Dungeonlands Kickstarter and Heroes & Servitors

The 24 Hour Design Party is complete, and the Dungeonlands Kickstarter is live!

Here is release info on the Kickstarter:

DUNGEONLANDS: TOMB OF THE LICH QUEEN

Savage Mojo's Old School Killer Dungeon which will be released in both Savage Worlds and Pathfinder versions.

Savage Mojo is pleased to announce DUNGEONLANDS, our upcoming killer dungeon set in the First Age of Relic, our fantasy realm, where your heroes will answer a call through time and space to rescue an angel imprisoned by the Lich-Queen.

Her Tomb is littered with the bones of all the heroes that came before. Her Machine spews forth endless hordes of chaos. Her Palace will hold your finest hour...or your crushing defeat.

The first Savage Mojo product produced for both Pathfinder and Savage Worlds, DUNGEONLANDS combines the epic adventure you've come to love from Savage Suzerain with classic, old school dungeons that have shaped the foundations of fantasy gaming.

There's an award-winning development team behind our Dungeonlands line, including writers John Wick (Legend of the Five Rings, 7th Sea, Houses of the Blooded http://johnwickpresents.com/) and Lee Szczepanik, Jr (War of the Dead http://www.daringentertain.com/); artists Jason Engle (http://jaestudio.com/), Jim Pavelec (http://jimpavelec.com/), Aaron Acevedo (http://aaronace.com/), Alida Saxon (http://alidasaxon.com/); and Savage Mojo (http://savagemojo.com/), ENnie and Origins Award winning publishers of Suzerain roleplaying games, Gamescapes roleplaying game accessories, and Brainradio fiction.

We're raising funds to create two books (one for Pathfinder rules and another for Savage Worlds) and a wide variety of accessories too: character cards, monster cards, a full soundtrack, tile maps for the entire dungeon, and more! We have a lot of great pledge rewards, including commissions from Jason Engle, custom tile map sets personalized for your game, or even illustrated fiction based on your character! Look for more on these and other rewards in the coming updates.

Funding Goal: $5,000
Deadline: October 14th.

HEROES & SERVITORS

They came from all corners of the universe,
heroes to defeat the Lich Queen
and free an angel from the Dungeonlands.

They came from all corners of the universe,
servitors of vile alien gods to protect the Lich Queen
and keep an angel imprisoned in the Dungeonlands.

High Fantasy; Epic Conflict

Heroes & Servitors is a book of pre-generated characters, ready to play
with backstories written. Get straight into the action. And for GMs,
there’s an evil, twisted version of each character, together with a premade
fiendish dungeon encounter especially for them. However you
mix them up, they’re bound to enliven your killer dungeon experience.

This is a product for the Savage Worlds rules system and Savage Suzerain. A Pathfinder version is in development.
A copy of Dungeonlands: Tomb of the Lich Queen is recommended to
make the most of this book.

Heroes & Servitors was created by the Savage Mojo crew over a 24 period as the end result of the Savage Mojo 24 Hour Design Party.

Christmas in July!

Yeah, RPGNow/DriveThruRPG is doing the Christmas in July sale again!

This means that a crap ton of stuff is marked down 25% until July 30th, including lots of Savage Worlds stuff (like Suzerain, Interface Zero, Deadlands, Beasts & Barbarians, Wellstone City), the Cortex+ games (Smallville, Leverage and Marvel Heroic), the BASH series of games, Scaldcrow's great generic supplements and a LOT more.

Christmas in July!

It is Christmas in July over at RPGnow, with a BUNCH of publishers putting a lot of products on sale for it. You have little over five days left to partake in the awesome, so get to crackin'!

Tommy's Take on Kiss of the Frog God

Kiss of the Frog God is a 6-Pack Adventure by Postmortem Studios for the Lamentations of the Flame Princess RPG, written by Michael "The Crazy GM" Garcia...that is, the adventure was written by Michael Garcia, not the RPG.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: The 6-Pack Adventures line are meant to be pick-up and play one shots that can either be played standalone or dropped into your campaign. They have been released for a few different systems, most of which have their roots somewhere in D&D. Kiss of the Frog God includes everything you need, including map, tokens and pre-generated characters and sells for $1.99 in PDF format.

The adventure itself involves pilgrims seeking atonement (the PCs) stumbling across a town that is being tormented by a corrupted pagan spirit. In addition, a pair of young lesbians who have been deemed sinners by the town have went looking for said fey spirit, under the mistaken impression that it can wed them. As is my policy, I won't get heavy into spoilers, though I will say that the Big Bad's underlings are freakishly terrifying and the Boss Fight itself has a very nice hook to it that prevents it from being a straight-up "stand up and fight".

Each of the six pre-generated PCs are fleshed out in such a way that each is given a hook that haunts them, making them more than just a group of statistics.

Although the adventure itself is only five scenes spread out over three pages, there certainly feels like enough material here for a full night of adventure, especially with the extra options for Scene 4.

WHAT WORKS: First off, the Frog Men (the underlings for the adventure) are downright terrifying, and do a good job by themselves of capturing the "weird fantasy" aspect over just any Basic D&D adventure. The catch for the boss fight is also a nice touch, forcing a bit of thought for the resolution, without feeling like it is cheating. The map is really well done, with some great production values. Two of the NPCs are set up as dueling personalities, and while we are clearly meant to sympathize with one, they are both at least partially responsible for the events that draw the PCs in, a nice bit of writing that makes the characters feel more real.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: Two of the pregens are closeted homosexual lovers, and the author's notes about playing the gay couple come across a bit defensive and condescending. Gamers in general have come a long way from the days when homosexuality was on the mental illness chart in Palladium games and while some folks may have issues with the "two gay men" aspect, in my experience a lot of folks are going to be equally uncomfortable with the solution of "just change one of them to a female and play the couple that way". I don't really think it's a matter of being insecure in one's sexuality, but a general aversion towards roleplaying romantic relationships among PCs in general, ESPECIALLY in D&D-type adventures. That said, it IS a good hook in that it ties into adventure's hook thematically. The "Pilgrims seeking atonement" plot hook works great for a demo or con game, but is *really* specific for a "drop into your own game" session, but that's a minor quibble as the town could be dropped onto any road along the way, and the PCs drawn into the affairs of the village. The proof-reading could have been a lot tighter, as I not only caught homonyms that made it past editing, but mis-use of apostrophes and even a typo in the editor's name in the credits.

CONCLUSION: I got more "weird fantasy" from this adventure than I did from reading Lamentations of the Flame Princess in its entirety, and I mean that as a compliment. This adventure provides compelling reason to re-read LotFP and see if there wasn't something I was just missing in there (I had high hopes going in, initially, but was underwhelmed). I applaud the author for tackling themes that aren't commonplace in fantasy adventures, as it didn't feel like political correctness for its own sake, nor did it feel like an attempt to be "shocking" and "in your face"...in the future I would just toss in a blanket warning up front (if the author feels like it is necessary at all). As usual for a Postmortem Studios project, it's certainly worth the money, even for a guy like me who doesn't play the system it is designed for (a Savage Worlds conversion would take very little time at all, I'm thinking). Good buy for an evening's worth of play and, if you're like me and re-use maps a lot, the map included is a very nice piece of work (a swampy grove, to be exact).

Feb-wu-ary FTW

One more quick note for the day:

Beginning today, Third Eye Games is giving away a copy of Wu Xing in PDF format every day this month.

Anyone who reads my blog knows I am a big fan of this game, and anyone who may be new to the blog can read my review here.

I highly recommend entering to win a copy of this amazing game. You can learn more about entering here.

Tommy's Top Six and Birthday Blog Giveaway

I reviewed a LOT of games since I opened my blog last year, and I wanted to take a special moment to recognize the six that captured my attention the most, provided that they fit under the following criteria: 1) I had to have reviewed the title on my blog from January 1st through December 17th. Unlike some year end awards, I'm not concerned with actual release dates, but when the books actually made it into my hands. 2) Only one book per company was allowed. This rule came in because one draft of the list had four books by two companies. The Top Six itself is a purely arbitrary number...I like the number six, nothing more.

There were a lot of products that I really enjoyed, that didn't get tagged for a certain reason, and I plan on doing a follow-up with a couple of those, explaining why I didn't choose certain titles.

Without further ado, in alphabetical order:

BASH ULTIMATE EDITION (Basic Action Games)

Why You Should Buy It: I love superheroes. It's part of the reason I write comics...(even though I have yet to do a traditional superhero book, unfortunately). Marvel SAGA is my favorite RPG of all time, flawed though it is...I've read a lot of superhero games since then, but none have captured my imagination in the same way as BASH, and I am hard pressed to think of a superhero game that does as much, with as little work. It has an "equalizer" for characters of multiple power levels on the same team, it provides plenty of options for making characters without the same level of bean counting that you get with Mutants and Masterminds or Champions, and it scales up from gritty to cosmic, all in the main rulebook. It currently holds the distinction of being the only game that I have ever purchased twice, once in PDF format and once in softcover. In fact, if the new version being released through Cubicle 7 is full color, I may go so far as to buy it one more time (and donate my black and white copy to someone). Chris Rutkowsky has made what is, to my mind, one of the best RPGs I have ever read, as it hits pretty much all of my sweet spots without a ton of work. For me, certain other major superhero RPGs are either underwritten, or incredibly overdone to the point of being Too Much Work...but BASH never has that problem. With Vigilance Press and Daring Entertainment coming aboard as third party licensees, I hope that BASH gains the following that I feel it truly deserves.

Buy the PDF at RPGnow, and look for the print version in 2011 from Cubicle 7.

HIGH VALOR (Silverlion Studios/Better Mousetrap Games)

Why You Should Buy It: I love fantasy gaming, but I can't make myself do Dungeons & Dragons anymore. I want epic, high fantasy, not dungeon crawls...and, as you may have guessed, I don't want it to be Too Much Work. High Valor is pretty much rules light, but never goes too far away from being a game. Just because you have three stats (kinda like you do in BASH, actually), and monsters only have one, doesn't mean it's not still a game. I love the mechanic of borrowing back and forth between your pools when you REALLY need to accomplish something, and I really like the fairly freeform nature of Magic and Miracles. I think one thing I love the most is that your experience comes from your Triumphs and Dooms...even epic failures help to define you, as you and your legend grows over time. Be Epic. High Valor wants you to. Don't kill a monster and take its stuff, risk life and limb to destroy an elder troll terrorizing the region, and take its head as a warning to all other foul creatures...and if it happens to rip your eye out? Then your legend is even more epic. The setting is dark, but not TOO dark...providing a growing storm of evil, sure, but you're expected to fight it *and win*. To boot, Tim Kirk seems dead set on making books that stand alone, so if you buy this? All you need is this...plus, the system is incredibly easy to convert to, since the monsters are basically one stat plus flavor text. Now, this isn't a highly tactical combat game...but it is a pretty damn awesome fantasy epic.

Buy the PDF at RPGnow, or the print version at Lulu.

INTERFACE ZERO (Gun Metal Games)

Why You Should Buy It: This is precisely what Savage Worlds settings could (and, IMHO, should) be. I'm not saying that every Savage Setting needs to ape Interface Zero, I'm saying that publishers shouldn't be afraid to make their game. Gun Metal Games does not hesitate to provide you with new Hacking rules, Cyberspace, cybernetics and the single coolest equipment chapter I have read since, well, Pinnacle released a whole book for Deadlands (both the Interface Zero equipment chapter and the Deadlands book - Smith & Robards - are written as catalogs). I'm also a sucker for random tables, as anyone that reads my reviews should know, and so not only does Gun Metal Games provide an adventure generator, but they also provide a random Bounty generator! The crazy part is that as comprehensive as this book is (at 300 pages), there is still a TON of room for development! Psychics will be coming this year, and publisher David Jarvis has been hyping it pretty heavily over on the Savage Worlds forums at www.peginc.com, if you wanna check that out. Also, Gun Metal Games and Silver Gryphon Games have announced that we will be getting an "Interface Zero" version of the latter's Wellstone City...and given the people involved, combined with the Savage Worlds system, I can't feature it not being twelve shades of awesome. In the meantime, get IZ and get acquainted with a world where life is cheap, especially if you were born in a vat (or built from the ground up).

Buy the PDF at RPGNow.

Leverage (Margaret Weis Productions)

Why You Should Buy It: Oh, man, what a year these guys had, and all because of two releases: Smallville and Leverage. Smallville was a GREAT game...but I'm not a fan of the show. Leverage was a GREAT game, and I AM a fan of the show. However, making a faithful adaptation of the show wouldn't have been enough to make the list. And luckily, they did more than that: Sure, you can run the Leverage crew, no problem...and you can build your own crew from the ground up. However, the book walks you through basically every step necessary to set up your world and run your game, including (YES!) random generators for making Jobs for your Crew to take! When I read the quickstart, I was excited, but scared to death: I mean, seriously, how in the heck do you run LEVERAGE as an RPG? For me, it seemed awfully daunting...and then came one of the best GMing chapters I have ever read. At that point, I was mostly just sad not to have the opportunity to run it right now. Great concepts get mangled in translation all the time, but Margaret Weis Productions took this opportunity and knocked it out of the park. Just an amazingly well-written rulebook and a phenomenal translation of the TV show.

Buy the PDF at RPGnow, or order the hardcopy from Margaret Weis Productions.

War of the Dead Chapter One (Daring Entertainment)

Why You Should Buy It: One of the most ambitious projects ever released for Savage Worlds, War of the Dead is a four part, epic campaign beginning on a simple cruise ship and changing the world forever. This is the zombie apocalypse come to Savage Worlds in a way that Zombie Run could never have been. Chapter One is the first thirteen weeks of the campaign, taking your hapless, Novice characters from their life-changing cruise, back to land, including a conflict with a ruthless biker gang and relative safety in one of the remaining refuges left. The world is familiar and filled with inside references to famous zombie creators like George Romero and Robert Kirkman, but most importantly, Lee Szczepanik understands the strengths of the system he is writing for, filling adventures with massive battles against zombie hordes that would have GMs pulling their hair out under many systems. Also, I'm a big fan of how many of the episodes feature random encounter charts, using card draws, specialized for the location and situation. Plus, of the books on this list, the support for War of the Dead absolutely blows the other picks away, with freebie adventures that fill the gap between Chapter One and Chapter Two, as well as one of the coolest sets of paper miniatures I have seen in The Paper Dead, including a printable RV with "anti zombie" attachments! If you like The Walking Dead or Night of the Living Dead, and wanna play something like it, this is it, right here. Chapter Two is in the home stretch now, and has even eclipsed Chapter One in some ways, though it has never failed to live up to the promise of Chapter One, even at its low points, in my opinion. I admit, when this project was first announced, I threw up my shoulders with a resounding "eh"...but going on nearly twenty six installments now (not even counting the free adventures), and Daring Entertainment has produced a Savage Worlds campaign with some amazing promise, as well as a scope rarely seen in this genre (again, The Walking Dead is the closest thing that comes to mind).

Buy the PDF at RPGnow, or order the print version from Cubicle 7.

Wu Xing: The Ninja Crusade (Third Eye Games)

Why You Should Buy It: I like superheroes, high fantasy, zombies, Leverage...I'm not BIG into cyberpunk, but I'll try anything in Savage Worlds. I kinda hate most anime, and I'm just not into oriental mysticism/mythology/history, etc. So why is Wu Xing here? Because I am not into those things and this book just stood out as one of the coolest books I have read in recent memory, perhaps ever. I had no real experience with Third Eye Games before this year, though I did get Apocalypse Prevention Inc. in the Haiti Bundle, but it kind of got lost in the shuffle when I was trying to download and read EVERYTHING. After Eloy Lasanta approached me about the game, I gave it an honest go, and really loved what I read there...so I checked out Wu Xing on the strength of API (which is right up my comfort zone, genre-wise)...what I found was a very cool, over the top, albeit westernized (to the annoyance of some, not me) martial arts fantasy epic.  The production is fairly light in this day and age, but that just means the book is filled with content. Plot hooks are all over the thing, and Third Eye Games doesn't truck in metaplots, meaning that if you want to expand something there and run with it, or answering one of the burning questions, there is no wrong answer and you are not likely to find something completely invalidated by a future book. All of the clans just come alive, and what could easily have been a rigid, "not much else to do" setting is instead loaded with intrigue and plot hooks. Any RPG that can take a genre I pretty much can't stand and make me go "oh, crap, I GOTTA play" is a big winner in my book. Wu Xing is just full of "cool".

Buy the PDF at RPGnow (where Wu Xing is also listed as Print on Demand option for those who have it available) or pick up the print version at Beautiful Brains Books & Games.

And now, the cool part:

These six publishers have pledged to give you, dear readers, a chance to win PDFs of these games, as part of the "Thank you" for reading the blog and the reviews of their fine games. Here are the prizes:

- Three (3) PDF copies of BASH Ultimate Edition (awarded separately) -OR- a Basic Action Games PDF of your choice, if you already own BASH.
- A PDF copy of High Valor.
- A PDF copy of Interface Zero plus a poster-sized PDF of the cover.
- Three (3) PDF copies of the Leverage RPG.
- A complete War of the Dead Chapter One PDF bundle, including the entire War of the Dead Chapter One, The Paper Dead and all of the Freebies released to date, everything you need (except for the Savage Worlds rules) in order to jump into Chapter Two.
- A PDF copy of Wu Xing: The Ninja Crusade.

To enter, simply send me an e-mail to tommyb(a)sstelco(dot)com, with the subject (minus the quotes) "Happy Birthday Blog", listing your order of preference for the prize. Once I have closed entries by 11:59 PM Central Time on January 15th, I will use a randomizer to determine the winners...#1 gets their first choice, #2 gets their first available choice (their first choice if it wasn't taken, second if it was, and so on). If you are wanting a BASH PDF that isn't Ultimate Edition, specify it in the e-mail.

Thank you all so much for reading this blog, thanks to Michael Wolf at Stargazer's World, whose shoutout helped spike my blog traffic immensely over the summer, thank you to the Top Six publishers for the prize support for this giveaway, thank you to every publisher who gave me product to review over this last year, and thank you to Sean Patrick Fannon of RPGnow for allowing me in the affiliate program, which literally allowed me to make it to and from work when I started a new job last summer and otherwise had *nothing* to put in my gas tank.

Next up on the slate: A few products that were exceptional, but why I didn't pick them for the Top Six, reviews of the Squawk RPG as well as Dust Devils Revenged, an overall look back on 2010, some WWE thoughts for old times sake, probably a full on review of Smackdown vs Raw, the Legendary installment of Savage Worlds Characters Are All The Same, the new Supers version of it, and a look at RPGnow's new Print on Demand program (as I was apparently one of the last ones in the pilot program to get my book...despite ordering two hours after it launched).

Thank you, have a Happy New Year, and come back soon!

Tommy

Free PDF Minimaker!

Before Savage Worlds, I never liked to use miniatures in my games at all.

After Savage Worlds, I found myself using them quite a bit...between extra HeroClix and Mage Knight pieces and what have come to be known in Savage Worlds vernacular as Figure Flats - cardboard stand-ups folded up and used on the battlemat.

Affordable, printable figure flats are awesome, and there are several sets out there, usually keyed to a given setting. Precis Intermedia Games, while not making minis for Savage Worlds, has a whole line of game-neutral but genre-specific figures called Disposable Heroes. They have Statix, which are your standard sets of figure flats, and Customizables, which allow you to print the figures you want, print whole sheets of a given piece, etc. They even released a set that allows you to upload your own images and print out your customized sets.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because that last thing always sounded like the coolest thing I'd never tried...and now Silvervine Games, makers of the Silvervine RPG, have released a free PDF Minimaker. There are two PDFs...one of 1" minis and one for 2" minis, and they function very simply: click on the logo on the on the figure flats and insert any image on your computer. You can place the image on the backside and it will flip it for you...the only thing it won't do is "mirror" the images...and then you print off your minis.

It's not QUITE as versatile as the PIG Build Your Own sets (especially if you want to print off an army), but it's a great set-up in a pinch. While the Minimaker IS on RPGnow, for some reason the file I downloaded off of there would not let me insert my own images...however, the one straight off of their website worked great, so go to their Downloads page and scroll down to access both versions of the Minimaker.

I seriously need to get my printer working again.

Tommy's Take on Druids, Goblins and Unkindness

Expanded Professions: The Druid

Holy smokes...now this is what I'm talking about. Misfit Studios officially tosses their hat into the Savage Worlds ring with a tiny supplement...of awesome. For $1.55 you can download a three page PDF that adds a Druid Professional Edge and then...expands it. What this product really is, is nine Edges starting with Druid and then allowing access to a number of special features and abilities,including a new Legendary Edge that allows the Druid to tap into the senses of all the animals in the surrounding area.

Yeah.

Another Edge piggybacks off of the Beast Master Edge and allows the Druid to impart cool abilities on their animal companion, or even boost the animal's stats. Yet another Edge allows the Druid to be powered by the land, complete with a table you can use to modify the Druid's power points with depending on where they are actually AT (a desert bumps the Druid's points down -4, while a jungle rockets them up a whopping +6, for instance).

Some people will say "too many edges" and "use what's already there"! I say "Holy crap, I wanna play a Druid, at least until some more of these come out...what's that? 'Champion' just came out? I need to pick that up..."

I am obviously very much a fan of this concept. The addition of more Edges (that have a reason for existing) can help dispel that notion that Savage Worlds "ends" at Legendary...and this supplement has a neat trick or two rolled into Edges that some might have tried to place into the Powers system.

If future releases hold up with this one...and I kinda hate Druids, so there you go...Misfit should have a bright future as a licensee.

Monster Brief: Goblins

Like the Expanded Professions, the Monster Briefs are short PDFs at $1.55, taking a given subject matter and "blowing it up" a bit.

In this case, we get an expanded focus on Goblins, complete with a couple of variations. The product is a mild letdown from the awesomeness that is the Expanded Professions, but still very cool. First up, we get introduced to the Beast Wrangler, a goblin that trains various animals for chaos and violence. This entry is mostly hampered by a reference to giant rats from the Pulp GM's Toolkit, an earlier Savage Worlds product that is now a bit on the obscure side due to the push for the various Companions (though the Pulp Toolkit is still available).

Goblin Lords are actually kind of impressive...having enough going for them statistically to be a threat, especially to lower ranked characters, even before you realize that they are also going to be surrounded by a whole tribe.

Goblin Wolf Riders are fairly self explanatory, and include vargrs, which are like dire wolves but big and mean.

The Monster Brief concludes with Ragefur mushrooms, a *very* scary mushroom that can send goblins into a furious berserker rage before possibly killing them...and then it does BAD stuff to non Goblins that eat it.

You know, its just not quite as cool or as useful as the first Expanded Profession, but this first Monster Brief is still a very encouraging sign as to what could be coming down the pike.

Unkindness

Unkindness caught a bit of infamy as Blackwyrm Games kind of jumped the gun when it was released, beating the August 1st "start date" for ICONS Licensees by a couple of months. This led to Adamant Entertainment initially pulling the license, but later reinstating it.

Unkindness is, in theory, a dual statted adventure for Hero/Champions and ICONS. In reality, It is a Hero/Champions adventure in which they decided to add some ICONS stat blocks in the back of the book. Any references in the adventure to rules are Champions rules, including a chart for attempting a knowledge skill check, which is only published in Champions terms and has no ICONS equivalents posted whatsoever. Literally, the ICONS support is limited to statblocks for the villain (The Raven King), his minions and a pair of important NPCs.

Is it super hard to convert the adventure to ICONS? Not really...but that's not the point. There shouldn't be any conversion work to do when there is an ICONS logo on the front of the book. If there were a BASH Logo on the front of the book, I would expect all rules to also be given in a BASH equivalent as well.

Does that mean the book is all bad?  Not as such, no. The adventure is interesting, featuring an ancient, mythological artifact and a series of robberies (that are connected and not in the usual ways) and a villain who both gets to be brough down decisively AND has room to come back in a far less contrived manner than your typical villain. In fact, no less than 27 system generic plot seeds are provided, giving you ample material to work with if you wanted to make The Raven King a recurring nemesis. It is worth noting that there is a revelation/subplot in the adventure involving (non-sexual) child abuse that pushes this adventure into more adult territory than your typical superhero entry (and I mean actual adult...not "boobs and guns" adult).

The art is pretty weak and this is one case where I think the coloring hurts it. It appears to have been colored by marker, and while the art isn't the strongest anyway, a better coloring job could have helped cover some of the deficiencies.

Even still, my single biggest complaint with the book is how, approaching it from an ICONS perspective, it feels very much like stat blocks were added in for the hopeful sales boost, but this was released as very much a Hero product otherwise. Disappointing, as more of an honest effort to serve both audiences advertised would have raised my opinion of the product considerably.

Realms of Cthulhu Contest

New contest!

Much like last month's Savage Worlds Fantasy Companion contest, I have a copy of the Realms of Cthulhu PDF by Reality Blurs that I'm giving away!  Sadly, I haven't even had a chance to get Realms of Cthulhu myself, but I'm going to give it some enterprising reader.

Similar set up to last month's contest, except I want horror encounters...the more Lovecraftian the better.

The rules:

1) One entry per person, please.

2) You must provide a working e-mail address, or I can't get you the code for your free download.  However, if you already own Realms of Cthulhu and would like to "gift" the it to a friend, provide me THEIR address and that can be arranged.

3) Elaborate as much or as little as you like, but if it's so long we get tired reading it?  That'll work against you.  Similarly, if it's too short to make us get into the idea of it, that'll work against you.  Ideally, I would like to see it fit a single column page of a PDF, but if it's good, it's good.

4) Spell check and the like will go a long way towards helping your chances.

5) Any game stats provided in your encounter should be Savage Worlds stats.  Please, do not duplicate any copy-written information (such as a monster's stat blocks from a SW book).  If you create a whole new monster for the encounter, you should stat it.  Similarly, noting that an adversary is, say, an Orc but with a Smarts of d8 and the Marksman Edge (for a crazy example) is fine.  The encounter should fit in the horror genre...doesn't mean it can't contain elements from other genres, but it should primarily be a horror situation that could be dropped into a horror campaign with not too much work.  The setting assumption should be Earth, say from 1900 to "five minutes into the future" (maybe you have a REALLY good 2012 idea, I dunno). Bonus points if you tie in the Mythos.

6) The contest is open immediately, and will run until 12 PM Central time on Monday, September 27th.  I will announce the winner on or before October 1st.  E-mail your entry to tommyb(at)sstelco(dot)com.  You can do it in the body of the e-mail, in DOC or RTF format, or in PDF format.  Any of those will work fine.  Please include the name you wish used with the entry (real name, screen name, whatever) at the top of the entry. The winner will receive the prize code at the e-mail they have contacted me from.


7) My handpicked judges (who will remain anonymous) will read over and rank the entries "blind" (meaning I withhold the names of the authors), with the highest ranked being named the winner.





8) Your entry in the contest is granting me the right to use your encounter in the compilation, in which all authors will be fully credited with either their real name, or the screen name of their selection, but I lay no other claim to the copyright of the work...I just think it would be cool to give a little collection of ideas to everyone else. The Horror Encounters Compilation will be made available for free download shortly after the winner is announced.

Thank you to Reality Blurs and DriveThruRPG for making this possible!

Tommy's Take on ION Guard - ICONS Edition

ION Guard ICONS Edition is a sourcebook for the ICONS RPG put forth by Colin Chapman and Radioactive Ape Designs and covering a section of the supers genre that never seems to get enough support: The cosmic hero subgenre.

Drawing from the obvious inspiration of DC's Green Lantern Corp (and perhaps Marvel's Nova Corp, which I prefer), ION Guard is a 59 page PDF running $7.99 at RPGnow.  It is fully searchable with copy and paste enabled, as well as featuring clickable bookmarks, so it hits all of my important PDF features.  A standard, detailed, table of contents is provided as well, which is always useful.

THE ION GUARD MANUAL

Our first stop in the book is the ION Guard Manual, which is a two page overview of the ION Guard, including the meaning of ION (Intergalactic Ordinance Network).  It gives an overview of their role as cosmic policemen, explains the significance of their symbol and talks about the creation of the ION Guard, when the last of the Ancients constructed an artificial world around a singularity and then installed himself into the construct, becoming ION Prime, in what reminds me a bit of Oa and the Xandarian Worldmind.  ION Prime created the ION Fists and blasted them into the universe, where they sought out those who have what it takes to wield the ION Fists.

HISTORY

Though the ION Guard has existed for one billion years, the timeline only hits key points from within the last hundred years, such as the emergence of the Sinister Sorcerers of Skathros, Galactus eating Oa (well, it was Infinitus eating Ao, but yeah), the fall, disappearance and reemergence of Manis, an ION Guard gone rogue and now calling himself Maniacus and more.  Wisely, the timeline is left wide open, especially later than 75 years or so, in order to give GMs extra flexibility.

OBJECTIVES

The book tells us that there are many laws to the ION Guard, but three core tenets: Protect The Innocent, Apprehend Wrongdoers and Aid The Cause of Peace.  There is the caveat that ION Guardsmen sometimes fly under the proverbial radar to get criminals when they are out of their jurisdiction, and a second caveat that, yeah, this is awful vague stuff...just like it is in the source material.

ORGANIZATION

The ION Guard begins with ION Prime.  From there, five Guardsmen are selected as The High Guard.  There are 50 Guard Commanders and then individual Guardsmen.  The book gives the five current High Guard, as well as their areas of expertise.  As well, there are 10,000 Guardsmen spread out over 5,000 sectors...meaning there's not a huge density of Guardsmen.

RECRUITMENT

Essentially, there are two methods of recruitment: You volunteer, at which pointed you are tested and interviewed extensively, and if the High Guard and ION Prime agree to it, you are inducted into the ION Guard, given an ION Fist and begin your training.  The other way is when an ION Guardsman falls and the ION Fist detaches from its former owner and seeks out a new Guardsman...if they accept, then that's that, whether the High Guard cares much for it or not.

TRAINING

ION Guard training is designed to winnow out the weak, so that the Guard is as good and as efficient as it can be...only 10% of those who make it TO the training make it THROUGH the training.  After a year of field training with a veteran, then they take The Oath, which makes them a full member:

“With Golden Light
I Fight For Right
Bear ION Fist
Against The Night
This I Swear
With Spirit Hard
Let Evil Fear
The ION Guard”

ION PRIME

This chapter details the planet itself, with all its features, such as the Training Academy (complete with Training Robots), the Forcells and their Sentries, plus the Hall of Light, which honors the fallen.  A sidebar is present discussing The Cosmic Singularity, and providing options for just what it actually is, as well as what exposure to it actually does, as the book ultimately leaves this up to the GM.

RESOURCES

Really, this chapter is about the ION Fists, also known as the Golden Gauntlets.  The ION Fist channels the power of the Cosmic Singularity, and adjusts itself to fit the hero.  The ION Fist absolutely resists removal, generally requiring that massive damage be done to the bearer first...and even then it should be a huge deal.  Every ION Fist has a handful of powers that it gives, including Flight, Blast, Life Support and Uniform Creation...however, a section is provided for stunt ideas, such as using the ION Fist in unconventional ways.  Also, the ION Fist is vulnerable to Magic.

CREATING AN ION GUARD

The one thing I don't like about the book is also one I'm not sure how to fix.  It specifically demands point based creation and, frankly, the thing I like most about ICONS is the random creation...but doing random creation with the ION Fist and without heavy houseruling is...difficult.

One interesting change is that the ICONS core rules seems to eschew the Origin system if you're using point buy...but ION Guard specifically uses Origins with the point buy...with everyone having the Unearthly option that combines two origins (Gimmick and one other Origin), complete with applying the modifiers after spending points.  You get 30 points and you must have a minimum Awareness 6 (before modifiers), Intellect 3 and Willpower 4.  You get the ION Fist, whose powers are set at Rank 8.  Common Qualities and Challenges are presented as well, to help ensure that the characters “fit” the ION Guard.

ADVENTURE SEEDS

A selection of mini adventure ideas, such as missing planets, world devastating storms and some tips on taking standard supers adventures and making them “cosmic”.

CHARACTERS

Three sample Guardsmen are provided: Caine Carston, Maug and Tamari.  The best part of this chapter, however, is the sidebar in mixing the ION Guard with other, non-ION Guard supers...after all, Nova and (especially) The Green Lantern team up with Earth heroes all the time.

We also get the fallen Guardsman Maniacus, who is kinda like Sinestro without any redeeming qualities.  The Sinister Sorcerers of Skathros are statted up here, and are a whole order designed to provide opposition.  Infinitus and his thralls are here as well, with Infinitus not given stats, and his four thralls (Asterox, Komett, Nebulea and Starr) taking some cues from Galactus' Heralds and their focus on the elements, without just being rip-offs.

Finally, the book rounds out with some samples cosmic vehicles, the gravcar, gravtank and starfighters.

A Sketch Gallery, Open Game Content notice and a single teaser for ALIEN EMPIRES caps the book off.

CONCLUSIONS

Honestly, this book almost singlehandedly takes ICONS from “looks cool” to “must play”.  Removing ads, table of contents, sketches and full page art pieces and there's maybe 50 pages of content in this book...but MAN are they packed with good stuff.  The Author draws VERY clear inspiration from Marvel and DC's cosmic titles, and manages it in such a way as to make it feel very much like an homage and not a rip-off.  Combine that with just how underserved the cosmic supers genre is, and ION GUARD is practically a must-buy product.

The art, provided by Jess Jennings, is in an “animated” style like the ICONS corebook, but cleaner and tighter pretty much across the board, so it feels like it fits the game while also improving on the standards set.  Similar things could be said about the writing.  ICONS is maddeningly vague in places, while ION GUARD really does provide just enough detail to get you playing, but leaving the big things open for you to do with as you will.

My one complaint is not being sure how to reconcile random generation with the ION Fists.

This book has not only sold me on giving ICONS a go in play, but it also sold me on the BASH version as soon as I'm able to acquire it (BASH is a bit higher on my “must-play” scale than ICONS is).  A third party supplement that is basically a step up on the parent game in just about every way.

Just a great product all around.

Savage Worlds Fantasy Companion Entries!

Hey folks!

Just to let you all know, the four entries for the Savage Worlds Fantasy Companion contest I ran recently are now available to download!

The winning entry features a corrupted fountain, but the document also includes a bad place to rest, a hellish combat set-up and a foul forest!

Again, I want to thank Michael Lively, Tim Kirk, Angry Ghost and Eric Nail for entering...the arrival of each entry put a literal smile on my face, and if I were in the position to do so, they'd all be walking away with something.

Some of these entries are more detailed than the others, but you only need the Explorer's Edition to make use of them.

The PDF is pretty barebones, because it's a small miracle that I know how to compile a PDF together...=)

Please, enjoy, and I hope to announce a new contest VERY SOON.

Edit: Added a Mediafire mirror download.

Savage Worlds Fantasy Companion Contest Winner!

We have a winner!

Michael Lively, better known as Lysander on the Savage Worlds forums, has won the contest for the Savage Worlds Fantasy Companion!

Congratulations to Michael and thanks to all the entrants!

I'm going to try to have all the entries compiled into a PDF and released this weekend for your enjoyment!

Stay tuned for more cool stuff!

Dark Heresy Winner

We have a winner in the Dark Heresy Inquisitor's Handbook giveaway: Rich Rogers, also known as the Orklord of the Canon Puncture site!

Congratulations, Rich, and thanks for entering everybody.

Remember that August Awesomeness continues on!  Plus, in a few minutes we are closing up the entrants in the Savage Worlds Fantasy Companion contest and a winner will be announced on or before September 1st!

Also, later on today we have a trifecta of articles still to come: My review of the various API Demon packs, my review of the free API adventure and my interview with API creator Eloy Lasanta!

Paths of Power: We have a winner!!

First of all, I want to thank RPGNow and 4 Winds Fantasy Gaming for making this giveaway possible...you guys are awesome.

Next, I would like to thank everyone who took the time to enter.

However, there could be only one...and they were randomly selected by Randomizer.org!

The winner is Chris at Dinky Dungeons !  Congratulations, Chris, and enjoy Paths of Power!

Remember...Monday, the contest begins for Fantasy Flight Games' Dark Heresy Inquisitor Codex, and our Savage Worlds Fantasy Companion Adventure Contest rolls on!

August Awesomeness Part Three: Pathfinder Paths of Power Giveaway!

Not much of a contest involved in this one, folks...courtesy of DriveThruRPG and 4 Winds Fantasy Gaming, I am giving away a free PDF of the Pathfinder Paths of Power supplement!  It contains five new classes including the Anti-Paladin and Samurai, three Prestige Classes including the Crypt-Stalker, four Elementalist schools for Wizards and three NPC classes!

All you have to do is reply to this post with your e-mail address and I will collect all the entries and select one at random (using either an online randomizer or an old-fashioned die roll) this Friday afternoon or so!

Don't forget, the Savage Worlds Fantasy Companion contest is still ongoing, so get me your fantasy encounters by Friday the 27th!

Finally, the August Awesomeness sale is still going on as well, through September 10th...where you can both support this blog and get an additional 20% off of great games like Colonial Gothic, Suzerain and Horror Rules!

Enter today and come back next week for one more free giveaway for the month of August: The Dark Heresy Inquisitor's Handbook!

August Awesomness Part Two: Savage Worlds Fantasy Companion Giveaway

This is my first attempt at doing something like this: A contest for my blog.

I am a pretty darn big Savage Worlds fan, and I am giving away a PDF copy of the Savage Worlds Fantasy Companion.  Heck, *I* don't even have the Fantasy Companion myself, but I'm gonna give it away to the person who gives me the coolest fantasy encounter.

What's that mean exactly?  Simple: Just a fantasy encounter, not more than a few paragraphs long (no hard limits here, use your instincts).  Try to be at least fairly general with the setting, and if you provide any stats, please make them Savage, but please make them original.  If you need to simply refer to a stat block in a rulebook, do so in the text.  I have compiled a Shadow Council, who shall remain nameless to avoid Judge Tampering, who will review the entries and vote on them.  The winner gets the Fantasy Companion.

Ideally, what I would like to do, in addition to giving the Fantasy Companion to winner, is compile the top entries (according to the Shadow Council), no more than thirteen I'd say (if we even have that many!), and place them in a PDF, with their authors fully credited of course, and made publicly available for free download.

The rules:

1) One entry per person, please.

2) You must provide a working e-mail address, or I can't get you the code for your free download.  However, if you already own the Fantasy Companion and would like to "gift" the Companion to a friend, provide me THEIR address and that can be arranged.

3) Elaborate as much or as little as you like, but if it's so long we get tired reading it?  That'll work against you.  Similarly, if it's too short to make us get into the idea of it, that'll work against you.  Ideally, I would like to see it fit a single column page of a PDF, but if it's good, it's good.

4) Spell check and the like will go a long way towards helping your chances.

5) Any game stats provided in your encounter should be Savage Worlds stats.  Please, do not duplicate any copy-written information (such as a monster's stat blocks from a SW book).  If you create a whole new monster for the encounter, you should stat it.  Similarly, noting that an adversary is, say, an Orc but with a Smarts of d8 and the Marksman Edge (for a crazy example) is fine.  The encounter should fit in the fantasy genre...doesn't mean it can't contain elements from other genres, but it should primarily be a fantasy situation that could be dropped into a fantasy campaign with not too much work. 

6) The contest is open immediately, and will run until 12 PM Central time on August 27th.  I will announce the winner on or before September 1st.  E-mail your entry to tommyb(at)sstelco(dot)com.  You can do it in the body of the e-mail, in DOC or RTF format, or in PDF format.  Any of those will work fine.

7) Your entry in the contest is granting me the right to use your encounter in the compilation, in which all authors will be fully credited with either their real name, or the screen name of their selection, but I lay no other claim to the copyright of the work...I just think it would be cool to give a little collection of ideas to everyone else.


And if all of this sounds like too much work, well, I'll be giving away a couple of more items later this month, so keep an eye on this space.  If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail or comment.  This contest is made possible by the tremendous people at RPGnow and Pinnacle Entertainment.

Thanks!

Tommy

August Awesomness from DriveThruRPG

Thanks to the fine people at DriveThruRPG and their affiliated publishers, we are very much pleased to offer some special deals on items available at DriveThruRPG through the month of August and into September!

From now until September 10th, you can use the code DTRPGAugust2010BlogPCast at checkout to save 20% off of any purchases by a number of publishers available on the site:

• A Terrible Idea - Makers of the tongue in cheek zombie game Shambles.
• Aethereal Forge
• Bailey Records
• Crucifiction Games - Makers of the offbeat humor/horror game Horror Rules.
• Dream Pod 9
• Fantasy Games Unlimited - Home of recent retro best seller Villains & Vigilantes
• Final Redoubt Press
• Gold Rush Games
• Goodman Games
• Highmoon Games
• Morbid Games
• OtherWorld Creations - Who released the Savage Setting Strike Force 7.
• Palladium Books - Makers of RIFTS and After the Bomb
• Rogue Games - Creators of Colonial Gothic, a horror game set during the American Revolution
• RPG Objects
• Savage Mojo - Makers of Suzerain, available as a Savage Setting as well as its own RPG.
• Tricky Owlbear
• Vigilance Press - Creators of the modern Arthurian retelling Arthur Lives! for True 20.

Again, just enter the above code at checkout, and save 20%.  As always, any purchases made through this blog helps support it and me, so happy shopping!

The Digital Revolution: Or “How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love PDFs”

    PDFs in gaming aren't anything new.  They've been around for a few years, but are taking on a life of their own now.  Virtually every major game company has embraced  a digital initiative, a conversion that was truly completed when Palladium came on board last year.  However, it seems that the only thing game companies can agree on is that digital availability is essential, in some format, with a large amount of disagreement beyond that.
    Wizards of the Coast (in)famously pulled their entire PDF collection after the Player's Handbook 2 was leaked to torrents and file-sharing sites.  They have locked away digital access to their games behind DDI, their in-house digital subscription program in which they control the release of the content.  This has had another effect on would-be WotC customers: If you are interested in Dungeons & Dragons, your only legal, commercial options are buying the Fourth Edition of said game (which is, for better or for worse, dramatically different than every version that came before it), or fishing around in the second hand market for the books you seek.  Well, that's not ENTIRELY true.  The “retroclone” movement has spawned reasonable facsimiles of every version of D&D except my personal favorite, AD&D 2e, so if you seek just the rules themselves, you're covered.  For my part, my favorite material has always been the settings, and I would kill to load up on Ravenloft, Birthright, Spelljammer, Planescape and a few other settings in PDF for the express purpose of conversion to a system I like better, like Savage Worlds, High Valor's FEAT System or something else.  Alas, that option is not available to me.  I pick up the odd used book as opportunity and funds allow, but I have more storage space on my computer than I do anywhere else in the house.  It has been said that the reason for this decision was to essentially force people into buying D&D 4th Edition, and not be able to stay with the older editions, though I don't know how well that has worked for them.   That does, however, bring me to...
     ...White Wolf, makers of the World of Darkness, who have every RPG that they have ever created, aside from the licensed Street Fighter Storytelling Game, available in PDF format to purchase as you will.  A few years back they “ended” the original World of Darkness and replaced it with the new World of Darkness.  They could easily have gone the WotC route of sealing away the old World of Darkness forever, but no, they provide you with at least a digital choice in your flavor of gaming.  Pinnacle Entertainment, my favorite game company and makers of both my favorite setting (Deadlands) and favorite in print RPG (Savage Worlds), have taken a similar approach:  Every Deadlands product ever made is still available in PDF format, and some are around in POD format, all while the Savage Worlds version, Deadlands Reloaded, is still being heavily supported.
     Not every company treats PDFs with the same level of importance, though.  Fantasy Flight Games ruffled some feathers years ago with their PDF pricing for the Midnight game line, and when pressed, simply said that the digital versions were a courtesy and not a priority for them.  Some game companies will give you a free PDF with the pre-order of a print book.  Green Ronin has been known to do this.  Presumably due to licensing fees, this changed with the new DC Adventures RPG, where the PDF cost an additional $5.  Precis Intermedia Games will let you buy a PDF from them and, if you like, you can pay the difference between that and the printed cost to have a POD copy printed up and sent to you.  Kind of a “try before you buy”.  Other companies keep PDF pricing at, or similar to, print pricing by arguing that the PDF is every bit as functional as a print book, just in different ways.
     Obviously, there are gamers who refuse to buy PDFs.  There are others who will, but will cap their purchase limit at, say, $10.  Others will only buy PDFs, having freed up their shelf space and liking it.  I haven't gone to one extreme or another, but since I bought a laptop last year, I have actually purchased PDFs, rather than just download free previews and the like.  These days, I get comped a lot of PDFs as I review more and more games, and I'm perfectly comfortable working off of PDFs for gaming (and actually prefer it for reviews), but that doesn't mean I have eschewed print products altogether.  For instance, I own 98% of all Deadlands print products in print...and I want to make that 100%.  That means no The Flood in PDF, I want it in print.  That's just me.  I still want BASH Ultimate Edition in print, and I preordered ICONS, so I wound up with both the print and PDF versions.  I hope to do the same with the Villainomicon, but we'll see how the funding goes.
    Point is, by embracing the digital revolution, I'm open to many more games than I was just a few short years ago.  There are some great products being released in digital format only, and there is a large number of tremendous, out of print games that are now available again thanks to PDFs.  Feel free to discuss as you will, I'm curious about the thoughts anyone else may have about the digital rpgs.  Okay, it doesn't hurt that  becoming an affiliate of RPGnow/DriveThruRPG has helped me put gas in my tank and thus helped me make it to my real job.

Christmas in July!

Right now, until July 26th, DriveThruRPG and DriveThruComics are having "Christmas in July" where tons of items are being discounted an additional 25%.  Among the RPGs currently discounted are Doctor Who, The Battlestar Galactica RPG, The Supernatural RPG, Deadlands Reloaded (one of the best RPG books I have ever purchased), Realms of Cthulhu and thousands more.

Comics on sale right now include the Deadlands: One Shot comic, TONS of The Darkness and Witchblade comics, The Uniques and much, much more.

Plus, anything purchased through the above links helps support me and my site, so check things out and load up!