Cthulhu's ongoing war against CthulhuTech

Few games in recent memory have had to overcome more hurdles than Wildfire's CthulhuTech. Originally published by Mongoose, that relationship ended very quickly. It was soon followed up by Catalyst Game Labs, which published the bulk of the game books until an allegation of financial wrongdoing on the part of one of CGL's owners forced Wildfire to seek out yet another publisher. That new publisher is Sandstorm. It seems, however, that the ongoing financial malaise (and the obvious ire of Great Cthulhu) is about to claim another victim. There is growing speculation on the interwebs that Sandstorm and/or CthulhuTech may be coming to the end of the road. These developments have further implications for other games as well. Although it could be argued that CthulhuTech was reaching the end of its cycle anyway with all the books that had been planned already published or in the pipeline, Wildfire's new game, The Void (aka, The Game Formerly known as Chthonian Stars) is just getting started. Will it, like CthulhuTech soon find itself orphaned (again, it was also originally going to be a Mongoose release) and looking for a new publisher? And what about Posthuman Studios and their game, Eclipse Phase, which is also published by Sandstorm? It seems to be a very bad time to be in the business of publishing tabletop rpgs with high production values that are not part of the D&D legacy. It may be that the only way for small publishers to stay afloat these days is to limit themselves to pdf and POD sales.

-Rognar-

Update: Forget speculation, here is confirmation. At least it appears The Void will see the light of day.

New Comments - Old posts.

I was poking around the blog today taking a peak at our most viewed posts and I saw Derobane's post about building monks was near the top. I didn't recall what the post was about so I took a look. There were a ton of comments (ok, half a dozen) I didn't recall ever having read. At least some of them we added very much after the fact since they refer to the APG which wasn't released until 6 months later.

Is there anyway in Blogger to see what new comments are being added? It makes me wonder how many other old posts are being commented on, and I (perhaps we) have no idea.

Free RPG day!

Is June 18th this year so make sure you get down to your FLGS and check it out. I'm hoping to pick up the new Paizo goblin adventure released this year.

My apologies to the Barbarian

A few posts back I ranked the different pathfinder classes and I placed the barbarian below the fighter. I've spent some time over the last couple days messing around with barbarian builds and really looking at the powers and realized that I've made a mistake. When you try to build a barbarian like a fighter, the fighter will always be better. If you build a barbarian around some key Rage powers, you get a terrifying beast that makes a fighter quiver with fear.

If you just look at the numbers the fighter is better. He hits more often for more damage and has those nifty crit feats. But if you put your optimization hat on you can see how the ole barb can surpass his rival. Let's start with the beast totem line of rage powers. Claws are a great back up weapon, by level 16 you've got a +5 natural armor bonus making your AC better then the equivalent fighter, and at level 10 you get Pounce allowing a full attack after a charge. With the Lunge and combat reflexes feats, the Come and Get Me rage power, and Enlarged the barbarian can make Attacks of Opportunity against anyone that either moves or attacks him within 15'. Against the fighter, the barbarian would reply with 4 attacks of opportunity and then do his own full attack. With a good enough Dex, a barbarian could do over 10 attacks per round most of them AoOs at full BAB.

Superstition gives him an awesome will save (with a big caveat), Reckless Abandon allows him to hit as well as a fighter, and Witch Hunter give a damage bonus against anyone with spells/spell-like powers. The Invulnerable Rager archetype trades uncanny dodge and trap sense for much better DR which really helps a build like this.

This barbarian will need lots of healing available because he is going to take tons of hits but the devastation he can unleash exceeds even what an archer can do.

More on Mongoose, MRQII and Wayfarer

As I posted previously, Mongoose has not renewed its license to publish RuneQuest and the Glorantha campaign setting. It will, however, continue to publish the core rules in a new format, originally called Wayfarer. However, there is a game called Wayfarers and by a strange twist of fate, the company that produces it has approached Mongoose about a publishing arrangement. Mongoose has agreed (beware of referer spam page) and has also decided to rename its new RQ clone Legend. Since I already have MRQII and Legend is supposed to be virtually identical to MRQII with the Glorantha-specific material removed, these developments would not normally be of much interest. However, Mongoose has decided to make Legend OGL. This is awesome, or it would be, except for the little caveat that there will be no SRD. Yeah, that's right. You can freely use anything from Legends in your publications, but you have to have the book. So, to Mongoose, from the handful of gamers out there that don't publish their own work (i.e. 99.9% of us), thanks for thinking of us.

-Rognar-

All Hail the King!

The volley flew true and Nyrrissa, unable to escape, felt the arrows pierce her body. There had been no escape to heal herself this time after being anchored to this dimension.

She felt the insane rage drain from her soul as the last of her life blood leaked away. Halak the ranger lowered his bow and flexed his stiff fingers. The Archon hovering behind him was the only thing shielding him from Nyrrissa's mental control. He thought her saw the cursed Nymph smile at him as the life and magic faded from her and she began to fall into the frozen river below.

Lung the barbarian reached out and grabbed her and carried her over to the cliff, his body still riddled with Halak's arrows. Peskar, the arcane trickster, followed, shifting back to his natural form. Merissa the summoner, collapsed on the cliff edge. The insane nymph had nearly disintegrated her in the battle's dying moments. The cleric followed the pack to the cliff and began patching everyone up.

Our kingdom is safe again (for now). The evil fey who had been manipulating things behind the scenes for years had finally been brought down. It had been a rough battle. The key to defeating her was the sword Briar but its wielder, Lung, had been banished via Maze as the battle began and had only managed to return at the tail end of the fight. The rest of us had been trying to strip her of her defenses which had made her near invulnerable. Halak was the only one that had any significant chance of hurting her so we had to keep him alive (and not dominated). In the end we managed to eak out a victory.

Rippin' on LotFP

Congrats to James Edward Raggi IV and the OSR. Zack and Steve have noticed you. You have arrived.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess

-Rognar-