First, Mr. Curtis presents the collective map for the entire layer on one page, followed by a single page that contains a bestiary of sorts for the level. This bestiary provides the basic stats for all of the creatures that appear in that level for ease of reference, as well as a quick overview of the core concepts for each sublevel within that layer. Right after that, each sublevel or section is then detailed.
Each subsection is displayed in the same consistent manner. First, Mr. Curtis provides us with two to three pages that give us an overview of the sublevel. This includes more detail on the conflicts of that particular area, the population that the player-characters are likely to encounter, special dungeon features, important NPCs, new monsters, new magic items and new spells. After the brief overview, Mr. Curtis then provide a two-page version of the One Page Dungeon template. Page one contains the map and some basic notes for use with the adventure, like elements that don't occur in a given room or random encounter tables. Page two of the template contains a list of all of the rooms on the map, along with a brief sentence or two describing its contents. For example:
Many of the rooms have inhabitants and/or treasure. Those would be written instead of the word "empty" in the example above. I simply chose an example that doesn't give away anything so as not to spoil some of the surprises. While this method of presentation does not spell out the "read out loud" text that other adventures would, Mr. Curtis does an excellent job of capturing the level of detail needed to create and describe the room's contents. In addition, I found his work to be highly imaginative and inspiring. I could easily picture myself running this entire setting, if only I had the time to do so in addition to my current game.
After all of the maps have been detailed, Michael Curtis completes his masterpiece with two appendices. The first provides three random tables to cover dungeon dressing and the contents of containers such as bags, pouches, satchels and small chests or wardrobes. The second appendix lists the special monsters that populate Stonehell. Among them are the Vrilya, perhaps based on the public domain work The Coming Race by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Only two of this mysterious race are detailed, but Mr. Curtis promises more will appear in Stonehell 2.
My Thoughts
All in all, this book is simply amazing to me. I found that it sparked my imagination with almost every page. The conflicts are varied and appear to be a lot of fun. In addition to the major conflicts that flavor each sublevel, Mr. Curtis has also added fun little elements and scenes that really captures the flavor of Old School gaming to me. I found myself consistently wondering how I could fit this in as a second weekly game with my particular schedule, or if I should wait until after the baby is born and make this my next campaign. I couldn't be happier with my purchase of this book, and I know that I'm going to pick up the second one as soon as it becomes available later on in 2010.
On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best, I'd have to give Stonehell Dungeon a 9.5. It's probably worthy of a 10, but I don't want my second review to identify a product as being the penultimate. However, this is a damn fine product, and I think any Referee or Gamemaster that enjoys running large dungeons would be remiss if they didn't pick Stonehell Dungeon up, in either PDF or Print-On-Demand. It's just too good to let it slip by.
That's My Two Coppers, Anyway,
Flynn
I have finally completed reading through Stonehell Dungeon: Down Night-Haunted Halls, by Michael Curtis. Here's the basic blurb from the website, to give you an idea of what this book is all about:
Stonehell Dungeon is a classic-style megadungeon, filled with enough monsters, traps, weirdness, and treasure to keep you gaming for a long, long time. Explore over 700 rooms, encounter more than 40 new monsters, and discover 18 mysterious magical items -- and that's just in the first book!
Stonehell Dungeon: Down Night-Haunted Halls details the first six levels of a megadungeon intended for use with the Labyrinth Lord™ role-playing game, but is easily adaptable to most early versions of the original fantasy role-playing game and its retro-clones. Featuring art by J.A. D'Andrea, Lee Barber, Marcelo Paschoalin, and Ralph Pasucci, Stonehell Dungeon gives the game master all the necessary information to run his players through the dungeon, while offering enormous opportunities to customize and expand on the site.
As you can see, this product declares itself as the first half of a fully-detailed megadungeon, capturing six levels (plus the surface) inside 134 pages. This review contains my impressions of the product, in the hopes that you find this information of use to you when considering whether to pick this book up or not.
Appearance
I picked up the print version of this book. Stonehell Dungeon is a softcover RPG book, perfect bound, with 134 pages printed in black and white. The front and back cover are glossy black, with the occasional series of red splotches that may be intended to conjure images of blood splatter. The front cover also includes a line art drawing of a single adventurer raising a portcullis within the dungeon, a nice piece provided by J. A. D'Andrea. The product has a title page, a credits page, two pages for an index and a page for the legal licenses, leaving 129 pages for pure content. The typeface is easy to read, in a two column format save for the two pages that detail the map for each sublevel. The maps are black and white, as are the other illustrations found through the text. I found all of the art to be well drawn and appropriate to the setting and flavor of the book. All in all, I found the book to be well organized and well-written. I don't necessarily like the red splotches on the cover, but otherwise, I think it's very well produced.
Content
In terms of content, Stonehell Dungeon is very dense. Fortunately, Michael Curtis's writing style makes it a very interesting read, and the only places that really bogged me down were the room details are each sublevel. As begitting a product that calls itself a megadungeon, Stonehell strives to create a setting that could serve one or even more campaigns rather than create a site for a single, albeit large, adventure. Although all of the game mechanics presented in this tome are for Labyrinth Lord, it is presented in such a manner that this setting could be used with very minimal adjustments with any of the retro-clones or original editions of the World's Most Popular Roleplaying Game. With a little investment in creature and treasure conversion, I could see this product easily being used for a 3E/Pathfinder or even a 4E campaign.
After a brief introduction, Mr. Curtis dives right in with details on how to use the dungeon, followed by a simple two page history, Stonehell's secret, general dungeon features, common residents found in the dungeon, thoughts on changing the dungeon over time, how to customize the setting to make it your own, identifying those elements that he would leave up to the individual Referee to resolve, a list of adventure hooks and even some rumors. In eight pages, Mr. Curtis packs in a lot of great information, but I found it interesting to read and complete enough to start me mentally salivating over the prospects that might be found within.
After that, the true content of the megadungeon begins. This product details six major layers (the surface and the first five levels of the dungeon). The surface layer is comprised of three sections, and each of the five dungeon levels are made up of four sections or sublevels apiece. All told, that's 23 maps, complete with details on their contents and their own individually flavored populations, all in conflict with one another on some level.
Each major layer is detailed in the same manner, much like a chapter of the book. First, Mr. Curtis presents the collective map for the entire layer on one page, followed by a single page that contains a bestiary of sorts for the level. This bestiary provides the basic stats for all of the creatures that appear in that level for ease of reference, as well as a quick overview of the core concepts for each sublevel within that layer. Right after that, each sublevel or section is then detailed.
Each subsection is displayed in the same consistent manner. First, Mr. Curtis provides us with two to three pages that give us an overview of the sublevel. This includes more detail on the conflicts of that particular area, the population that the player-characters are likely to encounter, special dungeon features, important NPCs, new monsters, new magic items and new spells. After the brief overview, Mr. Curtis then provide a two-page version of the One Page Dungeon template. Page one contains the map and some basic notes for use with the adventure, like elements that don't occur in a given room or random encounter tables. Page two of the template contains a list of all of the rooms on the map, along with a brief sentence or two describing its contents. For example:
Dormitory: Smashed bunks; moldy furniture; smell of mildew. Empty.
Many of the rooms have inhabitants and/or treasure. Those would be written instead of the word "empty" in the example above. I simply chose an example that doesn't give away anything so as not to spoil some of the surprises. While this method of presentation does not spell out the "read out loud" text that other adventures would, Mr. Curtis does an excellent job of capturing the level of detail needed to create and describe the room's contents. In addition, I found his work to be highly imaginative and inspiring. I could easily picture myself running this entire setting, if only I had the time to do so in addition to my current game.
After all of the maps have been detailed, Michael Curtis completes his masterpiece with two appendices. The first provides three random tables to cover dungeon dressing and the contents of containers such as bags, pouches, satchels and small chests or wardrobes. The second appendix lists the special monsters that populate Stonehell. Among them are the Vrilya, perhaps based on the public domain work The Coming Race by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Only two of this mysterious race are detailed, but Mr. Curtis promises more will appear in Stonehell 2.
My Thoughts
All in all, this book is simply amazing to me. I found that it sparked my imagination with almost every page. The conflicts are varied and appear to be a lot of fun. In addition to the major conflicts that flavor each sublevel, Mr. Curtis has also added fun little elements and scenes that really captures the flavor of Old School gaming to me. I found myself consistently wondering how I could fit this in as a second weekly game with my particular schedule, or if I should wait until after the baby is born and make this my next campaign. I couldn't be happier with my purchase of this book, and I know that I'm going to pick up the second one as soon as it becomes available later on in 2010.
On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best, I'd have to give Stonehell Dungeon a 9.5. It's probably worthy of a 10, but I don't want my second review to identify a product as being the penultimate. However, this is a damn fine product, and I think any Referee or Gamemaster that enjoys running large dungeons would be remiss if they didn't pick Stonehell Dungeon up, in either PDF or Print-On-Demand. It's just too good to let it slip by.
That's My Two Coppers, Anyway,
Flynn
Saturday, December 05, 2009
Review: World of Onn, Supplement I
Good Evening, All:
This is a quick review of the World of Onn: Supplement I, by Jim Bobb of Fantasy Adventures Studio. This review is based on the Print-On-Demand version of the product. The World of Onn: Supplement I book, which I will abbreviate for the rest of this review as WO:Sup1, is compatible with the Swords & Wizardry Core Rules.
Appearance
In Print-On-Demand format, WO:Sup1 is a standard-sized softcover RPG text. Its black cover and white lettering are very simple and understated. The line art used for the front cover image is a bit pixelated, but captures the flavor of the early editions of "the World's Most Popular Roleplaying Game" that Swords & Wizardry was created to emulate. The text on the back cover is large and easy to read, offering a description of the contents of the book: expanded character abilities, new sub-classes, new items, new spells, new monsters, some combat variations, and a World of Onn gazetteer. That's a lot to pack in 146 pages, but I think it does a pretty good job of it.
Kimberly Nicholson did the cover art and all of the interior black-and-white line art, keeping a consistent "old school" flavor to the artwork throughout the book. Her work comes across as a talented amateur, but she's got a lot more talent than I could hope to show. The art fits the flavor of the book very well, and like many of the older edition books, there are numerous pictures of busty women scantily clad, so I have to give the book props for that.
Although the book has 146 pages, four are basically the title page and table of contents, two contain the legal text and the last page is blank. The rest is all Open Game Content, and there's a lot of great content there. The text is easy to read, and well presented. I had no problems reading it, at all.
Content
After the obligatory introduction page, the author wastes no time in jumping into the rules he wants to present. We start off with the Characters chapter and ability scores. Ability scores are further defined than in Swords & Wizardry (S&W), offering additional modifiers and clarifications that lend themselves to a simplified AD&D 1st Edition feel in some ways. Although the stat breakdown is based on four-point spreads instead of the bell curve of the S&W optional rules, I did like the effort put in here. I may borrow some of this for my own S&W variant, but really, it's for those that want a simple 1E flavor to their characters. System shock is back, and the number of languages you can speak are defined now.
Character races have been separated from class, and a new consistent rule for level limits for non-humans based on your class's prime requisite stats is introduced that I really like. The races of WO:Sup1 include the common races of men, dwarves, elves, and halflings, as well as new races (inspired by newer editions, it would appear) such as the forged ones, giantkin, tigrans and trollkin. I like the flavor of the newer races, and in general, their abilities seem somewhat reasonable when compared to the original races. (They may be a little more powerful than the average, but not nearly as bad as other examples of these concepts that I've seen.)
The character classes of this book include re-writes of the three primary classes of S&W (Fighting-Man, Cleric and Magic-User), as well as six new sub-classes, two for each of the main classes. These are Druids and Shao Disciples (for Cleric), Divine Champions and Rangers (for Fighting-Man) and Illusionists and Bard (for Magic-Users). In each case, the classes typically have a nubmer of new abilities they can gain over the course of their adventuring career. For example, Fighting-Men now start with Weapon Mastery, and gain Combat Options (much like MyD20 Lite's Talents in concept and execution). The Magic-User gains spell research and item creation abilities. The Bard has bardic lore, bardic luck (an inspirational ability), spells, the ability to decipher script and a stronghold at higher levels. The list goes on. I like many of the options presented here, and I will likely integrate some of them into my own growing Player's Guide.
In addition to new special abilities, each class is defined with three new saving throw types based on 3E's save categories: Ego (Will), Dodge (Reflex) and Toughness (Fortitude). This is a bit confusing at first, as these columns aren't explained until you get to the saving throws section under Combat, but those who have read MyD20 already know that's a direction I went as well, so I like it.
The Equipment chapter is short, but contains a large variety of weapons and armor types, as well as more items available for purchase. I particularly liked the three adventurer's pack options.
After that, we come to the Magic section. Here, we are treated to some clarification on spellcasting that brings magic closer to that simplified 1E feel, and then cover spelllists and spells for each of the spellcasting classes. Within each class, spells are listed alphabetically, without regard for level.
A two page section introduces the continuous initiative system, which pretty much starts you out on a particular number and then you simply add your next initiative roll to your current score to get the next place on the initiative ladder you go. There are no circular rounds. Taking faster actions means you get to do more in a combat than taking slower actions.
The Combat chapter offers a good number of clarifications that bring the game closer to that simplified 1E feel I'd noticed before. All in all, I like the clarifications. The concept that a critical fumble gives all enemies within melee attack range a free attack against you is cool, and one that I will probably introduce into my games. Another interesting twist I noticed was that, with no Rogue class in the game, there's a rule that basically gives everyone the ability to backstab. As I said, there's some neat stuff there.
A two page section on Playing the Game introduces rules to let characters make listening checks to hear noises, detect traps and secret doors, and heal others a little (1d3) after combat by bandaging them up, as well as clarifying the power of wishes.
Monsters is our next stop. At nine pages and over twenty monsters, there's some neat new stuff in here, included a lower HD minotaur species that could have been a character race, dragons of Onn, some new elemental types, forged ones and mek stats, and even a Shifter Cat that resembles a certain miniature I have of a panther-like creature with tentacles popping out of its shoulders. I definitely liked seeing that in the list.
Twenty-two pages of treasure really help to integrate the new spells, classes and races into a World of Onn game. I liked flipping through this part and reading some of the new things I found within this section. The Elemental Armor is pretty cool, as are the Elemental Weapons, and some of the new miscellaneous items. I'm going to have a lot of fun raiding this section.
After magic, we finally get to see a two-page hex map of the World of Onn on pp. 120-121, and we're off into the world of Onn. The history section is a page and a half, and then there's half a page on altering Onn to make it your own game. There are both steampunk meks and black powder weapons by default in the Onn setting, but the Referee is encouraged to make changes if they feel the need. Six pages cover the list of lands, which are short and succinct but very well written, with lots of adventure ideas in them. (Of course, there's the ubiquitous Great Kingdom among the entries, probably a tribute to the old kingdom of the same name shared by both Greyhawk and Blackmoor back in the day.)
The Appendices of WO:Sup1 are interesting and varied. There's a one-page synopsis of the deities of the World of Onn, followed by a one-page appendix on golemcraft. After that, we spend two pages on rules for enchanting magic items, and three pages on familiars. Finally, there are three pages on strongholds and followers, including a table for each major class in regards to the type of followers a character of that class might attract, at least in terms of numbers and levels.
Whew, that's a lot to pack into one book!
My Thoughts
All in all, I really like the flavor of this book. If I weren't writing my own S&W variant, I'd be using this book for my next D&D-based game. There's a lot of good meat in there, and it's very well integrated with itself. I definitely consider it a quality effort. As it is, I know I'm going to be raiding it for a few things here and there.
It does have a few downfalls, but these are minor. The art, as I've mentioned, does have an amateurish quality to it. I like it, but there are some that might not. While I like a lot of what's in the supplement, I don't like some of the things: I think the Continuous Initiative Cycle is an interesting idea, but I don't want to use it in my game. It just doesn't appeal to me. Also, I don't like mechs and such in my fantasy. That's one of the reasons I didn't get into Eberron back in the day. I don't mind black powder weapons, though.
There may be those that may feel that twenty pages or so out of 146 is too little for a world setting. I like the way it was handled, but I think I would have enjoyed more information regarding the setting. I thought I was getting a bit more of that when I picked out the book. Still, that being said, I really like what I got, so I'm still glad I picked this one up.
All in all, I'd have to rate this product as an 8 out of 10.
Now that you've heard what I have to say, what do you think of the book? Please feel free to leave a comment and let me know, and if you liked the review, I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts on that, too.
With Regards,
Flynn
This is a quick review of the World of Onn: Supplement I, by Jim Bobb of Fantasy Adventures Studio. This review is based on the Print-On-Demand version of the product. The World of Onn: Supplement I book, which I will abbreviate for the rest of this review as WO:Sup1, is compatible with the Swords & Wizardry Core Rules.
Appearance
In Print-On-Demand format, WO:Sup1 is a standard-sized softcover RPG text. Its black cover and white lettering are very simple and understated. The line art used for the front cover image is a bit pixelated, but captures the flavor of the early editions of "the World's Most Popular Roleplaying Game" that Swords & Wizardry was created to emulate. The text on the back cover is large and easy to read, offering a description of the contents of the book: expanded character abilities, new sub-classes, new items, new spells, new monsters, some combat variations, and a World of Onn gazetteer. That's a lot to pack in 146 pages, but I think it does a pretty good job of it.
Kimberly Nicholson did the cover art and all of the interior black-and-white line art, keeping a consistent "old school" flavor to the artwork throughout the book. Her work comes across as a talented amateur, but she's got a lot more talent than I could hope to show. The art fits the flavor of the book very well, and like many of the older edition books, there are numerous pictures of busty women scantily clad, so I have to give the book props for that.
Although the book has 146 pages, four are basically the title page and table of contents, two contain the legal text and the last page is blank. The rest is all Open Game Content, and there's a lot of great content there. The text is easy to read, and well presented. I had no problems reading it, at all.
Content
After the obligatory introduction page, the author wastes no time in jumping into the rules he wants to present. We start off with the Characters chapter and ability scores. Ability scores are further defined than in Swords & Wizardry (S&W), offering additional modifiers and clarifications that lend themselves to a simplified AD&D 1st Edition feel in some ways. Although the stat breakdown is based on four-point spreads instead of the bell curve of the S&W optional rules, I did like the effort put in here. I may borrow some of this for my own S&W variant, but really, it's for those that want a simple 1E flavor to their characters. System shock is back, and the number of languages you can speak are defined now.
Character races have been separated from class, and a new consistent rule for level limits for non-humans based on your class's prime requisite stats is introduced that I really like. The races of WO:Sup1 include the common races of men, dwarves, elves, and halflings, as well as new races (inspired by newer editions, it would appear) such as the forged ones, giantkin, tigrans and trollkin. I like the flavor of the newer races, and in general, their abilities seem somewhat reasonable when compared to the original races. (They may be a little more powerful than the average, but not nearly as bad as other examples of these concepts that I've seen.)
The character classes of this book include re-writes of the three primary classes of S&W (Fighting-Man, Cleric and Magic-User), as well as six new sub-classes, two for each of the main classes. These are Druids and Shao Disciples (for Cleric), Divine Champions and Rangers (for Fighting-Man) and Illusionists and Bard (for Magic-Users). In each case, the classes typically have a nubmer of new abilities they can gain over the course of their adventuring career. For example, Fighting-Men now start with Weapon Mastery, and gain Combat Options (much like MyD20 Lite's Talents in concept and execution). The Magic-User gains spell research and item creation abilities. The Bard has bardic lore, bardic luck (an inspirational ability), spells, the ability to decipher script and a stronghold at higher levels. The list goes on. I like many of the options presented here, and I will likely integrate some of them into my own growing Player's Guide.
In addition to new special abilities, each class is defined with three new saving throw types based on 3E's save categories: Ego (Will), Dodge (Reflex) and Toughness (Fortitude). This is a bit confusing at first, as these columns aren't explained until you get to the saving throws section under Combat, but those who have read MyD20 already know that's a direction I went as well, so I like it.
The Equipment chapter is short, but contains a large variety of weapons and armor types, as well as more items available for purchase. I particularly liked the three adventurer's pack options.
After that, we come to the Magic section. Here, we are treated to some clarification on spellcasting that brings magic closer to that simplified 1E feel, and then cover spelllists and spells for each of the spellcasting classes. Within each class, spells are listed alphabetically, without regard for level.
A two page section introduces the continuous initiative system, which pretty much starts you out on a particular number and then you simply add your next initiative roll to your current score to get the next place on the initiative ladder you go. There are no circular rounds. Taking faster actions means you get to do more in a combat than taking slower actions.
The Combat chapter offers a good number of clarifications that bring the game closer to that simplified 1E feel I'd noticed before. All in all, I like the clarifications. The concept that a critical fumble gives all enemies within melee attack range a free attack against you is cool, and one that I will probably introduce into my games. Another interesting twist I noticed was that, with no Rogue class in the game, there's a rule that basically gives everyone the ability to backstab. As I said, there's some neat stuff there.
A two page section on Playing the Game introduces rules to let characters make listening checks to hear noises, detect traps and secret doors, and heal others a little (1d3) after combat by bandaging them up, as well as clarifying the power of wishes.
Monsters is our next stop. At nine pages and over twenty monsters, there's some neat new stuff in here, included a lower HD minotaur species that could have been a character race, dragons of Onn, some new elemental types, forged ones and mek stats, and even a Shifter Cat that resembles a certain miniature I have of a panther-like creature with tentacles popping out of its shoulders. I definitely liked seeing that in the list.
Twenty-two pages of treasure really help to integrate the new spells, classes and races into a World of Onn game. I liked flipping through this part and reading some of the new things I found within this section. The Elemental Armor is pretty cool, as are the Elemental Weapons, and some of the new miscellaneous items. I'm going to have a lot of fun raiding this section.
After magic, we finally get to see a two-page hex map of the World of Onn on pp. 120-121, and we're off into the world of Onn. The history section is a page and a half, and then there's half a page on altering Onn to make it your own game. There are both steampunk meks and black powder weapons by default in the Onn setting, but the Referee is encouraged to make changes if they feel the need. Six pages cover the list of lands, which are short and succinct but very well written, with lots of adventure ideas in them. (Of course, there's the ubiquitous Great Kingdom among the entries, probably a tribute to the old kingdom of the same name shared by both Greyhawk and Blackmoor back in the day.)
The Appendices of WO:Sup1 are interesting and varied. There's a one-page synopsis of the deities of the World of Onn, followed by a one-page appendix on golemcraft. After that, we spend two pages on rules for enchanting magic items, and three pages on familiars. Finally, there are three pages on strongholds and followers, including a table for each major class in regards to the type of followers a character of that class might attract, at least in terms of numbers and levels.
Whew, that's a lot to pack into one book!
My Thoughts
All in all, I really like the flavor of this book. If I weren't writing my own S&W variant, I'd be using this book for my next D&D-based game. There's a lot of good meat in there, and it's very well integrated with itself. I definitely consider it a quality effort. As it is, I know I'm going to be raiding it for a few things here and there.
It does have a few downfalls, but these are minor. The art, as I've mentioned, does have an amateurish quality to it. I like it, but there are some that might not. While I like a lot of what's in the supplement, I don't like some of the things: I think the Continuous Initiative Cycle is an interesting idea, but I don't want to use it in my game. It just doesn't appeal to me. Also, I don't like mechs and such in my fantasy. That's one of the reasons I didn't get into Eberron back in the day. I don't mind black powder weapons, though.
There may be those that may feel that twenty pages or so out of 146 is too little for a world setting. I like the way it was handled, but I think I would have enjoyed more information regarding the setting. I thought I was getting a bit more of that when I picked out the book. Still, that being said, I really like what I got, so I'm still glad I picked this one up.
All in all, I'd have to rate this product as an 8 out of 10.
Now that you've heard what I have to say, what do you think of the book? Please feel free to leave a comment and let me know, and if you liked the review, I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts on that, too.
With Regards,
Flynn
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