Points of Light, Oceans of Darkness

For a long time now I’ve been interested in running an old-school points-of-light style fantasy game, for no particular reason. I’ve never played or run one, so it’s not for nostalgia’s sake; rather, it’s probably for the opposite reason—because I’ve never really experienced with that style of game.

“Points of Light” was the one thing I really liked about 4th Edition D&D, rolling things back to a more AD&D-style world setting where civilization existed in the form of small towns and isolated waystations, surrounded by oceans of dark forests filled with monsters and brigands and primal savagery. Heroes come from small-town beginnings, or from the few well-fortified city states; they venture forth into the unknown to beat back the darkness and plunder strange relics of lost civilizations—faded empires, shattered races. Help may be days or even weeks away, so life can be brutal and harsh, even for the prepared: it’s the rugged individualism of a new frontier.

In sum, the generic OSR setting without archaic OSR game mechanics. The Hyperborean Tales, Lankhmar, Averoigne; old Weird Tales pulp fantasy meets the Dark Ages.

You can see a lot of the original D&D game in it, too: when a half-dozen men-at-arms is a “sizable” patrol in an underpopulated world, compared to forty or more hobgoblins, it becomes a bit of small-unit skirmish. (As in, wargame.) Hex grid wilderlands notwithstanding. They had this gee-whiz sensawunda, too; stumble into this hex and you might find some dude’s magic arrows hidden in a hollow treestump, stumble into this one and you get attacked by the plesiousaur in the lake.

Actually, I can chart this interest back to when I first played Baldur’s Gate, because its setting fits my ideal bill pretty well. A lot of open wilderness filled with hostile creatures and the occasional dungeon (or humanoid stronghold), with a few scattered hamlets along the way. Candlekeep, seaside resort for rich nobles, old wizards, and dusty tomes; Nashkel, occupied by a neighboring city-state, its iron mines besieged; Beregost, sizable trade city, and Baldur’s Gate, sprawling metropolis of the region. The Friendly Arms Inn in particular jumps out at me; a badass adventurer couple overthrew an evil overlord and turned his fortress into a waystation. Baldur’s Gate is nasty and harsh, a tough slog filled with memorable locales and unique NPCs… it’s how I imagine a great AD&D game would be like. (Not having to calculate THAC0, weapon speeds, or Armor Class modifiers—yep, that would be a great AD&D game.)

I’ve always enjoyed playing the Icewind Dale games the most—they have a rich if subtle flavor (case in point, items) and they’re easiest to progress in—while Planescape: Torment had the best story, and Baldur’s Gate II was the most accessible (while retaining a similar top-notch story). I’ve never really given the original Baldur’s Gate that much interest, despite how much it’s influenced my gaming perspective. Maybe the Enhanced Edition will change that. Maybe if it had been developed enough to not give me fucking bluescreens.

Part of my problem is that I realize it’s not an ideal genre to play in, and besides, everyone else who may be interested in this probably played it thirty years ago—it’s still a major source of nostalgia, and I’d wager most gamers into more trad fantasy have already played this. Plus, OSR just doesn’t interest me—I’d rather run a stripped-down version of FATE, or perhaps (glorious day!) take The One Ring for a test drive, considering Mirkwood matches my ideal points-of-light setting pretty damn well. (Plus its rules are kinda hot.) For the most part it’ll remain on my back-burner until I find the time and interest for it.

Roll The Bones Redux

I want to take a minute to point out why exactly I’m so stoked about the Reaper Bones Kickstarter (see last post), which has just cleared its $1,790,000 stretch goal. My hunch is that it’ll easily surpass two million, but I question if it’ll pass Wasteland II’s $2.8 million mark. I’d like to hope it will, but I’m also getting the idea that most people who were going to pledge have already pledged, and increased that pledge multiple times. We’ll see—an amazing stretch goal or two would be great motivation.

Plus, in case you missed it, you can swap out your limited metal Sophie-on-a-bike figure for $25 worth of product. Dracolich, here I come. Unless I go for the hydra and two extra swamp things packs. Or the demons and the colossal skeleton. Or the… sigh.

This fella is a purple worm—if you’re not up on your D&D, it’s a large subterranean sandworm/graboid/etc. that pops up and swallows people whole. Basically, a hundred feet of intestine crossed with a lamprey. Reaper currently has three versions up for sale. I have a Casketworks catalog from when I was last buying metal miniatures—2007—showing the metal version sold for $19.99; now it goes for $27.99, thanks to the rising cost of tin. The pre-painted plastic one (sans tail) sells for $6.99, which is about on par with the Pathfinder Battles large blind packs and non-awesome DDM large figures on the secondhand market.

The bones version (again, sans tail) sells for $2.99. And the detail quality is around 95% of the metal versions, or in other words, negligible for table use. That’s a fucking steal.

At that point, it’s an impulse buy. Not into minis? It’s a great place to start; you’re not out that much capital if you hate it, or screw up the paintjob. Into minis? You can afford to throw 2-3 on to every gaming purchase you make, getting several great figures for roughly the same cost as buying one metal figure. It’s a win/win for everyone, and will get a lot more people into minis since it overcomes to price barrier. No longer do you have to be the middle-aged old grognard to afford an army worth of little fantasy soldiers.

You can do all sorts of stuff new painters do: paint them out of the bottle without requiring primer, drop them, use the heck out of them, throw them across the table, and you know what? Most stress tests show they’ll survive a lot of punishment. And worst case scenario, you spend another three bucks and buy another one.

Because tin—core component of pewter—has increased in price faster than gasoline, thus spiking the price of miniatures, I dropped out of buying and painting them altogether. Not really something you can afford on a high-school/college student budget. Particularly for the big figures, which I’ve ALWAYS wanted to paint; the biggest I’ve done are some Chronoscape gugs, and those cost around $12 for a slightly-bigger-than-normal figure.

Even with a steady (if underwhelming) paycheck, metal minis require a lot more disposable capital than I can throw at them. When the choice is between a $50 book that will see hours of use, or a $50 figure that I’ll spend a few hours painting and use for one or two sessions, it’s pretty clear what I’m going to pick. Slashing the price-point drops “character” size figures down into impulse buy territory, and means that the big figures are priced reasonably enough that I could justify picking one up for a change. And makes me less concerned about spillage/usage from tabletop play since they’re only cheap plastic.

Another example. When I was running Legacy of Fire a few years ago, I really wanted three to five fire giants for the City of Brass, but just couldn’t afford them. This awesome Reaper fire giant king sells for $49.99 ($35 if you buy the lead alloy version), and his minions go for $24.99 a pop. Just for the warriors alone, $100 for four is something I’ll never be able to justify (short of attaining my dream job, managing an orchard of money trees). I don’t see the point in buying one figure if I’m going to proxy three more—may as well proxy all of them at that point. Like I did, using marids and crocagators in lieu of fire giants. But man, did I want to pick those suckers up and drop some painted versions down on the map.

The Kickstarter has options to pick those giants at the cost of $10 a pair. It’s been implied that the Bones will have MSRP about twice their Kickstarter option price, and if that’s true, the fire giants will go for ~$10 a pop. I can justify $40 for four figs; at my painting speed, I can set back $10 a week and be able to afford them without breaking my bank. $10 is an expensive impulse buy, but it’s within striking distance for pretty much anyone who can afford to be a gamer; if you can’t save up $10 a month to pick up a game-related item, you’re in the wrong hobby, friend.

I could go on and on, about the $60-80 dragons, the $50 demon, the $48 hydra, the $35 elementals, frost wyrm, and skeletal colossus. Heck, even the newest bonuses offered in the Vampire pledge level, a griffon and an owlbear, retail for $20 in metal form. From that implied price point, the Bones versions should retail around $8 and $6 each, which is pretty damn affordable.

And that’s why I’m glad the Kickstarter is going gangbusters: it means that next year, everyone can walk into a store and pick up an awesome mini without worrying about the cost. Every “optional” big critter is another monster I could justify buying in the future, because it’ll cost somewhere between $10-35 and not twice (or triple) that.

Though right now I can’t afford half of those awesome big options I want, I’m (mostly) okay with that. It’s comforting to know that I could walk into a store and pick them up later next year without spending an arm and a leg, if I really want a clockwork dragon or an elemental. Besides, it’s not like I won’t have ~200+ figures from the Vampire pledge to paint.

Pathfinder – Distant Worlds

One thing’s for sure, Paizo has kept up an impressive quality level on its world-building supplements, keeping its Chronicles/Campaign Setting books on the same bar as the best 3.5 supplements—and often raising that bar. I found the various 3.x “fluffier” books hit or miss, and got into the habit of avoiding them. So it’s been a pleasant shock to find some of the best (e.g., my favorite) Pathfinder supplements have been the “fluff” ones: Guides to Darkmoon Vale and Absalom, Cities of Golarion, Dungeons of Golarion, Lost Cities of Golarion, and now… Distant Worlds.

A lizard-riding lashunta woman on Castrovel beset upon by a Shobhad giant from Akiton – awesome art by Karem Beyit

If you haven’t guessed from the title, this softcover deals with the other planets in the same solar system as Pathfinder’s core world, Golarion. This include’s Golarion’s moon; Castrovel and Akiton, analogues to the pulp Amtor (Venus) and Barsoom (Mars) of the 1930s-40s; the apocalyptic Eox the Dead, which turned to undeath to survive its evaporating atmosphere; Triaxus the Wanderer, a planet whose slow orbit takes several centuries, seeing the rise and fall of many species and cultures in one planetary year (ala Brian Aldiss’ Heliconia Trilogy); and several gas giants with a multitude of inhabited moons. There’s a couple other planets, and the book even touches on the sun (!) and an asteroid belt (remnants of demolished planets).

Lizard-riders!

Right from the start, the book has a more science-fiction feel, through quantifiable realism—the planets have mini stat-blocks noting their rotational speeds, relative size to Golarion, etc. And that’s something I really enjoyed: seeing the fantasy world, complete with its magic, gods, and monsters, under a slightly more realistic and logical approach. Keep in mind, this is still Pathfinder, and still fantasy. There’s no rules for spaceships, computer networks, netrunning, or other modern technologies, though there are some robots, and a few of the races use guns or other magi-tech style “advanced fantasy” devices. Thus, while it deals with inhospitable gas giants and other astronomical features, they have things like space whales and energy creatures living on them. Science fantasy is a good descriptor.

The Introduction jumps to attention, dealing with how the gods and the multiverse affect and exist on other planets, and covering why most species on these foreign planets are bipedal humanoids.

From there, we have the lengthy Chapter One, going over each planet in brief. Distant Worlds is done in the gazetteer style, giving each planet’s major cities and adventuring locales, then a brief overview of its terrain, flora, and fauna. Add in some planetary history and some info about the planet’s humanoid life-forms, and touch it off with a map showing the planet’s two sides. There’s enough here for GMs to get the general idea of the setting, a firm baseline and plenty of room (and ideas!) to build adventure hooks out of.

Chapter Two takes us back to short chapters again; it details more of the “rules” style stuff, including vacuum and void, gravity, and most important of all, some hooks and ideas of how to get players to the stars. It has a few spells and one piece of equipment to help characters survive in the void. Chapter three moves on to monsters. There’s a nice list of Pathfinder monsters that would fit into the space setting, and the straightforward hint to re-skin monsters. It rounds the book out with six monsters, including Pern-esque dragons, blue Barsoomian giants, titanic space whales, and modular robots.

SPAAAAACE WHAAAAALES!

For a gazetteer, this is doing well: 64 pages isn’t a lot to work with, but Distant Worlds feels packed. Yet it’s still missing key pieces: there’s no playable races yet, many of the species introduced aren’t detailed, and the stellar bodies are wide-open, their overviews brief. It’s also lacking in landscapes and scenery art; I like seeing characters and monsters up close, but I’d kill to see a view of tidally-locked Verces, with its sustaining life-belt trapped between the planet’s dark and light sides. If wishes were horses; the book does an amazing job at what it’s doing. It will hold me over until the release of a Distant Worlds hardback (or, better, one for each planet, or in small groups/pairs), where those “key pieces” would be better suited.

I’m a bit biased as a pulp SF junkie, having waited impatiently for this book’s arrival since I saw the solar system overview in the 3.5 Pathfinder Campaign Setting. Not only did it meet my expectations, it surpassed them. Without a doubt, this is one of the best RPG supplements I’ve bought all year, one of the best Pathfinder supplements in 2012, and my favorite Pathfinder softcover. James Sutter did a remarkable job packing 64 pages with material while leaving enough to inspire GMs. Since it’s mostly fluff—there’s around ten pages with rules—I can also see using it with any system, making it a more of a utilitarian reference work for my space opera/sword-and-planet needs. And the wheels have been turning on that front.

Now, if only someone can convince the Paizo staff (James Jacobs cough) to let James Sutter loose on a larger version…

Edit 6/21: Apparently the Distant Worlds stock has almost sold out, according to James Sutter… so get it while you can.

Deliver Me From Halflings

I’ve always been a bit tired of the “traditional” western fantasy world. Maybe it was done 7th Sea style, like Pathfinder’s Golarion, where different eras of our history become fantasized elements that exist simultaneously. Maybe big, top-heavy, setting-based designs, like the Forgotten Realms’ Faerun, or Middle Earth: places with long-established and detailed histories. The thing defining “fantasy” today are the tropes that defy time, tide, edition, and system: you know, elves, dwarves, orcs, an entire world of Medieval Europe, the whole euro-centric knights and dragons schtick.

My problem is less with the individual pieces and more with games continually using this hodge-podge as a crutch, like it’s the only option for “fantasy” settings, be it film, book, or roleplaying game. (Well, I guess there are other options, but they fall into “Grimdark Fantasy”—Warhammer—or “Urban Supernatural Fantasy”—Vampire, Dresden Files—that also feel a bit overused and done to death.) I don’t mind western fantasy as a whole; I’ve always wanted to run/play an old-school Points of Light campaign, ala AD&D/Judges Guild, probably because I missed out on that and started with Dark Sun and Eberron. But that’s already been done to death; if I wanted to run that, I’d make something out of my assumptions of the setting and the dozens of books made back in the day. We don’t need yet another Faerun, Middle Earth, Greyhawk, or Hyperborea when we already have five each of those.

Anyways. Let me use Legends of Anglerre as an example, because while I like the game, I think someone should pick on it from time to time given some of its minor flaws. It’s FATE-based, so very open and flexible, and made by Cubicle 7, so it’s a giant, glorified toolkit. Unlike their space opera game, Starblazer, Anglerre has a pair of settings contained in the rules. And they’re both painfully traditional. Anglerre is a cross between the sword and sorcery of ’80s barbarian movies with a lot of Moorcock-style elements (Elric, Hawkmoon), and a dab of traditional Tolkien/Forgotten Realms high fantasy. The other, The Hither Kingdoms, is very traditional high fantasy, straight out of Tolkien and Lewis. Don’t get me wrong, they’re both very well done, very interesting settings. But I’m bored with all the elves and goblins; I want something that doesn’t immediately jump to mind when you say fantasy—I want something fantastic.

My problem is that given FATE’s incredible flexibility, I’m not sure seeing them build two very staple settings does much to showcase the versatility of the system. I’d rather have seen a third setting, or—and nothing against the writers—a replacement for The Hither Kingdoms. (On the scale of “FANTASY,” Hither Kingdoms are not that far away from Anglerre. It isn’t run by psionic hairless cat people with crystalline mecha or whatev.) Something totally out there. Maybe it doesn’t have to be weird, bust just has to be unique. I consider Dark Sun and Eberron to be brilliant settings, some of the best for D&D, for new and innovative spins on the post-apocalyptic fantasy genre and high-magitech pulp dungeonpunk respectively.

I’m thinking, something like:

• For Anglerre in specific, I could see going balls-crazy just to try and utilize FATE all the more. Imagine piloting your John Carter-style dragonfly flier across crystal forests infested with arachnid monsters, to help the god-kings of old fight back the Titan legions of the Adversary, on the banks of the sentient river Scamander? Go weirder. That’s only scratching the surface. Limitless potential in the fantasy genre, and for a system that can handle the far-end extremes, I’m a bit sad it steered so close to what’s gone before.
• How about… a world of insect-themed humanoids. Give each a power (stunt/aspect) related to their insect progenitors: beetle-kinden are sturdy and work well with mechanical objects, the ant-kinden are great fighters who work with a hive-mind, the mantis-kinden are deadly in single combat, the wasp-kinden can produce a deadly magical “sting,” etc. Also, divide them up between the “apt” (those who can make/use technological devices—beetles, ants) and the “in-apt” (those with a stronger tie to traditional mysticism/magic—everyone else), where the wasp-kinden straddle the line. Add a very lush pseudo-steampunk, pseudo-pulp setting, with the tyrannical wasp-kinden conquering the rest of the world. (This would be the Shadows of the Apt, Empire in Black and Gold setting, which I loved… much more than the prose of the novel, which drove me up a wall.)
• Why doesn’t anyone use early Frontier Americana as a setting? Like, pre-revolutionary North America, maybe Seven Years’ War era. It’d make a fantastic Points of Light setting: small, simple communities nestled amongst the pines, beating back savage warriors and unspeakable monstrous horrors. What few urban centers are few and far between, and are themselves reliant on other cities to survive—and their parent country is fighting a war with the people who are colonizing far to your north and south. That doesn’t even include dealing with ankhegs burrowing up through your amber fields of grain. I guess part of the problem would be making the “savage” natives in a respectful manner. But just thinking about it makes me want to run it. And elements have drifted in to other games—the Croatan Song sourcebook for old Werewolf; Andoran in Pathfinder… just not a full setting.
• Speaking of dropping existing history into a fantasy game—or visa versa—what about 1806? Dude makes a compelling case, I have to say; I’m not that into Napoleonic stuff, but I’d learn lots about it just to run it as a fantasy setting.

Or go with non-traditional settings that have already, also, been done several times, but which haven’t been trampled into the ground.

• Everyone loves a Hollow Earth, right? All it has to have is dinosaurs and morlocks and bam, however else you alter it, it will be a Hollow Earth setting.
• A planet that’s all one thing, for a metaplot reason. A planet that’s all desert; that’s all snow; that’s all water.
• Do something else weird with the planet. Maybe it’s tidally locked, so it has a light side and dark side, and a single belt where life can thrive—the incredibly slow rotation leaves dozens of cities abandoned by the ages, just a few miles on either side of the life-belt, so risking the chilling cold—or burning heat—could be the cost of diving these centuries-old ruins.
• Make the planet’s temperatures spike, forcing everyone to migrate underground. Global Warming meets Ultima Underworld.
• Make its rotation so slow that a single year takes centuries, wherein the change of seasons sees new life-forms develop (cough Heliconia cough).
• Make the entire planet one big city—not so much Coruscant as much as Ravnica.
• Blow the planet up, then make it better; make it occupied by aliens or Mythos monsters from beyond the realms of sleep and sanity.

But please, whatever you do, take me away from the knights and hobbits.

John Carter – less a review and more an analysis

I’m not really sure if I should bother reviewing the film, considering everyone seems to have made up their minds before it even hit theaters.

John Carter’s fared poorly with critics, even though most of them gave mixed but somewhat positive reviews. Leonard Maltin gave a very balanced review before encouraging anyone interested to see it. Richard Corliss at Time ended with “I’m glad Stanton made John Carter; I just don’t know why he did,” after dishing out both praise and complaints (also stealing my “transcend or subvert the genre” line). There’s a legion of uninspired and unimpressed reviews, though, and a bunch of negative  ones—the most critical being the one at Slant magazine, which was half review and half lengthy ad-hominum, calling the movie “a dollop of oatmealy, sick person’s poop.” (For balancing reasons, I’ll put Mark Holcomb’s glowing review for the Village Voice here.)

No, the film is not Casablanca, nor Citizen Kane. Nor is it on par with SF greats like 2001 or Blade Runner, or Avatar, a movie relative to John Carter in aesthetics, theme, and time. But oatmealy, watery poop? That’s the kind of derision I’d heap on a Star Wars prequel, or a direct-to-DVD release from some shithouse production company like Asylum—who happened to release Princess of Mars a few years ago, with the production values of the most insipid of SyFy TV movies and porn star/Juno Reactor eye-candy Traci Lords as Princess Dejah.

John Carter’s apparent sin is that its overinflated budget—$250 million, or more—only resulted in an above average, retroactively derivative, but most of all fun, blockbuster that’s failing to bust blocks. While it looks good, it doesn’t look as good as Avatar. And it’s got a long, long history of defying filmmakers, from Loony Tunes producer Bob Clampett, to Ray Harryhausen, to Robert Rodriguez and John Favreau and a half-dozen others, as a bad legacy to overcome. Add in that director Andrew Stanton worked magic on Pixar’s Finding Nemo and Wall-E, which translates to high expectations on behalf of viewers.

But the film feels like it was destined to fail. Disney’s lead-up marketing was half-hearted, starting with the decision to cut “of Mars” from the title, leaving us with the listless “John Carter” which tells the viewer nothing. Some too-little, too-late ads couldn’t make up for the lack of hype, the best of which being the ones for a Comedy Central special preview, proclaiming “John Carter / The Original Badass.” Plus, it was released well in advance of summer blockbuster season. And with its hyperinflated budget, the film needed to open to $100 million in order to spawn the franchise Disney was hoping for—a longshot given how badly the film was mis-marketed. Most of these relate back to the film’s director being brand new to live-action, and its executives being new on the job. The numbers are back in, and it broke $30.6 million in the US, charting second after The Lorax, plus $77 million overseas, leaving it the bomb critics proclaimed it as well before its release.

On the flipside. It’s been tracking very well with viewers, what few actually went to see it, and it has 70% user approval ratings at every site I’ve glanced at (Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes, a B+ on CinemaScore, et al.). And that vocal minority is getting active, not just on the review aggregates but in the Blogosphere and on Twitter. With very few exceptions, the changes to the novel’s plot, and addition of elements from the second book, Gods of Mars, went over well with fans—good, because for the most part, the movie needed most of them. They leave John Carter capable but not superhuman enough to plow through each challenge undeterred (as he does a little too often in the first book), with Dejah Thoris more of a competent individual and not a lost romantic macguffin.

Two white apes of Barsoom show the SFX is pretty good.

As for the movie itself? It’s fun, it’s enjoyable, it’s nowhere near an outhouse joke. But it’s not the cure for cancer that its price-tag might indicate. (Of course, this is Disney; they can afford to banter around with budgets in the triple-digit millions. Why should the film’s budget matter?) The effects are fantastic, with some amazing computer wizardry powering the machine-city of Zodanga and a variety of flying contraptions, plus all sorts of motion-capture Barsoom natives. The set and equipment design is spot-on amazing, giving a strong feel of the alien world, yet staying accurate to its source material (in essence when not in literal presence). I do wish there’d been more details to differentiate the Tharks, since there’s less feeling of individualization among them compared to Avatar’s Na’vi; the motion-capture work is good, but they’re like carbon copies. It’s easier to tell the humans—err, Red Martians—apart, even under their intricate costumes, henna-like tattoos, and British accents.

Taylor Kitsch, as Carter, does an admirable job, but it’s Lynn Collins as Dejah Thoris who really pulls things off. A strong supporting cast, including William Dafoe, Thomas Hayden Church, Dominic West, and Mark Strong, round things out: all told, there’s no complaints about the acting. Kitsch isn’t my first choice for Carter, and I’m not sure he’s the perfect actor for the job, but he gave a good show of things. His chemistry with Collins is lacking, but passable; I think her performance was strong enough to make it work.

My big complaints would be that the movie has a surfeit of introductions, some of which should have been tossed to get Carter on Mars faster—the Arizona sequences are somewhat true to the book, but more a failed attempt to generate early-film action than a useful intro; they add nothing, except a woefully underused Bryan Cranston. Second, many of the action scenes are just too short: one of the longer ones is the vaunted gladiatorial sequence shown in the trailers, which tops out around 12-15 minutes. Including some setup. That gives the film a very disjointed feel, with lengthy sections of exposition that lead to overly terse action scenes. And as a PG-13 blockbuster, it needs those action scenes long and involved for the male teen audience. Third, see my aforementioned complaints about the generalized CGI Tharks. I can also see how the film would be confusing, throwing plenty of Martian terminology and history at the viewer; it made me giddy as a fanboy, but not everyone’s familiar with the source.

Taking Burroughs' 8th Ray-powered airships and making them into solar-paneled dragonflies was a fine idea.

I did really like the film; it’s accurate to its source material, it’s entertaining, it’s got a good sense of humor and solid enough characters backing up cool visuals and an eclectic, action-filled plot. But it just didn’t give me that mind-blown sense of wonder that I got from seeing Star Wars as a kid, or Avatar just a few years ago. (To be fair, I went into both of those with no set expectations at all, knowing nothing about them, while I’ve read Burroughs’ first novel two or three times in the past fifteen years, most recently just before the film released.) This is the kind of slightly-campy, fun adventure movie I’d shelve next to The Mummy or Pirates of the Caribbean.

What we’re left with is an entertaining, fun film that doesn’t push the boundaries of cinema: it’s an enjoyable SF romp that isn’t as memorable or spectacular as it should be, but isn’t the motion picture equivalent of having your teeth pulled like everyone says it is. It’s less Howard the Duck and more Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, or whatever your preferential fan-favorite box-office-flop is. (I also thought John Carter was a stronger film, and truer to its source, than Disney’s previous franchise-killing flop, Prince of Persia.) It’s a niche genre film that cost too much and has a hard time appealing to those outside the SF nerd demograph. If you like no-nonsense, pulpy SF adventure, suspending your disbelief for some implausible thrills, go see it while you still can: it is worth seeing as a SF fan.

And Now for Something Completely Different

Who knew Daffy Duck had the same dreams as the rest of us?

(By "us," I mean twentysomething male nerds, of course.)

It riffs more than a little on Dungeons & Dragons, Warcraft, and generic modern fantasy in general; the fact that it blends traditional Western animation and Japanese anime styles is both nerd-bait and a statement on the modern Western animation industry.

And good lord, does its sound crib more than a little from Uriah Heep and early Sabbeth. Pure ’70s gothic rock-metal bliss.

Ten Great Things about The One Ring RPG

In lieu of a real review or anything, here’s ten of the best things I found about the new Middle Earth-based The One Ring.

1. Mirkwood! You want to know a brilliant idea? Start off your three-game Middle Earth RPG line in between The Hobbit and LOTR, in one of the most detailed areas of the world, where Bilbo was wandering around just five years prior. It’s a nice sandbox to play in, a good points-of-light old-school locale, with lots of potential for cool plots, without being in a high-traffic area where the noted NPCs will overshadow the players. And it hits all the basics, containing elves and dwarfs and orcs, ruins, mystery and adventure. For small-scale adventuring and the beginning of an epic RPG trilogy, it’s a good start.
   
2. Feels like Tolkien! The problem with the Middle Earth RPGs that came before is that they weren’t based around the actual themes Tolkien dealt with: long epic journeys, fellowship/the adventuring group as a unified whole, the fine sense of history and scale, lineage and the heroic adventures of prior heroes’ offspring, a high-fantasy realm with high-magic artifacts and creatures but with limited magic use. All of these are here as core game mechanics. Mission Accomplished.
3. No Wizards! Well, Radaghast is around as a deus ex machina NPC, but no playable wizards at any rate.
4. Corruption: Taint and Redemption! Speaking of major themes of Middle Earth translated to core mechanics. See anguish, take part in suffering, travel through tainted lands, and you gain corruption. How do you get rid of it? Make something beautiful ala Earthdawn: roll your Craft or Singing or whatnot to bolster your own spirits.
5. Dice Mechanics! When these were announced, the worry was that they’d be like Warhammer FRPG’s box of inane special bits. Instead, it’s quite simple. The One Ring uses a dice pool (ala Roll-and-Keep or Storyteller or Shadowrun) of d6′s, backed up by a Feat Die (ala the Wild Die of Star Wars d6 or Savage Worlds), in this case a d12. Rolling a 6 on the d6′s gives you a raise, e.g., makes your result that much better if you succeed; the dice pool results are summed, and go up against a base difficulty of 12-14. The d12 is closer to a d10, numbered 1 through 10 with two special sides: a Gandalf rune (auto-succeed) on the 12, and an Eye of Sauron (bad things happen) on the 1. Very slick, and you can use dice you already own. A full set is provided in the slipcase, I’d like to see separate sets for sale.
6. Encumbrance/Fatigue! One of the best systems in gaming for handling this, I kid you not. Running too much, wearing heavy armor, or otherwise exerting yourself in combat makes you Weary, which brings us to the other half of the dice mechanics: while Weary, results of 1, 2, and 3 on the d6′s aren’t counted. Ouch. But at least your high-end results, including the raises from rolling a 6 and the Gandalf rune on the d12, still count.
7. Beautiful maps! I’m partial to cartography, and this set’s strong selling point is the maps. There’s a nice player’s map of the Mirkwood region, along with a GM’s map, showcasing the major features, hex-grid distances, all color-coded to determine how long it takes to travel in one type of terrain or another.
8. The Art Loving Rules! It’s all very evocative of Tolkien’s Dark Ages Europe-esque world, in part because John Howe was tapped for this project. Though, it was Jon Hodgson’s work that made the book shine. All the art on this page is from the interior of the book: vast, mist-shrouded wilderness, like old-school landscapes, showing just how small and insignificantly finite our adventurers are in this ancient land.
9. Dynamic Character Creation! There’s only a half-dozen different faction-races—hobbits, dwarfs of the Misty Moutain, wood elves, Beornings, woodmen, and Bard’s riverfolk—but each has a variety of skill-sets to pick from and assign, various backgrounds, and occupation/callings, which results in a flexible system. Much more “who you are” than the D&D-esque “what you do,” which is nice, with plenty of freedom of choice. I’m hoping more will be added sooner than later, but the base ones cover a range of possibilities.
10. Synthesis of Form and Function! I know number two is similar, but I can’t get over this fact: it feels like The Hobbit. MERP always felt like Rolemaster wearing a Lord of the Rings mask, with its drudgery of charts, deadly criticals, and excessive list of skills. Decipher’s LOTR game was marred by typos, horrible handling of a cash-cow license, and a D&D-esque feeling of “descend into this dungeon, kill that, take its loot.” The One Ring is the first game that doesn’t feel like a variation on D&D, but gives an actual Middle Earth game vibe, in its handling of mechanics, narrative, and combat.

And a few things that aren’t so great, just so I’m not accused of favoritism. Every game I own has at least a few flaws, and this one is no exception.

1. Damn the Simulationist Nature! This is one of those games where skills like Singing and Cooking are actually important. I guess it’s nice that they have mechanical uses, and they do have a place in Tolkien’s books, but is this the kind of thing you really want to bother with in an RPG? Yes, rolling your Cooking makes sense—think of Samwise in the movies—but it reminds me of the ’80s, Rolemaster’s everything-and-its-cousin skill list and AD&D’s nonweapon proficiencies, which were the last places I saw Cooking listed as a skill. Ugh.
2. Lack of enemies! The only adversaries are those which appeared in the books, namely various kinds of orcs, trolls, wolves, spiders, and bats/vampires. That’s about it. Granted, plenty of variety in each type, so they’re perfect for scaling and changing it up, but there isn’t a whole lot of variety. I am glad they left the dragons and balrogs for more applicable supplements. But I foresee encounters becoming very repetitive.
3. Indexing is a bitch! Get used to switching back and forth between the Player’s book and the Loremaster’s book. I’m not exactly sure why they have this terminology, since important rules are spread out between them; other rules are mentioned once, and never referred to again. The worst parts are the rules that aren’t lumped with similar rules, and dumped someplace off the map—sometimes in another book. So it can be hard to find what you’re looking for if you didn’t memorize the books cover to cover.

Those are the only complaints I can drop on this, though, aside from a few niggling nitpicks that aren’t worth mentioning. Cubicle 7 has a GM—err, Loremaster Screen scheduled, along with Tales of the Wilderland, a seven-adventure loosely-linked adventure campaign. I think the game’s strength will be its scale of cumulative slipcase/box set games, allowing a group to run parallel adventures to the novels from the time of Smaug’s death to the fall of Sauron… provided the line has enough longevity and supplements.

Oh, Fantasy Novels.

I’m not going to lie, I don’t like most modern fantasy novels. Not that I find the old ones any better—it’s hard to deny Robert E. Howard was a misogynist racist, product of his time or no; and too much fantasy output is rehashing the same insipid tropes robbed from Tolkien. (David Eddings and Terry Brooks, often as not, read as Tolkien fan-fics.) Granted, a blanket statement, and one which I can point to many exceptions, but I’ll stick by it. By contrast, modern epic fantasies have carved out their own niche which partially bucks the Tolkien trend, and don’t always read like bad D&D campaigns transcribed into 600+ page tomes.

No, what I really hate about modern fantasy novels is their low quality of writing. Fantasy fans may vehemently disagree with me here, fantasy is one of the most denigrated genres within the genre-fiction ghetto. And in some cases, there’s a reason for that. Every now and then I’ll get a recommendation for a new fantasy novel, another five-star bestseller, and half the time the result is disappointment—due to the author’s inept prose, trite dialogue, flat characters, stock plot, flaccid developments, overuse of description, the author’s disturbing rape/torture fantasies, etc.

(I donno, maybe my tastes are too specific and I’m too hard to please. Lord knows I’ve had enough writing workshops, which are death on trying to read anything without a mental red pen in hand.)

So, when I see a capable, objective, coherent review that negatively criticizes a bestselling fantasy novel, I take note. (In part because far too much criticism comes from fictionalized fan-base infighting.) This would be Liz Bourke’s review for Michael Sullivan’s Theft of Swords; Sullivan was a big hit self-publishing his own work, and Theft collects his first two self-pub’d novels under the banner of an actual publishing house. By contrast, of the 45 Amazon reviews, only five are three-star or less.

At this point, whatever opinion I’d have had otherwise, the fanboy commentators have told me everything I need to know. What happens when someone has an opinion different from your own? Why, there must be something wrong with them. Let’s insult the reviewer, some kind of female historian intellectual who failed to objectively review even though she used objective data. (My personal favorite: taking quotes “out of context” makes any author look bad—of course, that’s exactly why I do it on my book review blog… not.) Two things strike me:

1. Objectively – I do not think this word means what you think it means.
2. To paraphrase Yahtzee: the objective for a critic is to critique, not put people’s balls in their mouth for a living.

This, as a whole, is my problem with the fantasy genre today. The review includes a number of “bad writing” examples which exceed anything I can pull out—”His father is a chivalrous knight of archaic dimensions. (p. 174)” is killer.

But more than that, my problem is with the fans; not just the stupidity in the comments section, but the fact that this is a bestseller. People continue to buy, defend, and propagate bad high/epic/fantasy works. It feels like the specific elements, the aesthetics and world-building and story arc, are promoted at the cost of quality and originality—in other words, popularity isn’t based on the novel’s merits but by its degree of catering to the genre’s tropes. That can’t be good for the genre.

To subvert this old article, which I more or less agree with: familiarity is what’s wanted, but only that which is familiar within the fantasy genre. And people wonder why fantasy is often so denigrated.

[The One Ring] Initial Impressions

I picked up The One Ring a few months ago, back when I had some Amazon gift cards, and have been paging through it since; very impressed so far, so here are some initial impressions. Something I’ve been meaning to do for a while, but I’ve been busy fixing computers and stuff. Besides, not like I got a review copy or anything as posting incentive.

The One Ring, released this last October, is the latest attempt to make Middle Earth into a viable roleplaying game. You could ask whether or not we need another Middle Earth RPG, since we have I.C.E.’s MERP and Decipher’s Lord of the Rings, but unless you’re a huge fan of either of those you’ve probably already answered the question with a “yes.” MERP was a copy of Rolemaster with Middle Earth setting details slapped on; Decipher wasn’t terribly knowledgeable about roleplaying games, and their product line shows: the books were passably solid but not exemplary, and support for the line bottomed out sometime shortly after the Two Towers sourcebook was released. (It was also focused more on the movies than the books, which may or may not be a bad thing.)

Whether or not we need another high-fantasy elfs and goblins RPG is another question, Epic Pooh and China Mieville and all; I still like Tolkien’s (and pre-Tolkien) novels to the subsequent fantasy genre, and make an exception in my general dislike of traditional fantasy for a couple of reasons. (The big one being that Tolkien wrote a myth, the end-all of Northern European mythic cycles to be precise, while everyone since writes in the genre known as fantasy. Then again, I also love The Iliad and Norse fables and the like.) YMMV.

In any case, The One Ring, Cubicle 7′s newest RPG. (It goes well with Starblazer and Doctor Who; they should have some “Imported from Britain” sticker on there for their outsourcing of European nerddom to America.) It’s written by Italian Francesco Nepitello, who knows his Middle Earth better than most. And while it’s another of those dreaded indie storygame RPGs, the influence of traditional games is immense: I can see running it either as a high-end tactical trad game (with some homebrewing to the combat) just as well as a storygame.

So far I’m liking what I’m seeing. Unlike previous Middle Earth attempts, the game adheres strictly to Tolkien’s style and world, meaning there’s no playable wizards for one. It also tries to make game mechanics out of some of Tolkien’s themes. Travel, for one; the included maps are used to determine just how long it took to get from one adventure to another. Lineage for another; after a player’s hero is “retired,” they can continue their story using that hero’s offspring, which is pretty cool. And while there are no magic-users, artifacts do exist, much as Bilbo and the dwarfs stumbled into a cache of magic swords.

The setting is Mirkwood, the wild expanse of forest and lawless orc-infested land depicted in The Hobbit. Take your old-school D&D wilderlands/points-of-light setting and turn it to eleven; safeholds are few and far between, the going is treacherous, and various enemies lurk in every corner. Plenty of room to explore and adventure in, and the books are littered with interesting story-seeds and plot hook ideas.

The dice are an interesting feature and selling point; you get a number of d6s and a d12, which you roll in a dice pool of sixers (equal to skill rating) with the d12 as your wild/action die. Rolling a six on the d6s gives you the equivalent of a Raise, making the result that much better. The d12 is actually a d10 with two special sides: a Gandalf rune, acting as an auto-success, and an Eye of Sauron, which isn’t quite an instant failure, instead making the result interestingly bad.

So, you end up rolling a bunch of d6s (up to six) plus the d12 against a base difficulty of 14, which can be a stretch on 3d6. Skills are divided under three attributes; you can add the related attribute’s total to the dice-roll total by spending a Heart point—something like a cross between Willpower and FATE points—if you don’t think you rolled high enough. (Otherwise, attributes don’t do that much.)

Combat is very streamlined, and though it’s not as tactical as it could be, it’s meaty in its own right. It revolves around the abstract of choosing a combat stance, which modifies physical aggressiveness and placement. So, not tactical in the maps-and-minis way, but a fine balance of choosing your balance of offense/defense. It’s also worth noting the game’s amazing encumbrance system: exhaust yourself, carry too much heavy weapons/armor, and suddenly you’ll find yourself Weary. When Weary, rolling any 1′s, 2′s, and 3′s on the d6s aren’t counted in your total. Dayum.

If you'd rather not suffer from eyestrain, you can download the sheet from the Cube 7 website.

Character creation is simple, yet flexible. You choose from one of six races—hobbits, dwarfs of the Misty Mountains, wood elves, wildermen, Beornings, and Bard’s riverfolk—and then pick your background (which provides skills and abilities), some more skills, some favored skills (and favored attributes, which raise the bonus provided when you spend that Heart point to boost favored skills), and lastly, pick from one of five callings—slayer, treasure hunter, scholar, wanderer, or warden. Which also provide you with benefits and new options.

It may sound limiting as a class system, but trust me, it’s not; there’s a lot you can build from all the options, and it gives a great feel of “who you are” rather than the D&D-style class feel of “what you can do.” That said, I’m hoping for a companion or something that adds in more races, backgrounds, and callings.

The One Ring comes in a slipcase for $59.99 (cheaper on Amazon!), containing two softcover rulebooks totalling 336 pages, two 22″ x 17″ mini-poster maps, and a tray of dice—six special d6s and a special d12. It’s a tad on the expensive side, softcovers and all, but it looks loving beautiful, and I’d say it’s totally worth the price I paid… which was negligible thanks to my Amazon gift certs and the fact they only charge $37 for it.) If you’re a Middle Earth fan, and don’t mind looking outside the D&D box… give it a shot. It’s the most Tolkienesque Middle Earth RPG so far.

Planet Stories – Steppe

Planet Stories 023 - Steppe - Piers Anthony - 1976

Needing some light reading, I picked up another Planet Stories book when I saw it in the book store—you’d be surprised how quick these leave Barnes & Noble, and how few of them are stocked. This one happened to be Piers Anthony’s Steppe, a historical fiction turned space opera, which sounded fairly interesting from its back cover blurb.

After falling into a cavern, the Eurasian barbarian chieftain Alp is sucked into a future world by people who want to use his knowledge to play The Game. This Game is an immersive roleplaying experience where uneducated future players take roles of historical figures, each hoping to lead their character to victory and glory. In the end, Alp escapes into the Game, hoping to use his extent knowledge to become victorious as he evades the police looking for him on Earth, and becomes enmeshed in the plots and politics of scoring and winning. There are several great battles, the forging of several tribes, and a love interest for poor lost Alp, all inside this great Game, where players ride spaceship “horses” and fire “arrows” of pure light.

Steppe is one of those interesting books which has a lot of bad elements balanced with a lot of good ones. The entire plot is incredibly relevant and creative for today’s society—the Game is a cross between a star-spanning mumorpuger and a reality TV show, with the players gauged on their performance by the number of stable viewers. The aspect of corporate espionage, the Game itself, and the Machine overlords are like a pre-Cyberpunk trifecta, all the elements of Cyberpunk well before they arrived. While the book’s primarily a fantasy with its historical homage, Alp becomes so enmeshed—addicted, even?—to the game, its proto-Cyberpunk aspects are quite notable. And, as a roleplayer and gamer, the idea of the Game is pretty awesome.

At the same time, there’s a number of major flaws with the book. I’ll ignore some of the more contrived plot points/macguffins and the confusing time terminology of the Game world (one Year in the Game is equal to a day of real time, while a Day is a couple of real time minutes, and Anthony stops capitalizing and therefore distinguishing between them somewhere in the middle of the book). The major problem with the book is its long history-lesson stages. Vast sections of the book are pure exposition, with no action, as Alp either watches or leads a cartoon effigy of ancient peoples as they fight and conquer other cartoon figures representing other groups of ancient peoples. While an interesting concept, these sections were so damnably slow and droll that I ended up skipping most of them; I may not have known the history, but I don’t necessarily need to know it. Each expository chapter was akin to pulling teeth. It was like Anthony really wanted to write two books, a novel about a technologically advanced world-game and a textbook of Dark Age barbarian tribes, and ended up with this.

I should note that Planet Stories is becoming much more like the original pulp magazine of the same name—the splash page and cover are very magazine like, the book features internal illustrations and a two-column layout, and it’s increased in size to a proper digest format. The quality of the book just feels better as the covers are less rigid, and from start to finish the layout and text are evocative of a step into the past. It even features a retro-styled ad for Planet Stories subscriptions. Definitely a step in the right direction.

In the end, I found myself praising the complex originality of the plot and ideas, while despising the sections of heavy expository writing. At any point where Alp turns on the viewer (TV) to watch the cartoon factions fight each other, turning from giants to dwarves, I started tuning out. The second half of the book is particularly low on dialogue or interaction, all being done through authorial exposition in text-block format. Still, Steppe is a decent read, hooking you at its best points as much as it drives you away with its worst. It’s mediocrity at its best, a great idea with rough execution, and while I can’t say I’ll read it again it provided several nights worth of entertainment.