Bruce Cordell Leaves Wizards of the Coast

courtesy Wikipedia

Over at his blog, Bruce Cordell announced that he was leaving Wizards of the Coast:

It’s with mixed emotions that I announce the end of my 18-year run at Wizards (and TSR before that). I gave my notice last week and will be leaving the company.

This isn’t an easy departure for me, both because of my long history with Wizards, and my recent good luck to be a member on the D&D Next design team. I’m thrilled to have been part of Next, and proud of what we accomplished: a kick-ass set of D&D rules. The team is on track to carry D&D Next to wide success.

 Hired by TSR in 1995, Cordell worked in both game design and fiction, writing adventures, sourcebooks and novels for both TSR and Wizards of the Coast. Outside of novels such as Plague of Spells and City of Torment, Cordell is probably best known for seminal adventures such as Return to the Tomb of Horrors and Die, Vecna, Die (both for AD&D 2nd Editions), as well as for writing (and re-writing) the D&D 3.5 psionics rules (both officially in the Psionics Handbook and Complete Psionnics, and "unofficially" in Malhavoc Press' If Thoughts Could Kill and Hyperconscious supplements).

Hopefully his next work will as inspiring to gamers. We all look forward to seeing what he does next.

Shaintar: Legends Unleashed Preview + Kickstarter

Shaintar: Legends Unleashed is the sequel to Shaintar: Legends Arise and expands upon the previous Savage Worlds content to introduce Heroic and Legendary levels of game play. The Shaintar setting was created by Sean Patrick Fannon and will be published by Evil Beagle Games, with the Kickstarter fulfillment being published by Savage Mojo.

For those that might not know, the world of Shaintar is one of world-spanning conflicts, mysterious ancient magic, and plays for power among elites – both ostensibly and covertly. It is a world ripe for adventures of both small and large scales.

But enough of the introduction stuff – what does Legends Unleashed hold in store for the Veteran Hero looking to advance further? Well, quite a bit.

Legends Unleashed is bringing dozens of new Heroic and Legendary edges including race-specific and plenty of Leadership, Combat and other edges. For the casters out there, High Magic, War Magic and rituals within both will allow you and any fellow magical buddies to weave spells that have truly massive effects – even covering entire battlefields to turn the tides of battle! And there are dozens of these new spells to get your gnarled, magey fingers on.

The game is going to include many new armor and weapon pieces – having played a rogue in Chris’ Swords & Wizardry game for the past year, the arrowhead options caught my eye in particular. I really would have loved to have some of those. Arcfire devices – a sort of magical technology – appear as well, bringing a bit more flavor to the potential equipment you can use. The Arclance reminds me of a staff weapon from the Stargate universe, which means it should provide a pretty good time (on the using end).

And that’s just a brief highlight of what is included in Shaintar: Legends Unleashed. If you are a fan of Shaintar: Legends Arise (which is out already) then be sure to check this title out and continue your adventures. Speaking of checking it out, it’s currently in the final stretch of its Kickstarter campaign!

As of this writing the Kickstarter is sitting at a week left with it’s initial pledge goal already more than doubled. Of the stretch goals given, ten have already been reached, unlocking even more content in the form of guidebooks that go into detail on various realms within Shaintar and other books on some of the more mysterious organizations that exist. (The books in the stretch goals are included for backers at the $45 tier and higher, with higher tiers getting more of them.) In addition to the stretch goals the kickstarter also has separate bonus goals which currently include some bonus content for the slightly higher tiers (starting at the $55 tier and higher).

But, suppose you don’t have quite that much to spend – what’s the minimum buy-in you need to get the book? Well, starting at $15 gets you a PDF copy of the Player’s Guide and at $25 you get a PDF of the full book. As far as I can tell, these lower tiers do not automatically include the books from the stretch goals which most likely will need to be purchased separately or by backing at a higher tier.

If you would like to know more, the kickstarter can be found here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/764802981/shaintar-legends-unleashed.

The Revelations of Jim Steranko

If you're a fan of comics you should know who Jim Steranko is. Even if you aren't a fan of comics, you really should know who Jim Steranko is. Steranko has sort of exploded across Twitter, like a comic creating money shot.

Shadowrun 5: A Preview/Review

Honestly, I had hoped to get this done a few days ago, but the July 4th holiday weekend took a huge bite out of my time to get this PDF read.

The new 5th edition of Shadowrun is (almost) here. You've seen the quickstarts and previews that have surfaced since the Origins con, and now the book is almost here. I am going to predict that Shadowrun 5 is going to be the runaway hit of this year's Gen Con.

Let me start by saying that I have always had a sort of love/hate relationship with Shadowrun. I played it in college a few times, one of the benefits to going to college near Chicago when FASA Games were still in control of the game, and my experiences with it were always mixed.

I love and have always loved the setting of Shadowrun. Yeah, I know...as a fan of cyberpunk I am supposed to be upset by the fact that they mixed elves and magic into my peanut butter, but I just can't get upset by that. The world of Shadowrun has always been the draw for me, rich and vibrant and full of the excitement that makes you want to run a game. In this new edition, that is no different. The world of Shadowrun is still alive, and brought to you with gorgeous art, vivid and well-written vignettes, and clear, precise descriptions of the world. The text does stumble a bit in a few places, only because the "in character" style of writing comes across as forced in places. That style can help set the mood and tone, but if not done well it can be jarring. In this case, there were just a few instances where the in character stuff sounded a bit silly. Context is everything.

There are always pieces of art that don't work, and the art in here is no exception. However, when the art works it is phenomenal in setting the tone and feel. And women in the art wearing sensible footwear? Awesome. I can't imagine going on a 'run in heels (but that might just be me).

This is a huge freaking book at nearly 500 pages. For me, anymore, that is a turn off. I'm personally willing to trade a concise rulebook for getting rid of things like fiction, but for the intended audience this is a good thing. Although I have to admit, there is a little whisper in the back of my head that wishes that they could take these up-to-date mechanics and present their own "clone" version of the first edition book. Wouldn't that be fun? But basically the high page count is only a detriment if you don't like that sort of thing, so I am not going to hold that against them.

The mechanics of the system are clear and well-explained. This is the fifth edition of this game, so that shouldn't be an issue by now (you would hope). Character creation goes through things carefully and slowly, step by step, so that no one gets left behind, or gets confused, during the process. Shadowrun 5 has one of the more clearly written sections on character creation that I have read in a while. This is a big part of the reason why the book has the page count that it does, and frankly if I have to have a big book I would like it to be because the options for character creation are well-presented and well-explained.

I have to admit that reading Shadowrun 5 did something that hasn't happened in a very long time: it makes me want to play Shadowrun. Yeah, I said that. Despite my preferences in gaming systems being for non-dice pool games reading this book did what a game book is supposed do...it made me want to play it. However, for me at least, running/playing a game off of a PDF of this size is just not going to happen. Maybe once the book is available the Dorkland! bloggers can have a try at a game on our livestream.

So, is this game worth the price of admission? I am going to give that a hell, yeah. Even if you don't want to use Shadowrun 5 as-is (and really, what gamer doesn't hack? I'm already seeing a number of new Shadowrun hacks showing up online), this book is definitely worth getting. If you are a Shadowrun fan then I don't need to tell you to pick this up. Regardless, this is a good quality book that has inspiration dripping off of the pages. Fans of mashup settings who haven't tried Shadowrun really should use this edition as the opportunity to get to know the game.

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.

Fetish Model and Adult Performer Caroline Pierce: My Life As A Gamer

In the latest My Life As A Gamer, I spoke with Caroline Pierce. For those who don't know, Caroline is a fetish model and award winning adult performer. She's a smart and witty woman who you should be following on The Twitter, if you do those sorts of things. I am also hoping to get the chance to play Call of Cthulhu with her and some of her friends in a few weeks. The picture is courtesy of these nice people.

With what game did you get started down the path of tabletop RPGs? About how old were you when you started?
The D&D red box I got when I was 10? 11? I didn't get to play an actual game of D&D (or maybe by then it was AD&D) until I was in high school.

What are some of your favorite games?
My generalized answer is "the games where the people I'm playing with have a genuine enthusiasm for the game they're playing."  Enthusiasm can be contagious, and people that are a fan of a specific game tend to know the game well and don't mind explaining things like timeline and game play and  rules etc.

Specifically, I really love Deadlands: Hell on Earth. I love the system (original not d20), I dig the setting.

I adore Lovecraft anything, and really enjoy Call of Cthulhu, though I've only played the 1920's setting. Good times. My characters seem to always end up maimed in that game.

I'm still a sucker (no pun intended) for the Old World of Darkness Vampire game. (I mean pen & paper, but yeah, I LARPed 20 years ago, for a few years with a really great group of non drama, laid back people. It was SO fun!)

I enjoyed Exalted. I like the world, I think it's fun and fascinating to play in. Plus you roll TONS of dice.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was darned fun the few times I played it. I like "moving at the speed of plot" in a game setting. No rationalizing that your character shouldn't go do something stupid, because of COURSE they should because that's fun and moves the story along.

What is that one game that you have always wanted to play, but never had the chance?

Paranoia.

I've heard about Paranoia from various gaming friends. Both of my regular Las Vegas game groups have mentioned it. It sounds like fun mayhem. I don't know a whole lot about the game itself or the specific game mechanics (death, lots of death, and clones is all I really know about it) but based on my friends' reactions to it when it comes up and the few stories I've heard I want to play it too!

What is the ongoing appeal of tabletop RPGs for you?
Comradery. Using imagination and story telling. Polyhedral dice. Mentally exploring imagined worlds. Being a dork with my friends, and sometimes strangers.

Are you primarily a GM or a Player? Which do you prefer?

I'm a player.  I have the luck of knowing a LOT of gamers, and play with several groups in real life.

In my hometown of Vegas, my main group has several people that GM the various games they know and love (or own and are interested in exploring and learning). If I pick up a game I want to run I'm welcome to run it, but I travel a lot so would be unreliable to GM a weekly game.

My Shadowrun group has a designated GM who's been running SR games for 20 years and has encyclopedic knowledge of the game.

In Los Angeles I'm not around long enough to GM anything more than a one-shot and I haven't done that yet.

Your day job requires acting, how does that help you with getting into or creating characters to play?

It helps me RP conversations (specifically with Mr Johnson in Shadowrun!) I'm fairly good at ad-libbing.

But honestly, I'm the kind of gamer that I don't particularly care what I play as long as I get to play (and the character isn't utterly useless in the game.)  I like to random roll to generate characters if I can.  Backstory and characteristics usually come out of the character creation and the accompanying group of characters.

If you were asked to put together an adaptation of an RPG setting for a movie, what would it be and why?

Oh JEEZ.  In the make-believe world where I could make an RPG into a movie and have it done right. How can a person choose JUST ONE?!

I want to see Shadowrun done as an ongoing television series. Each a stand alone episode but with ongoing story arcs and reoccurring characters. Start in the 2050s. Have flash back episodes that explains important timeline events like when the UGE first showed up, the development to the megacorporations etc. After a few seasons of that then the whole show can get rebooted with the second cataclysm and go into the "current" SR timeline in the 2070s.

I also want to see  Exalted done as an animates series.

Comic Artist Gene Ha: My Life As A Gamer

You may best know artist Gene Ha from his work on the Alan Moore created comic Top 10. That has long been a favorite of mine, and Moore's combination of the police procedural in a super-hero universe with Ha's realistic approach to art is what made me interested. I first "met" Gene Ha years ago on Steve Jackson Game's now closed private forum version of Pyramid Magazine. I also am the proud owner of an signed copy of Top 10 #1 autographed by Ha at an old Chicago Comic Con. We ended up talking about the (then unreleased) GURPS 4th Edition game, much to the chagrin of the artist who was sharing a table with him.

Recently I approached him to answer some questions in one of my Life As A Gamer posts. What follows are the questions, and his answers.

With what game did you get started down the path of tabletop RPGs? About how old were you when you started?
I think I was in third or fourth grade when me and my brothers were introduced to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. We started off with the Blue Box, and quickly began assembling the AD&D books with our allowances. Despite the size of the books, it was wonderful how much it left to the imagination. There were no rules for specific wounds or maneuvers: if someone got a great hit the GM had license to describe the goblin’s head flying across the room. Tabletop roleplaying gaming is a form of improv theater. It’s an exercise to expand the imagination.

What are some of your favorite games?

I have a lot of affection for Twilight 2000. In part because the rules are so loose. Mostly because of how loosely written the adventure modules were. They had almost no stats or maps, but they worked great in play. It taught me how to improvise details once you had a solid plot.

I also love Robin Laws’ Feng Shui. Mathematically it’s a messy rule set, but the gaming advice was brilliant. It took the example I’d learned from Twilight 2000 and turned it into a philosophy. These are lessons I’ve carried into my comics artwork. When you make a script or rough sketches or pencils, always leave room for improvisation at the next stage. Don’t try to define every little detail right away. Future you is at least as creative as present moment you.

I love the idea of Microscope. I’m really eager to try it out some day.

What is the ongoing appeal of tabletop RPGs for you?
It’s exactly the same appeal as going on a road trip with a really geeky pal. It’s talking crazy ideas with my best friends. That’s the heart of it. I’m not a convention gaming guy, I don’t like gaming with a group of strangers. I’m in it more for the company and the resulting ideas than the game itself.

Are you primarily a GM or a Player? Which do you prefer?
I’d love to GM, but to do it really well takes preparation. My friend +Lowell Francis  (http://ageofravens.blogspot.com/) has given me a high standard for table running. He knows the rules backwards and forwards, he’s picked out musical tracks for probable dramatic beats, and he never lets the narrative slow down. It’s glorious to behold.

It’s like grilling a great steak. It looks simple, but I don’t have the time and tools to make a properly dry aged and grilled steak at home, so I leave it to the masters. I’m a player, because my obsessive comics work doesn’t leave room to become great at another hobby.

As an artist, is your approach to gaming different, do you think? Do you create characters/settings from a visual perspective first?

When I was a teenage Dungeon Master my older brother would stop the game if NPC actions or the setting made no sense. This made me appreciate well told minor characters in every media. Every character has their own story and reasons. Buildings are built and adapted to how the people in them live. When I draw I try to think this through. I like to start with a simple visual cue for a character, but how I flesh it out comes from gaming.

If you could work on a comic adaptation of any RPG, what would it be and why?

I’d love to do something like Jared Sorenson's octaNe: premium uNleaded, if not a licensed comic. I suspect he borrowed some ideas from my comic Oktane so I don’t feel guilty with the thought. It’s a game set in a “psychotronic” post-apocalyptic America where Elvis impersonating samurai monkeys cruise the outlaw highways with extraterrestrial luchadores and genetically engineered warrior nuns. If I ever meet Clay Moore I’d love to see if he’d be interested.

If you have one of your comics adapted to an RPG, which would it be and why?

Other than Oktane, my genius GM friend Lowell told me he’d like to run a campaign inspired by Global Frequency using the Hollowpoint rules. That makes me very, very proud.

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.

Superstar Artist Trevor Hairsine Joins Valiant as Exclusive Creator

In advance of the release of Eternal Warrior #1 this September, Valiant is proud to announce that superstar artist Trevor Hairsine has signed on as the publisher's next exclusive artist!

 

A veteran of 2000 AD and Judge Dredd Megazine, Hairsine made his mainstream comics breakthrough in 2002 as the artist of the acclaimed mini-series Cla$$war. Shortly thereafter, Hairsine moved to Marvel, where was named to the first wave of up-and-coming "Young Guns," alongside Jim Cheung, Olivier Coipel, David Finch, Adi Granov, and Steve McNiven. From 2003 onward, Hairsine penciled several high-profile titles, including Ultimate Six with writer Brian Michael Bendis, X-Men: Deadly Genesis with writer Ed Brubaker, and Ultimate Nightmare with writer Warren Ellis. 

 

Hairsine made his Valiant debut earlier in early 2013, illustrating the prelude to the best-selling "Planet Death" storyline in X-O Manowar and, at present, is completing an acclaimed four-issue run on Harbinger with co-artist Khari Evans. On September 11th, the newly Valiant-exclusive artist will launch his first ongoing series for Valiant with New York Times best-selling writer Greg Pak in the pages of Eternal Warrior #1.

 

"I had a blast working on X-O Manowar and Harbinger, and couldn't be more excited about launching Eternal Warrior with Greg Pak," said Hairsine. "Valiant's an incredibly exciting place to be, and I'm looking forward to making great comics with them for some time to come."

 

"Trevor is one of the premier artists in comics and with good reason," said Valiant Executive Editor Warren Simons. "His work is nothing short of stunning, and, at the helm of Eternal Warrior with Greg Pak, they're readying an absolute monster of a book."

 

Hitting shops on September 11th, Eternal Warrior #1 is the first issue of all-new ongoing series featuring Valiant's most feared immortal, the Eternal Warrior. Across ten millennia and a thousand battlefields, Gilad Anni-Padda has traversed the darkest, most mysterious corners of history. But the horror and bloodshed of constant warfare has finally taken its toll on the man myth calls the Eternal Warrior…and he has abdicated his duties as the Fist and the Steel of Earth for a quiet life of seclusion. But when a blood vendetta from the distant past suddenly reappears in the modern day, he must decide if he will return to the ways of war…for the child who betrayed him thousands of years ago…

 

Hairsine joins Eisner Award-winning artist Cary Nord (X-O Manowar, Conan) and New York Times best-selling writer Joshua Dysart (Harbinger Wars, Harbinger) as the next addition to Valiant’s roster of exclusive talent.

 

For more information on Eternal Warrior, X-O Manowar, and the rest of the Valiant Universe, visit Valiant on Facebook, on Twitter and at ValiantUniverse.com.