My favourite things of 2017

Let's face it, 2017 has not been a great year. Our friends to the south seem to be going through a bit of a rough patch right now and nerves are frayed everywhere. Still, it's not all bad and in this little corner of the internet, we like to concentrate on the positives. In that spirit, I am going to highlight my favourite movie, music and game releases of the year.

Movies:
I saw quite a few movies this year. Some were very good (Wonder Woman, Thor: Ragnarok, Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol.2, Dunkirk, Blade Runner 2049). Some were enjoyable, but flawed (Justice League, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Kong: Skull Island). Some were immediately forgettable (The Dark Tower). But for me, the best movie of the year was...(drumroll please)...Logan. Man, did this movie speak to me. Having recently entered my second half century, I could feel every ache and pain Logan endured in his daily life. I don't have an adamantium claw that keeps getting stuck, but my knees are shot and I have an old shoulder injury that hasn't stopped hurting in five years. The struggle of dealing with an increasingly demented Charles Xavier and an uncommunicative "daughter" resonated with own life navigating fatherhood and aging parents. Logan was gut-wrenching, but I was feeling every minute of it. A superhero movie for Generation X.

Music:

It wasn't a great year in music, although seeing Sabaton in concert was certainly the highlight for me. As far as new releases go, I am going to divide up my picks into three categories, both because they cover the three kinds of music I love most; rock, metal and country, but also because the three best albums of the year fit this categorization. In the rock category, you have to look at newcomers, Greta Van Fleet. This foursome made up of the brothers Kiszka (Josh, Sam and Jake) and drummer Danny Wagner are the reincarnation of Led Zeppelin. I'm not kidding, these guys really sound like Zeppelin. Listen to Highway Tune or Safari Song from their 2017 double EP From the Fires and you'll swear you were listening to some unreleased Led Zeppelin B-side from the 70s.

In the metal category, wow, 2016 was awesome, huh? Metallica came back with a vengeance. And speaking of vengeance, Avenged Sevenfold had a pretty awesome album drop too.  Wait...oh right, this is 2017. Hmmm, Mastodon had a new album out that some people liked I guess. Kind of slim pickings this year. For me, I will go back to that Sabaton tour and a little known band from Finland called Battle Beast that opened along with Leaves' Eyes and damn near upstaged the headliners. My metal album of the year is Bringer of Pain by Battle Beast.

As for country, it was Chris Stapleton all the way. Following up his 2015 chart-topping debut Traveller, Stapleton released two albums in 2017; From A Room: Volume 1 and From A Room: Volume 2. It is from this second 2017 release that I select my 2017 Song of the Year: Scarecrow in the Garden, a haunting ballad sung by a farmer in West Virginia lamenting the state of the land today compared to when his father and grandfather worked it, and his fear that the biblical End Times may be coming soon.

Games:

We've all been waiting for this one and really, is there any doubt? The game release of 2017 is, of course, the Starfinder Core Rulebook. Not only is this the biggest new release by Paizo since the original publication of Pathfinder, but it has also been a source of much speculation regarding a future new edition of the game. Could the game mechanics of Starfinder serve as a template for some future Pathfinder 2.0? Now that would be cool!

May we all have a safe and prosperous 2018.

-Rognar-

New Life for West End Games

Back in the late '80s and early '90s, West End Games (WEG) was a major player in the tabletop rpg industry. Best known for the classic Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game, WEG also held licenses at various times for Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, Xena: Warrior Princess and Men in Black. It also developed classic games such as Paranoia and TORG. Unfortunately, even the Star Wars license couldn't sustain the company, which declared bankruptcy in 1998. In 2003, WEG, now stripped of all its licenses, was purchased by Eric Gibson, who hoped to develop its game mechanic, which became known as the d6 System. Gibson's company published the core rules as three books, d6 Space, d6 Fantasy and d6 Adventure as well as announcing the release of Bill Coffin's Septimus campaign world. However, it could not repeat WEG's past success. In 2008, Gibson dissolved the company, released the d6 system and Septimus as OGL and sold off its remaining IPs. Gibson retained nothing except rights to the name. Apparently, the name still has some value, however, because Stewart Wieck, one of the original designers of Vampire: The Masquerade and other White Wolf titles has just announced that he has acquired the rights to WEG. The first plan for WEG is to make all the d6 products and Septimus, which are currently available for free download, available for print-on-demand. Wieck has also set up a Kickstarter to bring back Web and Starship, an '80s era boardgame published by WEG.

I once had a great deal of fondness for WEG and still have a sizeable collection of original SW:TRG books as well as all the free d6 content. Although I've long since moved on to other games, that nostalgia will probably entice me to keep an eye on new WEG developments.

-Rognar-

Thoughts on the Arcanist class

Is the Arcanist the best arcane spellcasting class in Pathfinder? For this comparison, I will be leaving aside the Magus and the Bloodrager, which are really martial classes that use arcane spells to improve their combat abilities. The true arcane spellcasting classes, in my opinion, are the Wizard, the Sorcerer, the Bard and the Arcanist.

Bard:
Advantages - medium BAB advancement, decent weapon and armour proficiencies, lots of skill points, healing magic, two good saves, best "face" in the game
Disadvantages - medium spell advancement, heavily-weighted toward mind-affecting magic, no high-level spells

Synopsis - Limited combat ability, decent, but not great spellcasting, some healing, vulnerable to creatures with resistance to mind-affecting magic
Nemeses - undead, constructs, high SR creatures

Sorcerer:
Advantages - good spell advancement, high-level spells, good balance of spells, one major stat
Disadvantages - low skill points, poor weapon and armour proficiencies, underwhelming bloodline abilities, limited metamagics

Synopsis - poor combat abilities, yet many bloodlines encourage melee, good spellcasting
Nemeses - constructs, high SR creatures

Wizard:
Advantages - best spell advancement, high-level spells, good balance of spells, one major stat, unlimited metamagics, low skill points balanced by high INT
Disadvantages - poor weapon and armour proficiencies

Synopsis - poor combat abilities, best spellcasting
Nemeses - constructs, high SR creatures

Arcanist:
Advantages - good spell advancement, high-level spells, good balance of spells, many supernatural abilities, unlimited metamagics
Disadvantages - low skill points, poor weapon and armour proficiencies, two major stats

Synopsis - poor combat abilities, good spellcasting, supernatural abilities
Nemeses - you tell me...other arcane spellcasters, perhaps

Based on this analysis, I call it a toss-up between Wizard and Arcanist. The Bard makes a great addition to a party, especially when a lot of social interaction is involved, but you definitely don't want him to be your sole arcane spellcaster. The Sorcerer is also pretty good, but there are too many conflicting abilities. The supernatural attacks of the Arcanist are great for dealing with monsters that have high SR and really good saves, but they still require a ranged touch attack, so a decent DEX and a couple of ranged attack feats are essential. This forces the Arcanist to spread himself a bit thin compared to the Wizard. Otherwise, the Arcanist is solid, with a wide variety of abilities and no obvious weaknesses.

-Rognar-

Note: In hindsight, I realize I didn't consider the Witch in my analysis. I have never played one, so I have little experience with the class. Perhaps Obiri can enlighten us and make an argument for the Witch class.

The Strange, pt.3

Our excursion to Ardeyn went ahead without McNulty and Soderstrom. Rumours around the Estate suggested that McNulty got a sudden assignment somewhere in Siberia and that Soderstrom got a tryout with the Canucks in some NHL-based recursion.

[spoiler warning]

Our first obstacle was the entrance to the Mouth of Swords, a cave opening ringed with dozens of blades. A few nicks and cuts later we were through. Further on, we came to a central chamber with a giant copper brazier and encountered a hooded figure in tattered robes, a wrath lord calling itself the Myth Keeper. We decided to talk to the wrath lord and he offered to keep treasures safe for a fee. We had nothing to give it. We said we were there to claim the dragon eggs. However, we did not have the means to prove ownership and the Myth Keeper told us to leave. Roll for initiative!

The Myth Keeper proved to be less of an adversary than we anticipated. He had a seven-sided ring that controlled the fire in the brazier. There were seven doors around the room, each one inscribed with one of the Incarnations of the Maker; Death, Desire, Lore, Silence, War, Commerce and Law. With the ring, we could direct the fire toward one of the doors, which would then become unlocked. For no particular reason, we selected the Silence door first. It opened to a long stairway circling downward, eventually reaching a chamber with a statue of a unicorn. The statue was made of stone, while the horn was metal. We uncovered a secret door that could be opened by rotating the unicorn's horn to the left. A sign on the wall warned us against entering the Night Vault, lest the umber wolves consume our souls.

With the sound of howling in the distance and no sign of dragon eggs, we decided to try our luck somewhere else. So we chose the Death door. I mean, why not, right? We headed down a corridor, past another unicorn statue (which we chose to bypass) and came upon a chamber with four large sarcophagi and a large, smoking urn. A layer of water covered the ceiling. Not liking the look of this room one bit, we decided to try our luck elsewhere, although we all had a sneaking suspicion we would have to return eventually.

We next tried our luck at the door of Desire. A short passage led to a room with several corpses. We searched the room thoroughly, suspecting a secret door. There was a secret door and we also uncovered a small, hidden cavity in the floor containing a qephelim clay figurine. After some study, we determined it to be a talisman that allows the Myth Keeper to regenerate. Not knowing how long it would take the wrath lord to return, we decided to keep it as leverage in case we couldn't find all the eggs and needed to force the Myth Keeper to reveal them to us. Moving on throughout the secret door, we found a room with three statues. One was a muscular human male throwing a hammer, the second, a graceful qephelim dodging two pendulums and the third, a female human reading a large book. Holbein approached the second statue. It animated and reached out a hand. Upon making contact, Holbein got blasted for some serious Speed damage, but the outstretched hand of the statue held a dragon egg. Wilcox and Buckingham followed suit with the other two statues, each doing a type of damage appropriate to the style of the statue and relinquishing its treasure. However, neither held another egg. Rather, they were a large gem and a book.

Moving on, we found rooms behind the door of Lore to be largely empty, so we continued on to the door of War. By this time, our more martial team members were itching for a fight and that seemed like the best place to find one. Inside, we found a large black-tiled chamber with a large statue of an armoured qephelim and racks of weapons on the walls. An open door led to a large chamber beyond. As we examined the room, Wilcox touched one of the weapons. Suddenly, the open door slammed shut, the statue bellowed "Your challenge is accepted" and Wilcox disappeared. Wilcox found himself in a large chamber with a stone step pyramid occupying most of the available space. He stood at the base of the pyramid with the weapon he had touched in his hands, while two sark stood atop the pyramid raining arrows down toward him. As Wilcox worked his way up the pyramid to close on the sark, Holbein touched a weapon as well. Holbein and two more sark joined the battle. Holbein provided cover fire with his bow as Wilcox dispatched the sark with his sword. As the last sark fell, the previously open door reopened. At the top of the pyramid was a bronze altar with a bronze dial affixed to it. Wilcox turned the dial and the top of the pyramid collapsed. Fortunately he was able to dive to safety. After the trap reset itself, Wilcox tried again, this time turning the dial in the opposite direction. Another door in the room opened revealing another room beyond. Inside was another armoured qephelim statue and several chests. The chests contained some ancient bottles of wine, a few cyphers and another dragon egg. Two down, one to go.

After skipping over the door of Commerce (seemed lame) and spending some fruitless minutes not finding any eggs behind the door of Law, the time had come to return to the door of Death. Back at the room with the sarcophagi and the water on the ceiling, we jammed a large rock into the door to keep it open. Then Buckingham went inside and proceeded to push open the closest sarcophagus. As soon as it budged, the door started closing, crushing the rock as it did so. At the same time, the water on the ceiling started flowing down the walls and pooling on the floor. Buckingham dove throughout the door just as the rock shattered. We waited for roughly an hour and the door opened. The water was once again pooled on the ceiling. Holbein had a cypher that allowed him to breathe under water, so he volunteered to go in and look for the final egg. Sure enough, as he searched each sarcophagus, water continued to fill the room. Holbein was able to open the sarcophagi, retrieving some coins, a valuable amber statue and the third dragon egg. We smashed the Myth Keeper's talisman to ensure he wouldn't return, then fled the Mouth of Swords with a good supply of stolen treasure and the precious dragon eggs.

-Rognar-

The Strange, pt.2

Our second session saw us add a new agent to our team, a slick, smooth-talking bloke named Buckingham. McNulty would be sitting this one out. Presumably, a few of the higher-ups at the Estate wanted more details on the Seattle operation and why some local college kids had hired lawyers and were accusing the local authorities of harassment and police brutality. The rest of us boarded a flight to Denver.

[spoiler warning]

Nederland is a small, hippie town a half-hour west of Boulder. Soderstrom and Sinclair posed as Southern California hipsters looking for business opportunities selling healing crystals and other New Age paraphernalia. Soderstrom is a master of disguise and Sinclair has an MA in philosophy, so it wasn't difficult to be convincing. The rest of the team set up a surveillance cordon so we could keep watch on the Dreaming Crystal.

After checking out some of the local businesses and scoring some legal weed from a nearby head shop, Soderstrom and Sinclair headed over to the Dreaming Crystal. A tattooed young woman was outside smoking a clove cigarette. Her name was Delsey and she was an employee of the store. She didn't have a great deal of useful information to share, other than when to expect her boss, Lydia Nance, to arrive. Later that day, when Nance arrived, Sinclair and Soderstrom returned and proposed a business partnership whereby they would open a store in California. After some friendly banter and a few drinks, Soderstrom furtively brought up Spiral Dust. Although Nance was initially concerned about how we came to know about it, after mentioning Leroy Cain and indicating our interest in selling dust in SoCal, she seemed interested. She invited Sinclair and Soderstrom into the basement of her store where she said her Spiral Dust operation was located. Sinclair, a paradox, initiated a Mind Reading revision, allowing him to determine the combination of the lock on the door to the basement which she hid from view. This also allowed him to recognize that Nance was leading them into an ambush, At the foot of the stairs, clinging to the ceiling were two night spiders, horrific giant arachnids from Ardeyn. Soderstrom opened fire with his 9mm, while Sinclair started launching Exception revisions and signalling to the rest of the team for backup. It was a tough fight, but with help of the rest of the team, the night spiders were killed and Nance was taken into custody. Several dead bodies were discovered, victims Nance had lured down there to feed her pets.

The rest of the basement was explored and a room was discovered with a taped off square in the middle of the floor. Further questioning of Nance revealed that her source of Spiral Dust, a woman by the name of Donna Ilsa, would translate from a recursion called Area 51 into the taped off area, drop off the dust and collect money Nance would leave for her. She didn't have a fixed schedule, although drop-offs were typically every couple of weeks. It was decided to take up residence in the store and wait in the translation room in shifts for Ilsa's next appearance. It turned out Sinclair and Holbein were present a few days later when she arrived.

Subduing Ilsa proved no mean feat. She possessed several cyphers which she used to great effect. The first one was some sort of chemical grenade which she used on Sinclair. It covered him in a greasy, sticky substance which effectively immobilized him. The second created a force wall intended to keep Holbein at bay. However, a spectacularly successful attempt to vault over it allowed him to close with her and engage in a grapple. Holbein was able to subdue her long enough for the rest of the team to arrive. Once captured, we were able to interrogate her with the aid of a Mind Reading revision,

We soon determined that Ilsa was actually a dragon from Ardeyn. A creature she referred to as the Dustman was holding a clutch of her eggs hostage in order to coerce her cooperation. She was running Spiral Dust for him through a recursion called Area 51, a chaotic place in which a human rebel movement was fighting against a classic 50's movie style alien invasion of Earth. She knew roughly where her eggs were being held. but a previous attempt to rescue them had failed. Upon hearing this, we offered to rescue her eggs. We would allow her to continue running dust so as not to arouse suspicion, with an Estate agent waiting here to receive the shipments and dispose of them. Though reluctant, she agreed to give us a few weeks to try our rescue mission. She told us the eggs were kept in a dungeon in Ardeyn called the Mouth of Swords. And so, we're off to a old-fashioned dungeon crawl in Ardeyn.

-Rognar-

Our first campaign in The Strange, pt.1

Posts have been few of late. I'm not sure why. There just hasn't been much to talk about lately. Nonetheless, our gaming group has been busy delving into Monte Cook's new Cypher gaming system. We started with Numenera, but have recently switched to The Strange. For the uninitiated, The Strange is a multi-genre game that harkens back to the classic TORG game of the 90's. The title of the game refers to an ancient technological marvel created by a hyper-advanced alien race from the inconceivably distant past that permeates the universe. Thought to have originally been intended as a means of intergalactic travel, the Strange has decayed into a dark energy network that is capable of giving birth to pocket dimensions called recursions. Typically, these recursions are anchored to an inhabited world and derive their reality from popular fictional or mythological sources.

Our group is currently running through The Dark Spiral [spoiler warning] with some added material from other sources. We started out with five agents; Soderstrom, a mysterious Swede with a troubled past, Wilcox, a gung-ho ex-military NCO and unofficial leader of the team, McNulty, a disgraced ex-cop who's not afraid to bend the rules, Holbein, a former military sniper and all-around glass-half-empty kind of guy and Sinclair, a Canadian writer and philosopher who acts as the voice of reason. We are operatives for the Estate, a secretive private organization that monitors and investigates the Strange to protect the Earth from the many dangers that lie in wait. Our first assignment together involved investigating a drug dealer in Seattle named Leroy Cain who has been selling a mysterious drug called Spiral Dust which seems to have an unearthly origin. Pretty quickly, we were able to determine his home address and decided to stake out the place. We found Cain's car parked out front and someone inside, but despite repeated attempts to gain entry, the occupant could not be coaxed into opening the door. At one point, McNulty and Holbein tricked their way into the apartment next door which was occupied by two college kids playing video games. The young guys were clearly stoners and McNulty suspected they might be customers of Cain's despite their protests to the contrary. They applied a little bad cop/worse cop on the college kids to coerce their cooperation and get them to try and gain access to Cain's residence, to no avail.

Some time later, the sole occupant of Cain's apartment, a woman named Janice Cordell, left and headed toward a nearby car. Sinclair intercepted her and, posing as a police detective, placed her under arrest. Returning to Cain's apartment, we found a picture of the U.S.S. Enterprise from the original Star Trek TV show which we determined to be a focus used to translate to a recursion based on the series. Realizing that Cain had gone there, we followed, taking on classic character types from the show. McNulty became the pilot/navigator, Soderstrom, the science officer, Wilcox manned the weapons console, Sinclair became the engineer and fittingly, Holbein became the redshirt, a character who repeatedly died and was replaced by another. Each of his deaths, however, was beneficial to the rest of the party. We pursued Cain through a Federation ship that was fighting off a boarding attempt by Romulans. After successfully bypassing the automated defensive systems of the ship, we fought a pitched battle against the Romulans who were attempting to seize the engineering section. We were successful in defeating the Romulans and taking Cain back to Earth. He revealed his source of Spiral Dust to be Lydia Nance, owner of a small gift store in Nederland, Colorado called the Dreaming Crystal. We're off to the Centennial State.

-Rognar-

The Strange, a first look

The Strange, the latest game from the game design superteam of Monte Cook and Bruce Cordell has been released and it is fantastic. Using the Cypher game system, first introduced in their previous game, Numenera, The Strange is the most recent imagining of the multi-genre role-playing game concept. Although it borrows much of its tone from the Dark Matter campaign setting for Alternity and d20 Modern, which Monte Cook developed in collaboration with Wolfgang Baur, The Strange really seems influenced by a much older game, TORG by West End Games.

The title of the game refers to an intergalactic transportation system originally created by a race of hyper-advanced aliens billions of years ago. Over the aeons, this technological marvel which we observe today as dark energy, decayed and became chaotic.  When humans or other sentient races interact with the Strange, pocket dimensions called recursions can form. Theses recursions often have different metaphysical foundations depending on the source of their creation. For example, fictional worlds based on the combined belief of large numbers of adherents can be formed, such as a world based on Greek mythology or a particularly popular work of fiction, such as the Cthulhu Mythos. Recursions based on these worlds would allow for whatever magic or alien science would be required to fully realize the details of such worlds. Sometimes these recursions pose a threat to earth and there are other things that reside in the Strange as well that are even more dangerous.

There are two major recursions detailed in the game, a magical fantasy realm of gods and heroes called Ardeyn and a weird science world of intrigue and alien technology called Ruk. Players can be natives of earth or either of these recursions and may travel among them. Numerous other smaller recursions are also described and gamemasters are free to create more using whatever fictional worlds inspire them. Admittedly, the results can get rather silly (i.e. one recursion is inhabited by puppets), but the possibilities are endless.

-Rognar-

Hero Kids - a second adventure

So, Warrior-Mommy, Healer Big-Sis and Hunter Little-Sis assembled once again last weekend for another adventure (Warlock-Auntie returned home). We played Curse of the Shadow Walkers, a longer and more difficult adventure featuring wolves, spiders and other menacing denizens of the night. This time around didn't run quite so smoothly. There is more role-playing and problem-solving in CotSW than Basement O'Rats and the fights are tougher and more numerous. The girls are still trying to wrap their brains around the freeform nature of rpgs in contrast to the strict rules of boardgames of which they are more familiar. Things got a bit tense at one point when the kids had to acquire some wolfsbane from a ravine infested with giant spiders. Everyone was hurt and three spiders remained. A tactical retreat was in order and I, as DM, subtly suggested to Warrior-Mommy that she should lead her charges in an orderly withdrawal. Hunter Little-Sis was fully onboard with the plan, but Healer Big-Sis wasn't having any of it. Neither I nor Mrs. Rognar was aware of it, but apparently Healer Big-Sis has a bit of the bloodlust. She was determined not to surrender even an inch of ground and could not be convinced otherwise. Hunter Little-Sis bugged out, but Warrior-Mommy stood her ground alongside her little berserker and immediately fell to the spiders (although she took one of the little beasties with her). Healer Big-Sis now stood alone against two spiders for a round as Hunter Little-Sis changed her mind and returned to the fray. It was then that the gods of the dice, perhaps moved by the sight of two wee lasses standing over the body of their wounded mom, smiled upon them. Healer Big-Sis blasted the arachnid horrors with her searing light spell, while Hunter Little-Sis lashed them with her magic hair and all the time, the girls dodged the deadly fangs. The battle was won, Warrior-Mommy was healed and the wolfsbane was acquired. Everyone stopped to catch their breath and prepare for the final confrontation.

-Rognar-

Hero Kids first try

On New Year's Day, I got the munchkins together with Mrs. Rognar and Mrs. Rognar's sister for a game of Hero Kids, a tabletop rpg for children ages 4 to 10 years. We had a good mix of characters, a Warrior-Mommy, Warlock-Auntie, Healer-Big-Sis and Hunter-Little-Sis. We played the Basement O'Rats intro adventure, a harrowing race against time to save a poor unfortunate lad named Roger from a bunch of giant rats who have kidnapped him and taken down into their underground den for later consumption.

Characters in Hero Kids have three stats, sword, bow and spell, which also represent strength, dexterity and intelligence respectively. Each character will have two dice in one of these stats indicating their attack ability. Most characters and monsters will have one or two dice in shield as well. In combat, the attacker rolls her dice in the appropriate attack stat and the defender will roll however many dice he has in shield. Only the highest numbered die in each roll is compared with ties going to the attacker. There are three levels of injury for characters and boss monsters, bruised, hurt and KO, meaning a character can take two hits before being knocked out. Characters also have special abilities, items and skills that allow for more options in play.

The game went pretty smoothly. Our youngest player is 5 years old and she had no problem grasping what was going on. She had the highest bow skill, which also meant she had the highest dexterity, making her the best character for throwing Mom's rope up when a climb was called for. She took this responsibility very seriously. The 7 year old was the healer, so she was always ready to rush in when one of her friends got bitten. It was a fun time for everyone.

Hero Kids is available at Drivethrurpg.com.

-Rognar-

Anyone know of a Skylanders RPG?

If you're the parent of kids in the 5-10 year age cohort, chances are you have heard of Skylanders. If you have kids like mine, every conversation you have with them quickly turns to Skylanders. Before they will tell me if they want cereal or waffles for breakfast, I have to decide if I prefer Drobot or Flashwing (Drobot, of course). For the uninitiated, Skylanders is a toy line and a video game all in one. It includes a line of collectible figures, not surprisingly known as the Skylanders, divided up into eight elements: Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Life, Undead, Magic and Tech. Within each element are several characters, some are elementals, some are robots, there are also elves, dragons, undead creatures and anthropomorphic animals, and a few that simply defy easy description. The really clever part is that each figure has a radio frequency identification chip embedded in the base. When the figure is placed on a device called a portal, which is available for both Sony Playstation and Xbox, it becomes the character in the game.

The game setting is a world called the Skylands (what can I say, it's a kid's game), where towns and villages float in the air high above some unknown land below. Airships fly from one skyland to another, which are populated by a race of anthropomorphic animals known as the Mabu. There is also a wide variety of bad guys including the lowly (but annoying) Chompies, Drow (rhymes with snow), various troll-like things and Arkeyan robots. The Arkeyans were a race of evil robots than conquered and enslaved the Mabu 10,000 years ago. Although the giant Arkeyan robots were defeated (by the original Skylanders) and locked away in the Lost City of Arkus, many of the lesser Arkeyan robots remained scattered throughout the Skylands. There's a lot of potentially good stuff in there for a role-playing game, but it doesn't get developed much in the third-person shooter game. As my kids are getting close to the age at which they could handle a tabletop game, I'm curious if anyone is aware of any attempt to design a Skylanders tabletop rpg. Given the wide range of abilities displayed by the various characters, I would guess the best system would be some sort of superheroes game. Anyone know of an supers system that elementary school kids could handle?

-Rognar-

Red Aegis looks awesome

What do you get when you combine the tabletop rpg aspects of D&D with the empire-building of Sid Meier's Civilization? Red Aegis by Vorpal Games. There have been games in the past, notably Pendragon, originally published by Chaosium, that have allowed for dynastic play. Players could play a character throughout his or her life, then go on to play a scion of the original character. It was an interesting concept and pretty well-executed, but the game itself had limited appeal. Red Aegis, which is currently in the process of a successful Kickstarter campaign, is much more ambitious, Rather than playing several generations of a single family, the players take on bloodlines which rule empires for millennia. I cannot express how stoked I am for this project. My two favourite types of games, tabletop rpgs and turn-based computer strategy games fused into one...

Read more at io9.

-Rognar-

Oh, one more thing...it will be compatible with Pathfinder.

The aliens of TSR

Back in the good old days of TSR, Inc., much like it is today, Dungeons & Dragons was king. However, they did produce some other tabletop rpgs in different genres, including their popular post-apocalyptic game, Gamma World (1st ed. 1978), and their less-popular space opera game, Star Frontiers (1st ed. 1982). Personally, I quite liked Star Frontiers (much more than Gamma World, which just seemed weird and unbalanced to me). Star Frontiers includes three alien PC races, in addition to Humans, the Dralasites, the Vrusk and the Yazirians. The Dralasites are a race of amorphous blobs who can grow limbs as needed and have a fondness for philosophical discourse and lame jokes. They breathe through their skin, giving them an acute sense of smell, but their vision is limited. Because of their cultural affinity for debating, they have some ability to detect lies. The Vrusk is an insectoid race with a highly-complex society. Most Vrusk work for some mercantile entity and their loyalty to their company is absolute. Due to the extreme complexity of their laws and customs, Vrusk are highly-adept at social interaction. They have a racial ability to comprehend hidden motives and intentions. The Yazirians are tall, slender simians with large, wing-like membranes between their arms and legs that allow them some limited ability to glide. They are an aggressive, warlike race with night vision and the ability to enter into a berserker state in combat. A later effort at introducing a second edition of the game, entitled Zebulon's Guide to Frontier Space (1985), introduced several new races, but no supplements beyond the first book were ever published and the new edition was left abandoned and incomplete.

TSR flirted briefly with the space opera genre in 1993 as part of its Amazing Engine generic game system and the supplement, The Galactos Barrier. However, that experiment was very short-lived and they didn't really get serious until 1998 with the release of Alternity. A whole new suite of PC aliens are introduced in Alternity. These include the Fraal, a race of highly-advanced and peaceful nomads who bear a strong resemblance to the stereotypical aliens of UFO folklore. There is also the Mechalus, a cybernetic race trying hard to make amends for a dark past, the Sesheyans, a non-technological race of stealthy, bat-like humanoids, the T'sa, a technologically-advanced and constantly active reptilian race, and the Weren, a race of huge, lumbering, furry humanoids with a warrior culture and a preference for black-powder weapons. Like Star Frontiers and Amazing Engine, Alternity was a short-lived product line, although a significant number of supplements were published. These include several game settings. The Star Drive campaign setting might be described as the default space opera setting, but a modern sci-fi conspiracy setting called Dark Matter was also released, as were settings based on Gamma World and StarCraft.

Finally, in 2002, Wizards of the Coast released d20 Modern (and d20 Future two years later) and they did something quite interesting. They took all the alien races from Star Frontiers and Alternity and combined them into the new game. It was awesome to see Werens and Dralasites, Sesheyans and Yazirians available together and it was a laudible gesture from WotC to fans of these out-of-print games.

-Rognar-

Rippin' on....adventure hooks

Something different from the guys this week, Steve's Adventure Toolkit: Wicked Encounter Generator. I'd really describe it as a random generator of encounters and adventure hooks and it's awesome. My favourite so far:

A mother is afraid her son has been eaten by a giant toad, but the giant toad is actually protecting the child from his emotionally abusive stepfather.

-Rognar-

Dragon Age on TableTop

I've always wanted to watch a group of top tier players run a tabletop rpg, to see how a game goes when it's not being played by a bunch of average nerds like us. So I anxiously watched last night's episode of TableTop on geekandsundry.com because instead of playing a card or board game as they usually do, Wil Wheaton and his friends were playing Dragon Age by Green Ronin. A group of professional actors and the DM was the game designer, himself. I was expecting flourishes of Shakespeare-inspired role-playing and a rapier-sharp repartee between the players and DM. Imagine my dismay when instead I got to watch a bunch of dudes playing a game pretty much just like we do. The DM was just another doughy, bearded geek trying to keep a group of jackasses focused on the game. One guy created a wizard who was modelled on "The Fonz" from the 70s sitcom, Happy Days, while another one created an elvish rogue who spent most of the game smelling things. Obviously, they were playing it up for laughs and there were a few moments of humour, but I guess if I'm ever going to see the superstars play, I'm going to have get myself to GenCon.

-Rognar-

Rippin' on...Nightbane

After wasting everyone's time with another look at Street Fighter (what is it with that obscure game that fascinates them so much?), Zack and Steve are back with the funny. No company is a more inviting target for ridicule than Palladium, hence:

Nightbane

-Rognar-

My favourite things from the last year

The following is a list of the stuff I liked best from 2012. In some cases, the "thing" might be have been released earlier than 2012, but I only discovered it within the last year. Feel free to provide your own lists in the comments.

Favourite book: Anathem by Neil Stephenson. Awesome read, check out my review from back in August.

Favourite movie: The Avengers. Tough call, as I really enjoyed The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey as well.

Favourite game: RuneQuest 6th edition. An odd choice I suppose, since my group plays Pathfinder almost exclusively, but I just think RQ6 is a better game.

Favourite intoxicant: Highland Park single malt scotch...ok, that's the same as 2011...2010...2009...

Favourite news event of 2012: the landing of the Curiosity mars rover. In a year of god-awful news, Curiosity was a beacon of light, a marvel of human ingenuity.

Favourite music: Carolus Rex by Sabaton. Following their usual trend of writing about military history, Sabaton turned their attention to their home country of Sweden. Carolus Rex covers the rise of the Swedish Empire in the 17th century under Gustavus Adolphus, the peak of its power under Charles XII, the devastating defeat against the Russians at the Battle of Poltava in 1709 and the eventual death of Charles XII in battle in 1718.

Favourite sports event of 2012: The Habs are tied for first in the league at the end of the year.

-Rognar-

Rippin' on...Maid: the RPG

Zack and Steve are very busy all of a sudden and they've decided to poke around in one of the darker corners of the tabletop rpg world, Maid: The Roleplaying Game.

Maid

-Rognar-

Rippin' on...Warhammer and...Synnibarr?!

Zack and Steve slipped a couple past me when I wasn't looking. The over-the-top artwork of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is always good for a laugh. As an added bonus, the guys have thrown their weight behind an effort to reboot the famously awful game The World of Synnibarr. The Kickstarter project has almost achieved its goal. May God have mercy on us all.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
Synnibarr

-Rognar-

RedBrick calls it quits

RedBrick has announced it is getting out of the game publishing business. There have been some problems lately between RedBrick and the lead designer of their third edition of Fading Suns which I haven't been paying a lot of attention to since I'm more interested in the rumour of a Fading Suns Pathfinder edition. However, it now looks like all plans related to Fading Suns, as well as Earthdawn, Blue Planet and RedBrick's other IPs are up in the air. Not surprisingly, the Earthdawn license has reverted to FASA, but I'm surprised that FASA is also taking on the Fading Suns license. Holistic Design is the licensor for Fading Suns and as far as I know, FASA has not been an active publisher for more than a decade. It sounds like FASA is coming back to life, an interesting development to be sure. Sadly, the announcement does not say anything about the possibility of a Fading Suns Pathfinder edition. I will have to keep an eye out for upcoming announcements from FASA.

-Rognar-

Rippin' on...Call of Cthulhu

Zack and Steve apparently took some time off from bashing on tabletop rpgs and based on their rather weak take on AD&D 2e Tome of Magic, they probably returned to it a bit prematurely. However, they're back with the funny in what looks like a series of shots at Call of Cthulhu. It's about time.

Mansions of Madness, pt.1

-Rognar-