Tommy's Take on Karthador

Ya'll know Reality Blurs, right? They've had products named to my Top Six in the past, specifically Realms of Cthulhu and tremulus, and have been around the Savage Worlds community for quite a while...now, they are launching a new setting, sci-fi/swashbuckling setting called Karthador, available for preorder now!

Tommy's Take on tremulus playbooks I-III and cemetery expansion

tremulus was finally released recently, and you should totally run out and buy it. However, a number of expansions have also been released...such as three playbook sets and a cemetery expansion. What do those contain and are they worth your dough?

tremulus playbook set I: flexible thinkers

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: This $5 PDF was free to Kickstarter backers above a certain level, and includes 5 new playbooks for your players to use:

The Adventurer - A man of action, whose Moves can give him options like constant Armor, bonus damage to attacks and acting using his Passion instead of his Reason (because he's a man of instinct and not book-smarts).

The Entertainer - An actor, musician, singer, dancer, what have you. The Entertainer may be wealthy and famous, or have a gift for manipulating other people. The one Entertainer we've seen in our games proved incredibly light on his feet, which was a huge boon for him.

The Handyman - A fixer. He may have a workshop that he builds things with, he can jury rig repairs and one Move humorously duplicates the idea of smacking something to make it work.

The Librarian - A thinker who can occasionally use their wits to their advantage in combat.

The Scientist - Generally far more reasonable than most, insulating them from mental distress...though one option makes The Scientist harder to relate to, but allows them to start with Lore points.

WHAT WORKS: A few nice, thematic options that stretch the field. Some of the Playbook tweaks make it even easier to get the end result you want, like a purely "rational" scientist versus one that's becoming a little more unhinged. The Handyman is another one that stands out.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: On one hand, The Entertainer seems to stand out more than the others (as being out of place here). On the other, it's the only one we've used thus far. If the aesthetics of tremulus didn't do it for you, then the hard to see, old-timey images in this set won't do you any favors, either.

CONCLUSION: The Adventurer, Librarian and Scientist all seem very suited for period Lovecraftian adventurer. $1 per playbook also seems to be a bit better than similar deals for similar games, though I haven't looked too closely. Good pick-up if you want some options just a step away from the standard playbooks.

tremulus playbook set II: on the fringes

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: Same as above - $5 package of playbooks to expand your game, running the fine line of "acceptable society":

The Artist - Passion drives most of what the Artist does, and this can leave them vulnerable to shock, or make them off-putting to others.

The Criminal - Not generally a thug, the Criminal's Lore move allows them to formulate a Backup Plan, and other moves provide options like being sneaky or charming.

The Dreamer - No, this isn't just someone with their head in the clouds...The Dreamer can reach the actual Dreamlands! This can provide valuable insight at times.

The Drifter - A bonafide ramblin' man, who sometimes gets by on Luck as much as anything. Additionally, your Drifter may have witnessed a bit more in his day than most.

The Psychic - Full-blown having visions and communing with the spirit world.

WHAT WORKS: Some very oddball options for tremulus, stretching the boundaries further. We've used Drifter and Psychic both in play, so these are options proving popular over here.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: The Psychic communing with spirits can get out of hand at times, and I would imagine from the reading that The Dreamer could get that way as well.

CONCLUSION: If you want more weirdness from your PCs in tremulus, this is a good step as especially The Dreamer and The Psychic are particularly oddball. Just watch out for them spending too much time using their Moves (which aren't even Lore moves, but which do have time constraints on them) as they can blow some of your mystery right off.

tremulus playbook set III: madmen

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: Have you noticed a trend developing here? These entries have been a steady walk off the deep end, and the Madmen make the last set look normal.

The Chosen - No, not quite Buffy, or even Ash. The Chosen can be downright bizarre, perhaps touched by darkness in such a way that they now see in the dark or even breathe underwater.

The Escapee - You've lost your mind once, but you know there's crazy stuff out there. You may be hunted by the very things that led to your imprisonment, but you are powered by a desperate will now.

The Inventor - The Scientist and The Handyman pumped up to 11. More Frankenstein than Einstein.

The Sorcerer - You have a handful of magical effects on standby, and are more adept than most at casting rituals.

The Veteran - You experienced the horrors of war, but occasionally you still find glimpses of the man you once were, and unleash him against the darkness.

WHAT WORKS: One of the more unique sets (and the sets are usually pretty impressive). I particularly like the portrayals of The Veteran and The Escapee.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: Not a lot. I like the balance on The Inventor and Sorcerer more than I do The Dreamer and The Psychic, and the character options are among the most interesting.

CONCLUSION: If I were a player, I think I'd probably play The Veteran first and foremost above all of them, though The Escapee runs a close second. Probably my two favorite options among all the playbooks.

the cemetery (Ebon Eaves Expansion I)

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: This expansion is a little different than the others, running $10 instead of $5. On top of that, it only includes three Playbooks:

The Bereaved - Someone in mourning, needing a shoulder to lean on. Definitely NOT one to play in a one-on-one game, as a few of their moves rely on other people being present...namely, gaining Trust with others and using their Lore moves.

The Grave Digger - You can pick Moves that make him a perfectly nice guy...or you can make him a scuzzy graverobber instead.

The Mortician - Somebody's gotta prepare the bodies. The Mortician comforts folks who have just suffered tragedy, which can come in handy in a horror game.

So if it's $10 and only has three playbooks, what's the deal? The deal is that it adds more info based off of the Town Lore questions at the beginning of the game, effectively blowing up the information combinations by adding a whole other set of mysteries to the town (all kinda cemetery based).

WHAT WORKS: A slew of new options for town generation. Three new playbooks, each of which are interesting and unique in their own way, yet still tied to the cemetery setting.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: The minor complaint that the cemetery results are tied to the Town Lore, so those results will be bound together regardless (though there are soooo many possible results that this becomes a very minor quibble).

CONCLUSION: Well worth it if you're looking for more than just a one shot game, as a third plot thread should get you rolling nicely. If you're just in it for the playbooks, though, that price tag might be a tad steep.

tremulus Actual Play: The Hatchetman and the Silver Saints

We decided to give tremulus another go, with the new group of Russ, Chrystal, Tommy (who plays in most of my Savage Worlds games) and myself. Unlike the last time we played tremulus, we had extra Playbooks to choose from and more players, so this left us with a motley crew of Russ as an Entertainer named Frank Stone (and a bodyguard named Sheffield), Chrystal as a Psychic named Eliza Dent (and her driver Chauncey) and Tommy as a Drifter named Ramblin' Tom.

I was actually pretty ill prepared going in, so we started the session with Ramblin' Tom walking into town and being passed by Eliza and Chauncey...while a distracted Frank Stone ran off the road and clipped the Drifter, who chose (after rolling a 7-9) to take a little extra damage but force Stone to blow a tire and hit a tree. This led to Frank being a little shaken up and Tom hurting a bit, but Tom gathered his wits and put Frank in a bind, essentially blackmailing Frank into taking care of him, once Tom and Sheffield took care of the car tire.

Eliza and Chauncey checked into their hotel, which was a spacious, two story affair. As Eliza and Chauncey went to their room, Eliza noticed a younger man wearing a silver star pendant watching her. She smiled at him, but he turned his head away. When she and Chauncey got to the room, she decided to relax and commune with the spirits to see what she could see.

Back at the car, while looking for the spare, Ramblin' Tom noticed that the driver of the car (Frank) had some headshots in his trunk...making Tom realize that the driver was an actor or model or something, and this gave Tom a bit more leverage. He also saw a curious silver star pendant in the trunk of the car, which he pocketed. The three men piled back into the car and headed into Ebon Eaves.

Eliza had a vision of dozens and dozens of townsfolk, including the young man that was watching her, forming an angry mob while a demonic face loomed over them.

Frank Stone, Sheffield and Ramblin' Tom headed to the hotel, where Frank discovered there was only one available room...so he used charm and money to get people kicked out of their rooms while he and Sheffield took Tom to get some food (as part of their deal for, y'know, nearly killing him). The service in the diner was much nicer, friendlier and more competent than the hotel. The three men were just starting to maybe get along when a tall, silver-haired man entered the diner, flanked by a short, nervous man and a stern-faced man with a milky white eye. The tall man was referred to as "Reverend", which caught the attention of Stone and Tom. Frank said he didn't like that white eye, so Sheffield got up and grabbed a knife, threatening to put it out, but Frank made him sit back down.

Eliza and Chauncey entered the diner and sat down, and Chauncey never took his eyes off of the Reverend and his entourage. As dinner went on, Frank didn't like the look of Chauncey and sent Sheffield over to Eliza and her driver to make sure there was no issue. This nearly escalated into violence as Chauncey told Sheffield to take two steps away from Eliza. Frank overhead the commotion and told Sheffield to back off, (and Tom was busy eating all of Sheffield's food while this was going on). As Frank gathered up Sheffield and Tom and headed to the door, they were cut off by the Reverend, who recognized Frank. He asked for an autograph for Martin's (the nervous man with the Reverend) son and the two men soon decided that they should have dinner together. Tom mentioned being both broke and injured, and the Reverend offered him medical care at the doctor's and work at the church the next day. Frank began to press The Reverend on the real reason he had come here: Ebon Eaves' legendary Hatchetman. Many years ago, a young man named Billy had gone insane and chopped up five of his friends before a sixth stopped him...and every five years, the murders started up again. As Frank pushed the Reverend on these legends, the Reverend shrugged it off.

Ramblin' Tom headed to the Doctor when he felt an overwhelming sense of being watched...and discovered that *everyone* on the street was watching him.

Frank returned to the hotel and sent Sheffield out to find some drugs, while he began pumping the old lady now working the counter for information about the Hatchetman.

Eliza and Chauncey, paranoid about the town, scoured their room for cameras...until Eliza spotted something on the window. The outside of the window. The word "Witch". Eliza contacted the Spirit World once more, getting a flash of an eyeless, oily skinned creature in an old rock quarry...and a flash from the future of a newspaper headline proclaiming that that anniversary of the Hatchetman had passed without incident.

Ramblin' Tom got his wounds dressed by the friendly Doctor who suddenly, as Tom was leaving, told him to "keep your nose clean or we'll f---ing kill you."

Frank got upset when the old woman told him the Hatchetman wasn't a ghost...but a curse on the town, which drives people insane every five years...and that the next Hatchetman would be coming soon.

Eliza and Chauncey decided to go for a walk, having a chat with the old woman, who seemed nice enough...except she said that the town was constantly poisoned by satanic outsiders, such as witches like Eliza. Frank and Tom decided to turn in to their respective rooms.

Frank was awoken by someone beating on his door and peered through the peep hole to see Sheffield...who drove a hatchet into the door! He smashed his way in and the terrified Frank Stone darted away from him and bolted through into Ramblin' Tom's room, waking him up as the crazed Sheffield burst in! Frank fired his handgun at Sheffield and wounded him, but the enraged bodyguard charged Tom and Frank, only to be taken by surprise by the Drifter, who managed to rip the axe from his hands and knock him into a door, accidentally breaking his neck! Frank immediately proclaimed victory for stopping the Hatchetman. A nervous back and forth ensued about who to call, with Tom pointing out that the Reverend runs this town, and Frank became optimistic that his friendship with the Reverend would help out.

Eliza and Chauncey tried to return to the hotel...only to find it bustling with activity, including four of the Reverend's Silver Saints blocking her entrance, calling her a "Witch". Chauncey threatened violence on the four men, but Eliza opted for a less violent approach and took Chauncey back to Meg's Diner, where she once more contacted the Spirit World.

The Reverend and his sidekicks, Martin and Robert, were relieved to see that Tom and Frank had stopped the Hatchetman without further bloodshed.

Eliza got a flash of an eyeless, oily being biting Sheffield and driving him into a rage...and Sheffield biting someone else and throwing them aside as he grabbed a hatchet from the man's truck and stomped to the hotel...leaving the wounded, enraged man to attack another bystander and so on...and that the creature is now dormant.

Outside the hotel, the Silver Saints guarding it were attacked.

Ramblin' Tom decided to cut out, only to look down the stares at the old woman from the counter, now quite crazed and charging up the stairs. He barely got away from her, but didn't get the door barred in time. Frank tried to block her entry himself...but failed as she nearly bit him, causing him to lunge away from the door.

Eliza began asking the gentleman in the diner about rock quarries, leading to her and Chauncey deciding to head to the quarry to put an end to this monster.

Frank scurried away...leading to woman attacking Martin and ripping a chunk out of him! She tossed him aside and lunged at Tom, who got away from her and never saw Martin lunging up and biting Robert! While Tom and the old woman fought, Frank opened fire...shooting Tom in the shoulder and making him drop his axe! The Reverend began fighting with Robert, and Frank opened fire on on Robert, giving the Reverend an opening to draw a knife from somewhere and drive it into Robert's skull! Frank was pleased...until Martin pounced on him and dragged him to the ground! Tom and the old woman fought, but he flipped her end over end and out the window! Frank shot Martin, stunning him so that the Reverend could move in and slice Martin's head off!

Eliza and Chauncey began to enter the quarry to execute the dormant monster, when bizarre, vaguely crablike fungal creatures ordered her and Chauncey to stop! They were surprised as these beings descended from the skies and said that they created the hunter to quell the Nightgaunts...and that killing it would doom the town. Eliza tried to debate them, pointing out that it was killing people, but the beings said that those were acceptable losses to keep the Nightgaunts under control. She and the creatures argued, until she finally ordered Chauncey to execute the sleeping hunter, which he did with a high powered rifle. The creatures recoiled, stating their belief that she had doomed the area to the swell of the Nightgaunts.

In the aftermath, the Silver Saints did a splendid job of quelling the uprising caused by the madness of the hunter's bite, and when Eliza confronted to the Reverend about his town's zealotry, to her surprise he agreed: He's been well aware of the rising darkness in the town and has been deathly afraid of his inability to quell it.

Notes: I totally did a horrible job of conveying the humor we had going on here, as Russ hammed it up as Frank Stone and I had a blast slipping back and forth between Chauncey and Sheffield. The tremulus system is a bit exhausting, as I'm not used to improvising *that much*. All the improv is why some things were set up and not paid off (like Tom finding a Silver Star in the trunk of Frank's car). That said, I have to give the group credit: This was the first time roleplaying with this configuration, the first time Chrystal had played a non-D&D game and the first time Russ had played a non-fantasy RPG and everyone slipped right in. They played like characters in a horror game, and took my bait as I laid it out there, running with little tidbits here and there to advance the plot, conveniently choosing the same hotel to stay at and diner to eat at, and so on. Ironic, then, that Eliza *never* directly interacted with the other two PCs.

This was also the first time using non-core Playbooks, as all the Playbooks used came from the tremulus Kickstarter stretch goals. The special moves came into play a LOT (especially Frank's ability to gain +2 while trying to Act Under Pressure in defensive situations, Tom's ability to roll Luck to lessen harm and Eliza contacting the Spirit World, which bordered on being awesome and gamebreaking).

A good time was had by all, the new group got off to a promising start, and next week we hit familiar territory for me and Tommy: Deadlands Reloaded!

Tommy's Take on tremulus

I’ve had a few blog posts about it, one of which being from my first guest blogger, and I’ve even ran it…though it’s not been officially released to the public. That said, the next review is for tremulus by Reality Blurs.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: tremulus came into my hands as the result of a very successful Kickstarter. I currently have the PDF (Kickstarter Edition v1.3) and am waiting the eventual physical book, as well as a number of other goodies. tremulus is a self-described storytelling game of Lovecraftian Horror using the Haiku system, which is a hybrid of Apocalypse World, FATE and Fiasco. It is a “player-facing” game, meaning the GM rolls no dice…all rolls are performed by the players. (Edit: The PDF is now available at RPGNow for $15.)

In a nutshell, any roll by a player is 2d6 plus an attribute, with the following guidelines: 10+ is a success, 7-9 is a partial success with a consequence and 6 or less is a failure of some sort.

The core game includes 11 Playbooks (character archetypes, essentially) and only one of these archetypes can be used in a game at a time. For instance, there is only one Detective, one Dilettante, one Journalist, etc. Each player picks a Playbook and customizes it, picking the name, distinguishing features, point arrays to be spread over the Attributes (Reason, Passion, Might, Luck and Affinity), and Special Moves.

See, Moves are the actions the characters can do in the game, and there’s a big list of Basic Moves, with each Playbook getting two Special Moves and each having a Lore Move. Basic Moves include Resort to Violence, Threaten, Poke Around and Act Under Pressure. In the game I ran, the lone PC was a Detective and his two Special Moves were Tough As Nails which gave him +1 armor at all times and Methodical, which let him use Reason for his Poke Around rolls instead of Luck, which turned out to be a huge boon for him. Additionally, he had a Lore move, called Playing a Hunch, which costs a Lore point and gives the Detective +1 on rolls involving a given NPC. Each of the Playbooks have their own unique flavor and options. The Basic Moves all have tips on when to use them, as well as ideas to help you interpret the dice rolls.

As is common in games inspired by Apocalypse World, the PCs are encouraged to work out their connection with each other beforehand, in this case tying into a Trust Mechanic, ranked on a scale of +3 to -3, and if it ever crosses either extreme, you learn a deep, dark secret about that PC!

As noted, this is a game of Lovecraftian Horror, though that doesn’t necessarily mean Cthulhu and the Elder Gods, just cosmic and unknowable horror (which the book makes a point of explaining up front). This also explains why there are two “damage” tracks: Harm and Sanity. Insanity and Lovecraft tends to go hand in hand. You can adjust the lethality of the game by allowing PCs to take Debilities for Health, Sanity or both (or neither, by default), taking penalties instead of facing death or insanity.

The Keeper’s Section is pretty extensive, preaching a “fiction first” approach (it IS a storytelling game) and the three approaches to starting a game (running with a playset, like the included Ebon Eaves, running with a framework like the Primrose Path Kickstarter framework, and just winging it). The game I ran was using the Ebon Eaves playset, and was really quite a fun exercise.

One of the twists in the GM paradigm is that GMs are largely assumed to use THEIR moves when they are spending points of Hold that they have acquired from PC failure. Keepers have Moves and Hard Moves, the difference being that PCs can interrupt Moves and they are reacting to the outcomes of Moves if you are using a Hard Move. For example, a Move would entail a creature leaping out of a closet, then asking the PC how they react. A Hard Move has the creature leaping out and hurting the PC, THEN asking him how they react.

Everything that opposes the PCs is classified under Hazards, grouped as Elders (people in position of power), Townies (larger groups in the setting), Landscape (Prisons, Mazes, Breeding Pits), Weird (pretty much anything that is ultimately strange and alien) and Doom (any bad practical circumstance). Each Hazard type has a set of Moves and a Subtype of their own to help you figure out how to use them.

The Keeper’s section then walks you through putting all of this together in order to make your framework for the game, by putting Hazards together, tying them together with a Lynchpin and adding a Texture (like Revenge, Transformation or Forbidden Love) to make a Thread…and then tying multiple threads together. This gives you five elements: The Tragic End (what happens if the baddies win), The Unknown (unresolved questions), Lurking Evil (the stuff in the PCs’ way), Darkness Grows (how the bad guys’ plans progress) and Theme (the aforementioned Texture).

Bad guys/NPCs are slightly more streamlined with PCs, and a selection of creepy monsters are included, like Ghouls (which I used in my one shot) and Shoggoths, as well as a handful of regular animals. Not a big selection by any stretch, but the focus will generally be on investigation anyway.

Rituals are also included, and are powered by Lore. Anyone can try to cast them, but you take damage if you don’t have enough Lore. For that reason, I strongly recommend not telling the PCs how much Lore a ritual takes until they use it (unless they do some crazy research first). These include enchanting weapons, summoning or dismissing entities and contacting Outer Gods.

A lot of other good advice is scattered around, including a bit on pacing.

The Ebon Eaves playset is included to get you started, and is quite interesting: You start off by asking the players two groups of seven questions, to which they must answer yes to three each. Their answers dictate the starting descriptions and plot hooks of the town, with each entry having a paragraph for you to read to them, and a paragraph for you to keep to yourself about the secrets of the town. These questions also help to set elements like the Hazards. By Sean Preston’s count, including turning the elements into Frameworks and adding Textures, the Ebon Eaves set alone provides 17.500 combinations. That’s impressive.

WHAT WORKS: A ton of great advice is present throughout the book. An improv happy group will have a field day with this, and there’s already a lot of great support coming from the Kickstarter stretch goals, including expansions to Ebon Eaves and a lot more Playbooks, as well as new Playsets. The system works well for horror, with its harsh and unforgiving damage systems, and the Playbooks being designed with all the PC Moves already on them makes the game much easier to pick up and go for newbies (speaking from experience here). Playset creation is similarly inspiring, using the players’ answers to help dictate the plot threads (and probably in ways they will never expect). One of the best “Player Facing” systems I’ve seen thus far.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK: Some of the terminology (Forwards, Holds, etc) can take a bit of getting used to. I always prefer a bigger monster selection. Some of the advice can be repetitive, and the organization feels like it could be cleaner.

CONCLUSION: We played one session of this with me not having a chance to fully read the book and all prep done at the game table and had a good time. My player for that solo session actively wants to play again (and he’s a hardcore Savage Worlds nut), but with more people so we can use the Trust mechanic in play. I also told him about some of the Playbooks coming to me as a Kickstarter backer and how many of them seem more his speed and he was pumped.

tremulus doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel, though it does a really nice job of supporting investigative horror, providing a TON of structure to this as opposed to everyone standing around and swapping the story baton or something. It’s a pretty traditional horror/investigation RPG with some narrative quirks, and you can decide for yourself if that’s a good or bad thing. For us, it was a lot of fun…fun that we will surely revisit in the future.

tremulus Actual Play Report

Last night, we decided to give tremulus a go in a solo game as we work through various breaks before we finally resume Necessary Evil.

My lone player selected the Detective playbook (which I rather expected) and gave him the name "Harry Copperfield Dresden" (so he wasn't looking for points for originality).

We went through the Ebon Eaves creation, generating a town that had seen its heyday come and go, after wealthy eccentric McKenzie Baker, leader of the Silver Circlet and owner of the Windsor Place, had passed away. Harry was actually in Ebon Eaves at the behest of Lorraine Raslo's second cousin, Judith Crandall. See, Raslo murdered her family, saying it was "God's Will" until her brother-in-law Jack returned to Ebon Eaves. Jack, a big-time explorer who had been thought dead, was riding this fame and controversy all the way to the Mayor's office. Judith couldn't believe her cousin was capable of this, and sent Harry to investigate.

Ebon Eaves, PA
1927

As Harry rolled into town, he took a visit to the police station where he met Clint, a young, overworked officer manning the station by himself. Harry slipped him a quick bribe to get into the Raslo case files where he stumbled across the journal of Raslo's husband Stanley. Harry tried to slip it in his pocket, but when he "accidentally" dropped the case file, the journal fell behind Clint's desk. Harry came away from that visit with two things: The journal contained rantings about "snake men" and the police chief was an alcoholic.

Harry set out for the old Windsor Place, operating on a hunch, and while snooping around outside the house he stumbled on some dirty, yet fancy, eye glasses. Trying them on, he decided that the glasses belonged to someone who was incredibly nearsighted and pocketed them. Harry tried to enter Windsor Place and found the way barred, so he scaled the side of the house to the third story balcony...where an attractive, older woman in a flattering red dress was standing at the large double doors drinking tea. Harry tried to bluff his way through his trespassing, claiming that he heard cries for help, and when she pointed out that the road was two miles downhill from the house, he claimed his car had stalled. She instructed Boris and Dmitri  a big, lumpy Russian and a handsome younger one, to eject Harry...and they nearly threw him off the balcony. She ultimately relented and had them take Harry out the front door...though on the way out, he saw a portrait of an older gentleman surrounded by a dozen people...including the blond woman and the two Russians...and the older gentleman was wearing the glasses Harry had found outside. As Harry was being thrown outside, he heard an eerie moan from somewhere inside the mansion.

Harry's next stop was the Ebon Eaves Home for the Mentally Distressed, where he was told it was past visiting hours.

Harry went to the bar, where he found the chief knocking back drinks and he told the chief that he saw Clint taking bribes. His smooth talking combined with the chief's drunkenness lead to him and the chief heading back to the police station and sending Clint home, giving Harry his chance at getting the journal back. Inside, he ran the insane rantings of Stanley Raslo, who claimed that his entire family was snake men.

Harry got himself a room in a boarding house, and wound up oversleeping the next day.

He rushed back to the Asylum where he was told that Lorraine had been having "incidents". He asked to speak to her doctor, Dr. Gould, but was told he was in a meeting. Making arrangements to speak with Dr. Gould later, he went out to his car, where he was clubbed in the head from behind. When he awoke in the car, he was missing the journal and had a note on his chest telling him to leave Raslo alone.

Deciding to head a diner for some food and hoping to rustle up a lead, he found out a bit more about the woman in Windsor Place, and spied something lurking around his car. Heading outside to investigate, he was shocked to see - momentarily - the pale form of McKenzie Baker...missing his glasses. Heading back into the diner to pump the waitress for information, she directed him to the local paper and Jackie Laurence, intrepid reporter.

Harry found Jackie working late and the two began to talk. Jackie questioned why Harry was snooping around the Windsor Place if he was sent here to investigate Raslo, and then he dropped a bombshell on Harry: Lorraine Raslo's cousin had committed suicide since the last time Harry had spoken with her. Jackie dismissed both families (Stanley's and Lorraine's) as being crazy, but was intrigued with the activity at Windsor Place. He also noted that Lorraine's doctor, Dr. Gould, was part of Baker's inner circle. The two men set off for Windsor Place.

They searched around the house and found a shed...and Harry removed floorboards to find a tunnel underneath. The two men ventured in and followed the tunnel back to the house...where they found a large metal, unlocked door. As they started in, Harry heard the Russians coming and tried to threaten them with his gun, but only wound up trading bullets with Boris instead. Dmitri moved in to kill Harry, but he ripped Dmitri's hand around and shot Dmitri in the throat with his own gun.

Harry and Jackie, both armed now, entered the underground chamber, which was disturbingly cold, and began looking around. Harry came face to face with Baker once more...who was staring at him with glassy eyes. Harry offered Baker his eyeglasses and felt the chill of the grave as Baker touched him. Tabitha McFlaherty, the woman Harry had met earlier, walked into the chamber and explained that Baker had died but that she was trying desperately to restore him...she just hadn't gotten it right and he came back "wrong". Harry countered that the dead shouldn't come back at all, and she dismissed that as "rules for the little people". She explained that Ebon Eaves NEEDED Baker now, more than ever, due to Jack Raslo's moves to take over the town. Harry asked her why she didn't just run a candidate against him, and she pointed out that Raslo's serpentine tentacles were everywhere...including the newspaper.

Harry turned to see Jackie Laurence with his gun in Harry's face. Harry and Jackie both fired and Harry went down. As he recovered, he saw a blood trail heading out the tunnel and Tabitha and Baker closing the door to the house. Harry tried to break down the door and ultimately shot his way in...and managed to make it through the house and in front of an escaping hearse. He ordered the driver to stop, but he swerved around and Harry shot the tire out, causing it to crash into the large, wrought-iron gate. Harry moved in on the hearse, only to have Baker bust out of the back, attacking him. Harry was bitten by Baker multiple times, but managed to blow Baker's face off.

Tabitha, wounded from the crash, climbed out of the hearse and cursed Harry for his actions and all the damage he had caused, causing Harry to retort "that's what little people do". Dying, from his injuries and the arcane infection running in his veins, Harry asked Tabitha to save him like she did Baker, but she said she didn't know how...that's why they were trying to get the Raslo family secrets from Lorraine. She said she would put Harry out of his misery, though, and use the mystical artifacts collected by the Silver Circlet to fight Jack Raslo that way. As she moved in to finish Harry off, he snapped off a shot between her eyes.

Harry, in desperation, crawled back up the hill and into Windsor Place, where he searched desperately for something. Bleeding all over the place, his blood began to seep into runes in the fireplace, causing it to spring to life. The flames parted and hands reached for him as he passed out from the blood loss.

THOUGHTS: This definitely could have gone smoother, but we had constant interruptions from my kid, I was having Adobe issues with the PDF (on my end, not Reality Blurs' end) and I was distracted by a couple of additional outside factors at points in the game, aaaaaand I hadn't made enough time to really read the book as thoroughly as I wanted to before play. I was also scrambling to pull the plot threads together, though a LOT of things that came up were entirely improv based off of the PC's die rolls (like finding the glasses, being unable to see Lorraine). Raslo partisans were all over the town and I was noting how much Harry said to whom, and if the story had gone in a different direction the implication was going to be that Raslo's reach had gotten to the cousin.

We were fine with the player facing rolls, though the lack of "initiative" and "combat rounds" was a bit of a struggle, and trying to fit everything into the Basic Moves was difficult (though I recovered and began making up relevant moves on the fly). Lore is kind of a big thing in the game and all of Harry's Lore came from rolling 12s while making Moves.

There was also a bit more comedy, intentional and unintentional, than tremulus probably expects by default. I wasn't setting out to kill the PC, but a) we knew this was probably a one shot and b) the tremulus rules are fairly unflinching when it comes to combat. It can get really ugly, very quickly...which, I mean, is fine for a horror game.

In the end, we both had fun (especially as we entered the final act, I think) and we'll bust this out again, or at least another Apocalypse World-hack (like Dungeonworld or Monster of the Week). I also think that the bonus playbooks that'll be coming would really have helped my player out, as Detective was one of the very few within his comfort zone.

Ideally, I'd love to try this with multiple people next time, so we can see the Trust mechanic in play, as well as the Help/Hinder move.

Great set-up, great ending, some Keeper (GM) failure in the middle...but really no worse than most first time experiences with a game.

tremulus and Truth and Lies

To follow up on the Exploding Aces Kickstarter I blogged about the other day, I have two more to mention:

WU XING: TRUTH & LIES

Obviously, I'm a big fan of Wu Xing. I've mentioned this a lot. I feel bad that I didn't mention this Kickstarter before, because, Wu Xing.

Anywho, this book covers the Will of Iron and Hidden Strands of Fate clans, two major Wu Xing clans (the former acting as a force for justice while the latter manipulates everything they can from behind the scenes). I have yet to be disappointed with a Wu Xing purchase (or any purchase from Third Eye Games, and I own everything except Mermaid Adventures...I even own t-shirts for each game line), and I have backed this at the $25 level in order to score a print and PDF copy.

It only has 13 hours to go and they are trying to score $400 more, at which point a Wu Xing combat tracker app will be released to backers for free, as well as a new clan.

tremulus

I left this uncapitalized because the word is supposed to be uncapitalized, and I didn't want a lower case "i" and a capitalized rest of the word.

Anyway, this Kickstarter is for a storytelling game by Reality Blurs, based off of the Apocalypse World engine with a Lovecraftian twist. I'm torn between the PDF and print levels, but the anticipation is killing me enough that I've acquired Monsterhearts (which uses the same engine) for review.

Read a playtest right here on the blog.

With 24 days left to go, it has been funded many times over and just keeps unlocking stretch goal after stretch goal.

Guest Post: tremulus Playtest Report

I met Jimmie Bise Jr. on RPG.net almost ten years ago, and I'm not 100% sure he even remembers it. We swapped some RPG books via mail (all I remember sending him was Forgotten Realms 3e, I have no idea what I got in return). Over the last couple of years, we've had lots of back and forth exchanges on Twitter. Like myself, Jimmie is a blogger and podcaster but his blog is primarily of a political bent, so when he had something RPG related to post, rather than disrupt his normal routine or start a new blog, the idea occurred to us that he should post it here.

I'm glad to share this playtest of tremulus by Reality Blurs with you, and hopefully Jimmie can come back in the future. That said, let me turn the floor over to Jimmie.

***********

A couple of weeks ago, I answered an open call on Twitter from the head honcho of Reality Blurs, Sean Preston. I knew of him and his company from their excellent supplements to Savage Worlds: Realms of Cthulhu and the Ennie-nominated Agents of Oblivion. He was looking for a couple of people to playtest his new non-SW game of Lovecraftian Horror called tremulus and I volunteered to be one of the guinea pigs. I was apprehensive because I really didn't know Sean and he didn't know me and I had never been part of a playtest group even though I've been a gamer for most of my life.

I needn't have been worried. Sean is a fantastic guy and the playtest was a world of fun. The other three players in the session -- Jake, Eric, and Michael -- were good guys and I had a blast.

Wait…did I just say three other players? I did and that's worth a quick note. Sean had originally intended to run two players in a relatively quick session, but he decided more or less at the last minute to ask a couple more and give tremulous a more rigorous run. It could have gone badly, but it didn't. In fact, I'm prepared to say that tremulus could become the game of the year. Yes, I realize how crazy that reads given that I've only played the game for three hours and I've yet to see the full Keeper section of the rules but I'll stand by it and here's why.

I sat down in a Skype session with three other people I had never before met to play a game I had never before seen and had some of the most gaming fun I've had in a long time. We played for three hours in a mansion the Keeper didn't even know would exist until we created our characters. Character creation took us about 30 minutes, which included several questions about the rules. Our mansion-exploration wasn't mere noodling around either. There are two solid mysteries we have yet to solve (one of which I'm pretty sure we tossed into Sean's lap as we played). That is a sign of a game that's not only simple enough to pick up and play at a moment's notice but also powerful enough to provide a rich experience that will keep everyone engaged until it's time to call it a night. And it hit all the "scary" buttons you'd expect in a game that seeks to recreate the atmospheric (and ultimately doom-laden) horror of a Lovecraft story. We crept around in a dark cellar, found secret entrances, mucked about with Things Man Was Not Meant to Know (or at least one Thing), dealt with scarce resources, had a couple freakout moments, and finished the session with many more questions about out situation than when we began.

But let me back up for a minute and tell you a bit about the "adventure" in which we played. We spent almost the entire session in and around a mansion located on the outskirts of a mostly-forgotten  California town. Neither the town nor the mansion existed before we sat down to play; that is, Preston wasn't working from a module nor did he create any part of the town before we started the session. We players created the setting and generated the plot points based on the choices we made during character and town creation and in play.

Yeah. Cool.

Character creation is a breeze. The game provides Playbooks, two-page dossiers built around an archetype, from which the players choose. The Playbooks provide solid niche-protection -- I played The Journalist and there were no other Journalists in the game -- and give each player a nice little set of strengths and weaknesses. From each playbook, the player picks a set of Affinity (think Attributes here) numbers, chooses  identifying features (clothing style, general "look") that will help distinguish them, and two Moves (think Feats here) from a list of several. Each Playbook also has a special Move that is unique to that archetype and is triggered by spending Lore, which can be earned both at character creation and also through play. The Playbooks are short enough, at least in the current version of the game, that a Keeper could print them out separately and give them to the players to use in lieu of formal character sheets.  They are simple enough that a player could keep all the notes they need on a fairly small sheet of paper, as I did. See? Here is my character sheet, which also included brief bits about the other players, next to my computer mouse so you can see just how little information each player could need. 

Once the players have their Playbooks, it's time to create the town. The Keeper asks the group seven pre-generated "yes" or "no" questions, to which the players may answer "yes" to only three. This happens twice -- once to determine the relatively mundane aspects of the town (think Aspects from FATE) and once more to determine the supernatural aspects. Those choices, "local color" and "town lore", determine certain characteristics about the town from which the Keeper can begin to build the Framework (think, well, of a framework!) that will move the plot forward. In fact, each set of three "yes" answers corresponds to a code the Keeper will look up in the Keeper's section that will give the initial Framework for the scenario. Now, I bet you're thinking, "Wait. Sean Preston wrote out a Framework for every combination of "yes" answers?" He absolutely did and though all the Frameworks weren't available in the set of rules he gave us, he did give us a little sample we could use to see how the Frameworks work and how they contain the other plot elements inside them. I won't get too bogged down here, but plot construction is extremely modular. A Framework is built from smaller plot elements, all of which contain some obstacle the players must overcome. it seems complex, but in play it works very smoothly, at least it did from where I sat as a player.

There is one more element of the game, the one I found most interesting, I want to mention. Normally, it's part of character creation, but I want to tease it out of that a bit because it has an interesting effect on game play. Each of the players can have a direct relationship with the other players, thanks to a clever little mechanic called Trust. The players have a certain amount of Trust "points", determined at the outset, they allocate among the other players. The more points you bestow on a player, the more you trust them. The default level of Trust is zero, meaning that your acquaintance is casual and you neither like nor hate them. Positive Trust numbers can go as high as +3, which means that you trust that person with your very life. Now, other games have relationship mechanics, usually to help determine reactions in cases where the players haven't built up an in-game history. This game gives Trust a very important role. Trust determines how good you are at helping other players do things, as your roll is modified by the number of Trust points you invested in the other character. That means that the more you are trusted, the more help your "friend" will be to you.

That gives the relationships between the players a solidity that tends not to exist in other role-playing games, where relationships are usually color for a story or an interesting plot point. In tremulus, Trust can mean the difference between your character opening that lock before the slavering monster eats your face off and, well, being a faceless corpse.

As for the tremulus'  mechanics, you don't have a lot of rules to remember. The game is built from vital bits of several games you may already know -- Apocalypse World, FATE, and Fiasco --  and a few more very neat bits you may not have seen before. Don't fret, though, game play is simple and fast. You resolve your actions, called Moves, with the familiar 2d6 Die Roll +  the relevant Affinity against a set target number. The real twist is what happens after the roll. There is no such thing as a simple success or a simple failure in tremulus. Every dice roll leads to a choice, for good or ill, and the players control their choices. For instance, if you want to look around to find a lamp, you make a roll. If you succeed, you may find the lamp or you may find something even more useful. If you fail, you may simply fail or the Keeper can give you a partial success (like, say, a single candle) and bank your failure to use against you and your fellow intrepid adventurers later. Good Keepers will keep a few failures in his pocket, since he can use them to build plot complications and force hard but interesting choices on the players later on in the game. More choices lead to more fun, or at least they did during our playtest. Even damage involves a choice. In one instance in our game, a character failed a roll and fell down the stairs. His choices were to take physical damage, have an important item damaged slightly, or have a minor item damaged badly. In another, my character was searching for a secret door in the cellar. Not only did my Journalist find a secret door, Sean allowed me to describe what kind of door it was (a "dummy" cask of wine, like you might remember from that Scooby Doo episode with Sweet Cousin Maldehyde. I've always wanted to find one of those in a game and, to that point, never had). The ever-present element of choice -- that the Keeper does not simply press consequences on the players -- makes tremulus a far more interesting and enjoyable game without the correspondingly complicated rules you might expect would exist.

This leads me to the last thing I'll say about the rules. Sean impressed on us a couple major design principles of tremulus that infuse the entire game. The first is that the Keeper's job is to be honest and generous with the players. The second is that questions (and you have many chances to ask questions of the Keeper) are powerful. When players ask the Keeper questions about what is going on in the game, the Keeper must give them honest and useful answers. I admit, this weirded me out the first couple times it happened. Honesty and forthrightness from the guy running the game? What deviltry is this! I'm pretty sure Sean had to reassure us several times that this is simply how tremulus rolls. Once we fully understood that, we put ourselves in situations where we could ask more questions and trust what he gave us to move the plot forward.

In conclusion, tremulus really does have the potential to be a blockbuster game. We should see some sign of a final product in the very near future, perhaps as early as the end of this month (but please, don't hold him to that!) with a final publication date to follow as quickly as he is able. I am looking forward to this one and I think you should keep your eyes open for it as well.

The Michael Rohan Memorial Bundle

From Fabled Environments:


Fabled Environments is proud to announce a Charity Bundle to benefit the Michael Rohan Memorial Fund. This bundle, slated to be released July 2nd through OneBookshelf (DrivethruRPG/RPGNow.com) contains great submissions from Pinnacle Entertainment Group(the folks that brought us Savage Worlds), Fat Goblin Games, Reality Blurs and others. There is even amazing original artwork from Aaron Acevedo.

The Michael Rohan Memorial Fund

On June 10th of this year, the Creative Director of Silver Gryphon Games, Kevin Rohan, lost his 6-year-old son in the aftermath of a tragic accident while swimming at a local water park. This loss has deeply affected the Rohan family as well as the friends of the Rohans and hundreds of families that they are close to and through out the community.

Seeking to turn this tragedy into community outreach, the Rohan family has decided to start the Michael Rohan Memorial Fund which will be used to help pay for swimming lessons for local families, assistance for CPR and lifeguard training, as well as help with grief counseling in the wake of a tragic loss. There are plans for more and bigger things as well, and with the appropriate funding we will be able to achieve some great things and extend our assistance beyond just our local communities. 100% of the money raised through this bundle will go to the fund and will allow us to begin helping other families almost immediately.

My thoughts:

The Rohans have been truly inspirational with how they have worked to make a horrible tragedy into a positive for the world. Support this bundle, please...not because it's $176 worth of amazing products for only $12, but because it's a good thing to do...the rest is just icing on the cake.

The RPGNow GM's Day Sale

A little late to the party, as I meant to post this a couple of days ago, but RPGNow is running their Annual GM's Day Sale, with a crap ton of publishers discounting their items 25% (or more, in the case of Adamant Entertainment).

This is a fantastic opportunity to pick up a number of great titles on sale, like Savage Worlds Deluxe Edition, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, Wu Xing, Savage Suzerain, Realms of Cthulhu and over 8,000 more titles. In the interest of full disclosure, using links off of this site to buy your products nets me store credit...which I then use to buy products that I turn around and review on this site for your reading enjoyment.

So take advantage of the sale!

The Honorable Mentions

After compiling Tommy's Top Six, I did have a few other books that I felt needed special mention, so I'm going to do that here.

In alphabetical order:

Agents of Oblivion by Reality Blurs: This horror-espionage mash-up gives you the tools to run almost anything from James Bond to the X-Files to Men in Black. You can even amp it up further, making the PCs mutant super agents. It even meshes easily with Realms of Cthulhu for as much, or as little, crossover as you like.

WHY IT DIDN'T MAKE THE TOP SIX: Timing. If I had reviewed this in a separate year than Realms of Cthulhu, this would almost certainly have made it into the Top Six, but I have a "one book per publisher" limit that I impose on the Top Six, and at the end of the day, I feel Realms just brings more to the table.

Caladon Falls by Savage Mojo: Caladon Falls is a fantasy setting/campaign for Suzerain, taking a grittier and more warlike approach than you typically see from fantasy games. In fact, it is largely Band of Brothers meets Lord of the Rings, and it's a very impressive campaign that takes full advantage of the Savage Worlds strengths, namely the ease in PCs commanding NPCs and the Mass Combat rules.

WHY IT DIDN'T MAKE THE TOP SIX: Timing. Fact is, I had to choose between this and Savage Suzerain and as great as THIS book is, THAT book lays all the framework for the awesome twist on Savage Worlds that is Suzerain.

Hellfrost by Triple Ace Games: One of the coolest (no pun intended) fantasy settings that I was very much "late to the party" for, Hellfrost is a dark fantasy setting for Savage Worlds in a world that is freezing quickly. With some great setting rules and a gorgeous bestiary, Hellfrost won me over nearly as soon as I sprang for my copies.

WHY IT DIDN'T MAKE THE TOP SIX: Notice that I said "Hellfrost", which isn't a single book, but three books: The Hellfrost Player's Guide, The Hellfrost Gazetteer and the Hellfrost Bestiary. Honestly, I came very close to nominating both the Player's Guide (because the bulk of the setting is right there) and the Bestiary (because I love monster books, and this is a very well done monster book), but I ultimately split the difference and went with the Top Six that you saw on January 1st.

Horror Show by Bedrock Games: Bedrock Games impressed me with Terror Network and Crime Network, their anti-terrorism and mafia RPGs, neither being subject matter I'm particularly enthusiastic about. In 2011 they took their skill based system and applied it to cinematic horror, in a combination that probably shouldn't have worked as well as it did. In fact, Horror Show wound up being a very pleasant surprise for me, a well-researched horror RPG with a tested system and a lot of love behind it.

WHY IT DIDN'T MAKE THE TOP SIX: The biggest reason is that it is essentially a horror toolkit, and there are horror toolkits out there. It came THISCLOSE to making the Top Six, but I ultimately decided that Ghostories had the more unique hook that would sway someone into trying it even if they already had a go-to horror game, whereas Horror Show seems less likely to sway someone who is already pleased with their horror options.

Part-Time Gods by Third Eye Games: The third corebook by Third Eye Games covers all new territory for the small, but impressive, company: Playing Gods. Sure, this isn't unheard of in RPGs, at all. Where this one is unique from those is that the Gods are still bound to their mortal lives, and have to strike a balance between being Gods and being humans. Utilizing a simplified version of the Dynamic Gaming System to bring the over the top powers of the Gods to life, Part-Time Gods is a worthy addition to the Apocalypse Prevention Inc. and Wu Xing line-ups.

WHY IT DIDN'T MAKE THE TOP SIX: Part-Time Gods was a HUGE success on Kickstarter, which led to a few top tier donors making it into the back of the book as characters. The "vanity buy-ins" just kind of annoy me. I'd prefer the page count being used for things I'll actually use...but I did only pay cover for the book, while they shelled out more. The other thing was that, for maybe the first time, I read an RPG that has multiple PC "factions" (Theologies in this game) and not one of them really GRABBED me. I can usually find a clan, tribe, group, whatever that "speaks" to me, but not this time. Kinda left me feeling like the White Wolf-esque clan approach worked against the game instead of for it this time.

Smallville High School Yearbook by Margaret Weis Productions: A fantastic resource for not only refocusing your Smallville games for a high school setting, but a great snapshot of "TV American High School". In fact, if you have the extra money and are running any kind of game set in modern American high school and need a refresher on things, I'd recommend picking it up.

WHY IT DIDN'T MAKE THE TOP SIX: In this case, I think the focus was specialized enough that if it were a complete game (like Tough Justice), I would have given it a nod. I couldn't quite do that given that it's a very specific (though well written) sourcebook for another game. Fantastic book, limited in scope, but incredibly useful for that scope.

Tommy's Top Six of 2011 and Birthday Blog Giveaway

Last year's Tommy's Top Six and Birthday Blog Giveaway was a pretty good idea and a pretty big success, so I decided pretty early on to revisit it again this year. I am keeping the same criteria this year for last year's selections, which are as follows: 1) Only one title from each company could be eligible. Spread the love around and all that. This year, it was much easier to do that than last year. 2) I'm not concerned with when the book was released, only when I reviewed it, which had to be between December 17th last year to December 17th this year.

Also, like last year, I have some "runner-ups" or "honorable mentions"...a seperate blog post will detail those.

Oh, hey...and this is my 300th blog post! Yay!

GHOSTORIES EXPANDED (Precis Intermedia Games)

Why You Should Buy It: Ghostories is a really misleading title, as this is pretty much an all-purpose horror game. Using the genreDiversion system, Ghostories has everything you need to play, and is also compatible with other genreDiversion games (like Mean Streets), while including conversion charts for PIG acquisitions like Bloodshadows. That's a LOT of play that you can get out of this one book. As noted, it goes above and beyond just ghost stories, providing demons, liches, shapeshifters and trolls, and then some. In addition to being able to play normal humans, the book opens things up to a number of powers, like Sorcery, Revelations (visions), Binding Lore (binding spirits), Unholy Arts (which summons Phantoms, who are reallly demons, and that's Bad), and much, much more. In addition, the book crams in nine adventures and around twenty plot seeds, so there should be very little question as to what you "do" with it. On top of that, it includes 21 ready made characters. I'm a fan of games that are a little lite while still having crunch, and the cool, atmospheric modifiers for the supernatural powers in this game qualify (like casting spells on Samhain, for instance), and the powers in the game are a fun, unique mix that help characters stand out from each other without making the game about essentially horror superheroes. I had picked up the original version of Ghostories before but really kind of overlooked it, but a side by side comparison of that one and this are wildly different. Ghostories is a meaty, 128 book with a low-powered, horror feel, and I would gladly use it in place of games like, say WitchCraft. In fact, for my next pure horror game (not the ass-kicking, monster-hunting type ala Angel or Rippers), I would look to Ghostories first before I would anything else (even Savage Worlds), and that's about the best compliment I can give. And it is worth noting that Ghostories HAS rules mods that make it a little more cinematic, but there are other games that can do that better. Stick with the low-end, investigative horror and Ghostories should shine.

Buy the PDF at RPGNow or the print version at Amazon.com.

Realms of Cthulhu (Reality Blurs)

Why You Should Buy It: The idea that Savage Worlds is only good for high-octane, pulp adventure got completely kicked in the teeth by Realms of Cthulhu. Filtering the Cthulhu Mythos through the Savage Worlds lens, Lovecraft's legendary mind-bending tales managed to impose their demented will on the Savage Worlds game system. Now, Realms of Cthulhu doesn't fundamentally alter Savage Worlds...it just provides you additional rules to fundamentally alter Savage Worlds with. For instance, Pulpy and Gritty damage as well as Physical and Mental damage. Setting rules that can make Savage Worlds MUCH harsher than most folks seem to think it is. It does up the complexity level of Savage Worlds, but only a bit, and it grows organically out of existing mechanics. The bestiary is an extensive one that covers most known Lovecraftian beasties, and it's full of random charts with which to generate random entities and corrupted people. It also has conversion notes for Call of Cthulhu by Chaosium, in case you want to use CoC materials with Realms. Magic gets twisted sideways and overhauled to fall in line with the Cthulhu mythos, and the production values are as good as any Savage Worlds book on the market. The options, setting rules and random generators in Realms of Cthulhu make this an amazing addition to any Savage Worlds library.

Buy the PDF at RPGNow or the print version at Amazon.com.

Savage Suzerain (Savage Mojo)

Why You Should Buy It: Obviously, I'm a pretty big fan of Savage Worlds. Like Realms of Cthulhu, Savage Suzerain kind of plays with the way you look at Savage Worlds. Whereas RoC takes it to harder and grittier levels than the core, Savage Suzerain expands it far beyond what most people consider to be the "upper limits" of the system. Savage Suzerain is a world-hoppping Savage Setting that actually encompasses multiple Savage Settings and dials the awesome up to 11 by making the PCs capable of ascending into Demigods, a rank beyond Legendary. The settings thus far have included fantasy warfare (Caladon Falls), Space Empires (Dogs of Hades), cyberpunk vampire apocalypses (Shanghai Vampocalypse), pulpy Depression-era investigation (Noir Knights) and much more to come. Any of the above books (especially Caladon Falls, a thing of beauty and awesome) could have qualified, but I have a One Book Per Company rule, and this is the one that expands those options to begin with and makes the rest of them possible. This is the book that lays the groundwork, providing a slew of new Edges and explaining just how Pulse Paths (which replace Arcane Backgrounds) work. Pulse starts off with basic effects, mimicking the powers from the savage Worlds rules, but eventually scales up to reality-altering (at least temporarily) levels. The Savage Tales and Plot Point campaign in Savage Suzerain is also one of the most effective I've seen at hitting all the thematic bullet points while still leaving the setting wide open at the end. I love Savage Worlds just as it is, but I love those Savage Settings that blow the whole thing wide open, like Realms and Savage Suzerain. Oh, and it has my favorite Hindrance ever: Optimist.

Buy the PDF at RPGNow or the print version at Amazon.com.

Savage Worlds Horror Companion (Pinnacle)

Why You Should Buy It: The Companion series is designed to help you expand Savage Worlds in your chosen genre. Similar to the old PDF-only Toolkits, the Companions provide new rules, Edges, Hindrances and so forth. Two of my favorite books from that line were the Horror GM's Toolkit and the Horror Bestiary....both of which did a LOT to inspire the material for this book. Obviously, horror is nothing new to Savage Worlds, what with one of the earliest settings being Rippers, to say nothing of the Deadlands connection. Even Necessary Evil had a bit of a horror element to it. The Horror Companion does a fantastic job of taking the earlier toolkit and bestiary and bringing them in line with Savage Worlds Deluxe edition. There are a number of horror specific tweaks, like Doubting Thomas becoming a Major Hindrance, but my single favorite part is the addition of Monster PCs, from vampires to werewolves to angels to demons. There are also great new powers and Arcane Items. If you're planning on running any sort of horror game for Savage Worlds, you would do well to pick this up...and even if you're not, and you like having monsters around, there are plenty of options to choose from. While I can't quite call it indespensible, I'd say it's pretty close, as a lot of this stuff is pretty easy to adapt to any Savage Worlds campaign that isn't "normal" (Deadlands Blessed totally need Consecrate Ground).

Buy the PDF at RPGNow.

Sword Noir (Sword's Edge Publishing)

Why You Should Buy It: This unassuming tome is a complete rulebook, drawing from multiple sources for inspiration, including Savage Worlds and FATE. The different pieces make the game feel familiar if you've played some of the games that inspire it, but it's very much it's own game and not just a bolted on mish-mash. The human-centric setting is a bit different for fantasy games, and magic is thematically perfect, inflicting higher penalties for your successes rather than your failures, corrupting you over time. Some of the neater aspects are how character advancement/development are tied directly to the game mechanics: Critical failures allowing you the option of improving Traits or Qualities while Critical Successes allow you to add Stunts tied to your Qualities. The Qualities are all of a "Player Defines Them" variety, which is nothing new, but Sword Noir does a very effective job of guiding the players through creation by tying Qualities to various aspects of character generation. Sword Noir is a very unique game, created from some very familiar parts, that works better than it probably should.

Pick it up in PDF or in a print at RPGNow.

Tough Justice (Postmortem Studios)

Why You Should Buy It: Easily the oddest selection on the list, Tough Justice is a historical farce RPG designed to emulate a very bloody period of England. Meant to be played as an adversarial RPG, it is one of my favorite approaches to PC vs PC games, because the PCs are on opposing legal teams, rather than actually having to do battle with each other (though that's not completely ruled out). I'm a sucker for courtrooom dramas, and that sort of thing is often abstracted down to a couple of die rolls...here, EVERYTHING impacts the outcome of the case, from pre-trial actions to witness tampering to closing statements to the jury. Most importantly, the game has an extensive list of examples to walk you through every step of the case, from arrest to execution (if applicable). You don't even have to worry about getting stumped with the creation of cases and defendants, as there are large, random charts for that. In fact, it is even possible for PCs to wind up standing trial, if you broke too many laws in their pursuit of justice. Easily the most unique game on this list, Tough Justice isn't just different to be different, it is a well-written game based off a tested system, providing one of the most unique experiences I can think of. You don't want another fantasy heartbreaker or Star Wars clone? Then pick up Tough Justice and support something truly different from the norm. Bonus points if you base characters off of the cast of Boston Legal.

Pick it up in PDF at RPGNow or in print at Lulu.

And with that out of the way, now let's get to what you really came for: Free stuff.

Today marks the second anniversary of The Most Unread Blog on the Internet. Ever...as well as my 300th blog post. Last year, we had a very successful Birthday Blog Giveaway, and this year, we will do the same!

Thanks to the generosity of the above publishers, I am pleased to announce the following prizes:

- A PDF copy of Ghostories Expanded.

- A PDF copy of Realms of Cthulhu.

- A PDF copy of Savage Suzerain.

- A PDF copy of the Savage Worlds Horror Companion.

- One (1) print copy of SWord Noir, and two (2) Complete Sword Noir PDF Bundles, including Sword Noir and two adventures. (Print copy and bundles awarded separately).

- A PDF copy of Tough Justice.

Eight great prizes, including a print copy!

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).

Thank you once again for continuing to read the blog. Thank you to the publishers for their generous donations for the Blog's Birthday. As the New Year begins, I have made some tweaks to the blog, placing the Savage Worlds Characters Are All The Same articles linked off the front page, and I have also added an Amazon aStore as one more avenue with which you can support the blog if you so choose.

Up next, I'll discuss a handful of products that almost...but didn't quite...hit the Top Six mark and why.

Thank you, have a Happy New Year, and good luck in the contest!

Tommy

Tommy's Take on Agents of Oblivion

Agents of Oblivion, the latest offering by Sean Preston and Reality Blurs, is a Savage Worlds Spy-Horror game written by Preston and Ed "Pinebox, Texas" Wetterman.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: First off, layout wise, don't expect anything quite on the level of Reams of Cthulhu. The layout is a bit more spartan, nothing ugly, just more "functional" than "eye catching", which isn't a bad thing.

The premise is a conspiracy-filled monster-mashing modern world, in which the PCs are, um, Agents of an organization called Oblivion. Oblivion characters gain a few perks, including some free skills and a choice between a free Edge OR a free Attribute increase!

Additionally, they can belong to one of three branches (Assault, Occult and Operations), which can grant them temporary Edges as well! The "Defining Interests" mechanic from Realms of Cthulhu makes a return appearance as well.

The Skills List is expanded, adding notable additions such as Demolitions and Forgery, valuable assets for any spy.

Reality Blurs apparently does not like Power Points (which is fine, neither do I) as all of their uses of the Powers system in this book ditch Power Points completely. Speaking of, in addition to some fairly standard powers options (Magic, Psychic and Sacred), you can essentially be a "mutant", starting off with a power that you were born with.

Of course, there are new Edges to play with, like Gun Fu (which allows guns to be fired even in close combat), Hindsight (which actually means you are immune to gang up bonuses) and Silent Kill (pretty much a must for assassin types). Powers Edges can let you tweak your powers and Professional Edges like Hacker and Cleaner help the agents specialize.

I always love to see Legendary Edges, and there are some great ones here, like Last Man Standing (allowing the Agent to ignore all wound penalties), Empty the Clip (for when you absolutely MUST unload the entire gun) and Up Close and Personal (allowing an in-close gunman to force their target to default to the generally much easier to hit Target Number 4).

The Setting Rules include some tweaks to the Powers as well as new uses for existing skills, like applying your skills to a manhunt, for instance. This section also includes the Requisiton point system, as agents rarely have to deal with money hands on.

The equipment section covers most of the bases you would expect, as well as Perks, which are awesome bits like Emergency Evacs, a Cover Identity and, yes, an Air Strike. You can even, with GM discretion, "buy" Edges in the form of enhancements that mimic the mechanics of Edges (and there are enhancements available for a good chunk of the Edges, like the Flip Chip, which makes you ambidextrous). There are even Single Use devices that mimic powers: Like an Anti-Grav device that lets you Fly.

The GM section provides background in the form of Oblivion and the Pandora Institute, essentially rival organizations, one hoping to surprise the Bad Stuff in the world and the other hoping to use it.

That said, the book does more to provide a framework for you to work off of, with a number of factors on a sliding scale of None, Low, Moderate and High: Alien Factor, Conspiracy Factor, Occult Factor, Horror Factor and Technology Factor, along with example campaign types and how to combine them (like the "settings" for an X-Files ish campaign, for instance).

A ton of agencies are detailed, divided by their regions of origin, including Pandora, the Thule Society, the Bilderbergs, Al-Qaeda, the Illuminati, and more. Each is "ranked" by their involvement with various factors, and each is purely optional, but are rather inspirational.

More importantly, we not only get a random mission generator (somewhat based off of the Realms of Cthulhu one, but definitely tweaked for the setting), but an Agency generator and a monster generator.

Seven campaign arcs are provided, one for each of the campaign types given earlier in the book, each with the major "plot points" broken down. While none of them are fully fleshed out adventures, a GM with some experience should be able to run with what's given. The X-Files style arc, for example, involves a world domination plot partially orchestrated by parasitic aliens and another shadowy agency.

While we don't get a bestiary per se, we do get a list of generic stat blocks, as well as the major players in each of the Savage Story Arcs fully detailed.

WHAT WORKS: A great alternative for people who may have liked BLACK OPS or CONSPIRACY X but decided they weren't fans of GURPS of Classic Unisystem anymore (like me!). The book is all about options, options, options, not about shoe-horning in a single way to play...(sometimes, that shoe-horning is fine, and sometimes, you just want options, options, options). And I do so love me some random tables, even more than I do Legendary Edges.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: I always prefer a character sheet IN the book, and the PDF is also sans index. Now, while that's not a HUGE issue in a searchable, bookmarked PDF, it can be noticeable in a printed book. Also, I likes me a good bestiary, and this does look a true bestiary (though there is a sample alien or two to play with, to say nothing of the generator).

CONCLUSION: At only $10, I'm not shocked at all that this book shot to the top of the sales charts upon release. You can do straight up spies, you can do X-Files, you can do mutant super agents if you like, and it's at least 95% compatible with other Savage Worlds stuff to boot, so how can you go wrong? (Bonus points if you combine it with the Gritty options from Realms of Cthulhu for some real bone breaking action).