Cronos (1993)

With the Criterion Collection leaving +Hulu soon, I'm catching up on movies I haven't seen in years or haven't seen at all.

Cronos, a film by Guillermo del Toro, better known for Hellboy and other "weirdness", was next on that list.

Short review? Set in the modern era, an old man, Jesus Gris, in charge of a shop buys an old statue that contains an odd device. The device belonged to an ancient alchemist who'd crafted the device to grant eternal life. Unfortunately for the alchemist, that didn't include being crushed and vital organs pierced! Hence the alchemist items wind up for sale and this statue winds up in the old man's shop.

The story follows what happens when someone else seeks out the item and what happens when you play with ancient secrets without the instructions. It's not Guillermo's strongest work but it's a solid film and is worth viewing.

For role playing games, it brought to mind two bits.

1) Jane Stop This Crazy Thing! Jesus initial exposure to the device was accidental. Future exposures were deliberate. He does this without knowing what exactly he's doing and he suffers quite a bit for it. In post-apocalyptic settings or fantasy settings with their share of weird technology, don't be afraid to throw negative side effects into the game when players don't' bother trying to learn how to use an item.

2)Origin of the Species: The villain of the piece, the recluse and wealthy De La Guardia, notes how wonderful insects are. How versatile they are. He compares the miracles of Jesus to those of insects. But the device itself? The one crafted by the alchemist? Well, it grants you immortality, aging wise at least, by forcing the immortal to drink human blood.

It's a wonderful play off of the vampire origin and could be a fantastic way to do things in a role playing game. Forget getting bit by a vampire. Forget necromancers and their rites. It's a bug. A huge weird bug that lives in symbiosis with the user.

Keep an open mind when you're watching movies, reading books, looking at comics, and listening to others. Inspiration for thing different strikes when you least expect it.

For those readers with Hulu, any recommendations on the Criterion Collection? Any favorites? Any to avoid at all costs?

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.

Conan: The Hand of Nergal

Written by Timothy Truman and art by Tomas Giorello, the
Written by Timothy Truman and art by Tomas Giorello, the barbarian's collection travels in this sixth volume have some pros and cons.

For one, it ties up some old business. It also has Tomas Giorello as the full time artists here and he provides some great visuals.

On the other hand, while I like the story well enough, some of it felt kind of "m'eh". And this isn't a bash on the guys doing the work but I've been reading Conan comics for years and Ernie Chan and John Buscema left a huge void for anyone to fill and with the numerous Savage Sword of Conan reprints, even the color art here may not be enough to compete with that old school goodness.

Anyway, in terms of some of the ideas that are good for yanking into any campaign...

1. Recognize talent. Often times players are fighting just to survive but here Conan sneaks past some guards and knocks out the largest of them in order to sit by a warm fire and have some food. Instead of having the soldiers attack him, the commander rewards him for his abilities.

2. The Old Switch: During some battles, a young female magician thief who has come to warn Conan of a great darkness following him is wearing a Princesses robe. She is then mistaken for that princess.

3. Saving Throws. One of the things that was kind of m'eh to me in terms of the story was this ultimate bad ass that looks and people and they crumble before him. Works on everyone. Conan just kinda kills him. It was very anti-climactic. Still, when you have monsters in the game that have an all or nothing effect, be prepared for the players to always make those rolls and at the same time, be prepared for them to fail it. Nothing kills a game quicker faster than a bunch of bad rolls because you didn't plan on the whole party failing their saving throws versus the basilisk glare. I know that in the old computer game Baldur's Gate that was a section that was VERY annoying when all of the sudden you've got a whole party of stone and didn't even know what happened.

4. Swap out the Appearance. The things Conan battles look to be chaos spawn from the Warhammer world but are more or less, animated skeletons or zombies. Still, the art of Tomas Girello brings such vivid features to life that it makes the appearance at least more impressive. Don't have the things that party fights be dictated solely on the standard. Switch them up even if you don't change a thing in the stats.

5. Reminders: Conan is battling an elder evil in this volume when the place starts going up in flames. This ties back to using the environment to spice things up when possible. Maybe every round the players have to make a save or take some minor fire damage or worry about some of the treasure they're there to save? Another bit is Conan gets a good whipping put on him so that the enemy actually thinks he's dead. Well, the book is called "Conan' so yeah, he does survive that and like any true adventurer, quickly recovers and sets back off on the road of victory. Sometimes if the enemy isn't specifically out to murder the players, like they're just guards on a caravan or something, maybe the enemy passes them by while they focus on their real mission?

Conan continues to have some impressive visuals but story wise here I think they were trying to tie up too much material and 'open' up new material for the next volume. Sometimes in these collections it works better than others.