POSTMORTEM STUDIOS

Normal services will be resumed as soon as possible

2008-07-15T11:42:39Z

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

Review: Weapons of the Gods

2008-07-01T15:49:46Z

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

Review: The Liveship Traders Trilogy

2008-06-30T14:44:03Z

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

Review: Crimson Empire

2008-06-30T14:05:19Z

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

Reviw: Wanted (Graphic Novel)

2008-06-27T14:47:18Z

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

Review: GTA4

2008-06-27T14:18:04Z

Introduction
Everyone should know about the Grand Theft Auto series by now, even people who don't play video games. Rockstar have carved themselves a good niche with the GTA games and have, effectively, created a genre of third person, free roaming games that has been much imitated since the massive success of GTA3 back on the PS2. GTA4 then is another step in the franchise with a fresh character, an old city and updated technology for the next generation consoles. The version I played was for the Xbox360.

Everyone should know what you get with a GTA game by now, in case you don't they're basically crime fables, you playing the part of a criminal within a sprawling, open-play city area, doing jobs and running errands for the criminal powers that be in the city and usually ascending in power and prestige as you do so. In a departure from that model Niko pretty much stays an errand boy from start to end and never really 'makes it' as such.

Story
The new story follows the life of illegal immigrant Niko Belic, coming to Liberty City to seek his fortune, a new start in life and a chance at revenge. He's fleeing memories of an unnamed war and the tragedies that occurred in it, and problems with a crime boss he used to work for. Head swelled with the lies of his cousin Roman he comes to America to grab himself a piece of the American dream and finds out that it's not quite what he'd been lead to expect.

The storyline follows Niko as he makes his new life in the city and gets entangled in the various criminal and political factions vying for the city, a down-and-out Irish crime family, an old guard mafia dynasty, a smaller, more ambitious but also incompetent mafia family and, of course, the Russian maffiya. He also gets involved with oblique government agencies, spoofing Homeland Security somewhat. There's also the opportunity to make friends and wine and dine on the town, accruing influence that lets you call in favours from these friends.

Gameplay
There's a lot of gameplay to GTA4 but I felt it was something of a step backwards in complexity from the last few console GTA offerings. Vice City had you building up and running your own criminal operation, running businesses, buying up buildings and becoming a force to be reckoned with. San Andreas had a huge playing area beyond anything seen in the series before and threw you head first into gang culture, building it up, taking and holding turf and again gaining influence. GTA4 strips that element right back to nothing, you don't accrue power or influence in that way in this game, rather any favours you can call down are down to your friendships and these are improved by doing missions for the contacts and by taking them out on the town and watching shows, getting drunk, eating or playing mini games like bowling, darts and pool. Even so, with these systems in, I felt there wasn't as much depth of gameplay as there had been in previous offerings and while this made the game simpler it also decreased the depth and the involvement in the game, you didn't feel like you were making as much of an impact on the city and there was less sense of 'ownership'.

Difficulty-wise the game has been made easier to play. At no point did I feel frustrated by the missions, unlike in San Andreas where I never got past the remote control planes mission and couldn't get into the whole 'gangsta' thing. This is good in some ways as you lose the frustration but there are only a very few missions that are genuinely challenging because of it. Something that may turn off more hardcore gamers. One thing I was very glad to see was that only one race mission was compulsory and that was easy to win!

The driving, conversely, is a little more difficult. Compared to both imitators and previous entries in the genre the cars in GTA4 are much harder to control, the handbrake seems to almost always spin you out of control and cornering feels much stiffer and the cars 'wallow' much more than in previous incarnations.

Combat is much the same as before with a few options for hiding in cover and 'popping out'. It was involving and exciting and felt fairly controllable despite the clumsiness that using the waggly sticks on console controllers tends to cause.

Atmosphere
The city is wonderfully atmospheric with excellent weather and day and night effects. More than any previous iteration GTA4 really brings the feel of the city to life right down to garbage collectors and people raking leaves. The radio stations, as ever, are brilliant and retain the irreverent humour and digs at modern America familiar from the others in the series. There was a dissonance however between the more seriously handled plotline and the humour of the adverts and radio stations, they didn't quite seem to marry up the same way they have in, say, Vice City which was much camper and more humorous. GTA4 is much grittier as a whole and the humour side of things - despite the inclusion of TV programs as well, which were great, just didn't seem to hold together as well in that context.

One thing that felt stripped back was character customisation, the amount of outfits available seemed quite limited compared to, say, San Andreas and there was no ability to get tattooed or to buff up, or get fat, due to what you did or did not do. Spoiled by MMORPGs I like to be able to get my character to look at least something like I want to look and the problem was made worse by being unable to tell some sets of shoes from others, an important thing if you're trying to wear a suit (as some missions require).

The voice acting is top notch, as usual, and the storyline very engaging, you really do connect with and care for the characters in the story, there's just some rough edges that prevent you really getting involved in them.

Graphics
The city, the cars and the atmospherics are all very good but the character design an animation still had a PS2ish 'tinge' to them. The motion capture felt a little rough compared to other next-gen outings and the characters were neither quite believable, nor obvious, cartoonish caricatures, either of which would have been more successful as a graphical approach. It felt to me that, other than the special effects, the power of the next-gen console just wasn't being leveraged.

Conclusion
GTA4 is a solid free-roaming game from the masters of the genre with an engaging storyline and great gameplay. As a sort of 'reboot' of the franchise it strips things back to basics, tearing away a lot of the complexity and extra options that had built up in the PS2 series. On the one hand this gives you a cleaner and more focussed play experience, but on the other hand it feels like the console power isn't being used to its full potential and you're being kept from the fuller experience available in the previous games. In many ways it feels like GTA has been surpassed, in some regards, by its imitators, if Rockstar isn't careful then Saint's Row could steal its thunder, despite being so obviously an imitator.

Score
Style: 4
Substance: 4
Overall: 4

Review: Iron Angel (Deepgate Codex Volume Two)

2008-06-26T17:01:56Z

Introduction
Iron Angel is the sequel to Scar Night, reviewed HERE. Both books take place in a peculiar fantasy world, fraught with demons and angels and strange gods and possessed of a near-industrial technological level, though, anachronistically, it is one that seems to be without guns. The first book took place within the iconic city of Deepgate, a massive city strung on chains over a pit that descended into hell itself. That book ended with the death of a god but, whoever evil and dangerous that god was its death had to have implications, and these begin to come home to roost in the sequel.

Review
Iron Angel picks up where Scar Night left off, the hapless angel Dill, descendent of warrior archons and guardians of Deepgate, is on the run after the wholesale destruction of much of Deepgate. He and Rachel, a former church assassin who never quite completed her training, have fled the city and are hiding out. Carnival, their erstwhile semi-ally and daughter of the dead god Ulcis, has gone elsewhere and doesn't appear much in the course of the book.

Iron Angel isn't really a whole book in and of itself. Where Scar Night was self contained and told a complete story Iron Angel feels like it is waiting for the next book to wrap things up. A great many things are introduced and described throughout Iron Angel but somehow it doesn't really seem to get anywhere and the story is left hanging. That isn't to say that things don't happen or that the plot doesn't go anywhere, it just doesn't achieve any sort of conclusion.

Iron Angel is almost a travelogue of fantastical places and people, from the small towns outside Deepgate to the deserts and forests of poisoned trees, we are introduced to hell proper and Ulcis' brothers whose duty it is to hold back the forces of hell, by any means necessary, blood-flooded ports and demonically reshaped people, giant, floating, rotting fortresses in the sky and a mass of new minor (and major) characters throughout the world.

This is all very cool stuff, very interesting, well described and intriguing, some of the characters such as John Anchor seem rather simplistic and two dimensional but despite their nature end up holding your interest and being more than a one-note party piece. Even so, the book can feel disjointed and there's so much that is strange and wonderful, so much that is new to the cosmology and background from the first book that you can get a sense of fatigue. Other books that are full of strangeness somehow manage to cope with presenting it without overwhelming you, Iron Angel can be too much, drowning you in ideas and oddness with little time to take a breath.

The storyline is basically a pursuit and, much like the first book Dill, the putative protagonist, spends most of his time as a punching bag, which kills any empathy or sympathy you might have for the character pretty much stone dead. It isn't until the end of the book where we see a possible chance for Dill to finally get some payback, but even that gratification is deferred to the next book in the series. The real focus of this book is Rachel, the former spine assassin and she, at least, is competent and capable of looking after herself somewhat through the book.

Conclusion
Iron Angel takes a very long time to get not very far at all. Scar Night was a passable work of the new, industrial, urban fantasy, though perhaps a little derivative, Iron Angel has more grandeur and scope and steps out of the shadow of other authors of the genre, but is a little too enthusiastic which removes any real grounding or relatability you have to the characters or the events that are going on. It is more imaginative, but less engaging. It's a hard book to judge by itself since it is so obviously leading into the following book in a way that Scar Night wasn't, so I can only really judge this as average. It's more Dead Man's Chest than Empire Strikes Back.

Score
Style: 5
Substance: 2
Overall: 3.5

Review: The Man With the Golden Torc

2008-06-25T12:44:32Z

Introduction
Simon R Green is the author of the Deathstalker books, a rollicking romp of space opera insanity that makes a good pulpy read and keeps you enjoyably engaged all the way through. This book, the first in a Shaman Bond series is set in the present day, sort of, amongst a madness of the occult and conspiracy theories and within the greatest conspiracy theory of all. This book was the launch of the new series which continues in the obvious vein with Deamons are Forever. I wonder if we'll also see Doctor Om, Chandraball and On Her Majesty's Occult Service before the series is out...

Review
This book is fun, completely over the top, but fun. It traces the fortunes of Shaman Bond, an outcast and rebel from the powerful Drood family, a generational watch-guard over humanity, protecting it from all sorts of nasty, supernatural evils. Shaman Bond, Eddie Drood, it one of the very few who have fallen out of favour with the family and he continues to work, semi-freelance, in the occult underground. As the book gets going Eddie gets dragged back into the machinations of the family, whether he wants to or not and ends up causing wholesale destruction of many cults and occult forces, as well as his own family and the conspiracy within the conspiracy.

As I said, the book is fun, but it does get over the top, completely over the top. The book seems to run away with itself, there's no sense of control or direction to the writing and it just keeps scaling up and up and up until it's so ridiculously overblown you cannot really follow the plot any longer, such as it is. There's one sequence on a long stretch of road where Eddie is trying to escape the various forces arrayed against him and this is the whole book in microcosm, the power level and silliness of the enemies getting stronger and stronger and stronger until you can no longer stomach it. Each enemy despatched almost as swiftly as they appear. That theme also reoccurs through the book with enemies and allies introduced and swept out of the way one by one almost as swiftly as they turn up.

The book concludes on a down note (frankly there was no other way to end it) and may have 'reset' the power levels for the future books, which means they might be more sane, but that acts to the detriment of this book which, as an introduction to the series explodes like a technicolour rainbow-bomb leaving little room or scope for a sequel to go anywhere or to top the outlandish events of this book.

Conclusion
It is fun, it is pulpy, but where the Deathstalker books managed to walk the line of being pulpy but not ridiculous Torc jumps over the line with both feet while dressed in a chicken costume. It doesn't just jump the shark, it jumps sea world, on a flaming motorcycle covered in cheese. It's ridiculous and leaves little room for the following books to manoeuvre, it'll be interesting to see how the author copes with creating stories in the aftermath of this one.

Score
Style: 4
Substance: 1
Overall: 2.5

Review: Blight Elves

2008-06-24T14:15:20Z

Introduction
The Blight Elves are a race of elves native to Simarra in the Blood Throne setting. These are basically dark elves dialled up to eleven with the themes becoming those of torture, despair and cruelty, equally dialled up to eleven. This is presented for True20 rules and it will be interesting to see how d20 variants like True20 and Mutants and Masterminds fair in the face of 4th Edition D&D.

Overview
This is a comprehensive guide to the Blight Elves with career path choices, powers, background, history, society, a complete and whole in depth look at the whole race allowing them to be fitted into campaigns with enough weight behind them to make sense - if the Games Master sees fit to use it all. This is all pretty much standard stuff for racial guidebooks in any game and there's nothing particularly innovative, though nothing innovative is needed.

Artwork
The artwork is of a good standard throughout, clear black and white line work that works very well with the material, though some of it borders on caricature. The big downside for me was the sidebar, this big thick piece of art blocks off both the left and right hand side of the book with a pregnant blight elf on either side standing before a twisted tree. This eats page space and is the same image throughout detracting from the overall feel of the book. The layout itself is competent and uncomplicated and easy to read.

Writing
The writing is good throughout though it does have a tendency to use extra affirmations of the dark and evil quality of the blight elves when it isn't needed and a little more subtlety would make for an easier read. The rules are presented clearly and concisely and there are no complaints there. If anything the writing is only let down by its subject matter, the blight elves, for all their darkness and evil, do come off a little campy, scenery chewing, opera-cloak wearing evil, even though they needn't be played out that way.

Rules
There are background feats, extra vices, special weapons (appropriate to the racial background), character paths and their special abilities and lores, new feats, new powers and new equipment - much of it specific to particular power blocs from amongst the blight elves. It's all decent, well written and doesn't appear to be too unbalancing and it all thematically fits the different power groups without issue.

Upsides

Well written.
Complete & comprehensive.
Well presented.

Downsides

Expensive for forty pages.
Who needs more elves? Seriously.
Campy.

Score
Style: 3
Substance: 5
Overall: 4

Review: Daughter of Nexus

2008-06-24T13:53:49Z

Introduction
Daughter of Nexus is an adventure offering for White Wolf's fantasy RPG, Exalted. This adventure is published in PDF form and is another prong in White Wolf's fairly aggressive and welcome acceptance of the PDF medium as a way to do business. This is particularly desirable for Adventures, I think, as the production costs and the sale price can be kept low though, at nearly seven dollars - for which you can get PDFs two and a half times as big and with more content - I still don't think they're getting the price point right for their electronic offerings, after all, adventures are pretty much disposable products, with little in the way of replay value and few elements that can be effectively reused.

Overview
Daughter of Nexus is a pretty straightforward adventure and, like almost all written adventures, it suffers the usual flaws. Namely it is extremely railroady, taking the players from point to point to point with little wiggle room and no real contingency plan for when players go off the rails. The handy flow charts that are included give some very limited amounts of choice and do make it easier to keep track of things but there's no denying this is an adventure and just an adventure.

The story follows a young girl named Arvia, future city-goddess of Nexus, kidnap victim and political and metaphysical tool. The circle are hired to retrieve and protect her and, in the process, end up entangled in the machinations of the city government, the Deathlords and the Fey, though considerably more time is devoted to hitting things with an assortment of objects than dealing with the social and political complications.

Artwork
The artwork is of a good standard throughout though the cover is a little lacklustre without that element of design flare that White Wolf used to be noted for, it also uses what seems, to me, to be one of the weakest pieces of art in the book for the cover. A depiction of Arvia, (or perhaps Sailor Moon) that is less good than some of the interior art. Layout is functional and effective, but again lacks that polish that White Wolf lead you to expect from them.

Writing
The writing is clear and relatively concise, perhaps too concise in some places where some extra exposition and description could compensate for the linear nature of the adventure. As a tool for running an adventure the booklet is written very well, filled with useful things like alternative rules and flow diagrams of the plot which makes it easier to run. Still, despite claiming to be about certain topics, and it arguably is about those still in some sense, it is mostly an excuse for a string of fights and these battles seem to be the main thrust of tactics of nearly all the antagonists involved.

Rules
Daughter of Nexus makes good use of the rules, presents character sheets for all the key players and includes alternatives in terms of powers and statistics if one does not have all the necessary books, which is a lovely courtesy and thought to extend to Games Masters who may not have everything. The villains of the piece, if they survive, may be reusable later on as repeat antagonists for the players but it isn't likely that many of them will survive encountering the circle.

Upsides
Very well organised.
Villains have some re-use value.
Formatted to be read from the screen.

Downsides
Very linear.
Repetitive.
Not so suitable to be printed out for use.

Score
Style: 4
Substance: 2 Overall: 3

Apres Vie Cartoon

2008-06-18T15:26:57Z

(click to expand)

So, what does this mean for Postmortem Studios?

2008-06-18T09:57:58Z

ACTUAL Line
The Actual line couldn't be done under the 4th Edition license since it depends on the redefinition of existing classes to make them fit better and depict what they profess to be better. We could create alternate core classes that better reflect what they're supposed to be but the restriction on naming terminology and the necessity to terminate the entire line presents problems. Creating a new line called REAL wouldn't fool anyone and since the license says it's Wizard's say so on what constitutes the same line or not it wouldn't matter how much effort I put into differentiating them from each other if they didn't buy it. One way out might be to provide an 'Alternative Basic Classes' book, with alternative versions of all the core classes, and perhaps a couple of extra ones. These would have to be given new names though, EG: Hospitaller, Soldier, Templar, Warden, Scoundrel, Infernalist, Captain and Mage (And Berserker and Martial Artist).

Bloodsucker: The Angst
Bloodsucker falls afoul of the 'decency' clause, since it rips the piss out of goth/emo subculture and includes themes of sex and drugs. So this will have to continue to be published under the OGL.

Feast of Crows
Publishing a 4th Edition version of this would mean ceasing the sale of the OGL version. This is one of my strongest OGL/3rd Edition products so it is the best candidate for a revision to 4th Edition. To do so I'd fold it all together, Army Books and Main Books but I really dislike the lack of ability to continue to support the old edition. Nonetheless I think this will likely be my first/main foray into 4th Edition territory in order to test the waters.

Cloak of Steel
Thanks to the publication of the French version, Mantel D'Acer, I am no longer free to convert this to 4th Edition, though 4th Edition's mechanics may have been a better fit for the frenetic, anime style thematics of Cloak of Steel. I think the second edition is more likely to be developed either for Xpress (my house system) or for Mongoose RuneQuest, or both. There WILL be a new edition late 2008-2009.

Live System
Doing a 'fix' on the 4th Edition system as a whole simply isn't possible under the new license, so converting it to a classless, levelless version simply can't be done.

New Products
The main things that can be done with 4th Edition are setting books and adventure books.

I am hesitant to release setting books because the license restricts me from also/later publishing under the OGL. While this only applies to the Wizards OGL and wouldn't apply to, for example, the RuneQuest _logo_ license, the RuneQuest logo license is too restrictive to release a full and complete game and the open version used the Wizards OGL - which is what the GSL supercedes.

In my experience, adventures never sell that well and I don't like writing particularly structured adventures. I can do it, and I believe I can do it well - as people will hopefully find out when Cross City Race finally graces Dungeon Magazine - but they're not, normally, a fantastic amount of fun to write or to play, since they're hedged in and too structured.

One way might be to compound the two in a gazeteer type structure. A line of adventures taking characters from beginners to near-godhood travelling around a world describing it and expanding on it as one goes, with side quests and sub missions all along the way.

Class expansions are possible, so a series of toolkit books for the various classes might be a possibility, the threat is though that Wizards will release something similar/identical and demand that you stop publishing it, if, for example one did something on colour wizards replicating the various schools in new power selection tables that might bone you further down the line.

Lots to think about.

GSL Analysis

2008-06-18T09:16:24Z

What I must do:
Turn in a Statement of Acceptance.
Keep up to date about the state of the license.
Keep SRD material inviolate.
Keep up to date about the state of the SRD.
Have the 4th Edition compatible logo present on the back page and with the legal text on the lower third of the page. For electronic products on the last page.
Include the legal text within the first three pages.
Include the short form legal text on any advertisement.
If I convert products from OGL to 4th Edition I have to stop publishing the (Wizards) OGL version altogether along with its entire line.
Keep it clean and nice.
Keep to the law.
Provide wizards with copies, should they ask.

What I can do:
Start publishing from October 1st 2008 - It doesn't establish which timezone this means.
Use the 4th Ed compatibility logo in advertising.
Market products before October 1st.
I can convert products from OGL to 4th Edition.
Can reference the Corebooks, but not by page.
Can use the D&D map symbols.
Can create new rules and extensions to existing rules.

What I can't do:
Publish before October 1st 2008.
Ignore the Statement of Acceptance (which wasn't needed for OGL products but was, sort of, for d20 products before).
Publish under older versions of the license.
Change any of the references/definitions/reprints in the SRD.
Change the size of the compatibility logo.
Use any trademarked stuff.
Put material on a website, even a password locked, pay-up website.
Incorporate miniatures.
Describe character creation.
Describe applying experience.
Use the term 'core' in application to a book.
Refer to the visual look of the corebooks.
Reprint non SRD material.
Republish in other products, if they're not licensed themselves.
Republish the SRD as a stand-alone as a whole.
Republish the definition of the SRD references.
Use Wizards images or derivatives thereof.
I can't convert 4th Edition material to OGL or publish both at the same time.
Nothing violent, gory or sexy, or illegal, or that promotes or disparages a minority or a political situation.
Can't publish the blank stat block from the SRD.
Can't republish stat blocks from the core books.

4th Edition GSL
Preamble:
You accept this license for your 4th Edition products by turning in the Statement of Acceptance. Once you do that it kicks in after a fortnight even if you haven't heard back from Wizards.

Section One:
To reiterate your ability to produce products kicks in two weeks after Wizards recieves the Statement of Acceptance. If things change that are on the Statement of Acceptance you have to let Wizards know within two weeks of that change. If you don't let Wizards know about changes they can terminate the license. Despite all of this you can't publish ANYTHING until October 1st 2008.

Section Two:
Wizards can change the license at any time and it's up to you to find out about it and to comply. They may release general notices about changes but you won't get any specific warning.

Section Three:
The license only applies to Hardcover/Softcover print books and single e-book format (PDF) books and anything that isn't specifically excluded.

Section Four:
So long as you play by the rules of this contract you can print and sell things allowed by this contract.
Subsection One:
You can reprint terms, tables and templates from the SRD. You can't change any of these references though, though you can add to them. Wizards can change the SRD at any time and you have to go along with it.
Subsection Two:
There's a logo you can use. This logo has to be on the lower left of the back of the product and in the lower left third of the page where you print the licensing information. Electronic products should instead have it on the last page. You can use it in adverts etc, but it still needs to be lower left.

Section Five:
Requirements and limitations.
Subsection One:
You can't use Wizard's trademarked stuff, outside of what's allowed by the license.
Subsection Two:
Within the first three pages you must include the legal text.
Subsection Three:
Advertising must include this shorter legal text.
Subsection Four:
You can't publish anything before October 1st, though you can market products before October 1st.
Subsection Five:
This license is NOT extended to: (a) include web sites, interactive products, miniatures, or character creators. It does not allow for: (b) describe a process for creating a character or applying the effects of experience to a character. It may not: (c) use the terms “Core Rules” or “Core Rulebook” or variations thereof on its cover or title, in self-reference or in advertising or marketing thereof. It cannot: (d) refer to any artwork, imagery or other depiction contained in a Core Rulebook. It must not: (e) reprint any material contained in a Core Rulebook except as explicitly provided in the SRD. And it cannot later be: (f) be incorporated into another product that is itself not a Licensed Product (such as, by way of example only, a magazine or book compilation).
Subsection Six:
You can't republish the SRD as a whole, or the definitions of SRD references.
Subsection Seven:
All artwork remains property of Wizards and can't be republished. Derivatives are included.

Section Six:
Interaction with the OGL
Subsection One:
You can convert your old OGL products to 4th Edition products. You can't convert 4th Edition products to OGL products. If you convert an OGL product to 4th Edition you must stop publishing it altogether and remove it from sale and the same for every other product in that line (as defined by Wizards). Even if you terminate your license agreement this remains in force.
Subsection Two:
You can't turn 4th Edition material into OGL material.
Subsection Three:
Wizards can terminate your license as regards converted material at any point after the new material is published.

Section Seven:
Quality & Standards
Products have to conform to 'Community standards' of decency and appropriateness, as determined by Wizards. No graphic violence or gore. No sexual situations, sexual abuse, porn, 'gratuitous' nudity, sexual activity. No nasty portrayal of minorities, nor any promotion thereof. Nothing unlawful.

Section Eight:
Outside of the remit of the license, you're responsible for any publications meeting any other laws.

Section Nine:
Wizards can request review copies of material and these must be provided.

Section Ten:
Property Rights.
Subsection One:
You recognise all Wizard's rights and IP and stake no claim to any of them.
Subsection Two:
Third party IP remains the property of that third party.
Subsection Three:
You'll take action as directed to help protect Wizards IP.
Subsection Four:
You agree to take responsibility - and costs - of any damage incurred to Wizards by your actions/products.

Section Eleven:
Termination.
Subsection One:
Wizards will tell you in writing if you're terminated. The GSL as a whole can be terminated by a posting to the website.
Subsection Two:
Sections 6 and 10-21 all survive the termination of the license and you must remain compliant with them.
Subsection Three:
On termination publication must cease of ALL licensed products and may no longer use the compatibility logo anywhere. Wizards may make special provisions.
Subsection Four:
If you don't comply with the license Wizards can take you to court and you agree that you'll pay for everything involved.

Section Twelve:
Representations. The licensee agrees that:
    1. They're the sole author of the licensed material, if there's any third parties they've secured all the necessary rights etc.
    2. They have the necessary authority to enter into this agreement.
    3. There's no conflict with prior agreements.
    4. No licensed product infringes on other laws.
    5. No libellous or invaisive content.
    6. That they'll comply with any government stipulations in the execution of the license.

Section Thirteen:
Wizards makes no guarantees and isn't beholden to you for any problems you might have while using the license.

Section Fourteen:
If Wizards comes under fire over a product you take the rap and provide any and all assistance.

Section Fifteen:
Wizards and the Licensee are separate entities.

Section Sixteen:
You can't assign this license, or any part thereof.

Section Seventeen:
Just because Wizards doesn't appear to enforce some part of the license doesn't mean it can't or won't in the future.

Section Eighteen:
Wizards can publish material that covers the same ground or competes with licensed materials.

Section Nineteen:
US and Washington State law are applicable to this license. Right to jury trial is waived. Any actions against Wizards or the license must be brought to this venue.

Section Twenty:
If any part of the license is rendered invalid by a court the remainder remains in force.

Section Twenty-One:
This license represents the whole of the agreement between the parties, it supercedes any previous agreements and can only be altered by Wizards.

4th Ed GSL Released

2008-06-18T07:24:46Z

In case it passed anyone by, HERE it is.
I shall be reading, digesting and trying to translate into real English and work out what it means today, which means I won't be doing much else. I'll post an update when I've figured out what it means for Postmortem Studios lines and products.

One other thing from the4th Ed Launch

2008-06-08T00:17:12Z

Whoever it was doing the speechifying at the beginning said something about how Gygax would appreciate it that his death brought a lot of positive light on D&D in the media, stopping just short of saying it was great for business.

Yeah, I wasn't too impressed by that and the sharp intake of breath from the other industry vets around me seemed to indicate they weren't too happy with that either, but it may be a cultural thing.

D&D 4E Launch/Day at the London Dungeon.

2008-06-06T23:13:07Z

That was a bit of a wash really.

They were late opening the doors and getting people in (and it was drizzling).
There wasn't enough food for the horde of portly geeks in attendance.
The London Dungeon isn't that great a venue for playing games, too dark, too noisy - and labyrinthine for getting in and out.
The goodies were a bit scant and while the T-shirts were good quality the transfers aren't and they're brown. Yes, brown.

As to 4E itself, I got to see a couple of encounters played out, though not a skill encounter. Of course, nobody really knew the rules, the DM hadn't read the adventure and the players were all oldies and gaming industry types who were mostly taking the piss, which didn't help...

It was slow, even accounting for everyone's unfamiliarity with the rules, the combat encounters seemed to take a long time. I think, when I run and write for it, I'll be making heavy use of minions (mooks, one-hit kills) and save the full-on characters for leaders and bosses.
Some of the rules aren't entirely clear and interactions between abilities ramp up the complication factor quite drastically.
Even with all that the simplifications seem, to me, to have turned it into a good entry game.
Miniatures are really, really, really important now.

The concentration on miniatures worries me a great deal for 4th Edition modern, there aren't great sources of cheap modern miniatures and I wonder if Wizards are going to support their game with a new line of modern figs. I just worry they wouldn't be popular enough to warrant the investment which, in a minis-lead game will partially cripple modern play. Of course, a 4th Ed modern set of minis would also have some cross appeal to Shadowrun players I think, so who knows, maybe that would work. A bugbear pimp miniature would be a nice thing to own :)

Open Interview

2008-06-05T21:55:49Z

After I finish a project I generally take a day or two off to unwind. I'm off to the 4th Edition launch party in London tomorrow so need to rest up anyway (travel can be hectic) so for something to fill the day in a relaxing way, here's an open opportunity to ask me some questions about my games, about design or anything else Postmortem related you'd like to ask about.

Fire away!

Invaderz Print on Demand

2008-06-05T15:15:18Z

Is now available HERE.

Downloads from the other main PDF download sites will begin to become available from tonight/tomorrow.

Invaderz Released!

2008-06-05T13:45:31Z

Greetings Jerkian warrior elite! Know this, that your very existence is down to the orders of our Portly Potentate and that without him, you would not exist. Your very conception, in the clone tanks of Clonius, is ordained by his Obese Omnipotence and from very that moment you owe him your life, your servitude and your loyalty.

To be a soldier in the glorious army of the Jerkian Empire is perhaps the best fate that can befall lowly matter in this universe. The Jerkian Empire is all-conquering, all powerful, has the best uniforms, the most advanced weaponry and the greatest leader the galaxy has ever known. Nothing can stand in our way and you, even as lowly as you are, can die knowing you are serving a far greater cause and a far superior people to any other in the universe!

A 'beer and crisps' game of comedic alien misadventure, Invaderz is a good fill in game when you're in the mood for a break from your regular campaigns. The rules and style should be familiar to those who have played Urban Faerie and Invaderz follows in the spirit of that game.

Get Invaderz HERE

If you like Invaderz you may also enjoy Urban Faerie, the madcap game of modern Faeries. You can get Urban Faerie HERE

You may also like our adult comedy card games.

HENTACLE

FINAL STRAW

Invaderz will be available from the other usual download sites and in Print on Demand soon.

Invaderz!

2008-06-03T14:04:46Z

All being well Invaderz should be released for sale on PDF and POD tomorrow or Thursday.

Review: D&D 4th Edition

2008-05-29T15:11:45Z

Introduction
Unlike most RPG gamers in existence I didn't come to roleplaying via D&D. My path to gaming ran something like:

Avid Reader > The Hobbit > Fighting Fantasy > The Lord of the Rings > MERP.

Very much in at the deep end and I didn't run into D&D at all as a player or a GM until I was 13, four or five years into my gaming career. When I did play it the relative lack of sophistication and over simplistic constriction on what I could do as a character made me pronounce it 'stupid', the final straw being when I managed to sneak up on a sleeping dragon and the rules couldn't cope with me STABBING IT IN THE FUCKING EYE before it could wake up.

Aside from a bit of dabbling in 2nd Edition (Dark Sun, great setting, still didn't like the rules) and in computer game versions of D&D (Torment and Balder's Gate) that was pretty much my limit so far as it came to D&D, fantasy appealed (Dragon Warriors, WFRP and others) but D&D didn't because I didn't really buy into its sacred cows so much.

3rd Edition though, and the OGL that went with it, dragged me back into D&D. Now I could engage with it on a design level and the open nature meant not only could I 'fix' it, but I could trade those fixes and ideas with others and get remuneration for it. Which was great! d20 had pretences at being a generic system, but it really wasn't, it got shoehorned into every possible setting and genre under the sun, even when it didn't fit and eventually the d20 bubble burst. and things settled down again.

What we were left with, though, was a rambling and over-bloated beast of a game with masses of WOTC and third party supplements sprawling in all directions, a behemoth filled with munchkinism and twinkish combination exploits so foul that even RIFTS players would turn their nose up at them.

Now we're on to 4th Edition and I've been deliberately staying out of the gossip around it as best I can to come at the books fresh. I won my copies from Dungeon Magazine for the 'best adventure I never wrote' which should be published sometime before June 6th, but since I had books coming for free I didn't see any harm in getting a sneak peak at what would be coming in the post. As such some of these comments are provisional and may be revised when I get to see actual, physical copies.

Going into this I'm coming from two directions, as both a consumer and a producer. As a consumer does 4th Edition deliver the type of game that I want to play? Does it compel and interest me? As a producer I'm looking at it and trying to anticipate where the market might go, what products might emerge, how the system might be customised and altered (if at all) and where problems might arise.

Overview
Reading through the books 4th Edition feels, to me, very much like an introductory game in a way that 3rd Edition wasn't. The look, the feel, the language all seem, to me, to be angled towards bringing in new players. This is a really good thing, obviously, but I think that the targetting of the MMO market - which seems to be the aim - is a miscalculation. TTRPGs can't beat MMOs at their own game, D&D aping MMORPGs is a bit like having your dad go through a midlife crisis, dying his hair, driving a porsche and trying to pass himself off as 'Emo'. It's a little embarrassing and not what he's really good at. I think it may have been more productive to go after the areas where TTRPGs still excel over CRPGs and MMORPGs but hey, nobody listens to me.

I'll wait to pass judgement on the D&D Insider computer platform but my gut instinct is that this is a miscalculation as well, charging the same amount as a typical MMO subscription for what amounts to a static graphical chess set that doesn't even take care of some of the rolls etc for you and a few other bits and pieces that they are yet to prove they can deliver seems ludicrous to me, if it's a choice between their WoW subscription and their D&D Insider subscription people aren't going to go for D&DI in my opinion. If it were five or perhaps ten dollars a month I can see people subbing to it on the side but this, to me, seems overpriced.

Artwork
The three books seem to be going against the grain in terms of where graphic design has been heading in RPG books since the 90s. While the level of production is professional and the artwork standard good overall there's very little 'feel' to the pages. No faux-parchment effect or little notebook conceits, very little ornamentation. It is very clean, very clear, quite minimalistic. On the one hand this makes the books much easier on the eye and a lot more readable, on the other hand it makes them feel rather clinical, perhaps not coincidentally like a computer game manual.

The artwork is fairly good throughout, though there are some disappointing pieces that have a washed out look and what appears to be CGI derived imagery that doesn't really fit. While the overall art is good it lacks cohesion. Love it or loathe it 3rd Edition had a consistent look to it 'dungeonpunk' while 4th Edition is a bit all over the place. The strongest theme to come through is one, again, of computer-gamey feel, a sort of pseudo-anime, pseudo-Warhammer/WoW effort of massive shoulder pads and even larger weapons. Otherwise the rest of the art seems a bit all over the place, technically good but a little schizophrenic.

Writing
The writing is fairly clear throughout but a problem I noticed was that things were introduced before they were defined so, for example, if you were reading off the power descriptions they might have a formula. 2 x [Q] + Snarf, but you don't find out what the Q stands for or what a Snarf is until page two-hundred and twelve. On a first read through this lead to a sense of bewilderment and frustration, unable to understand quite what I was reading - and this for someone who has several systems all but memorised.

Another flaw I felt existed in the writing was that there was no attempt, not even a weak one really, to reconcile the rules with reality, or even game reality. Things work as they do because the rules say that they do and that's pretty much it. As someone who values immersion while roleplaying I can't help but feel that this will detract from that experience, and that's not the only place it occurs. Throughout the game characters aren't really treated as characters so much as playing pieces, arrays of powers and abilities rather than personalities. The roles are described, again, in MMO terms so you end up not so much creating the persona of Corvin Ravenfeather the half-elf rogue but rather your 'Assasination/Damage specced Rogue'. While there are paragraphs here and there that encourage roleplaying the overall feel is more like a character card for playing Descent than an actual character role to get into.

The DMs guide is a triumph though, at least in writing. There's great advice in there on player types and typical troubleshooting and it's helpful without being patronising, something that occasionally shines through in the Player's Guide. I particularly liked the boxed out hints and tips, which are very human comments from the developers that give you more of an insight and connection to the game than much else that's present.

There's no real setting to speak of, as such and while much is familiar much is also different, different gods for example and different races, but this comes more under discussion of the rules.

Rules
Over all I think the rules are an improvement and a clarification from third edition and they have been streamlined and simplified, at the basic level, by a great deal. I can see this speeding up play and making things much easier for the GM in particular - prepping monsters and encounters is now much faster, but all of this simplicity comes at a cost of depth. Where D&D was more like a bag of lego bricks before - a little crude but you could put it together any way you liked, now it's more like a plastic model. The pieces go together certain ways and you're told how it should be. Everything is channelled, quantified, laid out as to how it 'should' be and while you can fiddle around a bit you're really only making cosmetic changes.

There is a massively heavy emphasis on miniatures and battlemats, though different parts of the book swing between saying their optional and implying that they're essential. While one could easily enough convert the distances and areas back to feet rather than squares it is a pain in the arse to do so and a pain that they're so heavily pushing the minis. I hate using minis and battlemats unless I'm war or skirmish gaming, I feel it detracts massively from the RP but I can see where the business decision comes in here, clearly the figures make the big bucks so anything that encourages their use has to be 'good'. I disagree but then money talks in these instances.

Another thing that has effectively been lost is the capability to multiclass freely and easily. Now you spend feats to gain qualities from other classes but you are still pretty much stuck in your role and using these multiclass feats is 'weak sauce' compared to previous methods of doing so. While you can customise within your role and build to a couple of different specifications this felt stifling to my creativity when I was trying to create a character I really liked, especially at first level. Multiclassing was always an ad hoc solution to the problem of character customisation but it was still better than the solution being presented so on that score I'm not a happy bunny.

The role enforcement problem is made worse by the new skill system. You no longer have varying skill levels, you either have a skill or you don't and that only gives you a +5 bonus within the area of that skill, this means a great deal more emphasis is weighed upon Ability scores and, even more importantly, level. Level rules everything now, giving bonuses across the board and the rewards for levelling are much greater than in 3rd Edition as well, what feels like excessive Ability score increases and a wealth of new powers.

I found the choices for races in the new book peculiar, to excise character types people like and are used to for the Dragonkin, Eladrin (Elves 2.0) and tieflings (but no Aasimar) seems a peculiar choice to me. The exotic and interesting is no longer exotic and interesting if it's the default. It would have made more sense, to me, to retain the Half Orc, Gnome and to have the Warforged in there and to put these new ones in a follow up Player's Guide - but then maybe that's the point to put familiar classes and races in additional player's guides to help them sell, if so that's a touch cynical but perhaps good business sense.

In classes we lose the Sorcerer - the change in magic rules means the spontaneous caster is no longer needed as much (though a magic user with more lower power At Will/Encounter spells would simulate it quite well) but we gain the Warlord - a leader type - and the Warlock, a pact-based magic user. Again these feel like odd choices to me, better suited to expansion books than to the core book, I assume the Warlock is there to appeal to the MMO crowd but the Warlord I can't particularly place, other than they perhaps wanted another 'buffing' class.

Feats are reduced in importance compared to the class specific powers and capabilities and many are, additionally, streamed by class themselves. In some ways this helps remove a problem of 'feat bloat' but on the other hand we now have many, many, many more categories which can bloat independently, all the different tiers of abilities and abilities relating to the Paragon and Epic levels of play (11+ and 21+).

Another metagame intrusion is the idea of 'respeccing' (sorry, retraining) allowing you to replace older, weaker powers with more powerful versions as you advance, effectively rewriting your character's history and allowing you - if you're careful - to maximise your potential every level by playing the system, playing the game rather than playing your character.

One ray of sunshine amongst all the metagaming and immersion breaking is the expanded concept of skill based encounters. These are now more of a creative chess game somewhat akin to the process of making an extended challenge in HeroQuest. Characters get to RP creatively and use their skills creatively to solve extended problems such as, say, tracking enemies through a forest or seducing a noble's daughter. I like the idea as presented and see lots of RP opportunities from it but it also made me feel that in inexperienced groups the skill rolling would replace the RP and the natural back and forth of play.

Long term I can see problems with the approach that WOTC have taken in 4th Edition. While the game has been stripped back and rebooted and while the 3rd party market has calmed down there are now many more things that could suffer game bloat, rather than classes, prestige classes and feats we now have classes, paragon classes, epic destinies, at will powers, encounter powers, daily powers and multi-level equipment which means 4th Edition could end up sprawling out of control twice as fast as third edition did. The other problem is that even though the system is streamlined and simplified there are not twice as many complications, modifiers, exceptions and so forth which in their own way will slow everything right back down again.

Upsides

Clean, crisp, readable.
Honest effort to reach new gamers.
Forward thinking approach to support.

Downsides

Misguided attempt to engage MMO players.
Returns to the relative constriction of Basic/2nd Edition
Miniatures emphasis overwhelming.

Score
Style: 4 (Good but falls short of what's expected of the industry leader)
Substance: 3 (All rules and no inspiration makes Jack a dull boy)
Overall: 3.5

Final Verdict
My score would suggest that I rate 4th Edition as slightly higher than average. This may not be revealing my views sufficiently. The Substance score is low (average) because these corebooks do not contain anything in the way of setting information or content past some discussion of dungeons and ruins. These three books represent a game engine and advice and little more. I am almost certain that the new limited three book setting productions will be excellent and that they will provide the substance that the corebooks lack.

In my opinion 4th Edition does deal with many of the flaws from third edition, but it also embraces others - such as metagaming and optimisation. This can be dealt with by a good GM but I have to assess the books from a position of relative neutrality, as such I can't assume every group has a brilliant GM or non-abusive players.

While I have deep reservations about D&D Insider I hope it succeeds and while I have even deeper reservations about trying to beat the MMOs at their own game I do wish D&D 4th Edition and Wizards the very best of luck with it, especially in roping in new gamers. I hope to be writing for 4th Edition - it does make that job a lot easier - and Postmortem Studios will definitely be supporting it.

Review: The Old Man of Damascus (Cthulu Live)

2008-05-26T12:31:10Z

Introduction
The Old Man of Damascus is a 'script' for Cthulu live, a game which I have - unfortunately - never managed to get in on a game of, though I have liked less physical LARPing and I love the Cthulu Mythos. Therefore I can't particularly comment on the efficacy or appropriateness of the rules - not that many are presented in this product - and can only comment on it as a scenario, something I do have some knowledge of having been involved in many 'wine and cheese' LARP events over a span of nearly ten years.

The Old Man of Damascus is an unholy alliance of Cthulu Mythos, Assassin's Creed and The Da Vinci Code all rolled into one and put into a scenario in the period when Saladin was advancing into Christian territory and driving them from the holy land, before King Richard's crusade. It is a period rich in secrets and religious fervour and a period also valued by conspiracy theorists due to the presence of Templars, the Vatican and the Assassins, all rich fodder for all kinds of conspiracy twaddle that also happens to make good games. I can't give away a great deal without spoiling the plot for people who might play or organise such a game, but I'll do my best.

Overview
The setting for this 'script' is negotiation over the surrender of a fortress manned and protected by a contingent of Templars. Also present are merchants from a secret society with a very deadly secret, servants, priests and monks and the forces of the Muslim leader who is demanding surrender. On the surface this is a parley to determine the exact nature of this surrender and how it is to be conducted but under the surface each faction has their own secret agenda and these intermingle between the various forces at work. It's a nice, tangled knot of interwoven motivations and goals that should be ideal for a one-off convention-type scenario.

Artwork
The book is not heavily illustrated or particularly interestingly laid out, there are a few medieval style woodcut images throughout the book as well as some photographs of players apparently playing through the scenario. I am not a fan of photographs in books, even licensed games from TV series or films tend to look poorer for having photos rather than illustrations and LARPers do not have the advantage of CGI, airbrushing or million dollar budgets to make their photos look good. I love gamers and LARPers I really do, but your average couch-jockey wearing a sheet does not inspire the reader and doesn't evoke the mood particularly well. If you're going to put photos of people in costume into a book it behoves you to make a really good effort on that costume and location in order to inspire the readers as to what they might be able to accomplish with a bit of effort. This was just lacking in this 'script'.

Writing
The writing is matter-of-fact and gets the points across, most of book is devoted to the character profiles and statistics of the assorted factions that are present. This is good as far as it goes and people have plenty of background and characterisation to get their teeth into, all very well researched from what I was able to tell, but it falls down as a LARP scenario by not particularly giving anyone any reason to share their secrets or any mechanism by which these secrets might be found out. There is a great deal of rich conflict and intrigue beneath the surface but I couldn't find much of anything that might expose some of these secrets midway through the game and get the ball rolling towards a conclusion. It's a fairly open 'script' which is good, but in such scenarios you still need something to prod the drama into happening and this was absent. While several endings were defined they were unsatisfying, particularly the 'deus ex machina' ending which, in the hands of a less able player, could result in a game-breakingly and mood-destroyingly bad ending.

Upsides

Well researched.
Comprehensive character profiles.
Self-contained single scenario.

Downsides

No engine to propel the drama.
Many typos and mistakes.
Bad presentation.

Score
Style: 2
Substance: 4
Overall: 3

Controversy and Comparison

2008-05-13T07:00:35Z

Postmortem Studios is no stranger to controversy, usually of an ill-thought-out and badly conceived form that has little relation to reality. Hentacle has been accused, in the most extreme, of being 'fetishized child rape' which struck me as rather excessive and missing the subtext of the game somewhat. Final Straw equally had its point slip past many observers, sight unseen, like a day-glo ninja in a hospice for the blind. The latest haranguing I've gotten, however, has been over - of all things - my piracy plea that appears in all my text products:

The odds are fairly high that some of you are reading this on a downloaded PDF copy taken from a file sharing network. I don’t necessarily have a problem with that myself since evidence pertaining to my company tends to show that this acts more like free advertising than a cut into my funds.

However…

The role-playing game industry is not huge, not rich – with only a couple of exceptions – and can ill afford your piracy, unlike many software companies. I am a one man show, not a large company by any stretch of the imagination and I am attempting to build a business from the ground up. I need every penny.

If you have downloaded this book illegally, and you like it, please consider purchasing some of my other products.

That’s all I ask.

Not so bad really, is it? Is that an unfair comparison to make with the software industry? I don't think so, an industry that outstrips Hollywood in terms of money is certainly in a better position than the pen and paper RPG industry to absorb the losses incurred by piracy, particularly when it has itself to blame for much of it through overpricing, something that people in the software industry themselves say.

Many pirates justify what they do from the fact that music, films and software are horrendously overpriced, this is particularly true in Britain. People who would happily rip off Sony, Warner Brothers or EA will not do the same for Indie labels, Indie studios or Indie game developers. The point of the appeal I make is to prick the conscience of those sorts of people and to point out that I am one individual person, working out of a room in their house and not some multinational company raking in billions of dollars. When even D&D makes only a fraction of what even a medium sized software house does I don't think anyone has any room to complain when I state the obvious about the software industry which is, relatively speaking, awash with capital.

Coming Soon! INVADERZ!

2008-05-12T07:59:08Z

To be a soldier in the glorious army of the Jerkian Empire is perhaps the best fate that can befall lowly matter in this universe. The Jerkian Empire is all-conquering, all powerful, has the best uniforms, the most advanced weaponry and the greatest leader the galaxy has ever known. Nothing can stand in our way and you, even as lowly as you are, can die knowing you are serving a far greater cause and a far superior people to any other in the universe!

RPGs as Architecture

2008-05-11T09:30:51Z

There's an ongoing, and somewhat histrionic, argument going on, constantly, between two approaches to RPG gaming. On the one hand you have those who might be called 'traditional' gamers (or less charitably 'Fatbeards') who tend, it seems to view RPG games as purely games and seem to take offence at the idea that they could be art and on the other side you have the avant garde and Indie gamers (or less charitably the 'pretentious') who do view RPG creation and play as - potentially - art.

To me, RPG creation seems to be one of those things were a variety of skills and outlooks are required. RPG play can be an artistic accomplishment and experience in play, just as much as it can be a straightforward play experience and not be art. In creating an RPG you are required to draw on creative, non-engineering skills (layout, writing, artistic direction, theme, mood) as well as more constructive skills (creating a system that works mechanically as well as aesthetically) and it occurred to me that RPGs are a good comparison with architecture.

Is architecture art? People seem to argue over that question just as much. On the one hand it is a creative skill, but you are often hemmed in by the desires of your clients, the possibilities for the materials and while you might stamp a personal touch onto a building, once it's complete you have no real say over what happens within it and people may use it for all sorts of things you hadn't originally envisioned. You can end up with something beautiful and inspiring - as a building - but it may be filled with tacky shops and used as in impromptu skate park.

To me, that's very much like crafting an RPG. You're not creating something whole, you're creating a space in which people are going to play. You might define some parts of the world, you might design mechanics with a specific theme and mood in time, you might be careful in selecting art for the work but in the end it has to fend for itself and people will use it as they wish to.

I think comparisons with novels or plays aren't really valid, but I do think RPGs can be art in both creation and in play, not high art perhaps but involving, inspiring and joyful. Creating a game is both art and engineering, it requires both sets of skills to create a game that is effective as a complete whole and there must be a sweet spot somewhere between the engineered boardgame nature of more old fashioned design and the straitjacketed artistic vision approach of the new wave.