The King of the Crags by Stephen Deas

While roaming about at Half Price Books a few weeks ago, I stumbled across The King of the Crags. Looking at the Kindle Price of $7.99, that's not outrageous but not more attractive than having the hardcover for about half that price.

The first book, The Adamantine Palace, was one that had a lot of good set up. I enjoyed it enough that I bought the second book in The Memory of Flames, and if I see the third and fourth books in the series for a good price, will purchase them as well.

Stephen Deas provides a very large cast of characters for the reader. Much like Mark Lawrence, Stephen has a way of quickly moving characters around in importance. Perhaps its best to acknowledge the father of the main character killers, George R. R. Martain while I'm at it.

The book continues to build the setting in history and mythology. Characters continue to evolve or well, not, and act in manners contrary to their best interest. This isn't unbelievable behavior mind you. I myself just went to the Cubs game and it was like... thirty degrees out so not in my own best interest eh?

I'll be discussing some spoilers below. The short of it is that if you want a fantasy with dragons, with a wide variety of characters, with a slowly unveiling tapestry of events, this is a good series for you.

Now onwards!

1. Kill your idols. I've mentioned this a few times and as authors continue to work with the idea, it can be more an more realistically applied to role playing games with the ability for the GM to point out examples of where it happens. Mind you, when I say kill your idols, I'm not saying the GM has to go out and slaughter the PCs. It's easier to kill NPC's. You can introduce NPCs who have complex plots, various duties, detailed back story, give the players a taste of it, and then horribly butcher them. The NPCs can be of a more simple nature. They can be allies that may not offer the players anything except a mirror to show them how they might have been. To give them a sense of camaraderie. And then you kill them. This happens in different ways in the book. Some of them you can see coming, others of them you get taken by surprise. If you can keep your players on their toes, this isn't a bad thing.

2. False History: This is another field that gets hit often. In the 'real world', Obama, at least in some parts of America, is hailed as bringing gas prices to unheard of heights. That's funny because I remember paying similar, if not higher prices when the previous persistant happened to invade an oil producing country. People quickly rewirte history to showcase their thoughts and believes. The victors do make the books. Having said that, there are often people who know the truth of the situaton. The GM should have a few 'record keepers' in his campaign that have 'hidden knowledge' that may not change what happened, but may have changed the how it happened. Imagine if drow are invading the surface world and doing their usual thing of slavery, murder, and sacrifice, but imagine they were invited to the city by the king in order to eliminate some rivals. Or that the king's recent mine collapsed and crushed a drow city in its fall. Or that the dwarves come to the players for assistance and only later on find out the dwarves tried to open a volcano on the drow. The whole "nothing behind the curtain" trick can be used for all manner of reasons.

3. Reskinning: The idea of taking one monster's game abilities and making it another monster, is an oldie but goodie. There are times though, when it goes beyond skinning. For example, the dragons in this series are beasts of burden. However, they are only such creatures while they are under alchemical influence and power. When free of that, they are almost elemental forces of nature that have few equals. When looking at what role monsters play in the campaign, don't forget to take into account the abilities that may be non-combat in nature. Dragons that are dumb beasts aren't that rare for example but dungeons and dragons versions are often hyper intelligent spell casting ancient beasts of power and lore. Drakes and other variants often fill that beast role. But it is something that can be hammered out if the GM is interested in that.

In Rolemaster, they had a variant of the High Man that was even older and more physically powerful. Great Men or something? It's been a while. Anyway, in Dungeons and Dragons, what if Ogres are the remnants of these former empire rulers? In the various Robert E. Howard stories of fantasy, the old rulers have often become degenerate imitations of their former glory. Having ogres be the former rulers of the world whose glory only rarely pokes to the surface in some exceptional individual can make for a whole different type of campaign.

4. Heavy Is the Head That Wears the Crown. In The King of The Crags, there are many princes, nobles, rulers, advisers, and other individuals of importance. One of them is the leader of the Adamantine Guard. These soldiers are a powerful force that owes allegiance to no one king and are there to keep the peace. But they have a leader themselves and that leader is not often a wise, kind, or just person. What happens if that one person who is between the rank and file and that ruler decides, "Yeah, we're not doing that?" The weight of responsibility is an important one and players who, in older editions or OSR style games, may find themselves in command of armies or organizations, may have to take responsibility a tad further than leading dungeon crawls.

5. The Evolution of Magic: In the series, the Alchemist are the ones who keep the dragons docile. They learn much of their craft from the Blood Mages. The Blood Mages are the originators of the styles, but their resources were different. Turns out when you need sacrifice to power your sorcery, well, when there are perhaps less powerful versions that require less sacrifice, your time may be up. In your own campaign, are these family tress of magic? In Rolemaster, the Arcane was a style of magic that was more raw and primal than Essence. In further volumes, Elementalism allowed users to tap into another type of magic. Knowing how things interact, where they come from, and why they work the way they do, at least in terms of how they came about, can give the spell casters more role playing opportunities much like Dark Sun took advantage of with Defilers and their opposite.

The King of the Crags provides a good read and builds up the characters while tearing down others.

The Black Stranger and Other American Tales by Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard is best known for his sword and sorcery contributions including Conan, Kull, and Solomon Kane. Each of which has had movies, comics, and other good stuff developed around them. Having said that, Robert E. Howard also contributed a lot to the horror genre. Mind you, things weren't quite so broken apart that Conan never experienced some horrific situations.

In many ways, the heroes of the horror tales, are more similar to August Derleth's tales in which there is opportunity to battle against the horrors as opposed to the original Cthulhu myths proper where well, even finding out about how insignificant you are was enough to send your pansy ass shrieking to the abyss.

I was lucky enough to pick up this volume, along with several others in the Bison Books reprints for cover price. Now the only two I don't have, that I'm aware of, are the Boxing Stories and Lord of Samarcand, both of which tend to veer up in price. Perhaps those two were limited, or even more limited printings. On the other hand, I've read most of Robert's work before thanks to the old Baen reprints way back in the day and the more recent Del Rey publications.

This volume, starting off with the Black Stranger, makes me smirk when it has "Other American Tales" on its cover because the Black Stranger is actually a Conan novella. I'll be discussing some specific spoilers below so if you'd rather not know specifics, read no further. Short review would be it's Robert E. Howard and unlike say Tolkien, Robert manages to put more story in a handful of pages, or at least more action, than Tolkien does in sixty.

Onward!

1. Starting in the middle. As the tale opens, Conan, unnamed at this point, is in the middle of a dead run. His equipment stripped from him, his body ravaged by minor cuts and bruises, he is on the lamb from a legion of Pict enemies. When running your own campaigns, if you have enough trust and buy in from your players, don't be afraid to start in the middle. Have them roll dice for initative. Have them already be in the middle of the story.

2. The Human Foe: While there are supernatural entities here, Conan's main enemies are those who like himself, are reavers and pirates. He has to spend more time navigating the quickly turning truces he forges among the powers in the manor and pirate boats, then he does fighting against the Picts and the Black Stranger himself.

3. Treasure is Fleeting. In 3rd edition and onward, the game made some changes to how a character was assumed to be armed. In this volume, Conan boasts, "What are a handful of jewels to me, when all the loot of the southern seas will be mine for the grasping?" (pg. 76) It's a feature of the Sword and Sorcery genre often where after horrific odds and suffering and loss, the character gives up some or all of the meager treasures to others more in need of them. Mind you, it often doesn't matter to these characters because they are so self assured that more will be coming down the pipeline, they are free with the funds. In a game where the treasure is built into the balance, if the GM makes no effort to compensate for those level assumptions, either in allowing players to have more powers, abilities, statistics, hit points or something, then there is no reason why the players would do so. They will NEED that treasure by the book to survive.

Marchers of Valhalla, The Gods of Bal-Sagoth, and the Horror From the Mound, showcase another interesting facet of these older tales. That its okay to destroy cities, civilizations, and indeed, whole island if it serves the story. Marchers of Valhalla and The Gods of Bal-Sagoth have differences in the way their approach their methodology, but the end result is the same.

In your campaign, ahead of time, have those ancient and decaying civilizations whose glory is held on only by the thinnest of threads that can be snipped by the players if events work out that way. Having the players so equipped that thousands may live and die on their choices, gives them a much greater impact on the setting.

On the other hand, if you do as Robert E. Howard and others have done, and make these isolated civilizations, places that are difficult to find, places that are not normally easy to access, then while the players still have such an ability to impact that society, the overall campaign will only be minimally impacted.

Mind you, in today's society where you can travel sixty miles in an hour or less in a car, the spread of civilization in olden times might be so vastly different that no real mountain range or other magical needs of keeping civilizations separate from each other may need to apply. Distance itself may prove to be the solution.

Black Vulmea's Vengance hits a theme that Robert is good with. Throwing characters together that have no reason to trust each other outside of their mutual need for good sword arms and keen eyes. The initial 'heroes' hate each other due to the deeds each has performed against the other but by the time the novel ends, they at least have tolerance for one another. In role playing games, it can be difficult to have such a situation in terms of the players trusting each other.

On the other hand, if you have players who are okay with such back stories being woven, and they know ahead of time that if they can work things out for the good of, you know, actually playing the game as a team instead of breaking the party down loyalty lines, then it can be well worth doing so. In one of the Elric tales, when he is attacked by pirates, one of the pirates turns against his 'allies' and helps Elric overcome them. The two remain good friends until the typical Elric ally fate falls on that individual.

Another aspect of the old tales, at least by Robert E. Howard, is that equipment is transitent. This isn't to say there aren't fine and quality weapons out there. Even Conan is given a magic sword at one point in the old stories. But rather, by having the characters be more... self sufficient, the characters are the showcase of the story. In certain genres, such as the superhero one, this is far easier to do than in others, like Cyber Punk, where much of the game revolves around who has, or at least knowns how, to use their toys the best.

If looking for some short stories and novellas to get the images of action flowing, Robert E. Howar'ds The Black Stranger has a lot to offer.

Kickstarter April Edition

Ramble ramble ramble...

Kickstarter for me has turned into a place where money goes either to die or enter into a state of hibernation like Ripley in the Aliens movie where she misses her pickup by such a long time that when she wakes up her kid is dead of old age.

I know, we're "supporting the arts!" but I have to tell you, for that, we're getting some of the lamest updates I've ever seen when talking about 'behind the scenes! "Man, I had a head cold you wouldn't believe! Nothing updated. Sorry dog! Can't help you."

Here's the thing for me at least. A lot of the ones I initially backed were for role playing games. If you can't get some previews, some art, some discussion about your research into the product, where your inspiration is coming from, what made you select some artists, or any number of useful things, don't come to me as a backer with "you're supporting the process!" because most of these process posts are so incredibly lame that if you approached a project manager with them you'd be fired on the spot.

With the advent of the Internet, with YouTube, twitter, and so many other social media options, the fact that most of the ones I've backed hide from their backers and only respond to individual posts instead of, you know, updating the Kickstarter itself? Your doing it wrong.

Onto the late projects!

28mm Demons & Devils: While it's only now officially 'late', remember, no one PROMISED anything would be done in March. That was only an estimate dude. You can't be holding anyone to that stuff. And in the meantime, they haven't sent out the old pledge backing so you know, we can actually order what we've paid for. Then again, I went in for their Facebook exclusive miniature which was done after their Kickstarter so yeah, good work Joe.

1650s Rulebook: Supposedly printed. Will see it in American shores... soonish?

Imbrian Arts Miniatures is now late. Miniatures were supposed to start flowing in Feb and follow up the rest of the year for people who were at a certain level. Turns out Jody isn't going to do that method he initially was in Trollcast due to timing issues. Some have said there's a lot more going on behind the stages and Ed needs to step up and clear his name so to speak. Between this and Red Box I'll be very curious to see how Assimiliation by Ed goes. I'm also curious to see how the Cthulhu Mythos I'm backing, also using Ed, goes. Good luck to everyone involved here. From an outside perspective, it seems a mess.

Reaper Miniatures Bones:Okay, not really late, but late for me as I'm one of the people that backed at a higher level so no generic level and that means more stuff to pack later. One day I will understand the mentality's of the Kickstarter worker. "This person has spent more than 90% of my other customers. I will ship his shit dead last. Screw this guy for supporting me at this level. Dumb bastard!" No, seriously, I get that there are complexities involved in dealing with orders that are not standard or normal, but often, in that dreaded 'real world', when you put in a large or deluxe order with a 'real' business, you generally get taken care of BEFORE the people who are ordering one or two offs. This whole methodology will probably never happen but a man can dream.

Red Box Games: Love Tre's figures but man this has turned into a disaster for the guy. Not only this Kickstarter but the one that followed. Seems to be 'bad blood' between Tre and Ed now in terms of whose responsible for the fiasco.

Note in the comments Tre mentioning one of the things I pegged almost at the start. That if you're a business doing small batches for large orders, you and the person you are serving are screwed. Everyone has to put in more man hours to make it work. If you have an order for 800 broken up into one hundred separate orders instead of one order, or any number under that total number, more trips to the post office, more time packing, more packing supplies consumed, and so forth and so on. It's an ugly situation to be in. This doesn't include things beyond your control like say, a postal hike.

It's one of the reasons why where I work, the large orders are preferred in terms of 'getting the work out' because its more productive to 'touch' a bin once for one hundred pieces then it is to touch that same bin one hundred times for one piece each time. Oh well. Looking forward to seeing it whenever it hits.

Tectonic Craft Studios: Going on a year late. In the meanwhile, he's been doing conventions, setting up trade with internet stores, and selling stuff online. While one can understand the need to do these things, telling the customer in the meanwhile how lucky they are to be getting such great deals didn't fly over to well and I'm actually not the worst jerk in this supporting faction now. People getting tired of reasons and wanting to see their goods. I myself find that its going to be an uphill struggle for him because of things I've mentioned in the past. Comparitive prices to Games Workshop terrain for example.

Tentacles & Eyeballs: The dude here has taken, what for him, was a bone breaking punch to the jaw, got up and said, "Win!". He's turned some of the material that was taken out from the C&D into some fantastic monsters with some great paint jobs.  He made more than he should have and then allowed people to buy in at kickstarter prices. While it's late, he's keep everyone in the loop, no one's had to hunt him down for information, he's provided pieces as they were being done, and has gone above and beyond in my opinion.

Dwimmermount:More drama than your favorite soap opera. I'm glad that the guys have got the rights they need to take care of things. Tavis has been class act here while James deals with a terrible situation. Should have been done months ago in my opinion but hey, people don't want to intrude on such a terrible scene and I can't blame them.

It Came From the Stars: Supposedly on its way. Looking forward to seeing the end result as I'm actually having time on the weekends to do things. Painting and role playing may make a comeback in this life yet!

Midgard Tales: Honestly have no clue what's going on there. I'm actually not worried about it NOT coming out and not really interested in the project any longer. Too few updates, not a lot of clarity for my dumb ass as to what's going on and well, it's something I wish I'd just waited on and maybe bought in the store.

Pathfinder Online: Not late but there were levels with rewards that included PDFs that already exist. They were deliberately put into a special level to encourage people that even if you weren't doing the game, you'd be getting a good value. Those should have already been sent out and maybe it has, but this is another one where I'm not digging through comments and other things to see where things stand in terms of the pledge manager.

Steampunk Musha: Hasn't been updated in months. The game site for Fat Goblin Games, last time I checked, was down. The company has a web presence but hasn't made mention of this game yet. Dead?

In terms of "new" Kickstarters, I've let a ton go. There were MANY miniature ones I wanted to back and a few RPGs. The only one I have backed recently is Wicked Fantasy by John Wick. I like some of the ideas we've seen and he's been good about updating the page with you know, the actual material that will be going into the book. Oh, maybe Fate too? Didn't know if I mentioned that one.

John's I backed because I like a lot of his work. I might pick it up in the store. Fate I backed because it was a fantastic deal and it looks 'fun'. There appears to be community build up around it.

For the most part, I'm done with Kickstarters until I see and hear a rapid improvement. As I've heard things the opposite though, I don't think that will be an issue. For example, let's take Nystul's Infinite Dungeon. I did not back this one at the time. I already had a mega dungeon and more on the way. However, look at who recommends backing it..

"Support this Kickstarter. I'm sure you won't be sorry. Mike's incredibly creative."

- Monte Cook

"For all you gamers wrapped up in the old-school revival, you don't get more old-school than Mike Nystul. How many other gamers were around early enough to get a D&D spell named after them? How many designers were writing sourcebooks about demons back when TSR had banned the word from the game? Let Mike haul you back into the dungeons that thrilled you as a kid and remind you why you were afraid to go in there in the first place!"

- Matt Forbeck

"Mike Nystul is a brilliant designer and the best DM I ever played with. Imagine someone with the ability to peer right into why you play D&D in the first place, who can then create a game with the perfect balance of challenge and reward -- that's the work of Mike Nystul."

- Aaron Loeb

How do you then look at anything these guys say in the future about a Kickstarter? Couldn't Monte have given Nystul a copy of his book on running Kickstarters? The whole thing, from an outsider prospective, looks a mess and it's one that was supported by many industry insiders. I don't think that any of these guys are going to take a direct hit on their rep, but then again, if you backed one of these projects because you were like, "Man, Monte Cook says I will not be sorry! Awesome!" Anyone know if Monte is stepping up with free PDF's of his latest game for those backers?

Anyway, that's enough rambling.

Easter Versus Istar

Neat little picture.

This article says nonsense.

Religion is a funny thing. It has to adopt to the times to survive.

I remember when I was in a particular religious study, they were discussing that Jesus was not accepted by the Jewish at the time because they were waiting for two kings; one a religious figure, which Jesus fit, and the other, a warrior king to throw the imperial rule of the Romans off them. It wasn't something I had heard before then, but they had a wide body of literature and theories to back their belief.

Since then I've seen a lot of studies that discuss how saints and angels are actually the incorporated gods and goddesses of the various countries that the Christian Church has occupied.

Time has a way of changing things in order to be more appealing to the people that practice it. Slavery for example, isn't something we have as a legal entity. Sure, we could argue the semantics of it back and forth in terms of having to have a job, and having to have enough money to survive and not work 80 hours a week, but hopefully no one has to worry about being whipped or beaten to death at work. Although boxers and people who work in the S&M may have something else to say about that.

Anyway, in terms of slavery, unless I"m really misremembering my bible, it's in there. There's even a whole section in there about how to treat your slaves.

Not something that comes up in every day conversation about the bible I'm sure.

It is one of the reasons why those who don't necessarily follow the bible, often want more than just "the bible says so" in terms of convincing arguments. The bible says a LOT of things. It's a very old book. It tried to cover a lot of ground for its time and still has a lot of relevance to many millions of people.

But as you can see above, in the whole Ishtar and Easter bit, we've still got a lot of theories on how things all work out.

In role playing games, it can be more difficult to do this. Many games have modern sensibilities despite their technological backward settings.  Any race or religion or culture that endorses slavery? Probably not going to be on the good guys side. Drow, orcs, and hobgoblins aren't traditionally the good guys and this is reflected in the evil things they do like have slaves.

But in terms of having symbolism and deities have all of these different culture elements incorporated into them, it can be more difficult in a setting like the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk say, where the deities are actual entities. Would you put up with the dilution of your church in terms of someone changing your portfolios, symbols, and other elements? It's pretty much an bypass in terms of games that do this. It's not dungeon crawl enough.

When setting up your own campaigns, think about the impact that the deities and the social norms have on the setting not only in terms of adventure, but how they interact with the rules. Dungeons and Dragons, despite being the backbone of the industry (or Pathfinder), has its simplicity knobs in alignment and when acts are evil, like slavery, despite their widespread use in the ancient world, and parts of the world today, the two do not mix unless you have a lot of buy in from the players.

Someone playing a paladin for example in a culture where slavery is normal? Is that really a lawful good person? It's best to discuss what the appropriate roles and opinions of such elements are and how they can impact the players enjoyment of the setting and how they interact with it.

For those who celebrate the holiday, enjoy it! For those who don't, enjoy, what is turning out in Chicago at least, to be a beautiful day.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation (Movie 2013)

I've been hanging out with my amigos being a mildly disruptive presence with both beer and rum. This week however, a few of the regulars couldn't make it and a very irregular did. So with that rare crew in tow, we went and saw G.J. Joe Retaliation in Imax 3-D.

The evening started off with some fast food at Dear Franks. It used to be, I believe, You Lucky Dog You but... times change. It's a good place for burgers though and their seasoned cheddar fries are fantastic. After we dogged down that food, we ran over to the Half-Price Books. I had a box of used paperbacks and cooking magazines to get rid of. While they don't pay you anything for them, well, hardly anything, I figure it's better than tossing them out right? Plus a 10% off coupon! I wound up picking up about ten $1.00 CD's. I figure it's cheaper than buying the single MP3 song I want right? Like Peter Gabriel Security for $1? Oh yeah.

My amigos headed off to Best Buy. Honestly, I rarely have any use for Best Buy. It's not that it's not a neat store but with a possible move in the future, the only thing I'd be interested in, a computer, laptop to be more specific, isn't on the menu. I'd already hit up the music so I was good there and well, movies are taken care of by Nexflix. So instead I went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and picked up some material for the kitchen and some snacks. Very manly eh?

They called from the theater. Apparently Best Buy wasn't for them either. Who would have known that a place known for selling DVDs and CDs wouldn't be entertaining to a group of 40 year olds? Anyone? Bueller? The Imax tickets are a bit more expensive than the regular ones but I was glad to see the glasses were very light. Hell, I was more surprised that the theater was only modestly filled. It wasn't empty by any means, but there were seats in every row. I don't know if that's because word got out about what type of movie it was, the extra price of the glasses, or what have you but hey, I'm a fan of the only partially crowded theater.

The Show was supposed to start at 7:00 PM. It started, after reviews and special peaks and lord knows what other type of mind control, about 7:20 PM it finally started.

I'll be discussing some specific spoilers so if you don't want any of that, read no further. If you want a thumbs up or down, for me, the 3-D experience, my first, was a bit strange. The movie wasn't bad. The costumes were good. Many of the fight sequences and action sequences made good use of the environment but a few of the scenes were too CLOSE to the characters. If all I can see on that massive Imax screen is a dude's elbow swinging, you're doing it wrong. Difficult to enjoy the cartography of the fight if you know, you're just seeing some blurry crap. Some of it does require a massive brain shut off, but it's G.I. Joe and if you didn't know that going in...

Anyway...

1. The Outfit Makes The Man: A huge part of the appeal of a movie like G.I. Joe is how the characters look. In the first movie, we didn't really get to appreciate Cobra Commander or Destro's unique features. In Retaliation, Cobra Commander is here looking like a semi-modern day Darth Vader with the heavy breathing and all. Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes also make their appearances and look impressive. One of the new characters, Jinx I think her name is, initially looks like a complete Electra rip off.

 

Oh well, it's not like it's a bad look or anything right? Still, the visuals can be an important part. I have several friends who bring illustrations of popular characters to get across the point of what their characters look like. Games Workshop and back in the day, the guys doing Confrontation, put a lot of time, effort, and money in the visuals which have had huge payoffs. As a GM, don't be afraid to scrounge around for such tools.

 

2. The Characters: This may sound strange, but to me, the first movie had a much larger 'feel' to it. Don't misunderstand me, the stakes here are equally high if not more so, but by cutting down the cast to a smaller level, there is a bit more focus on the specifics of the characters. In many ways, a role playing game is set up like this to begin with as the characters being the main focus of the 'story' if you will.

 

3. The Toys. Stormshadow, Snake Eyes, Jinx, and Roadblock, all have very distinctive weapons. You know when they're in the room. King Arthur and Elric, among others, also have very famous weapons. Giving characters distinctive weapons, sayings, and other bits that cement them, like the Thing's catch phrase, "It's Clobberin' Time", can give characters quick recognition both for the players and when specific NPC's are in play. Some of Batman's most famous villains have specific 'calling cards' that they use to torment Batman. When the players see such a calling card, they may be aware of what the problem is while others don't initially know.

 

4. Killing Them Softly... Well, okay, not softly. I mentioned that they were able to focus on a smaller cast here, and they do that by essentially killing off all the other characters in the start of the film. If you're campaign is getting so clogged with characters and back stores and other bits that its no longer fun for you or the players, never forget the Godzilla option. A big shake up can provide the characters reason and motivation to keep adventuring when things may seem to be at a point where that's no longer necessary.

 

5. Action Sequences: There are a wide variety of action sequences that occur here. One of them involves Snake Eyes and Jinx kidnapping Stormshadow in a snow covered treacherous mountain region while being chased by the Hand, I mean, Cobra Ninjas or something. They use numerous zip lines across various mountain ranges, bouncing back and forth with swords clashing not only at each other, but the equipment allowing them to navigate these paths. It gets into one of the things I think 4e tried to do more than most editions of Dungeons and Dragons, and that's make the environment a part of the combat. If there are opportunities to bring the background into the game, use them.

 

6. Introducing New Characters: When I was running the Shackled City in my 3.5 days, well, fatalities were not unknown. It can be difficult to bring in new characters ahead of time. In theory, the G.I. Joe setting is rich with history. In this case, they bring in  General Joseph Colton (aka Bruce Willis) one of the original Joe's so to speak. In a campaign that's long in the tooth, the characters may have many allies and friends, and those allies and friends may have patrons or associates who can be used to do a logical fill in when necessary.

 

G.I. Joe Retaliation is a no-brainer at best, but it's one filled with enough explosions and glamour to provide entertainment for its run.

Freeport Versus Kickstarter

Green Ronin has been around for over a decade at this point. Their initial module setting, Freeport, was one of the first adventurers for the SRD back in the day. Now they're working on a massive update to the book on Kickstarter.

One might think that with their longevity in the game and their plethora of products, that funding would have been easily hit and made right? Apparently not. I'm not saying that it won't fund. There is still time. But let's look at some reasons why they might be having difficulty.

1. No Pathfinder brand loyalty. This may sound like heresy as Green Ronin, as I mentioned, was one of the first companies to get on the SRD bandwagon in a HUGE way. They made settings, class books, race books, and a ton of other goods including cross promotions with Paradigm Press and others. But when 3.5 died, they didn't jump on the Pathfinder band wagon. They had something like d20 age or d20 forever branding so that they wouldn't have to update their catalog. Sounds a lot like Necromancer Games before they came around ala Frog God Games. Having said that, you have no build in Pathfinder base.

Oh sure, we can get into the whole, "It's all the same!" arguments that happened with 3.0 and 3.5 and with 3.5 to Pathfinder, but if you didn't go and do the branding, getting the Pathfinder crowd to automatically leap into the frey isn't something that's going to happen easily or overnight. Am I saying that Green Ronin has zero Pathfinder products? Don't know to be honest. When I think of Green Ronin, d20 gaming isn't what I think of. Instead, we have Game of Thrones, Dragon Age, Mutants and Masterminds, and the DC comic game.

2. Goal is Too High. For a company that hasn't been backing Pathfinder since the start, and isn't using one of its licensed settings, the minimal goal here seems high. I'm not saying it's not needed for what they want to do. But when you're setting a higher bar than one of the most popular OSR projects, Dwimmermount, managed to achieve at the start of the Kickstarter craze, you might be overstepping realistic expectations.

3. Eastern Front Miniatures. This one is just a casual observation. Eastern Front as a few successful Kickstarters under their belt. But those projects are late and some of the backers are vocal about it. This may not have been the best partner for Green Ronin.

4. Pirates are played out. Well, can pirates ever really be played out? Probably not. However, there hasn't been a really popular pirate movie like the old pirates of a certain Caribbean for a while AND more importantly, people just shelled out a lot of cash for a Frog God Games pirate, in part, based project. That one had trouble funding too. Also for a similar sized product. Also for premium product. And that was by a company that has been doing Pathfinder fans right for a while now.

5. Kickstarter Sucks. Well, not really. But a lot of people are getting weary of the continued lateness of Kickstarter projects and are taking their money to actual stores and buying things. Or just downloading illegal PDFs. You know those damn kids today and their internets. When I do my next Kickstarter update, I'll actually have a few that have fallen off the list but most will not. As Kickstarter continues to evolve, people will continue to decide where their money goes in a manner that reflects not only companies, but product types as well.

I hope Green Ronin is able to pull this one off not necessarily for Freeport, but I would love to see them do compilations of their various Races, Classes, and other material that never got compiled thanks to the d20 meltdown, into hardcovers for Pathfinder.

Dungeon Crawl Classics: The Art

Dungeon Crawl Classics gets a lot of 'play' from the old Internets. It's already gone through a printing and two special edition covers. While offered a PDF for review purposes, I opted to wait until there was a sale as my reviewing patterns, thanks to my old job consisting of working seven days a week an an ill mother have converted to a new job that I'm still learning and a still as yet ill mother.

But a sale?  I figured that it probably wasn't going to get any less expensive than the GM's Day Sale. Ah, then I can just poke around when I want to and not have to worry about it. One of the things I did first was 'page' through the PDF.

Let me say that art is highly subjective. Some are going to love one specific type of artist over another, one specific type of style over another, and so on. Overall, the whole book feels like a 'retro' effort with some emphasis placed on modern design. I say some mind you.

In terms of art, the company wasn't afraid to use full page spreads which to me, is a good thing. The bad thing is that in going to 'capture' that old school feeling, it's all internally black and white. Not necessarily a bad thing but this isn't an inexpensive book. On the third hand, for a PDF, I wouldn't want a full color book. It's so armature when companies put out these PDF's that are saturated with color and would look great as a professionally printed book, but as a PDF take forever to open, flip between pages and even thinking about printing it makes you shudder and lose 1d6 SAN. If only there were a way to include multiple types of files so that you could have one for printing and one for on screen reading... hopefully one day... one day...

Anyway, I like the cover. It's a simple piece in that it's the lone adventurer getting ready to enter the unknown. Good use of color. The similarity between the cape and outline of the door makes some nice symmetry.

The first interior full color piece is also like a trip on acid but a pretty one. Full out dungeon crawl madness there brothers!The gods, one from law, chaos, and neutrality, waiting in the upper left hand corner as a group passes through some strange dungeon with massive worms devouring and attacking the party. Great stuff. I had to point out to one of my friends the neutral deity had a tentacle coming from his mouth. He thought maybe it represented something from the sea, while I was thinking of the Twain's mentors and the weird things they often had hidden under their cloaked hoods.

When it comes to those full page pieces, Mullen does several I enjoyed right off the bat. His style is of the 'old school' vibe. For example, there is a picture of a dragon that appears to be possessed by a demon burning a group of adventurers not with his fiery breath, but with fire shooting forth from his hand even as some strange type of winged minions wait for orders while a fighter type is commanding more soldiers into the fray.

Another great Mullen piece is a wizard among his patrons, or what I assume is a wizard among his patrons, those who grant him his dark powers. It's a great piece as all these strange and alien things of anathema wait on the cloaked stranger's words.

Another nice nodd to the old school bits are the various joke comics. Some feel that newer editions of Dungeons and Dragons take themselves too seriously. I can see it but I'm not quite so sure every book needs a Bigby's Back Scratcher bit in it. Here it works well because it's part of the genre they're trying to capture so when you see such jokes, they work.

Some bits though? Well, on one page talking about languages, you have this dark picture on top taking up about a quarter of the page and it's an intense looking situation but then on the bottom right hand corner you have a clear line illustration of some dude that looks like he's be the morning page delivering the news before getting a tomato in the face. It's distracting and cuts into the flow of the text even thought it's not a bad picture, it just doesn't 'jive' with the rest of the page in my opinion.

Another example is the table with the cleric information. We get a break down of the cleric names from first through fifth level, one for law, chaos, and neutral, and another one of these clear lined illustrations. It's already in a box separate from the rest of the text. There's already a table there. Would too much white space be a problem? Possibly. Maybe some more cleric names as opposed to random cleric?

But hey, speaking of old school art, one of the artists is Jim Holloway, a real old school artist whose works range all over the industry but include TSR. Jim does some great stuff here but, and this is going to sound weird, his art isn't necessarily 'old school' outside of it being well, original old school. If you compare him and Mullen for example, completely different styles and while both solid, I'd still say Mullen's is far more old school to my eye. Mind you for me it's not an issue but I can see someone whose knowledge of OSR is from forums wondering what's up with all the different styles of art.

Lastly, when discussing nods to old art, ranging from style and you know, actual artists of the time, there are also several homage images to the original book and its a nice nod to the AD&D you might have played once upon a time.

Now I just need to start reading the book eh?

And that's another impressive thing. There is a lot of art here. While I think the book could actually use some purging and removal of art to make it a cleaner looking book, especially on the old PDF side, if you don't like one particular style of art, there should be more than enough variety to keep you going through the book.