RPG Review: All For Me Grog From Mt. Zion Press

All For Me Grog is a family-friendly pirate-themed storytelling game written by Ryan Shelton and published by Mt. Zion Press. The game aims to provide a simple rules set that will not get in the way of the story building.

Kenneth Hite's The Nazi Occult From Osprey Adventures

I'm not sure which came first for me, the Nazi Occultists in Raiders of the Lost Ark, or the ones that were in the early days of Roy Thomas' retro-revival comic set in the (then) World War II Earth-2 continuity of the All-Star Squadron from DC Comics. Regardless of which came first, both of these sources imprinted upon me (and probably countless other geeks of my age) that the Nazi bad guys should be occultists.

Gaming has long followed this idea, with more Nazi Occultist bad guys than you could shake a rune-scribed stick blessed by an Eastern holy man.

If you're a gamer and you do not know who +Kenneth Hite is, you can take a few minutes and go over his Wikipedia page/resume. One of the foremost horror/occult writers in tabletop RPGs, Hite has also been writing a lot of non-fiction over the years as well. The latest in his non-fiction works is for a new imprint of the historical war publishers Osprey that is called Osprey Adventures. Hite's book for this imprint The Nazi Occult combines historical fact and historical speculation to create a history book that isn't a dry or uninteresting read.

To be honest, much of what Hite covers in The Nazi Occult would be considered to probably be the material from bad horror novels...if it wasn't taken from historical facts. In part, that is also what makes this book so scary. Madmen who put so much faith and belief in myths and legends being the truth came so close to nearly controlling Europe during World War II, and a lot of these myths and legends are explained in this book.

On a level, much of what the Nazi Occultists put forward was likely to be little more than propaganda to bolster their scary and extreme viewpoints, but this book also demonstrates just how many people believed the propaganda as truth and thought that the war would be won as much by Germany's magical forces as it would be conventional troups.

The Nazi Occult is a slim volume but packed full of facts, names and information about the occult traditions of Nazi Germany, as well as the time leading up to that. The graphic design is top notch and helps to overcome what could be a blistering wall of text in the book. Hite presents a lot of information in the book in an entertaining manner. The art in the book is a combination of photos of the people involved taken at the time with scans of book and magazine covers and new art that reproduces scenes of what the Nazis thought they were doing, as well as some of Hite's historical speculation.

This is a solid, information-packed book that can be as much use to someone of interest to the period from a historical view, as it would be to a gamer. For a gamer these is a lot of information that is nearly begging to be included in World War II games that deal with the Nazis and their interest in the occult worlds. If you are in either of those two categories, I suggest that you grab a copy of this book from your local book store. You will not be disappointed in it.

Machinations Of The Space Princess Playtests

One of the things that we have been talking about behind the curtain here at the Dorkland! blog is to augment our usual "capsule" reviews (talking about games by reading them) with Hangout-based playtest reviews. Obviously, this isn't something that we are going to be able to do with everything, but when we can do it we would like to provide as many angles as we can.

Recently we played a couple of sessions of +James Desborough's Machinations of the Space Princess game. A couple of the bloggers back the Indigogo campaign, so that got us some early access to the rules. +David Rollins, one of the new bloggers here, ran a couple of sessions of it. We were all excited about the game, many of us being fans of science fiction, and that's what lead us to back, and then play a couple of sessions of the game.

Machinations of the Space Princess, despite calling itself an "old school" game, really owes a lot more to D&D 3.x and D20 Future than it does the Lamentations of the Flame Princess rules that were used as the game's starting off point. That isn't automatically a bad thing, but it did cause us some problems with expectations of the game. All of us have previous experience with Lamentations of the Flame Princess, which actually caused us trouble during play. Those expecting Machinations of the Space Princess to be the result of the equation of Lamentations of the Flame Princess + European science fiction may be disappointed. The game really diverged quickly from its base and took it into directions that were both heavier (from a rules angle) and more confusing in places.

Like I said, it could be that some of our troubles came up from the fact that we were expecting an "old school" game and instead received something different. Not different bad, but just not the game that we thought that we would be getting.

While we had fun with the game, we felt that much of that came more from the group itself than the game. Obviously what we played was a playtest draft, and hopefully there will be some changes made in the final version that is supposed to be out in July.

The parts we enjoyed: 

Character creation was fun. You can make interesting and varied characters with the system. Some of the rules were a bit confusing as to how many options characters received, but we decided on a ruling based on an extrapolation of a couple of the rules. The game went out of its way to support the weird and sleazy style of science fiction in the Heavy Metal/Metal Hurlant vein. There was plenty of support for creating weird alien races for the game. The game did a pretty good job of spelling out what kind of game that it was, and tried its best to support those things.

The parts we didn't enjoy:

The game was fiddly. The game was very fiddly for a gaming touting itself as an "old school" game. There were a lot of moving parts to character creation and combat, and they didn't always work the way that they should have. You can see us having troubles with the combat rules in our playtesting. Being called an "old school" game, our expectations were different from what we got out of the game, and I think how combat worked was a prime example of that. There was also a disconnect to the rules at time, as things were attempted in order to bring "balance" to the game that ended up not making sense in play.

The things that we didn't get to see:

This was a text-only playtest draft of the rules that we used, so we did not get to see the art from +Satine Phoenix, which was an important selling point to many of us in the initial crowdfunding campaign. This isn't a negative against the game. The cover provided, at the time, was a great and evocative piece of art, stylistically idiosyncratic and different from a lot of what you see in games today. Gaming seems to have forgotten its idiosyncratic past in favor of more homogenized experiences. Seeing that style coming back is a good thing.

Once the book is officially released, we may revisit our review of the game.

Skullkickers: 1000 Opas and A Dead Body

To me there are two schools of fantasy fiction, as it applies to gamers: the fantasy fiction they think represents their campaigns and the fantasy fiction that does represent their campaigns. Skullkickers from Jim Zub and Image Comics is very much in the latter category.

I mean that as a compliment.

I finished this week the first trade of Skullkickers, it was my first exposure to the comic (although I had heard a lot of good comments about it online. Skullkickers, like a good band of fantasy adventurers, takes its name from a "heroic act" done by one of the characters during a fight with the big monster. I won't spoil it, but I wouldn't be surprised if people tried this with their characters in fantasy games.

The characters in Skullkickers spend a lot of time in bars, not surprisingly. If anyone else's fantasy campaigns are like the ones that I run, everyone's characters spend a lot of time in bars.

I enjoyed the art, and the fast pace of Zub's writing. They come together to give the comic an animated cartoon feel that I really liked. It has an anime feel to it that, while not everyone may like, it definitely appealed to me. The art as much as the writing adds a lot to the characterizations of our protagonists (I hesitate to call them the heroes), which is interesting because the characters aren't actually named in story. To be honest, I didn't even notice this until I was reading the introduction to the reprint of the first appearance of these characters (from the Image Comics published Popgun comic) talked about how The Man With No Name was an influence. Considering some of the terrible character names that I've encountered in my 30+ years of gaming, I think this approach is a good one.

The more that I read of Skullkickers, the more that I want it to be turned into an RPG, to be honest. I think that it would fit well in a game with an old school approach, like Swords & Wizardry or Labyrinth Lord. I don't know that I would want a character to have to deal with Shorty and Baldy during an adventure (most player characters are already disruptive enough) but the world of Skullkickers is very engaging and I want to explore it at ground level, inside the world, as well as read more of the comics. It is interesting that I am not a big fan of fantasy fiction, preferring the works of only a couple of authors in fiction, but I love it when fantasy is done in comics. Part of me would love to see a crossover between these guys and Travis Morgan.

OK, so, do I recommend buying this comic? A most emphatic yes. This trade is one of the most exciting comics that I have read in recent months. If, for some weird reason, you need to be further sold on this, there is a webcomic version of the early adventures of these guys. But you really should pick up 1000 Opas and A Dead Body on your next trip to the comic store. It is just that much fun of a comic.

X-Files Season 10 - First Issue

There is a new X-Files comic hitting the news stands and comic shops today. Is it worth picking up?

Let's Visit The Doctor's Grave...For The First Time In Lawrence Miles' Alien Bodies

This week's season finale of Doctor Who was a lead-in to the upcoming 50th Anniversary Special. And it had to do with a visit to the final resting point of The Doctor.

Recently I decided to embark upon a return journey through the Eighth Doctor Adventures published by BBC Books during that horrible period of time when there was no Doctor Who on television, and the only way that we could experience The Doctor's adventures was through (to many) the non-canonical novels and audio dramas. I decided to start this journey with Lawrence Miles' Alien Bodies (mostly because I am a not so closet fan of his Faction Paradox concept). The parallels between this novel and the season finale are interesting (and I am pretty sure coincidental).

I should warn that there might be spoilers in this, but I think that spoilers have a statute of limitations...and 16 years is more than enough time for everyone to catch up on the book. If you don't want to see any spoilers of the novel, don't go past the jump.

Short Order Heroes

I've met some interesting people around Google Plus, a lot of people who are doing more than just talking about gaming...they're doing things and making the games that they want to have out there. One of these people is +Jesse Butler. He's got a Kickstarter coming up for what he's calling a hybrid of card games and RPGs. Short Order Heroes is sort of what he says it is, and what it is isn't half bad.

Obligatory Crappy Phone Picture

I received a promo deck of the cards in the mail from Jesse. What you get is a deck of 50-some (I admit that my phone rang while I was counting the deck and I lost count) playing card-sized cards, each with a quirky and evocative piece of art, an adjective (tied in to the piece of art) and a number. The number is there so that the cards can be used with a task resolution system (there are very brief rules enclosed with the deck). I really like the style of the artist (billed as Eleanor Ferron). I like quirky art. It reminds me a lot of the art of Jana Christy from Very Vicky, a favorite indie comic of mine from the 90s. The art in conjunction with the adjectives can very quickly give you some personality hooks for a character, or NPC.

Now, the idea of these cards is that you "make" a character by drawing three cards and using the adjectives on the cards describe your character. I can see this as a starting point for a character, but I do think that it would definitely need more meat (even for me). The idea of the adjective-based character creation would mesh well with a game like Fudge, where adjectives are already a part of the system. I can also see these cards as a way to come up with a personality for Generic NPC #5 that the GM is recycling a writeup of another NPC and wants a quick way to differentiate the two characters. I'm not saying that this approach isn't without merit, or use, but I think that it just needs a little more meat on its bones. And this is coming from someone who likes rules light games.

I can definitely see using this as a part of my next Fudge-based or PDQ-based game. It is a very cool tool, and GMs can always use a new tool in their toolboxes. The Kickstarter will definitely be worth a look when it starts up.

Dungeons of Dread: The Classic AD&D S-Series of Modules Reprinted

Updated with some thoughts on the actual product.

 Out today, according to the Wizards of the Coast website:

Dungeons of Dread is a hardcover collection of four classic, stand-alone Advanced Dungeons & Dragons adventure modules -- S1: Tomb of Horrors, S2: White Plume Mountain, S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and S4: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth -- complete with original black-and-white interior art.

S1: Tomb of Horrors: In the far reaches of the world, under a lost and lonely hill, lies the sinister Tomb of Horrors. This labyrinthine crypt is filled with terrible traps, strange and ferocious monsters, rich and magical treasures, and somewhere within rest the evil Demi-Lich.

S2: White Plume Mountain: It has always been a subject of superstitious awe to the neighboring villagers. People still travel many miles to gaze upon this natural wonder, though few will approach it closely, as it is reputed to be the haunt of various demons and devils. The occasional disappearance of those who stray too close to the Plume reinforces this belief. Now, the former owners of Wave, Whelm and Blackrazor are outfitting a group of intrepid heroes to take up the challenge of recovering these magical weapons from White Plume Mountain.

S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks: From the preface by Gary Gygax: "This module was begun early in 1976 when TSR was contemplating publication of a science fantasy role playing game. Jim Ward had already shown us some rough notes on Metamorphosis Alpha I thought it would be a splendid idea to introduce Jim’s game at Origins II, and introduce the concept to D&DO players by means of the tournament scenario. I laid out the tournament from old “Greyhawk Castle” campaign material involving a spaceship, and Rob Kuntz helped me to populate the ruined vessel."

S4: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth: In the Yatil Mountains south of Perrenland there is rumored to be a magical hoard of unsurpassed value, a treasure of such fame that scores of adventurers have perished in search of it. Find the perilous Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth and you may gain the hidden wealth of the long-dead arch-mage—if you live!

Item Details

Release Date: March 19, 2013
Format: Hardcover
Price: $39.95
ISBN: 978-0-7869-6461-1

It looks like it is going to be reproductions of the original modules, put together in a single hardcover. I'm looking forward to seeing these because the only one of these modules that I saw the first time around would be Barrier Peaks. I'm looking forward to giving these a spin with my new Swords & Wizardry Complete books (just arrived yesterday). I will post more when the book arrives.

Update
Now that I have a copy of this in my hands, I have to say that this is a physically impressive product. Except for what appears to be scanning troubles in a few place (with fuzzy, low rez pictures on a couple of pages), the art is very well reproduced and the slick paper causes the black and white art to pop off the pages.

I will be honest...I never played any of these adventures the first time around. In our gaming neck of the woods in the 70s and 80s, adventures were hard to come by (no real local gaming-related store until probably about 1984), so we never played published adventures. I'm sure that this probably gave us a completely different D&D/AD&D experience back then, but we liked it. Seeing this volume of classic adventures shows me some of the things that I missed out on.

These are some brutal adventures. Tome of Horrors is considered by many to be the example of a killer dungeon. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks introduced science fantasy (in an official way) to AD&D. This is some formative stuff right here.

As someone looking at these adventures with a fresh, and contemporary, eye, I think that they have held up well. I can see running these here and now for a group of players. Obviously, it would take the right group of players. These adventures are challenging, and can grind down a party of characters. Not everyone is cool with that approach and some will be upset about having characters killed. That's all a part of the cover charge for something like this, and that is all right by me. Of course, I would be the GM so it is easy for me to say that it would be fun.

If you have never experienced these adventures, I definitely think that you should. Buy this book, run these adventures and kill some characters. This is the old school, unadorned by any of the modern add-ons of the Old School Renaissance. If you have experienced these adventures, maybe it is time to do so again. None of us are 12 any more, and it could be interesting to see how modern us reacts to these adventures, with a few more years of experience under our belts. Regardless, Dungeons of Dread is must have in the library of any GM with an interest in older styles of play.

IDW Publishing And The G.I. Joe "Relaunch"

Periodically, although some may not agree with me on this, you really have to freshen up and revitalize the G.I. Joe concept. This is, after all, what got us the 80s G.I. Joe cartoons and comics that so many are still nostalgic for today. IDW Publishing, with this new G.I. Joe #1 is doing this again, and revitalizing the concept again for the 21st century.

In the book, the team is coming out of the shadows to become a public face for the American military, or as Duke puts it in the issue, so-called "celebrity soldiers."  As a gamer, I have to say that this concept sells me on the book. As a matter of fact, this concept is ready made for a role-playing game setting (I wish that Hasbro would let Wizards of the Coast do a G.I. Joe role-playing game, but that is a digression).

One of my favorite lines from the comic comes from Shipwreck: "Do I have to wear this? I'm a Navy SEAL, not a cartoon duck." For the first time, the G.I, Joe team has to deal with marketing: tee shirts and even toys with their likenesses.

This is not a restart, or a relaunch or a revamp. The previous continuity all still seems to have taken place, right down to General Colton, the G.I. Joe of the original "Adventure Team," being put in charge of the contemporary team. These are all of the characters that you know and love, they are just changing and adapting to the world around them, a world where news and advertising are as much weapons as guns and knives.

In addition to the usual, familiar faces, there are a couple of new characters. In accordance with the team's new public mission there is an embedded blogger (named Hashtag by someone who has obviously been on the internet during the last few years) who's job it is to record the team's missions and make sure that everyone knows who they are and what they do. I also like the fact that Cover Girl had been on Project Runway.

The story is pretty fast paced. We are dropped into the action, after things have already hit the fan and then brought up to speed with flashbacks to the G.I. Joe press conference and the events leading up to the current mission going wrong. There are a lot of familiar notes to this story and writer Fred Van Lente is obviously very well-versed in the lore of the Joes. However, this is not a continuity mired comic. You don't have to have read ten or twenty years worth of G.I. Joe comics in order to know who the people are, or what is happening. With a new G.I. Joe movie looming on the horizon, that is probably a big reason for all of this, and I do not think that it is a bad reason either. Unfortunately comics have become wrapped up in a certain kind of fan who knows the trivia and minutia of thirty or more years of continuity and by creating comics that appeal to those people the casual and new readers have been locked out of comics. I applaud IDW Publishing for making a comic that is so new user friendly.

The art is really good as well. I mean really good. With Steve Kurth on pencils and Allen Martinez on inks, the book has a team that is capable of dynamic, engrossing art that is both good in the action scenes as well as the character bits. The art lives and breathes and draws you along with the story.

Is this comic worth buying? Hell. Yes. This is the best G.I. Joe first issue that I have seen in a very long time, better than previous issues from IDW. I would say that this is probably the best first issue that I have seen since Devil's Due had the rights and was publishing a G.I. Joe comic through Image Comics. Even if you're not a fan of the Joes, if you like military stories or action-oriented comics, I really think that you will like this book. It has made me impatient for the next issue. If you didn't pick this book up today, get back to your comic store and get a copy before it is gone and you have to wait for the trade to find out what all of the rest of us are excited about.

Reviewing Doctor Who: Prisoners of Time No. 1

Fifty years of Doctor Who, Who (no pun intended) would have thought that it would have lasted this long and had such a lasting impact on science fiction and entertainment.

IDW Publishing is part of the celebration for this 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who with their twelve part mini-series Doctor Who: Prisoners of Time. Each incarnation of the Doctor will be featured in a story and then (hopefully) we will get the "team up" that Who fans cannot get in real life: a meeting of all eleven incarnations of the Doctor.

This first issue starts at the "beginning," with the First Doctor (as played by William Hartnell from 1963-66) getting involved in an altercation with a classic Doctor Who monster. The Doctor and his companions (Barbara, Ian and Vicki...I am a bit disappointed that this story didn't feature his granddaughter Susan instead) travel back to London in 1868 to hear a lecture from Thomas Huxley. This is an excellent nod by the writers (Scott and David Tipton) to Doctor Who's start as an educational program geared towards teaching about history.

In typical Doctor Who fashion, things quickly go wrong and aliens get involved. I know, reducing it down to one sentence like that makes the comic sound more cliched than it actually was to me. This was my first time reading one of IDW's current Doctor Who comics, in the past I just picked up some of the reprint collections. The Tiptons definitely know their way around a Doctor Who story, quickly immersing the story in the tropes of an early Doctor Who story. The handling of the characters is spot on. Vicki is her typically condescending self, making sure to point out how much better educated she is than the people of the time period they are visiting. Ian is square-jawed and heroic, providing the muscle needed at times in these early adventures. Barbara is, well, Barbara...and being the Doctor's general sense of empathy. The villain of this story is a direct followup to a Doctor Who serial from 1965. I would tell you the identity of the alien but I want to leave something for the readers.

The story is fast paced, probably much faster paced than the First Doctor serials were, but that is not a bad thing. People do expect faster paced stories these days, particularly fans of the newer version of Doctor Who where the stories are in and out in a single episode, rather than the multipart serials of the classic show.

Is this comic worth getting? Definitely yes. If you are a fan of Doctor Who and your exposure to the earlier incarnations of the character has been limited, this comic is a good way to learn more about the earlier incarnations of the character (so far at least). The characterizations in this story are in line with the characters that I remember from the old serials. The story is reminiscent and the aliens are taken directly from a Doctor Who serial. The portrayal of the First Doctor is spot on with my remembrances of how William Hartnell played the character. This Doctor is just as crotchety and willful as Hartnell's character was.

There is an overarching story, with a shadowy villain manipulating things from behind the scenes, someone with a vendetta against the Doctor. Nothing much is revealed of the villain, but I am hoping for a classic bad "guy" like the Master, the Valeyard, or even the Rani. I am really hoping for the Valeyard, but I can understand that might be just a wee bit too obscure of a character. Time will tell.

Go out and get this comic.

Let's Talk About Atlas Games' WaRP: The Wanton Role-Playing System

Let's talk about the WaRP system from Atlas Games. For those who may not know, these are the rules, now released under the OGL, that powered Atlas' groundbreaking game Over The Edge. For me, Over The Edge was really one of the first freeform and rules light games that really clicked for me. Over The Edge came out in 1992, designed by +Jonathan Tweet and then revised by +Robin Laws. Over The Edge was a weird game, with a setting that is strange even for RPGs, and the light approach to the rules for the game really benefited that weirdness. By focusing on a stripped down approach to the system it meant that players (and game masters) could come up with strange concepts for characters (I once ran an Over The Edge game at a convention where the characters were all different media incarnations of the author Hunter S. Thompson, racing against time to solve a murder on the streets of Al Amarja, the default setting of the game) without having to worry about having to rationalize their ideas within the framework of the game's systems. It is like Hassan I Sabban's famous quote "Nothing is true, everything is permitted."

Many game systems have the mindset of "If it is not covered by rules, it is not permitted." With a system like WaRP, that is turned on its head with the idea that the rules are there to help and to guide, but not to limit. That's a sensibility that was once much more prevalent in the design of RPGs that I think people have lost over the years. For some, the idea that rules have to cover every distinct possibility that could ever arise during a gaming session means that they are protected from unfairness, either from the rules themselves or by those who run the games. Sadly, no matter how explicit rules may be, or how many of them that there are in a game, ultimately they will not be able to stop someone who wants to make their fun more important than the others at the table.

WaRP uses an idea of defining characters with fairly freeform, and player-defined, traits. Fans of more contemporary games like PDQ or Fate will recognize the DNA of these ideas within those games. Each character is defined by four traits, one of them a disadvantage of some sort or another. Each of these traits has a physical "sign" or tell that helps to define the character's physicality. This way, the interior life of the character informs the exterior. It is an elegant way to cover many steps in a streamlined fashion. Physical traits (like Tough, Former Soldier, Boxer, and the like) also help to define the hit points of a character. Traits can also determine if a character has special or exceptional powers and abilities (called Fringe Powers in the game). Fringe Powers can cover anything and everything from psychic abilities to magic to the powers of super-heroes to the extraordinary abilities of aliens and extradimensional beings. And WaRP does all of this in 28 pages (which includes the OGL as well).

Developed for a surrealistic game of conspiracies and strangeness, this basic engine can be used to cover a lot of different sorts of games. It can be used for playing super-heroes. Author +trey causey has been using it to run online games set in his excellent Weird Adventures setting. By the way, I cannot recommend Weird Adventures highly enough if you are a fan of the heroic pulps and the fantasy literature that informed the creation of D&D. WaRP is a flexible gaming system that has a lot of juice in it. If you haven't checked it out before, I suggest doing that now and maybe checking out Over The Edge, or the supplements for the game that Atlas Games has produced over the years. If you're looking for a simple and streamlined game that's different from all of the D&D-inspired games available and yet has had a huge influence on lighter, more story-oriented styles of gaming, you really should check this game out.

From The Fevered Imaginings of Rafael Chandler Comes The Teratic Tome!

Looking for cool monsters for your old school games? Look no further than Evolved Grottoes & Griffons: Teratic Tome from +Rafael Chandler. This volume of new and original monsters was created for use with OSRIC, but as we all know it can easily be adapted to any old school game, with a little bit of effort.

Deities and Demigods Returns

As I blogged earlier today (while still asleep I might add), Wizards of the Coast and OneBookShelf/RPGNow/DriveThruRPG unleashed upon the gaming world a new site: dndclassics.com. Using a customized interface for D&D fans, WotC has begun the rollout of classic D&D materials for every edition in PDF form. These are brand new scans: with bookmarks and internal hyperlinking. Of the batch that was in the free reviewer downloads, one PDF stood out for me: Deities & Demigods for AD&D. This book was my one gamer's regret. I had a copy of the first printing (with the Cthulhu Mythos and Elric stuff), but I had to sell it during my college years to help offset the ridiculous price of textbooks.

I've missed that book and it is one of the treasures of gaming, which of course means that it is horribly expensive to try to recover (if someone has a copy that they want to let go of).

Troll Lord Games' Amazing Adventures

If you like the pulps, and I know I do, then this just might be the role-playing game that you have been looking for. I'm going to get this out of the way right from the get-go, Jason Vey is an (dare I say it?) amazing designer. If you haven't seen his work on the Unisystem stuff from Eden Studios, or his own retroclone Spellcraft & Swordplay, you are surely missing out.

If you're not familiar with the heroic pulps of the 30s and 40s, they were a precursor to comic books that featured crime-fighting men and women who became embroiled in global whirlwind adventures. Some of the best known of the characters from the heroic pulps would be Doc Savage, The Avenger, The Spider and The Shadow. Other famous literary precursors to the pulp traditions could be characters like Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, Nick Carter or the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu. More modern neo-pulp characters could be ones like Indiana Jones, Buckaroo Banzai or even someone like Jack Burton. Big, bold, larger than life characters against a backdrop that is just as large, and as dangerous, as they are.

Howard Chaykin and David Tischman's Bite Club

It is probably easy to figure out, if you have been reading this blog for a while, that I am a fan of Howard Chaykin. Yes, he's done his share of clunkers, like pretty much any creator but when he is on, he is capable of telling some very cool stories. One of the times that he was on was 2004's Bite Club, through Vertigo. Chaykin and Tischman also collaborated on the American Century mini-series for Vertigo, but that one was not as interesting for me.

David Hahn's art brings a lot to the table with this comic, and it was as much of a selling point when I bought it as was Chaykin's name on the cover. Hahn has a clean, illustrative style that is almost a counterpoint to the noirish crime story that Chaykin and Tischman are telling in this comic. His art is very reminiscent of Jamie McKelvie's art, of which I am also a big fan (as readers of this blog will also probably know). Hahn has also done art for arcs of Fables and Lucifer for Vertigo.

Bite Club is a story about vampires, family, organized crime and Miami. Any of those are enough to make any story complicated. The story starts with the murder of Eduardo Del Toro, and his being thrown from a Miami high-rise. This brings prodigal son Leto, America's first ordained vampire Catholic priest, back home to deal with the death and his family. Conflicts start almost immediately with Leto's sister Risa and mother Arabella. Leto is given control over the family's businesses by his father's will, setting the conflict against his life as a priest with that of the head of a criminal organization.

One of the primary money makers for the Del Toro family is a drug called Phantasmagoria, a synthetic drug that is like crystal meth for vampires.

A lot goes on in this six issue mini-series, without the book coming across as cluttered. It sold well enough to spawn a second mini-series, so I must not have been the only fan. Chaykin and Tischman bring a lot of plot threads together in this: from the murder of Eduardo to the return of Leto's last girl friend before the priesthood to the conflicting loyalties of family and church in Leto's head to Risa's jealousies and less that pure feelings towards her younger brother. All of these balls, and a few others, are kept in the air with a deft touch by the writers. This story is so much more than the buzz words of saying this comic is True Blood meets The Sopranos. Despite their being vampires and murderous criminals, Chaykin and Tischman create a cast of characters that you care about and are interested in seeing what they do next.

The ending is a bit of a shocker. I won't give it away but I will say that just as Leto figures out who he wants to be and what he wants to do with his "life," it is taken away from him, in proper noir style. This isn't a comic for the faint of heart, or those who are easily offended. It is not an all ages comic. There is murder, gratuitous bloodshed, violence, interesting and unique sexual activities (to those who have mainstream attitudes towards sex), a touch of an incestuous relationship between the brother and sister, a lot of nudity and drug use. Like I said, not for everyone. Of course, I would probably be disappointed with a vampire story that didn't have at least some of the items off of that list in it.

Is it worth picking up for yourself? Definitely. This is a vampire story that does not revel in the cliches of the genre, nor does it try to be "ground breaking" by violating those cliches in a stupid way. The characters of the story are well-realized and have motivations that drive themselves and the plot of the story. I own this in a smaller than comic-sized format that packaged all six issues for $10. It is worth that price, and more. This is a comic that I find myself re-reading whenever it happens to catch my eye on the book shelf.

Dynamite Comics' Masks 1 + 2

This is one of those comics that should come as a no-brainer for me. The Shadow. The Spider. The Green Hornet and Kato. Chris Roberson writing a neo-pulp story based around these characters and set in the classic pulp era of the late 1930s.

Masks is an eight issue mini-series from Dynamite Entertainment that teams up their licensed pulp characters: The Shadow, The Spider, The Green Hornet and Zorro (Zorro in the 1930s?) with golden age heroes like The Black Terror, Green Lama and Miss Fury. This is a recipe for success...or great failure. I'm hoping for success.

Roberson's story is based around the classic Empire State stories from The Spider Magazine, three novel-length interlinked adventures from 1928. The Empire State stories were a thinly veiled analogy of Nazism, and how it could take root in the United States. Historically, these stories are interesting because they are some of the few pulp stories to tackle the evils of Nazis. In a nutshell, the original plot of the Empire State stories was that a cabal of criminals and corrupt politicians were able to push laws into effect and voted their Justice Party into power in the state of New York. Eventually this Justice Party took over the state and, using their Black Police were able to strong arm everyone into following them. Of course one man stood up to them, The Spider, and led a revolution against their oppression.

Chris Roberson takes the seeds of the Empire State stories, having the Justice Party rise to power in this shared universe of pulp and comic book hero greats. Now, instead of just The Spider fighting against the Justice Party and its Black Legions, a team of great heroes rise up to fight against these villains. Despite the Empire State stories predating it by decades, this story so far reminds me of The Dark Knight Rises, but maybe that is just because I finally watched the movie recently. The parallels are there: criminals and terrorists take over the city in an apocalyptic manner, rout the police forces and institute a near lawless regime where their words are taken as law. I think that these similarities come from the long lasting influence of the pulps on the comic books of today, and their cinematic offshoots.

Unfortunately, the story of these two issues is a bit disjointed. I honestly expected better from Roberson, after his work at DC Comics (I will admit that I haven't read any of his recent creator-owned works from Monkey Brain). These first two issues are a bit disjointed, and for a comic that is supposed to be only eight issues, I honestly expected more story in these comics. The first issue puts most of its efforts into building the connection between The Shadow and the Green Hornet, only to throw in The Spider in an almost random manner near the end of the issue. I am assuming that an Hispanic character introduced in passing in the first issue will eventually be revealed to be the pulp Zorro. To be honest, even though I love the character I think that his inclusion in this story seems to be a bit of a stretch, but I am hoping that Roberson pulls it off.

The art in these issues is a bit disjointed. Alex Ross does the first issue in his painted style, while the second issue is done by Dennis Calero. This is a bit disappointing. After Ross' great renditions of the characters in issue one (I love his Shadow and Lamont Cranston portrayals), seeing Calero's style in the second issue is jarring. Is that the secret origin of the Black Bat we are witnessing? For me, the art of the second issue was disappointing, mostly because in a mini-series I want to see a consistent art style throughout the book, and if you have to mix artists at least pick ones that have similar styles. Calero's style in the second issue does not appeal to me. It comes across as rushed and unfinished in places, particularly after the set up of Ross' photorealistic style in the first issue. However, Calero could very well just be suffering in comparison rather than due to the actual quality of his art.

I will stick with this book, because I think it has potential. I am looking forward to the re-re-introduction of the Green Lama and the Black Terror. I have loved these characters for a long time, and I really enjoyed their last use from Dynamite in the Project Superpowers books. I just hope that the characters aren't just abandoned this time around like they were before.

Overall, I liked these two issues despite the flaws.  Roberson's dialogue in the issues is superb and gives each of the characters their own unique voice. The story could have a faster pace, but that could be because I am comparing them to the source material, and Spider pulps were some of the fastest paced pulps written in the day. If these books suffer, it is not because of Roberson's writing on them. I do hope that the pace picks up a bit with the next issue, and they settle on a single artist for the rest of the story.

My main concern is that Masks is intended primarily as a world-building tool, much in the same vein as the First Wave comics that DC Comics put out, featuring Doc Savage, The Spirit, Batman and The Avenger. First Wave was a cool idea that ended up not living up to it's potential because I felt that the writer just didn't get writing characters like Doc Savage. Chris Roberson does not have this disadvantage. He gets these pulp characters and knows how to write them, clearly and with distinct voices. I just hope that he is allowed to write a story on its own merits, rather than one conceived to sell other merchandise and spin off new comics. Masks has the potential to be so much more than that, if the powers that be at Dynamite let it happen.

Below are some sample pages from the issues.  The first two pages are Ross' art from issue one and the next three are Calero's art from issue two. I think that the sample pages demonstrate the jarring differences between the issues, art-wise.

Do I recommend purchasing these comics? I will have to say that my answer is a qualified yes.  They are definitely worth checking out if you are a fan of the pulps, the neo-pulps or the golden age of comics. I would not suggest having too high of expectations from them, however. They make for a good yarn, but I am not entirely sold on their long term readability. I think that $3.99 an issue is asking a lot for the content you get, in places. I still have high hopes for Chris Roberson's capabilities as a writer to pull all of this together and deliver a stronger story than these issues have so far demonstrated. Hopefully, I won't be disappointed.

Howard Chaykin and Shadowmania

1986 was a heady year for comics. Two stories that have since come to be regarded as modern classics were released by DC Comics: Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons Watchmen and Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. Both of these books have left their marks on comic books. Moore and Gibbons' Watchmen has become for many the highwater mark for comic book storytelling, while Miller's Dark Knight single-handedly altered the course of The Batman forever. Somewhere in the middle of all of this was released a four-issue miniseries that has every bit of the same right to be considered a masterpiece of comics as those other two series: Howard Chaykin's The Shadow.

Since Dynamite Comics is publishing a new trade edition of this mini-series, I will try to avoid spoilers in the story itself for those who have not yet experienced this masterful comic.

Howard Chaykin is a comic artist and writer, sometimes doing on or the other on a book and sometimes doing both. With The Shadow Chaykin wrote and drew the book, infusing it with his characteristic fusion of 1940s period dress with a modern sensibility. Previous to doing The Shadow, Chaykin was known most for having done some well-regarded fantasy series for DC Comics and the early run of the blockbuster Star Wars comic from Marvel Comics. Chaykin has the rare distinction of being one of the first people outside of Lucas' production company to create original material for the Star Wars Universe, helping to usher in what we now know as the Expanded Universe. Chaykin also adapted Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination and worked with British fantasist Michael Moorcock for Heavy Metal magazine. He also found the time to create one of the earliest independent comics in 1976 with Star Reach, and his seminal character Cody Starbuck.

Each of Chaykin's works informs the next, and it was with characters like Cody Starbuck, Dominic Fortune, and of course Han Solo that he became known for his roguish male lead characters. In The Shadow, this disposition towards the roguish lead was married to an old school social conservative to make his interpretation of Kent Allard/Lamont Cranston/The Shadow. Chaykin's Shadow is probably one of the more fleshed out interpretations of the character too, leagues away from the cipher of a character that plagued the radio shows and some of the more poorly-written instances of the pulp magazines.

In this mini-series Chaykin made a ballsy move that upset a lot of pulp purists...he moved The Shadow into the modern day of 1986. Before this pulp characters adapted to comics either existed still in their original eras or were "updated" to a hazy setting that could be the contemporary world, or it could still be the past. A lot of people did not like that Chaykin moved the story to a contemporary setting. However, the strength of this idea is that it pitted the character of The Shadow, who was still very much rooted in a pre-World War II social and psychological mindset, against the contemporary world of 1986. As with any Chaykin work, this play of the vintage against the contemporary is a method of showing that change is both good and bad, and the past should not always be viewed through rose-colored glasses. The Shadow's attitude towards women is compared to that of his contemporaries, like Harry Vincent (an important supporting character from the original pulp stories), who have been exposed to the changes for forty years and have been able to adapt to those changes. The Shadow is still very much the force of nature that he was in the pre-War days, and still he has to come to grips with the societal changes around him as well as the physical changes to New York City.

The plot of this mini-series is launched by having a number of The Shadow's operatives from his early exploits, now old, being targeted and killed by an unknown villain. This serves to bring The Shadow out of his lengthy retirement in the Himalayas. The Shadow himself is unchanged and unaged in the near forty years since he was last in New York City, and now establishes himself as the son of his original cover identity of Lamont Cranston. Assembling a team of his remaining operatives from the 1940s and new contemporary operatives (including two sons that he had while retired), The Shadow moves against this new villain. The balance of these issues deals with The Shadow and his operatives uncovering the villains of the piece and finally moving against him.

Despite the opinions of those who felt (and those who probably still feel this way) that the adventures of The Shadow should have remained in their original historical period, I think that a great deal of the success of this story came because Chaykin decided to update the time period to the contemporary. Much of the tension of the story comes from the interplay between The Shadow and his "unenlightened" (according to other characters in the story) attitudes. The Shadow as a man out of time is as much of a driving factor to the story as the actions of the villain of the piece. The story is an engaging one, although ironic because now the setting of 1986 is a historical one as well. For some current readers, the 1980s can be just as foreign as the 1930s of the original pulp stories.

I do think that the story holds up well, regardless. The characters (new and old) hold up well and Chaykin demonstrates that he can write a Shadow story in the vein of the original pulps and update it at the same time. This mini-series was the launching point for a long-running on-going series featuring the characters which would lead to some of The Shadow's strangest adventures. Fans of the pulps should enjoy this story because of the loyalty to the characters and concepts of the original pulp stories (despite the time period updating). Fans of Chaykin's current work should enjoy this story because of how it shows the development of some of his now standard storytelling tropes. If you would be bothered by a lot of people in 1930s-era clothing in the 1980s, this might not be the comic for you.

I am glad to see that this story is getting a new lease on life, and a printing up to modern standards. I never picked up the first trade collection of these comics and have had to rely on my original comics over the years. At least now I can get a good trade collection and I can put away the comics.

Eldritch Enterprise's The Forest of Deceit in Review

I received a PDF in my email recent, a module from Eldritch Enterprises called Forest of Deceit ($7.50 in PDF form over at RPGNow). This is part of a series of modules that feature contributions from names that should be familiar to fans of Old School D&D: Frank Mentzer and James Ward. Forest of Deceit, however is by Christopher Clark, rather than either of those two men.

Forest of Deceit is intended as the introductory or "set up" module to a series of interlinked adventures that flesh out an area of the setting. According to the module, there are three more "chapters" or adventures for this setting yet to come. This can be good or bad for GMs, because if the adventures don't catch on (or there are long delays between each release) then that can adversely impact the campaign.

While designated as an adventure, what Forest of Deceit really is would be a series of short woodland encounters, intended to be used as the adventurers travel to the city of Namar (to be outlined in an upcoming adventure). The encounters are interesting, and are linked thematically by being in a wooded area. There's nothing that really ties these encounters to the Forest of the title, so a GM could easily drop them into any sort of woodlands encounter. As a matter of fact, I may use one or two of these encounters in my own Swords & Wizardry Whitebox campaign.

My main complaint with this adventure is that a lot of pages are wasted by reprinting the monsters. Each encounter is self-contained, with its own monster write ups, but each of these write ups is then reprinted in a six page bestiary section. Those six pages could have been better utilized with another encounter or two. And while speaking of the monsters, I have to say that I found the "shorthand" used to give stats to the monsters in this module a bit confusing, since they don't exactly sync up to any of the old (or new) school fantasy games. Since most of these monsters are fairly common, finding write ups for them in your system of choice shouldn't be hard, but I think that I would have preferred if they had gone with using the stats from an existing Old School game (anything from Castles & Crusades to Labyrinth Lord to Swords & Wizardry) rather than this approach. The OGL has made it so much easier to create compatible materials for so many games that this would have been so much easier to make something compatible than to come up with yet another way to reinvent the wheel of monster write ups.

Is this module worth the money? Well, that's a tricky question. I'm sure that someone will find a use for the material in this module, so for some that answer is an obvious yes. However, at $7.50 (for the PDF) for 34 pages of text and front and back covers, I am not sure if this is worth the money as it is. I think that this module could be much more successful if the encounters from it are integrated into a book with more of the Namar setting information integrated. That way GMs and players won't be left hanging when they finish these encounters but still do not have the city that is supposed to be their destination. With these couple of flaws, I can see this PDF being worth more in the range of $2-$3, rather than the $7.50 that it costs. There's too much introduction and not enough follow up to really make this worth the price of admission.

Hopefully this module does not set the tone for other Eldritch Enterprises modules. I would like to think that Ward and Mentzer have a lot more experience at setting up these sorts of modules, but only time will tell.

Castles and Crusades Classic Monsters: The Manual

Classic Monsters is a compilation of some of the classic monsters of old school gaming, taken from the open content of the first Tome of Horrors and converted to the C&C system. This book greatly expands the amount of monster available from the Monsters & Treasure book, and would be a boon to anyone running a game of Castles & Crusades. The art is up to the usual high standards of a Castles & Crusades book, and the layout follows the crisp and clean standards of the other C&C books.

Unfortunately, among the weird and wacky monsters from the early days of the first edition of the Advanced Game, the one glaring absence would be the demons and devils. Yes, it would be easy enough to convert these...but they just seems to be much too noticeable in their absence, particularly in comparison to other much more thorough old school monster manuals that are on the market. Does this render Classic Monsters useless, or make it a less attractive purchase? Well, no to either of those questions. Classic Monsters is definitely much more affordable (and likely easier to find) than those other monster manuals, and there are still plenty of other monsters that are available in this book. With a couple of hundred new monsters, there is still a lot of meat for a Castle Keeper in this volume.

Comparing this book to the recent edition of the Tome of Horrors Complete (ToHC) for Swords & Wizardry, would not be a fair comparison for Classic Monsters only because ToHC has five times the page count of Classic Monsters. It does, however, not shy away from the conversion of Devils and Demons. You can almost call these infernal creatures the Great Schism of AD&D, as it was their removal from AD&D 2e that upset a good number of gamers who felt that the new edition was overly sanitized after the "Satanic" scares over D&D of the 80s. I am certainly not accusing Castles & Crusades or Classic Monsters of being sanitized, but for me this is a glaring omission. I like the existence of the infernal to test the goodness of characters, and as a fan of writers like Michael Moorcock I like to emulate his fiction with demonic characters. Not that I would not be able to adapt or convert this material myself, if I wanted. I don't want people thinking that Classic Monsters is a bad book, because it certainly isn't. I just feel that it could have been a better book with the addition of more material. Who knows, maybe someone at Troll Lord Games will want to do something along the lines of the great old Demons series for AD&D that Mayfair Games put out all those years ago.

One of the strong points of the write-ups for these monsters is the combat section. For those less experienced Castle Keepers, or those who were not around in the hobby when many of these creatures were first published, having that brief outline of how each monster acts in combat can be very useful. There is also enough ecology information to be able to place these monsters into an adventure in a way that makes some logical sense.

Yes, this is a volume that adapts material that is already available, but sometimes not having to do the conversion work is worth the price of admission, and not everyone still has copies of the original MM2 or the Fiend Folio around to use for their Castles & Crusades games. Because of that, this book is useful and a good addition to anyone's Castles & Crusades library.

You can purchase the PDF of this book here, and if you keep the affiliate code, a portion of the sale will benefit this blog and allow for more things to be reviewed.

Talking About The Clockwork & Chivalry 2e Role-Playing Game

Building on the streamlined OpenQuest rules (which were in turn derived from the MRQ1 SRD), the second edition of Clockwork and Chivalry comes storming out of the gate and into a growing pack of games building on the foundation of either Mongoose's Legend/RuneQuest rules or Chaosium's BRP system. For those who do not know, OpenQuest is a fantasy game, a retro clone of earlier editions made possible by the OGL, much like the many Old School Renaissance games were made possible by the d20 SRD material.

One "fault" that I had with the OpenQuest rules were fixed in Clockwork and Chivalry was the lack of Professions. I like Professions because it is a way for players to customize their characters, without adding a lot of detail. Professions can emulate the best parts of class-based RPGs, without some of the drawbacks that go with class-based gaming. Clockwork and Chivalry also crank up the Faction/Cults rules, by giving them a bit more mechanical strength. The addition of the idea of Righteousness Points is a little complicated at first, but they give a reason to have a Faction/Cult on your character sheet, besides just because of the fact that you can get some extra skills. For a game set in the 17th century, I think that this particularly helps to make your characters more of a part of the world of the game.

Some faults that I had with this present game:

I'm not particularly a fan of the naming conventions for spells. I understand that they are intended to give spells a more "authentic" feel, but the grammar of the spells' names just come across as forced to me. And while I like the idea of Satanists and Satanic Witches in the game, I'm not as happy with making the Satanic Witch more powerful than other forms. I understand why the authors choose this route, but I don't particularly agree and that is something that would more than likely get house ruled into a change for me. I do like the effort that the authors put into making a justification for an adventuring group, and in putting some effort into making these groups fit together. That is something that can be a hurdle for many group, trying to justify why their characters are together, and it is particularly helpful in a historical game such as this one.

A starting character in this game is not only flavorful, and starting with story ideas that can be developed from the first session, but they are not handicapped. This is definitely a game that is about capable characters doing big things in their world. It is also nice that the Professions are set up with historical fidelity, as well as ways around those "restrictions," if the group wants to play the game more ahistorically.

This game does not scrimp on background or or setting material, so the group that wants to run a fantasy game outside of the box of the usual standards of fantasy gaming, or the group that wants to run historical settings but may not as expert on the time period as they feel that they should be are both supported by the setting material in this. There is more than enough background material for England and the important personages of the time and place to get even the most historically undereducated of people up and running for campaigning in this world. There are also a couple of very good starting adventures (complete with premade characters) to get games rolling.

In short, Clockwork and Chivarly is a very solid game, one that builds on the strong foundation of d100 gaming. If you are looking for a fantasy game that is well-designed and that goes outside of the boundaries of what you will traditionally find in a fantasy RPG, this is the game for you. I am looking forward to seeing what comes next with this line, and the supplements that are forthcoming look exciting and will greatly expand the game and the world.

The PDF version, while a bit pricy in my opinion is available from DriveThruRPG. As usual, there is an affiliate code attached that will help me pick up future releases to talk about here on my blog.