Wildfire: Some Companies Have All The Luck

At this point there’s only 3-4 RPGs I actively follow and try to keep up with their new releases. That got very easy very quick with CthulhuTech, since it seemed to exist in a desert or void—every year and a half a new book would pop out of the ether and surprise me, not having been mentioned for half a year or more. It got to the point where I stopped bothering to look for new releases since there never were any; their Cthulhutech.com blog never updated and I’d only find out about new releases when they were three months old.

There was a reason for that; after working through a laundry list of bad publishers, their last one—Sandstorm Productions—wiped itself off the map.

And now, a logo for a company that doesn’t exist any more.

Well, it’s been three months since Wildfire had its last update, and it wasn’t a good one. Such an awesome setting—and really slick set of rules, once you get your head wrapped around them—has had some of the worst support in the world, the unluckiest production run imaginable. Their deal with EOS Press fell through back in 2006 when EOS wanted to focus its limited resources on the Weapons of the Gods game license; next, their reputable publisher named Osseum Entertainment had its death spiral. Their CthulhuTech books produced by Mongoose were pretty badly constructed, and then Mongoose’s internal publishing experiment got dumped before a better produced CthulhuTech came out.

Then, a lengthy deal with Catalyst Game Labs was looking like a good fit, since they shared the same high-quality production values and amazing art design. The game finally got its awesome full-color release, and hit the Ennies with a vengeance. But Catalyst kept up a tradition dating back to FASA, wherein the company owning the Shadowrun and BattleTech licenses implodes financially after a decade or so. That happened to be Catalyst, and Wildfire was caught in that implosion. When Catalyst stopped paying, Wildfire broke out the lawyers.

And it was promptly gobbled up, along with Catalyst’s other big-new-thing license, Posthuman Studios’ Eclipse Phase, by a new company called Sandstorm Productions. They came out with a new Eclipse Phase book or two, and I think three CthulhuTech books, and did absolutely nothing else. Card games and other on-the-side, non-RPG products that I don’t care about, and I’m not even sure how well those were supported. A year ago around springtime, people had considered at least one of those lines—Cthulhutech—on its last legs, or at least in severe distress, along with Sandstorm. The lack of support was deafening.

So it’s not surprising to find Sandstorm’s reach exceeded its grasp, and that the company went belly-up: they bit off more than they could afford to chew, and ended up first dropping their RPG lines, then dying outright. Where does this leave the two licenses?

Posthuman Studios is a bit better off, having already cut the cord with Sandstorm after the lapse in publishing support. They have a nice (if smallish) line of Eclipse Phase supplements and the occasional hardback. They’ve jumped over to the Indie Press Revolution bandwagon, supplemented by DriveThruRPG, so there’s several outlets to acquire their four hardbacks and half-dozen ebooks.

Wildfire’s in more of a bind. Their Shadow Wars miniature line was killed due to the lack of support after one promo figure, and even though a chunk of the CthulhuTech and Void—formerly Cthonian Stars—material is finished (or near enough), they don’t have the same kind of leverage (or time) to get it out there. As with Posthuman (and others), Wildfire is moving more towards ebooks and print-on-demand (PoD) to get their products out.

You can tell from their forum posts that the guys behind Wildfire are really into their games, but as a part-time hobby venture, they don’t have the time or capital to act on it—Kickstarter maybe?—and just want to get their completed products out the door and call it quits. It’s a shame; this once-promising new game line has had the worst luck in the world getting its products out. What was supposed to be a quick six-book run turned into a six-year-plus odyssey.

Lovecraftian Gaming

The more I think about it, the less I’m sure why somebody (cough Chaosium cough) decided to take H.P. Lovecraft’s style of fiction and make it into a roleplaying game. Not for the obvious reasons that you might think, of course.

Let’s take CthulhuTech, for example; the Mythos works because it fits the “evil outsider enemy” role in a game inspired by Mecha anime (Evangelion comes to mind) and BattleTech (itself influenced by anime), which have precedents for unknown tentacled alien others to arrive and stomp on humans. In Pathfinder, the scattered Mythos creatures fill the same role as other D&D monsters; you don’t change your Pathfinder game to become an investigative one, and instead, end up with tactical battles against shoggoths instead of dragons.

What I mean is that Lovecraft’s fiction doesn’t adapt itself too well to roleplaying games, and in fact run counter to the adventuring party/tactical unit/gaming party and its social, action-based nature.

Consider.

1.) Most of Lovecraft’s protagonists are individual; there’s rarely a group of people who encounter the strange beings from beyond time and space. When there are, they tend to be unnamed red shirts—members of a large expedition, household staff, rural townsfolk, native bearers, etc.—or, if they’re Name-Owning Proper White Folk, they almost always end up a.) betraying the protagonist, or b.) devoured by the story’s conclusion (“Statement of Randolph Carter” comes to mind).

This makes sense, given the stories’ nature—it’s fringe horror. These protagonists are the few individuals out of millions who’ve stumbled onto something far beyond human understanding, and will never be the same again. If what happens to Lovecraft’s protagonists happened to everyone in Lovecraft’s world, there’d be riots in the street, attempts to prepare defenses, governments would either collapse or become totalitarian bastions of humanity… in short, see CthulhuTech.

2.) Lovecraft’s prose is, to be honest, dull: second-hand monologue retellings of recent events (“Pickman’s Model”), or journal entries (“Call of Cthulhu”), or some other passive story frame. Often, it’s a madman recounting their tale, trying to understand how their mind broke (“Rats in the Walls”), or why you’re now standing over their deformed body (“Winged Death”). Modern authors can break that trend, but Lovecraft himself ends up creating this strange emotional distance through the story’s passive frame; maybe it mollifies the horror, setting it back and away from the protagonist, much less the reader.

“The Call of Cthulhu” is an amazing story, but it embodies all of those problems. It involves one person investigating things that happened decades before, reading a collection of primary source data that he obtained from… someone else investigating those events, decades before.

I’m not sure how that would pan out successfully in a game; there’s no sense of action in reading events that occurred decades before unless you run stories-within-a-story. Which is a stretch; players will forget which character they’re playing, will lose investment with each since they’re jumping from body to body, etc. Never mind that to be accurate to the source material, you’ll have at most five players, and they’ll need to be fine with the reality that all but 1-2 of them will die, and most of the survivors will be insane.

Between the sheer passivity of their frames and prose, and the limited number of protagonists in each one, his tales are something that doen’t adapt itself well into a social, group-based activity.

Not so much a condemnation as much as surprise; I think it’s impressive that Chaosium managed to build an effective roleplaying game that’s stood the test of time on a subject that doesn’t quite fit. And so successful that Lovecraft gaming has become a booming market nowadays: Trail of Cthulhu, Realms of Cthulhu, pulp action Cthulhu, tactical D&D Cthulhu, Cthulhu the video game, Cthulhu the flamethrower…

Wildfire’s Return – Chthonian Stars Review

It’s been a long wait since we last saw a CthulhuTech book–Unveiled Threats last fall, which contrary to what its name implies was a large book of guns and artifacts–so it’s about time we see another release from Wildfire. In this case, it’s Chthonian Stars, a Cthulhu Mythos (big surprise) game using the Traveller license. (Notably little relation to hypothetical chthonian planets, or Brian Lumley’s Mythos race.) Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading too much SF lately, but the  Traveller part alone was enough to grab my interest.

The new Traveller is being published by Mongoose Publishing, of all people. My opinion of Mongoose isn’t terribly high, partly because of their hit-or-miss-and-generally-miss d20 products (Slayer’s Guides Say What). That said, I also held that opinion for Fantasy Flight Games (Legends & Lairs Say What), another publisher of early d20 over-bloat, and their handling of the Warhammer 40k RPG lines has me eating crow. Mongoose’s new Traveller line has been pretty top-notch–the Hammer’s Slammers book was a blast, and they have a good selection of Babylon 5 supplements–and they’re also running the new RuneQuest game, which is slick as all hell.

So, Chthonian Stars. The game line has been mentioned a few times in the past years, and finally released this spring in .pdf form. Now it turns out that Wildfire decided it wasn’t going with Mongoose Traveller after all, for reasons which never really got explained; probably for the best, since while I like the Mongoose Traveller rules, I’m not sure I’ll either buy them or use them. Wildfire is be renaming the game as The Void, giving it a new rules system (please, please, please either be Framewerk so I can use it with CthulhuTech, or that wonky percentile system so I can use it with Eclipse Phase), and releasing it as a 6″x9″ softcover sometime in the near future. As the Mongoose Traveller edition was mostly complete, they put it on the market in .pdf form with its Chthonian Stars name; for simplicity’s sake (e.g., laziness), that’s how I’ll be referring to it.

And now, the game itself.

GenCon Recap: Paizo Grabs ENnies, Ravenloft, CthulhuTech, White Wolf’s Booth Blew

Let’s start with White Wolf, since I’m of the opinion that they need to be savaged continually for bad decisions. This time, it’s their booth: White Wolf’s Gothic New Orleans Nothing For Sale Shop. It had booth babes, booze, a DJ, everything… except product. Since their merger with Icelandic game giant CCP (the guys behind EVE, and keeping the Icelandic economy afloat), White Wolf has been continually minimized in terms of product releases. Word on the World of Darkness MMo was a vague “It’s coming.” I’d been hoping that Exalted would see some kind of revitalization, but aside from publishing the errata books, it appears to have finally run its course. In any case, I wouldn’t be surprised if White Wolf ends its life as content developers for the WoD MMo, since they don’t seem to be doing very much with their pen and paper lines.

Paizo won the crowd. Lines for the Advanced Player’s Handbook were long and constant, a good sign considering the main material has been free to gamers in open-beta testing for a year. There’s also a few tidbits of info about the company’s new products, under the working titles of Ultimate Magic and Ultimate Combat, which are to have new feats, spells, and equipment from across Golarion; Tian Xia is supposed to be the next campaign setting for the Pathfinder world.

On top of that, Paizo’s Pathfinder products swept the ENnies… not entirely surprising, but another solid win for the company. The full list includes:

• Pathfinder RPG Bestiary: Best Cover Art (Gold), Best Monster or Adversary (Gold)
• Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook: Best Interior Art (Gold), Best Game (Gold), Best Production Values (Gold),
• Product of the Year (Gold)
• Stolen Land: Best Adventure (Gold)
• Classic Horrors Revisited: Best Monster or Adversary (Silver)
• City Map Folio: Best Cartography (Gold)
• Advanced Player’s Guide Playtest: Best Free Product (Gold)
• GM Screen: Best Aid or Accessory (Gold)
• d20PFSRD.com: Best Website (Silver)

The Shadowrun 20th Anniversary Edition grabbed three itself, and Hero System 6th Edition got the Silver for Best Rules. Not to be outdone, Eclipse Phase ended up with three solid ENnies: Product of the Year (Silver), Cover Art (Silver), and Writing (Gold).  And Mysteries of the Hollow Earth pulled Best Supplement away from Wizard’s Player’s Handbook III, the only Wizards product to place. Gaming Paper won an award, which makes sense, given how cool their tech is. And Diaspora, a relatively unknown indie game using FATE to handle hard SF, beat out Hero 6th for Gold Best Rules; that’s a pretty good track record for FATE.

Wizards’ major news was the upcoming release of a 4th Edition Ravenloft for 2011, which has been somewhat decisive amongst fans. Namely, it will include rules for player monstrous races like werewolves and vampires, a major break-away from the old school Ravenloft mentality of corruption slowly leading to horrible, damning changes. Wizards also released its 4e Dark Sun books, a few weeks before their street date, though I haven’t seen any reviews of them as of yet. They’re also going the boxed set route, with a new Red Box style set, and a Shadowfell box set upcoming. So very late ’80s/early ’90s of them so far: Dark Sun, box sets, Ravenloft… where does it end?

For new releases, there were a few, but nothing major. Eoris Essence finally saw release, after having made a variety of minor splashes since (before) 2008. The publishers have been making gamers drool with its gorgeous art and claims of a ridiculously flexible system, enough to keep a following of “Is it done yet?” threads on RPGNet. Green Ronin kept up appearances with its DC Adventures; as you probably guessed from the title, it’s a supers game licensed from the DC world. Since the company sold out of them, it’s safe to say that the license was a success. Apart from that, Cubicle 7 and Pinnacle were swamped, like usual. Probably due to new Deadlands and Space 1889 releases for Pinnacle, and Cube 7′s well regarded Doctor Who RPG.

Last but not least, in the list of “game lines I care about,” CthulhuTech and Eclipse Phase were back with reckless abandon. Eclipse Phase saw the release of Sunward, its first sourcebook. CthulhuTech saw its next supplement come out, Ancient Enemies, a fairly slick book detailing the Eldritch Society (Tagers) and the Chrysalis Corporation (Dhohanoids). I’m very happy to report that Ancient Enemies keeps up the strong production values as its previous books; Sandstorm looks like a great replacement for the stricken Catalyst.

Overall, GenCon 2010 was a bit quieter in terms of announcements and releases compared to past years, but still had some solid releases.

• Pathfinder RPG Bestiary: Best Cover Art, Best Monster or Adversary
• Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook: Best Interior Art, Best Game, Best Production Values, Product of the Year
• Stolen Land: Best Adventure
• Shipyard Rats: Best Electronic Book^*
• Classic Horrors Revisited: Best Monster or Adversary
• City Map Folio: Best Cartography
• Advanced Player’s Guide Playtest: Best Free Product
• GM Screen: Best Aid or Accessory

CthulhuTech: On the Rebound?

It feels like every time I turn around, something major happened at Catalyst Game Labs a month previous.

Now, after all the dust has settled from their big Palladium-esque budgetary crisis, Catalyst has good news and bad news. The good news is that the company’s retaining control over their long-running game lines, BattleTech and Shadowrun, and even have a ton of new books listed as upcoming for both: 7 for Shadowrun, and 8 for BattleTech. (That’s really not that hard; after all, the company was in stasis-mode for quite a while as it was unable to pay its writers, thus stalling the production queues).

The bad news (for Catalyst) is that their two newest, shiniest lines have jumped ship. Since Catalyst couldn’t afford to pay WildFire, WildFire ended up with all the warehoused CthulhuTech books—hopefully the reason Damnation View and Mortal Remains are not available anywhere. (I’d like to buy those without having to sell a kidney, thank you very much.) With all their relationship woes, WildFire broke up with Catalyst, signing with newcomer Sandstorm Productions LLC. Days later, Sandstorm signed up Posthuman Studios, with Eclipse Phase leaving Catalyst’s domain. (Note the TORG-esque “The Storm Is Building.” tagline.) Much like the latter two CthulhuTech releases, I’m hoping that the oft-talked-about second run of Eclipse Phase is on the way.

So, interesting times ahead for the various game lines. Catalyst had some incredibly high production values on Eclipse Phase and CthulhuTech, as well as the rest of their work… then again, thier high production costs probably aren’t the best thing for a company with financial woes. Sandstorm is a relative newcomer, with no real products on the market so far… their other studios include Closert Nerd Games and Glowfly Games, two small-press board and card game companies. (Closet Nerd is probably the more well-known, with its Globalization board game.) Can Sandstorm hold up the same production values and quality that the game lines have had so far? After the gorgeous full-color, high-gloss books the two lines have so far, I can’t see a switch to, say, black and white on non-glossy paper going over well.

So far, though, it sounds like everyone’s coming out ahead—as soon as Catalyst pays off its debts, and Sandstorm gears up production for its two new lines.

Goodbye Catalyst?

So, in the past couple of days, a lot of news and speculation has broke out regarding Catalyst Games and its licenses, particularly Shadowrun. It all started on Dumpshock before spreading out to EN World and RPGNet, fueled by some twitters and blog posts of authors leaving Catalyst. The main post has some pretty dire info on the company’s stability:

OK, as you may well have been able to surmise from release schedules, Catalyst Game Labs is in a bit of a financial pickle, and it is somewhat unlikely that they will retain the license to make Shadowrun products. This is not because Shadowrun hasn’t been selling enough to cover expenses, but merely because a significant quantity of money is missing outright. Reliable sources put this figure at roughly $850,000. Which sounds like a lot, and it is. It is roughly 40% of Catalyst’s entire sales for last year, missing over a three year period. There will of course be lawsuits, and there are already people drawing up legal documents accusing Loren Coleman of having hired people to construct an extension on his house through the company as “freelance writers” and somehow reporting an estimated $100,000 of convention sales as $6,000. Whether that is actually true or not is – of course – a matter for the courts to decide. And decide they presumably will.

But what that means for Catalyst as a company is pretty bad. It costs several dollars to print a book even when the pdfs are finished and ready for publication. A print run of say, 50,000 books (like the print run of Runner Havens) would cost somewhere between $150,000 and $250,000 to print and ship to distributors. And while it eventually sold to distributors at ~$15 a book (a total take home of $750,000), it did so over a period of three years, during which time they were paying interest on loans and paying for storage, and advertisement and so on and so forth. A book like that isn’t actually taking home half a million in profits. Which is a bad thing, because it means that even if there was a complete book printed and ready to sell, even a total and rapid sell through would not pull the company out of the financial hole it is in – and the shortfall means that it does not have the cash on hand to start the ball rolling with a new major printing.

The tiny amount of drachmas that are left in the coffers are being used to print up tiny print runs of books that have sold through – another 3,000 books of Runner’s Companion for example (~$15,000 to start up, maybe $30-40k towards paying creditors if it sells out). There simply is not the startup cash to bring upcoming books like the SR4 sixth world almanac or corporate guide forward. The writing is there, but the printing costs are not. Beyond that, the freelancers have not been paid, and some of them are withholding copyright until they are – meaning that even a tiny print run of these new materials is simply not possible.

Many SR writers are quitting, have already quit, or have handed in notices contingent on demands which – word on the street – will not be met. And CGL does not even own Shadowrun, it leases the intellectual property from Topps. It seems unlikely that they will be able to make their licensing payment when the contract comes up for renewal – in a couple of months. At that time, CGL will cease being able to print Shadowrun or Battletech materials (they would presumably keep the license to Cthulhutech and Eclipse Phase for at least a little while longer, because those are separate contracts).

So what does this mean for the future of Shadowrun? It probably means that someone else will create a company and start making Shadowrun again. After all, freelancers work for very little, and a well selling book can bring in tens of thousands of dollars in profits. $850,000 of embezzlement is seemingly enough to sink the company (whoever ended up with the credsticks), but I must point out that there was indeed eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars to steal, so Shadowrun is not – as a concept – insoluble. And I also point out that something similar happened to Shadowrun before. Indeed, twice before, as both FanPro and FASA before it collapsed under the weight of people not paying debts and having bags with dollar bill signs vanish mysteriously in the middle of the night. It’s somewhat… poetic considering the subject matter of the game itself.

It is entirely probable indeed that when a new company comes to take the licence, many familiar faces will appear in the new company as if they had never left. Certainly back when FanPro collapsed back when I was working for the company, I simply started working for the new company as if nothing had changed. This happened back when FASA collapsed as well – those members of the team that were not extracted by Microsoft simply started turning in writing assignments to the new boss.

And yeah, I regularly go on shadowruns against Catalyst to find out what new releases are in store. Don’t you?

-Frank

Things didn’t really improve when Catalyst came out with an official press release detailing the state of the company and its financial woes:

For Immediate Release

Catalyst Game Labs recently completed a detailed financial review of the company. We learned that over the past several years the company has achieved dramatic growth in terms of demand, increased total revenues and strong sales with an increasing market share in the gaming industry, despite a lackluster economy. We are thrilled by that news and are eager to move forward with our upcoming original game Leviathans, along with our other new casual games. We also remain committed to plans for our beloved licensed games: Shadowrun, BattleTech, Eclipse Phase, and CthuluTech.

While we wish the review had only uncovered positive news, we also discovered our accounting procedures had not been updated as the company continued to grow. The result was that business funds had been co-mingled with the personal funds of one of the owners. We believe the missing funds were the result of bad habits that began alongside the creation of the company, which was initially a small hobby group. Upon further investigation, in which the owner has willingly participated, the owner in question now owes the company a significant balance and is working to help rectify the situation.

The current group of owners was presented with this information on Monday. Administrative organization for the company is under review, and accounting procedures have been restructured, to correct the situation and provide more stringent oversight. We feel the management team at Catalyst did the responsible thing by seeking this financial review and we will continue to restructure as needed. We are in discussions with our partners and freelancers to remedy any back payments that may also be due as a result of this review.

We are embarrassed that this situation did occur but we hope our eagerness to make these changes, along with our reputation for making great games, will encourage you to stand by us. We understand that for a few employees the news was too stressful and we wish them all the best in their new endeavors. However, the majority of the team remains and will continue to bring great entertainment to you all. We appreciate the support our friends, freelancers, and fans have provided us in the past and look forward to a successful future.

Honestly, I guess this explains why Catalyst’s releases have become more and more sporadic. Eclipse Phase has been the last big one of note, Shadowrun’s been languishing since the 20th Anniversary edition, and the CthulhuTech companion, Vade Macum, has been out of stock and hard to find for months now. I can’t comment on the BattleTech supplements, but for the other licenses, things have been looking grim for a while now.  The Eclipse Phase and CthulhuTech licenses are too awesome to vanish.

It’s sad to see such a fantastic company with high production values and great licenses so close to the edge. But it’s not like the licenses haven’t already drifted around in the past: when FASA went under, they went to FanPro after Microsoft took the best parts, and when FanPro collapsed, Catalyst took up the banner. I have to assume the Shadowrun license is cursed or something.

CthulhuTech – Dark Passions

Recently, I picked up the Dark Passions supplement for CthulhuTech. I’d already sped through Reuben’s copy to see that it was mostly fluff detailing cults, with enough crunch at the end to make playing cultists possible. The major thing I noticed was that the book was flimsy—incredibly so. But, I liked the idea of cults, and thought it might have some useful material, so I kept its flimsiness in mind when I picked up my own copy, for half price, on eBay.

Despite the warnings of graphic content, there’s nothing as extreme as I’d expected, though there are some fairly creepy mentions about killing, raping, and (of course) the creation of Deep Ones, so there’s a reason it labels itself as “mature only.” Not for the easily offended. Keep in mind that cults are sick and twisted, so if you don’t like the idea of your players fighting (or being) people who perform ritual sacrifice and rape, this isn’t the book for you.

For a book detailing cults, it’s not bad. It has some general info on cults in the CthulhuTech world before going into some overviews of a number of cults. They’re all pretty useable, and it’s interesting to see the various directions these cults take. There’s the Blood Brigade, a cross between paranoid militias and far-right evangelicals, which roves inside the New Earth Government to attack Nazzadi and anyone else they consider to be sins in the eyes of God. There’s the Church of All, a new-age religious sect which has some shady underbelly and would fit well in Innsmouth. There’s the Empty, homeless people who destroy communities from within, probably the deadliest since they form a hive-mind which causes them to kill, maim, or otherwise erode society. (The book has several examples of the Empty, ranging from the housewife who snaps and poisons her family, to the group of high-school football jocks who abuse the girls on their street.) There’s a bunch of other cults as well, all maybe 3-5 pages each.

Besides this, there’s a selection of cultist character templates, a few merits and flaws to apply to said cultists, some ideas for running cult-based games (“don’t forget, the characters should be reminded that they’re bad people on the other side of the law”), and several pieces of fiction that I didn’t read since I always assume the worst of game fiction and consider them to be wastes of useable space. And that’s about it.

As an overview, it’s interesting, and gets me thinking about what cults I’d create for the game, but it doesn’t go too in-depth with any of the examples. The big problem with this book is that it’s flimsy. The thin high-gloss pages make it feel smaller than it is, and the cover isn’t as sturdy as your average National Geographic. It’s a mere 64 pages for $19.99, yet another book which makes me think even higher of the $24.99 Exalted soft-splats packed with information through their 160 pages.

Dark Passions is a useful overview, with a number of cool cults and enough rules to play them, but it’s too brief and expensive to recommend it for all GMs. If you want a complete CthulhuTech library, go for it; if you just want to run the game, stick with the core book and Vade Mecum.

Cthulhutech – Review and Overview

We first found out about Cthulhutech last fall, and thought it was the best thing we’d ever heard of. A cross between the Lovecraft Mythos and Japanese mech-based anime? Preposterous! Amazing! Hopes to make it into a Halloween horror game came and went with the financial flow, but the game was in the back of our minds the entire time. Finally biting the bullet, I picked it up in July, and after a few one-shot sessions it proved so popular that my reign of having a game before everyone else did was incredibly brief. In fact, so popular that it earned no less than 5 ENnie nominations and 2 ENnie awards (best cover art for the core book, and best supplement for Vade Mecum).

Originally put out by Mongoose, the “revised and no longer horribly laid out” edition is brought to you by Catalyst, with all the production values and quality you’d expect from Catalyst. The books are GORGEOUS; the art is stunning, the color vibrant, the whole thing slick and very modern, almost justifying their high price tags. And I should note the price tags again. The core book is pretty damn slim at just under 300 high-gloss pages for $49.99; for the same price I picked up the 512-page Savage Worlds Solomon Kane hardcover, and for just $10 more, one can own the 400 page Rogue Trader. Expensive, kind of irritating, but still worth it.

The World

The world background is pretty in-depth, you get a great overview of how the New Earth Government was formed, as well as the various developments in the next 75 years. We have the D-engine, allowing the development of mecha and spaceships and other tech. We have two invasions from the Fungi from Yogguth, the Mi-go, first sending in a slave race based off modified humans known as the Nazzadi, then actually going in themselves when their slaves rebelled. So, the world’s at war between the bug-like extraterrestrial Mi-go, and the allied humans and Nazzadi.

And now we have the rise of the cults, the Rapine Storm, the Dagonites, and the Great Old Ones thrown into the mix. Rather than ally with the humans, the Mi-go do their typical thing and try to fight everyone at once. On top of this three-way death struggle, even the cults are working at opposite sides; some support Hastur, other Nyarlathotep, others for Dagon, and some trying to wake up Great Cthulhu. The world’s definitely going to hell in a handbasket, with war and intrigue everywhere.

The art helps build this technologically advanced marvel world, where every faction has its own mecha and powered armor (check out the amphibious Dagonite mecha in the companion), then there’s the mysterious “living-mecha” Engels, and the Eldritch Society and its Tager symbiote warriors… there’s occult science, spellcasting (legal and otherwise), ancient artifacts and Mi-go tech, and (with the companion) para-psychics thrown into the mix as well. It’s cluttered at points, but still believable, with plenty of options for both storytelling and character creation.

In other words, there’s a lot going on here. There’s plenty of opportunities for good hooks and adventure yarns, with numerous adversaries and the enemies of your adversaries. It all feels very natural, a world of epic anime-esque heroism and battlemech action, while at the same time adding in the  intrigues and paranoia of a good Cthulhu game. The blend is fantastic, and really depends on where you want it to go, horror-intrigue or epic-action, or anything in between.

System

I’ve heard a lot of negative responses for the system; I’m a big fan, and think it’s a good blend of epic-action to go with the anime-esque aspects of the game. It’s a nice action-y, cinematic system with a lot of class, and it’s also simple enough to learn quickly.

The Framewerk system involves the use of  one to five d10s for skills, one die per skill point, and a set-point-value for stats determined at character creation. The skill d10s are rolled and calculated, then added to your stat. The way in which the d10s are calculated is pretty cool too: you can either take the highest single number, add the highest matched pair, or add the best consecutive straight of three or more dice.

So, if you have 3 dots in a skill and 6 in the stat, you’d roll your 3d10 for skill and add them to the stat’s 6. Rolling a straight of 3,4,5 adds up to 12, plus the stat (6) to total 18, which would beat a high-end Challenging difficulty. 10-14 is the Average difficulty, with 12 being the “average” Average difficulty, a good example of how there’s a lot of sliding-scale options.

This kind of stokes me as a GM; I like having the sliding-scale since I can play with partial/near-miss glitches as well as overcoming the difficulty number.  The whole thing adds a lot of math head-games going on here. Which attributes do you raise higher to get the flat bonus? Can you survive with just 1 or 2 points in some skills since you won’t be able to roll a straight with them? Contrary to some games which introduce poker/card rules for skill checks, this one actually manages to pull it off well.

There’s a ton of other character options. There’s a smooth and classy “fear and insanity” system, of which I’m always a huge fan of in horror games. The merits and flaws are all reasonable, none of them immediately breaking the game for or against characters. The mecha rules are the same base rules only amped up a little for size. There’s a ton of Lovecraftian creatures, along with a bunch of other staples, plus some other awesome things thrown in for good measure. While generically named, the weapons are pretty cool, and the combat system is smooth and runs quickly once you get a handle on it.

This game also boasts one of the nicest vitality systems I’ve ever seen. You have XX vitality points, which is equal to the average of you Strength + Tenacity, plus five. You then have that many vitality points per damage step, of which there are five, each with new and interesting penalties. So, 11 vitality gives you 11 health per step, for a total of 55 health, though most of them with various wounded penalties and a sanity check once you’ve started the fourth damage step. Gnarly! Sanity check for damage. I love that.

All in all, this game is a hit for a reason. The core book, and companion Vade Mecum, are a tad expensive, but trust me, you’ll use them. The other books so far have some wonderful fluff, but not enough rules for me to say they’re critical for running the game—just really helpful. Cthulhutech has already won over enough players that Reuben and Paul both picked up the two mentioned books and are planning on running their own long-campaign Cthulhutech games in the near future.

The Indie Games Short-list

A list of new roleplaying games everyone should be aware of. In other words, my wish list.

Unhallowed Metropolis – ‘Gothic Victorian horror in a steampunk, gasmask-chic style.’ Or something to that effect. Unhallowed has one of the best settings I’ve seen in a while, and that’s nothing to scoff at. Plus, the rules are similar enough to TORG to hope for a third-party conversion. Also to note–the game’s first expansion, Unhallowed Necropolis, is scheduled to hit stores early 2009. It features more undead, ghost, and paranormal rules, along with psychics, and more tech.

Edge of Midnight – Pulp, firmly in the film noir genre of dark city streets, blonde bombshells, and a plethora of trenchcoat-wearing detectives. Of course, it also has a lot of magic and intrigue in it–not quite to the level of Bloodshadows, but still, it’s in print, and it looks hot. The system is relatively simple enough, making it a quick game for on-the-run one-shots.

Cthulhutech - Gothic horror meets mecha. I know I already went over this one recently, but I feel I need to keep plugging away at this game. After fixing a plethora of errors with the first, black-and-white print run, the game has been re-released in an awesome print run. Plus, there’s plenty of books out for it, and more on the way–it’s a heckuva line.

Hollow Earth Expedition – Science Fantasy, in that ’30s pulp action kind of way. Another one I mentioned recently, but I bring up again because it’s that good. The system is incredibly simple, the world is incredibly versatile, the book packed with all sorts of movie and novel references. This one’s pretty hot, no denying.

Spirit of the Century – Pure pulp fantasy, more in the ’30s epic actioneer serials than in the more two-fisted heroics of Hollow Earth or dusky noir of Edge of Midnight. Spirit assumes your characters are very powerful, and assumes your players are very fast on their feet when it comes to rolling with the punches. The game demands a lot of its players, namely in that all of the characters’ abilities and powers come straight from the players’ imagination. The more imagination, the more awesome the ability. It looks fast, fun, and epically awesome. Evil Hat Productions also is working on the Dresden Files RPG, and did a bunch of other awesome stuff.

Dogs in the Vineyard - Western, with a lot of spiritual influences. You play a Morman watchdog wandering from town to town doing a variety of tasks, form carrying the mail to enforcing the law. What sets this game apart is its originality–who thinks up these things?

In A Wicked Age – Sword-and-sandals fantasy. Heavily influenced by the ancient empires, as well as swords-and-barbarians action. Yet another game light on rules and high on fun, this game is not only quick, but offers one of my favorite gameplay options yet: a prophecy-tarot draw using your standard poker deck (or the online generator, if you will). You can make some fantastic plots with this.

Savage Worlds – ’nuff said. The game lines I most like to point out are Tour of Darkness, the survival-horror game based in the jungles of Vietnam (imagine if Platoon was as dark as Apocalypse Now, and the growing madness was helped along by the supernatural terrors in the woods), and Necessary Evil (imagine if all the superheroes were killed by aliens, requiring you to play the necessary evil–a supervillain–who kicks alien butt to liberate earth). Sadly, both are hard to find and

I tried to keep it indie as long as possible, but can’t help but promote these last games. When the first released last year, it won my nominations, and I still consider it the best game idea of 2007. The other has been around for a while as a d20 product, but was released as its own game a few years back; it fits into my top-ten list of “this is an awesome concept” list.

Scion - Modern Fantasy, with a good dose of the epic and a lot of mythology rolling about. Imagine if you were the child of the gods, starting as an avatar to fight the titanspawn and save Earth and ending up replacing your parent as part of the patheon. Now, imagine that it was using a variation of Exalted Second Edition, had the most well-documented pantheon options, and used the standard White Wolf system that is both easy to learn and quick to play. That’s your game.

Grimm - Modern Fantasy with a lot of dark elements. In Grimm, your character is a child sucked into the realm of fairy tales to fix whatever’s currently screwing with it. And the world is indeed screwed, resulting in a much darker fairy land than the Grimm brothers ever told it. Your character must defeat the evils and save the world, should that be possible. See Labyrinth, Dark Crystal, Stardust (most Gaiman in general), and a lot of other modern influences–it’s like Changeling, only a lot more playable. (E.g., your players could possibly concieve of how to play this.)

Honorable Mention -
Dark Heresy – Warhammer 40k. Duh. A list of recent RPG’s is just lacking something without a mention of DH.

Cthulhutech R’lyeh!

I’ve been meaning to mention Cthulhutech for some time, namely around Halloween, but never got around to it; in the meantime I’ve been being lazy, doing real work like exams and papers and compiling lists of what I consider the best ’80s music. So, anyway. Cthulhutech. Read this and tell me it’s not the coolest thing you’ve heard lately:

CthulhuTech is an innovative storytelling game that started out as a combination of two popular genres. The first was that of cosmic horror, made popular by H. P. Lovecraft and culminating in the modern day with elements of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy and John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness. The second was that of giant mecha Japanese animation, made popular by such series as Robotech, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Rahxephon. But the setting has grown far beyond what it started out to be. CthulhuTech is now a truly unique hybrid of genres – cosmic horror, anime, post-apocalypse, traditional horror, and science fiction blended together seamlessly.

Hotness! I can’t wait to get my grubby paws on a copy of this. And, to top it off, there’s a ton of supplements for it, too. High-quality and hot, yet I haven’t heard anything about its system yet other than that it uses a bunch of d10′s and is pretty cinematic and awesome–hence, a selling point for me. Think of it–fighting off the Mi-Go in your very own Veritech? Getting your mecha swarmed by some shoggoths? I’ll admit, I wouldn’t consider the genres they pulled from to be, well, related (as it were), but the originality and the awesome combination have been sticking points. This definitely puts a new spin on Lovecraftian horror, and a welcome one at that.

Look into it! Read the website! Highly endorsed.