Minireview: Murder of Crows
Chaosium has recently licensed Cthulhu to various rpg companies, and the first fruits of that are now appearing on store shelves. Murder of Crows is a “classic era” Cthulhu scenario from Super Genius Games, set in the fictional town of Bethlehem, New Hampshire. The town has transmuted itself from an up-in-the-mountains lumber town into a fashionable wilderness retreat for city folks – which is now threatened by a plague of crows, in the thousands, in true Hitchcock “Birds” fashion. Who can save the day? Why, an intrepid group of investigators, of course!
This is a “low-level” scenario, well suited for starting off a campaign. The Mythos involvement is fairly minor and no special skills are really required. Some connection to the town via backstory etc would of course make the PC involvement feel a bit more natural. That’s actually one of the minor flaws in this otherwise very good scenario; the beginning is a bit weak and needs some GM work. Another minor flaw is that the “bad guy(s)” are pretty obvious, the PCs are almost saturated with clues pointing in the correct direction. I would personally make things a lot more muddled and add some red herrings here and there. Depends on group, of course.
I liked this. It’s well-written (bar some editing glitches) and engaging, and the town is a well-realized locale. Nice Twin Peaks vibe going on. I gather there are mode adventure modules on the way from these guys, with apparently one being a sequel of sorts to this one. I’m probably byuing them, this was a very good initial effort from a new Cthulhu licensee.
Where's my damn towel?
Woke up this morning with the knowledge that I now should be aware of the meaning of life, the universe and all that jazz. So far, illumination has evaded me. Maybe it’ll arrive in the pub this evening. Assuming the whole damn planet isn’t demolished before I manage to finish my first beer.
“It’s amazing how much ‘mature wisdom’ resembles being too tired.”
– the late great R.A.Heinlein
The connection between all these bits is left as an exercise for the civilized reader.
Minireview: The East (Exalted)
The East (wielding the full title of The Compass of Terrestrial Directions Volume 3: The East) is the latest “direction book” for Exalted 2nd ed, and one which I’ve been waiting for since my game takes place in the East (well, up North at the moment, but anyway).
It was worth the wait. While some of the info was just (re-statted) repetition of stuff in the 1st editon books, there is a lot of new stuff here – and some of the old bits have been tweaked in very interesting ways. While Halta is still the darling of the North-East, the Linowan have now been given a proper writeup… and one that doesn’t conflict too much with my own version, which is handy. The Bull of the North is only lightly mentioned here, he may be given more screen time in the North book. Or not, we’ll see.
The star of the show is the Chaya writeup. Where before we were given the (interesting as such) peaceful region where people go apeshit bugfuck nuts from time to time, now we’re given the reason why. And it’s good. And very, very creepy. Kudos to whoever wrote that; I think it was StephenLS but not 100% sure. Mount Metagalapa is also statted up in a useful fashion, as is the realm of Raksi, the Queen of Fangs (talk about bugfuck crazy part two…).
All in all, an excellent region book for the game. If you’re running a game set in the East, this book will give you tons of ideas. The only minus goes to the map in the beginning of the book: it’s worse than useless, and whoever did it apparently never read the book itself. Rubylak is set hundreds of miles from the river (while it’s clearly set next to it in the text, as in 1st edition). Raksi’s lair is set in the middle of the eastern rice paddies, instead of the middle of the jungle. And so forth. White Wolf seems to have a general hatred of exact maps, or even semi-exact ones. Maybe their developers think that maps don’t matter in a game like Exalted, but I find it hugely annoying. So skip the map. Read the text, it rocks.
Minireview: Toast, by Charles Stross
Toast is a collection of Stross’ older short stories. You can clearly see ideas and influences here that he later expanded and used in his novels. In particular, Lobsters later got expanded into the first chapter of Accelerando. The vision of virtual reality and such as the “next frontier” is one that he has used a lot, too.
The stories vary in quality, but all are at least “ok”. Standouts include the excellent near-future Cthulhu story A Colder War and the clever Antibodies, but there’s a lot of other good stuff here, too. In all fairness his novels are better, but this collection is well worth reading (especially so if you already are a fan of his books).
Some of the stories are already quite dated, as noted by the author in the afterword. That’s the problem when you write about high-tech… it becomes “retro” faster than you can blink.
Pick this one up if you like Stross. Cthulhu fans may also want to read the book just for A Colder War, it’s a fun extrapolation of At the Mountains of Madness.
Highly-trained thug
We went to see the new Bond movie (Quantum of Solace) last week, and I have to say I liked it a lot – even more than the previous one, which I also liked. I really like what they have done with Bond here; he’s a lot closer to the character in the books, a lot harder in many ways… and the story is dark. Gone is the goofy Bond of old times, and I don’t miss him much. Sure, some of the Roger Moore films were a lot of fun, but we’ve already covered that area quite well. Besides, the old womanizer Bond feels like a relic nowadays.
I’d even go so far as to say this new one was one of the best Bonds I’ve seen. Sure, it’s a valid criticism that there’s a lot of similarity to the Bourne books / movies here – but I also like those a lot. Gritty agent/spook stories are cool.
I can totally echo John Wick’s thoughts on the film.
Oh, and I’m loving the fact that there’s now a (good) movie theater in Leppävaara. And one that’s not Finnkino. Yay!
New TV
I’m totally backlogged on new TV stuff, but while fighting the flu watching some small bit of my downloaded pile of episodes was just the thing. So I watched the 2nd season of Heroes, and the 3rd season up to the latest episode. Verdict: it’s still watchable, but the show has problems. While the second season was still ok, this third one is a mess. Time travel was cool when it was done in a limited way in the first season and used for heavy foreshadowing. Here, it’s used all the time, and I’m starting to have no idea whatsoever what’s going on. New characters are introduced, characters are killed off, same characters are brought to life again, all at a dizzying pace. What’s lost? The story. It’s… well, a mess.
After that I’ve been sampling some new series in the scifi/fantasy ballpark, with varying results.
Fringe has an ok basic setup… the passengers of a plane all die in a gruesome fashion and the FBI is called in. Things get weird, and we end up with a special group tasked with investigating “fringe science” events. Sort of in the X-Files direction, lots of good stories to be found there. Potentially, at least. Here… not so much. The acting is pretty wooden (with some exceptions), and the plots.. could use improvement. Ok, it’s “fringe science” so I’m prepared to let the “science” word slide – but here threats get pretty ridiculous, along with the solutions. The pacing is strange. Total weirdness happens, and then it often gets dropped without much of an explanation. Underneath this, there’s still something good: some of the characters have potential, and one of the episodes (The Arrival) was actually pretty damn cool. The MIB-like “Watcher” character made up for a lot of crap. Still… I’ll keep watching this for a while, but can’t recommend it too highly.
Eleventh Hour attempts to cover slightly the same territory; science & medical emergencies. The main characters spend each standalone episode investigating weird events and figuring out a solution. No X-Files vibe here, this is more straightforward… problems, then solutions; very much like traditional “detective/investigation” shows. Sounds a bit bland, and that is is, somewhat. In addition, the characters aren’t all that believable and (so far) remain totally two-dimensional. However, the episodes manage to be quite entertaining and the writing is at least lots better than Fringe. I’ve put this in the same category as Fringe – not all that hot, but ok entertainment.
Then we come to Sanctuary. Amanda Tapping (from Stargate) plays “Dr. Magnus”, a (very) long-lived scientist who specializes in providing a safe haven for various sorts of supernatural creatures. Heavy on computer-generated content, it’s very lightweight… but it’s also lots of fun. Sort of like Stargate, actually. I can’t really call this a quality series, it’s way too fluffy and lightweight for that, but it’s good fun. I’ll keep watching. Best “popcorn” series of this new bunch. Oh, and it has Jack the Ripper in it. Can’t go wrong there (well, yes you can, but it works here).
Saving the best for last, there’s True Blood. A new series from HBO, by Alan Ball (creator of Six Feet Under)… I was already expecting to like this, before I saw the first episode. I also expected it to be… not exactly family-friendly fare. Right on both counts. Based on books I haven’t read, it’s set in the present-day deep South, in an alternate world where vampires are both real and have “come out of the coffin” some years previously. Enter Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic barmaid, and a some new vampires in town. Everyone wants to sleep with everyone else, some do, some don’t, some get killed, some just screw everything else up. Oh, and it’s pretty funny, in the way Six Feet Under was funny (in a dark way, that is). There’s a lot of fun play on old racist attitudes, transformed (partially) into the human/vampire context. “God Hates Fangs”, indeed. It’s no Six Feet Under, but it is easily the best of this bunch. It doesn’t follow a formula, it’s doesn’t follow “safe” themes (quite the opposite). Will be interesting to see where this one goes.
Election hour of the wolf
You know… this is stupid, and probably shows off my distorted sense of what’s important and what’s not. But I mostly ignored the recent Finnish election, just reading the results from the web the next day…. and here I am, it’s 1:50am and I can’t go to sleep before seeing at least some preliminary data on how the U.S. election is going. I’m so hoping Obama will win, for a wide variety of reasons (amongst them the fact that I quite admire the man). Not “hero worship” admire. Just admire. He’s the sort of man that (I feel) deserves to lead the States. Not a dim-witted, powerhungry (ex)alcoholic like the one who has been in office during the last 8 sad years.
McCain was looking reasonable until his choice of Palin as running mate and the angry, shrill and ugly turn his campaign took in the end. Asshole.
…so here I am, half a globe away from the States and awake, sipping red wine and reading John Wick’s bizarre, intimidating and awesome Houses of the Blooded, hoping for the best. Maybe because I was partly raised in a sort-of U.S. cultural environment, I’ve always had a soft spot for the U.S.. Not the politics. Never that. The people, the attitudes, the way of life. There’s a lot of good stuff there, a fact that gets lost sometimes in the general U.S. hatefest you tend to see over here (which is mostly deserved, of course). A lot of bad, too.
I’ve said it before, but I think a lot of the things I admire most about the States can be summed up by Burning Man. Many folks in the U.S. would probably find that a scary statement, but for me it’s just the truth. For whatever it’s worth.
So here I am. A glass of red wine. An open book. A web page that tells me “no results yet”.
Here’s to hope.
