Tommy's Take on Buffy the Vampire Slayer Revised Corebook

No, a new Buffy RPG didn't come out. This is the one that came out...holy crap...eleven years ago, from Eden Studios. This is not an old review, though. Yes, this is a brand new review of an eleven year old RPG that I got when it was brand new.

Why?

Because it's badass, and you can still get copies for cover price on Amazon even though it's out of print. You can also get the PDF for $20 at RPGNow. (Disclaimer: That last one was an Affiliate link.)

#RPGaDay Day 6: Favorite RPG I Never Get To Play

I'm taking "play" to mean "GM", as I rarely play and I'm okay with that...and, again, I'm giving two answers instead of one, but there's a good reason for that.



Like the TV shows, the RPGs can be taken separately or complimentary with each other (in fact, my actual favorite combo is Angel combined with The Magic Box supplement for Buffy). These RPGs hold a very special place in my heart, in part because I love the shows to death, and in part because the larger Buffyverse line holds my first RPG writing credits (including a Buffyverse related article for Eden Studios Presents vol. 2 and an additional writing credit on Angel). Three times I have attempted campaigns (one a Buffy playtest campaign, one an IRC based online game and one an Angel game), and each time they just never "clicked", even though I was super enthused and everyone said they were having a great time. I even prepared a fourth campaign, which could be best described as The Dead Zone meets Friday the 13th The Series meets Beauty & The Beast, but we never even made it to our first session. I had grown quite adept at getting the Cinematic Unisystem to do the things I wanted it to do.

I still have all the Buffy books, all the Angel playtest files, and occasionally poke around them and get ideas, but I know better than to go down that trail again *sigh*.

Actually, The Angel RPG led directly to my Savage Worlds obsession, in a funny story. I caught wind that the Angel GM screen was on clearance at a game shop and when I went in to pick it up, I saw Savage Worlds Explorer's Edition. I had traded away my original Savage Worlds rulebook (I just HATED it. The rules were bad, the characters were all the same and there was NO flavor. Yeah, I was every guy I've argued with since), but I had seen all this buzz on the internet about the Savage Worlds settings and I figured $20 for the screen I wanted (but would never use) plus the Savage Worlds rules seemed like a good enough deal...and grew hooked on Savage Worlds.

Probably one of the reasons I can't get a Buffy/Angel game going *now*.                                                                    

Tommy's Take on Buffy the Vampire Slayer Board Game

Let me preface this by saying that this review is the first review I had ever written of anything, and appeared at RPG.net over 12 years ago. Since then, I have encountered a number of board games that trump this one, but I still maintain that this game was head and shoulders above the licensed games and typical Wal-Mart shelf fare available at the time (or, y'know, now).

Enjoy my first ever review. Ever.

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Looking around a nearby game shop not long ago, I found the Buffy the Vampire Slayer board game from Hasbro. Looking it over, I wound up putting it back on the shelf due to lack of funds. A couple of months later my girlfriend picked it up for me, since she's a fan of board and card games, if not RPGs.

Man, I love her.

Tommy's Take on Deadlands One Shots and Angel & Faith #1

DEADLANDS: MASSACRE AT RED WING

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: The second one shot in the new Deadlands series by Image Comics has much  closer ties to Deadlands canon than the first one, as the main character is the illegitimate daughter of Raven, who is kind of a big deal in the Deadlands spectrum. Written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray and drawn by Lee Moder, Massacre at Red Wing is a revenge tale with action taken straight from the Deadlands Reloaded playbook. The back-up continues the tale of The Kid, in a flashback explaining how he came to be aware of the monsters in the Deadlands world.

WHAT WORKS: Avenging, nameless characters are kind of a staple in westerns, and Raven's daughter doesn't really reach much further past that archetype, but that is perfectly acceptable in this genre. It is nice seeing a hard tie-in to Deadlands canon, of course.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: The Kid's follow-up is a bit of a letdown to the "WHOA" from his introduction, but the whole story is only something like 12 pages once the whole thing is complete, so you can't blame 'em. Raven's Daughter's costume is overtly cheesecake. I'm also not sure where she got her looks from after seeing her father and mother. No "bonus" in this issue for Savage Worlds players, unfortunately.

CONCLUSION: While this one is more of an archetypical western tale than the Devil's Six Gun was, it's not quite as strong as the previous issue, in either the main tale or the back-up. Raven's Daughter's design is very "comic book", and not in a good way, with an outfit that is sure to cause wardrobe malfunctions. The ending is almost surely a set-up for next year's comics, which are promising to tell "The" Deadlands story. Good stuff, if not quite quite as good as Devil's Six Gun.

DEADLANDS: DEATH WAS SILENT

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: Written by Ron Marz and drawn by Bart Sears, Death Was Silent is the third Deadlands one shot. When I read that Bart Sears was drawing a western, I was...skeptical. Sears does great, muscular superheroes, but he managed to adapt his style very well to the genre, drawing a tale that is darker and grittier than I expect. This is the tale of Hoyt Cooper, a mute bounty hunter who rides into town with a couple of secrets...and a dead body strapped across his horse. The back-up features more flashbacks from The Kid.

WHAT WORKS: Sears transforms his style to fit the genre very well, producing a very moody piece of work that is, thus far, the pinnacle (no pun intended) of the Deadlands releases, stylistically speaking. Hoyt Cooper wears a magic item on his chest that, at first, had me banging my head at the lack of reaction to it, but it all makes a ton of sense by the end. Not surprisingly, Marz' script holds up nicely, making for a great combination.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: More and more, I think I would have liked that back-up strip turned into its own comic, as the pacing just doesn't seem to work for it here, making the long awaited debut of Billy the Kid a little anticlimatic. Again, I lament the lack of a "bonus" for Savage Worlds players.

CONCLUSION: The potential for great Deadlands comics was always there, but Visionary Comics have really brought their "A-Game" with the releases thus far, landing not only name creators, but *quality* creators who are putting forth great comics. I assume that these one shots, and the Billy the Kid back-up, are just setting the stage for year two, which sounds to be an even more ambitious undertaking...and I, for one, look forward to it.

ANGEL & FAITH #1

So long as they avoid the annoying
sexual tension subplot.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: If you stopped following the Buffyverse after the Buffy and Angel shows went off the air, you're going to be a bit lost. However, the set-up is pretty simple: Angel has done Very Bad Things again, and is trying to make amends. This time, his Very Bad Things are at LEAST as bad as his Season 2 stint as Angelus, without the same level of deniability, and Faith is the only one willing to give him a big shot on the whole "redemption" thing (in a call-back to why she's not dead or a villian herself). So Faith and Angel are using the Watcher's Files compiled by Rupert Giles to clean up the world in the aftermath of Buffy Season 8.

WHAT WORKS: Christos Gage does a fantastic job setting the stage for the new status quo for Angel and Faith, capturing their voices very well. Rebekah Isaacs does a nice job drawing the comic in the "style" of Georges Jeannty, who has been handling art duties on Buffy for most of Season 8, making sure that you can tell that Giles is Giles, Angel is Angel, Faith is Faith and that surprise character from YEARS ago on Buffy looks like their TV counterpart.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: Not much. I mean, we get two brand new characters introduced, who apparently served Angel during his stint as Twilight in Buffy Season 8, and "created for the comics" characters have been a crapshoot through the last few years of Buffy comics, but I'm willing to give it a shot.

CONCLUSION: Angel is one of my favorite characters of all time, and Christos Gage is a fantastic writer, so I had high hopes for this book. If this is any indication, the "back to basics" approach for Buffy Season 9 should work very well, and at the least, Angel & Faith is off to a great start.