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15th Jul, 2008

Nurse

Normal services will be resumed as soon as possible

Bit too much freelance work on just at the minute, reviews etc shall return ASAP.
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1st Jul, 2008

Nurse

Review: Weapons of the Gods

Introduction
Weapons of the Gods is a Wu-xia martial arts game based in a sword-and-sorcery China and derived from the Chinese manga series by the same name. WotG is a fast paced game of martial arts, intrigue and high powered adventure falling somewhere between Qin and Exalted in the level of overpowered, martial arts mayhem and destruction it describes.

Overview
The book is a massive one, totalling out to nearly four hundred pages interspersed with illustrations that are mostly small, so that's an intimidating amount of text, though most of it is background and plots, and thus optional. It includes the general rules, combat rules, character creation, kung fu, secret techniques and powers and an enormous section of plot and background providing a great many hooks and ideas to players and Games Masters alike. The game is complete in one book but be aware that the PDF I am reviewing from lacked the front cover image, this does make a file smaller but I would have liked it to be there. I have also read the hardcopy version.

Artwork
The artwork almost throughout - with the exception of a few weapon illustrations - is taken from the Chinese manga. Personally I don't find the Chinese manga style as engaging or as interesting as that of Japanese manga, this is a matter of personal taste however and the pieces are colourful and well executed and, since the game is based upon the comic books it makes sense to use that art. The layout is fairly simplistic and readable with a faded background that doesn't interfere with the text or get in the way of reading, though the text layout is a little dull and can run together a bit too much, requiring the re-reading of some sections to be sure you have it right.

Writing
The writing is good, but dense, and uses many seemingly unnecessary terms that describe established RPG factors. This obfuscates some of what's being said requiring a second or third reading and reference to the definitions to really get it. The writing is also very dense, difficult to take in with a single read through but this is only really true of the background/factions/plots sections of the text which does all start to blur together after a time. A Games Master will need to be familiar, intimately, with this section though, in order to run a fully effective game that truly relates to the background. If players are not so familiar with the comic books this can be less of a problem but if players are knowledgable then the GM can be put in something of a tight spot.

The clearest explanation was of the rules, though I'd heard elsewhere that these were difficult to get that isn't because of the writing, which puts it out there quite clearly, at least so far as the basic rules go. For the rest things get a little more complicated and they aren't all explained concisely in the same place, which is less effective writing as rules explanations go.

Rules
WotG uses a dicepool system but it isn't one that is entirely intuitive. A handful of ten sided dice are rolled and the highest 'set' is used to determine the value of the roll, so you're trying to get groups of the same number. A single number is read as ten plus the number, two the same as 20 plus the number and so on, 10s are considered to be zeroes. This seems odd and takes a while to grasp but really isn't that difficult once you get the hang of it. The other main concept is the idea of 'The River' a storehouse of dice that can then be used later in a scene like 'wildcards' in a poker hand to make longer or better chains and thus to get better results.

Layered on top of this relatively simple system are all the exceptions, special rules and conditions that complicate it, and there's a lot of them from The River to chi of assorted colours to all the Martial Arts powers. This in many ways defeats the object of keeping a system simple but it does make all these special abilities and styles important, which is a good thing when it comes to such kung-fu dependent settings.

The one complaint I do have about the system is that it has a certain lack of detail, something that does plague a lot of dicepool and soft systems, you can harm someone but you can't, as such, sever limbs or go for specific effects beyond the remit of your powers. This can make battle description a little more difficult to keep engaging and does stifle player creativity somewhat.

Where the game shines, or falls down, depending on your spin, is in the backgrounds. Characters can have fates and destinies and can buy into plotlines that exist in the background of the game as well as tying themselves into the various clans, factions and other powers that be. On the plus side this gives the players tremendous buy-in to the game and provides the GM with a great deal of inspiration to run their games. On the minus side the GM necessarily loses a great degree of control over their own game, the campaign - if you follow the rules in the book - needs to be built upon the desires of the players expressed through what backgrounds they have bought, not the idea of the GM in the raw.

Upsides
  • Simple dicepool system, very accessible.
  • High martial arts action with plenty of styles and powers.
  • Good player buy-in to the game narrative.

Downsides
  • Unnecessary use of extraneous language/terminology.
  • GM lack of control over the campaign direction and content.
  • Qin does it better.

Score
Style: 5
Substance: 3
Overall: 4
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30th Jun, 2008

Nurse

Review: The Liveship Traders Trilogy


Introduction
The Liveship Traders is a trilogy of books (Ship of Magic, The Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny) by Robin Hobb, set in the same world as some of her other works. It follows the trials and tribulations of the Vestrit family -  Liveship Traders from the title - a family with the priviledge to own a liveship, a living, magical vessel that is swifter and more capable than any other ship and, with time, becomes quickened and alive, manifesting through the figurehead thanks to the magical properties of wizardwood and the lives of the captains who die, generation after generation, to bring the ships to life. There's a greater secret behind the wizardwood and the liveships and this all comes out with the fall in fortunes of the Vestrit family and the events that they get caught up in, including the fate of dragons and empires.

Generally speaking I avoid what I call 'generic fantasy' with a ten foot pole, if a book has pastel colours and a picture of a dragon on it I run screaming into the nearest Peter F Hamilton book to cleanse myself ritually with antimatter bombs and cybernetics. However my missus was quite enthusiastic about this series, as was a friend's mother, as were reviews and, technically, sea serpents don't count as dragons, so I risked it.

Review
This is a review of all three books which I read directly one after the other in quick succession. Overall I was quite happy with the books, other than dragons there are very few of the conceits of generic fantasy and the books - taken as a whole - are an engaging and lively read. Subgenre-wise I would place the books firmly in the Romantic Fantasy area and close to the Feminist SF/Fantasy area as well.

The first book does a good job of introducing us to the main elements and characters of the story, including the places. Bingtown is the major setting here and the hook around which the rest is build, a largely independent trader port in hostile territory and close to a dangerous rival it pays lip service to its putative 'owner' Jamaillia and the Satrap who commands it. Bingtown is under assault however from many new forces, the New Traders - outsiders granted land there by the Satrap - and Chalced, their hostile neighbour, which has made overtures to Jamaillia through the Satrap and is taking advantage of its newfound authority in the area.

Bingtown owes its fortune in no small part to its relationship with the people of the Rain Wilds, a strange place upriver from Bingtown where there are ruined and overgrown cities and where the river can run white with acid. The people there wear veils to hide their deformities, caused by their living in such strange and magic-suffused places and old and secret covenants bind together Rain Wild traders and Bingtown traders, riches dug from the ruins providing both with great wealth.

As the story starts the old captain of the Vestrit liveship Vivacia (liveships are another key prize to come from the Rain Wilds) is dying, his daughter Althea expects to inherit the ship and become its next captain but the changing situation in Bingtown (including increasing misogyny from Chalcedean influence) makes this a political and social impossibility and instead her sister's husband - a man of Chalced himself - is installed as captain and his son dragged away from his monastery to be the familial link the newly awakened ship requires.

Outraged Althea runs away to seek confirmation of her capabilities as a sailor, something that should win her back the family liveship Vivacia due to a rash oath sworn by the new captain.

And so the story begins, across the three books we find out the truth about live ships, dragons, sea serpents and the Rain Wilds and all are interconnected, we meet other characters, empires clash and nothing turns out quite as anyone expects.

The first book sets all of this out and in place ready for the remaining books in the trilogy but, because of this, it is rather slow and poorly paced and tends to drag and become boring. The second book describes the downfall of the Vestrit fortunes and the pacing is much better, rapid - but not too rapid - and it ends on a note of hope for the main characters as well as introducing a new power, the newly united pirate isles. The last book is too fast towards its end, cramming a great deal into the last few chapters things begin to feel a little glossed over and while there is a conclusion it lacks that final 'bang' for your buck, the emotional payoff that you might expect. A longer epilogue would have gone a long way towards fixing this but as it was I was left feeling a little bit cheated at the end of the complete trilogy.

That said, the only major problem I had with the book was that it almost completely lacked sympathetic male characters. I know fantasy is awash with shallow or unsympathetic portrayals of women (Conan, Gor, and so on...) but it doesn't seem to me that going the opposite direction really addresses the problem. The male characters in this trilogy are simpering buffoons, rapists, puppy dogs trailing after the women or otherwise ineffectual almost in their entirety. Even the main love interest for Althea seems defined only in relation to her, mooning around and the overall feel of the book because of all this nigh-relentless undermining of men got quite offputting by the third book.

Conclusion
A good yarn that avoids many genetic fantasy pitfalls with engaging (female) characters and some good twists and turns of plot. Let down by the pacing of the first and third book and the deeply unsympathetic portrayals of the men throughout the story. A good story of self discovery and change, these being the running themes for all the major characters.

Score
Style: 3
Substance: 4
Overall: 3.5
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Nurse

Review: Crimson Empire

Introduction
This is a review of the second edition of the game with the name altered from Cursed Empire, which the earlier edition was titled, due to a dispute with Lucasarts (or vice versa, it all seems a bit confused). Crimson Empire is a small, independent press game written by Chris Loizou and presented enthusiastically and comprehensively at many UK conventions. This is a weighty book and obviously a labour of love for the creator whose enthusiasm for the game is obvious and infectious. This makes me feel bad about criticising the game given that it's such an obvious and singular labour of love, but there are significant problems with it.

Overview
Crimson Empire's adventures and story take place in a land called Thargos. A dark land that has suffered a great deal and which is torn apart by civil war. The characters in the game will tend to be chancers, adventurers and opportunists, doing what they can to get by and maybe, eventually, picking a side and helping shape the course of the conflicts and their eventual outcome. Crimson Empire is billed as a dark, gritty, medieval fantasy world but it seems to draw more inspiration from Greek, Roman and Alexandrian myth, particularly in the look and feel of the game which, coupled with a heavy dose of 1990s alternative culture results in a not-quite-dungeonpunk, semi-BDSM fantasy feel to the whole game. This isn't necessarily a bad thing!

The game has a rich and detailed world setting, interesting magic systems and a great deal of enthusiasm behind it, but it suffers greatly from poor explanations of the game rules - particularly character creation - and some presentation mistakes.

Artwork
The artwork is excellent and consistent. The cover(s) are by Rob Larson with interior artwork by Rik Martin and Amandine Labarre. This isn't to say that there aren't problems with it however. The excellent cover art creates great expectations of the interior and while the interior artwork is excellent it doesn't quite manage to marry up to the expectations that the cover creates. There is an awkwardness and flatness to some of the interior artwork which is made worse by the lack of contrast. The interior works are almost all pencil/charcoal works and thus tend to a flattened grey, lacking contrast. This is made much worse than it might have been by the grey background on all the pages which tends to cause the interior artwork to get lost in the background. Weapon and equipment illustrations suffer this less, but they are pixelated, suggesting that they weren't created/scanned at the right resolution and thus have become stretched.

As mentioned previously the pages are very grey and this causes both art and text to fade somewhat into the background, making the book something of an eyestrain to read under many conditions. Combined with the writing problems (next section) the two feed on each other to make a quite frustrating reading experience. There's also quite a lot of wasted space on the page and the use of an unconventional and somewhat wide font, while countering the problems of reading the text a little, make you feel a little short changed on the amount of content.

Despite these flaws Crimson Empire presents a unified vision of its game world though, in the corebook at least, this is mostly presented in the form of characters and their equipment and it isn't until supplements that you really get much of a vision of the world that they inhabit - save via the text.

Writing
The background and story sections are excellent, engaging and brimming with enthusiasm though some of the writing seems to present a much more 'vanilla fantasy' vision of the game than the artwork, body piercings and bondage armour might otherwise present. The inclusion of elves and dwarves also feels somewhat unnecessary and drags Crimson Empire dangerously close to being just another Fantasy Heartbreaker.

The big letdown comes with the rules themselves, they are not explained very well and remain deeply confusing even after a third read through and a second attempt at creating a character. The index is comprehensive but for the book/edition I had all the references seemed to be 1-2 pages off and I still couldn't find an adequate explanation of 'Mastering Weapons'. This is compensated for somewhat by an Exccel sheet character calculator on the website, but if you can't easily make up a character from the book, that's a problem.

Rules
As intimated above the rules are confusing and they are also complex. I think this may account for why many of Crimson Empire's major enthusiasts are people that the author has managed to play with at conventions. By directly experiencing the game being run by its creator I am certain that many of the problems fade into the background and the confusing parts become obvious, but we can't all have access to the game's creator and a game should be judged on what it presents in the book.

The basic system is somewhere between Rolemaster and Basic Roleplaying, a percentile based system but one that also includes ranks and set difficulties. There are levels, but they are referred to as Caste Rank and aren't quite so profoundly important as they might be in D&D or a similar game.

One truly inspired part of the game is its magic system, a method of combining runes to create new spells, a true 'magic system' rather than just a series of pre-made effects. This isn't quite as free-wheeling as Mage 2nd Edition but is much more interesting and engaging than endless spell lists.

Upsides
  • Well realised dark fantasy look and feel.
  • Creator's enthusiasm and indomitable will to succeed and provide.
  • Excellent website/forum/fan support.

Downsides
  • Poorly explained rules.
  • Complicated.
  • Overuse of grey in presentation.

Score
Style: 4
Substance: 4
Overall: 4
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27th Jun, 2008

Nurse

Reviw: Wanted (Graphic Novel)

Introduction
Given that there's a movie coming out that supposedly draws its inspiration from this graphic novel I felt now was a good time to review the trade paperback of it since 'draws inspiration from' seems to mean 'has the same name as' and 'vaguely, kinda, sorta, follows the basic plot of' - and not even so much as The Tempest/Forbidden Planet. I mean, really, what are film producers thinking these days? They're lucky I'm not involved...

Me: "Hi scriptwriters, I've called you in today to go over this Avengers film project with you and to discuss the script you've worked out."
Writers: "Hello Sir, yes, what did you think?"
Me: "Well... the comic book has the heroes as a group of strong, individual superheroes being brought together to face a greater menace than any one of them could handle, bankrolled by the government they fight off the evil shapechanging space lizards and eventually triumph despite their internal differences and the fact that Pym is a wife-beating prick."
Writers: "Yes, and we took that as inspiration."
Me: "How... exactly, have you done that? You've moved the setting from a giant government facility to a tenement block in London. Captain America is now a cab driver from Camden, Thor is now a woman overcoming her poor relationship with her father and Giant Man and The Wasp are now the cabaret identities of a homosexual couple dealing with the problems of bringing a third person into their relationship."
Writers: "Yes, it's very today."
Me: "And the shapechanging space lizards are now a gang of skinheads who are eventually revealed to have hearts of gold."
Writers: "And what did you think?"
Me: "Tell me guys, what's the common element in the following movies... Sin City, Batman Begins, Spiderman, Iron Man, Hulk, 300, X-men..."
Writers: "Well they're all very successful comic to film adaptations that have grossed millions of dollars."
Me: "What else...? Nobody? Well I'll tell you... THEY DIDN'T FUCK WITH THEM! THEY STAYED FAIRLY TRUE TO THE ORIGINAL SOURCE MATERIAL! THEY DIDN'T SCREW WITH IT! OUT! GET OUT YOU DICKS!"
*Beats the writers to death with their own manuscript*

Anyway, suffice to say that Wanted is NOT about a secretive guild of uber-assassins. Instead it is about an alternate universe, much like this one, where the supervillains banded together and slaughtered all the superheroes and now rule in secret without any opposition, at least in this dimension, aside from each other. It is written by Mark Millar and displays much of the expected Millarisms, such as wholesale violence, crudeness, and a wicked and scatological sense of humour. It follows the story of Wesley Gibson, a down at heel nobody with a dead end office job where he has to grin and take shit and a girlfriend who sleeps with just about everyone except him. It turns out that Wesley is the son of a notorious villain with an untapped genetic heritage of superlative killing skills, and he's about to come into his inheritance.

Review
Wanted is a tour-de-force for Millar, as good, if not better than a great deal of his other work. The villainous nature of the setting and the story gives Millar free reign to be crazy and nasty, even more so than in his run on The Authority and the sheer exuberance and joy in being able to do so oozes from every panel. The villains in many cases are inspired by those from the mainstream, familiar comics, gleefully deconstructed and reconstructed into irreverent forms of their former selves and allowed to run loose. Through Wesley we come to meet these villains, members of 'The Fraternity', the secret rulers of the world who have divided up the continents between themselves. Wesley comes in after the apparent death of his father, instructions having been left that the only way he can come into his inheritance is to train up to be his replacement and to join The Fraternity.

Wesley is reluctant at first but eventually takes to the villainous path with great gusto, revelling in sex, violence, sexual violence and the casual murder of anyone. Members of The Fraternity can do anything they want, without comeback. As Wesley is coming into his own, mentored by The Professor (an evil supergenius) and The Fox, his father's lover and another stone-cold killer, the balance of power begins to shift. The more sensible villains are challenged by the more maniacal and nihilistic villains and eventually the differences come to head, and violence breaks out publicly as The Fraternity starts to fall apart. Wesley gets caught up in all of this and in many ways it becomes a mirrorworld version of 'The Punisher kills the Marvel Universe'.

There's a good twist at the end and, just as you're expecting the normal sort of denouement it throws another spin in there for kicks as well, something that brings it above the level of a well-executed but puerile celebration of excess.

Conclusion
A brilliant and unmissable graphic novel I found Wanted to be an inspiring way to look at superhero comics - and their villains - from another angle. Of particular brilliance amongst the villains were Shithead, a living golem made up of the faeces of six-hundred and sixty-six of the world's most evil men and Mister Rictus, a former priest who became an amoral sociopath after being disfigured, dying and having a Near Death Experience not of heaven or hell, but of nothingness. Do yourself a favour, don't see the film, buy the comic book instead.

Score
Style: 5
Substance: 3 (In many ways its relative shallowness is the whole point, villains are superficial wankers, so don't let this put you off).
Overall: 4
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