Minireview: Southern Vehicles Compendium Two, Tanks & Artillery: Swords of Honor (Heavy Gear)
Swords of Honor is the South counterpart to the North tanks & artillery compendium. Not much else to say here, except that this one goes even further in the “intentionally biased reviews” direction (as also noted in the book intro). There’s a lot of Southern military propaganda bias here, the commentator never gets tired of pointing out how superior this AST technology is compared to the Northern stuff. It’s quite amusing, especially in the cases where the Northern counterpart is actually arguably better.
Other than that, this is a thinnish book of “crunch” on Heavy Gear tanks and artillery units. Useful if you want that for your game, otherwise skippable.
Pew pew pew, or: EVE Alliance Tournament 6
Some busy weeks here, on the EVE front. Our alliance (Electus Matari) is one of the 64 alliances competing in this year’s big Alliance Tournament, and I’m part of the tournament team. We’ve spent quite a bit of time brainstorming setups, testing them out on simulator, scrapping some, keeping others, and generally learning to fly as a team.
Well, it paid off. In last Saturday’s first qualifier round, we decimated our opponent, White Core (link to video of fight). Some bad mistakes by the opposition were a factor in that; White Core opened fire early and were penalized one of their Paladins (ouch)… we lost an Ishkur, but that’s a fair trade. In addition to that, the opposing FC made some apparently weird choices. But in sum: everyone on our team performed great, our setup had counters to what they fielded, and generally it was just a slaughter. Even though that fight looks pretty peaceful and clear-cut, I can tell you that as one of the Ishkur pilots it was pretty intense; took quite a while for the adrenaline to settle down.
Oh, and as usual the commentators on our fight are a bit clueless, they get quite a few things wrong. I’m fine with that, misinformation is good.
So, this Saturday we’re facing off with Privateers. They are a much more credible outfit, and they also decimated their opponents (video link) in the first fight. I expect this to be a tough fight, and could go whichever way. On the other hand, due to the way the qualifier round scores are calculated, we stand a good chance of making the finals even if we don’t win this one – as long as we do at least some damage.
Obviously, I’m not going to give any details about our past or future setups here, or about our tactics. Our opponents would no doubt much like to hear about them, should any of them stumble on this. I will say this: we have a plan and it’s pretty solid. On the other hand, no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.
Videos of all the fights can be found here, in case someone is interested.
Minireview: The Pact Stone Pyramid (J4, Pathfinder)
The Pact Stone Pyramid, written by Michael Kortes, is written to be a potential sequel of sorts to the earlier Entombed with the Pharaohs (by the same author). While there are no direct connections, it’s another “go plunder a pyramid for riches” thing, set in the same area. Entombed was a great adventure so it was natural that it would get a continuation at some point. Initially I was a bit sceptical; this sounded just like a repeat. Again, there’s a mysterious hidden pyramid full of riches and (assumably) traps. Again, there are multiple parties heading towards it, so time is a factor.
I need not have worried. Pact Stone Pyramid is actually very different from the first module, despite some surface similarities. It’s also very, very good… better than the (already high-class) first one, and actually one of the best adventure modules I’ve read so far from Paizo. This thing rocks.
I don’t want to spoil the plot here, because there actually is one, and there are some surprises. On a general level, the PCs are tasked with finding and investigating a vanished pyramid, either in opposition with another party or as allies (of sorts). After they find the thing life gets even more interesting; while it’s expected that a pyramid has traps – and sure, there are traps to be found here – this is not strictly a “deathtrap dungeon” thing. It seems very open-ended, both in the initial setup and in how the PCs can “solve” the scenario (or at least escape with their lives). I really liked the variety here. There’s social encounters and intrigue, there’s some sneaking around, some combat, a pile of traps and puzzles, and lots of room for PC improvisation.
Good stuff. Recommended.
Minireview: Pathfinder #16, Endless Night
With Endless Night, Paizo’s “Second Darkness” adventure path advances to its fourth installment. As the title implies, here the PCs are sent deep into the “night”… in other words, deep underground.
In an intentional nod to the classic old “Against the Giants/Drow” series of modules, the PCs are disguised as drow and sent to infiltrate an ancient drow city, deep under the earth. There’s a lot of room for social stuff (too bad D&D mechanics suck for that, but whatever), and also for various sorts of covert sneaking about. The locale is a huge city, but naturally only a small part of that is detailed – the main plot assumes that the PCs infiltrate a very specific drow royal house, as prodded by plot elements. If the PCs decide to do Something Completely Different (as they are prone to do), well, the GM needs to think fast and improvise. There are some details included here to help with that; the booklet also contains a separate article on the (huge) city, with general descriptions of various interesting locales.
This was a pretty good “episode”, methinks. Lots of room for social shenigans, the absolute need to keep up a cover, and a few fun surprise twists should make this pretty fun to run and play in. Might need some extra GM work, but that goes with the territory. As with many of the imho better D&D “modules”, this one is not just a bunch of combat scenarios strung together.
Minireview: A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin
I don’t read much fantasy these days, mostly for the reason that most fantasy is absolute crap: stereotypical stories of black & white Good vs Evil, with very little variance. Silly “Dark Lords” (with about as much real “evil” as Dr. Evil in Austin Powers) send endless waves of idiotic minions to conquer the bright and shiny happy lands, and Some Random Farmer realizes he has a Destiny to save the world. Rinse, repeat. Ho hum. It’s sad that a genre that’s supposed to be about the “fantastic” is probably one of the most formulaic ones out there. Innovations are few and far between, most authors are happy to tell the same old tired story over and over again – largely because all too many readers are happy to read that story over and over again. Comparisons to “romance” literature are all too easy to make.
That said, I do tend to pay attention to what books get praised – and George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” books have been getting consistent praise ever since 1996, when the first book came out. So I finally caved in and got all the four (huge) books currently available and started reading. A Game of Thrones is the first book in the series… and damn, were the praises for once spot on. This thing is fantastic.
Yes, yes, I know…. I should have read this ages ago. I actually felt like someone reading Lord of the Rings for the first time when talking about this book with friends… pretty much everyone was saying “what, you’re reading it for the first time?” and “yeah, it’s really good, I’m waiting for the fifth book…”. In other words: pretty much everyone had already read it, and the three other books to boot. The general opinion seemed to be that the first three rocked and the fourth one was a relative dissapointment. We’ll see.
Anyway… this is a great book. It’s a very humanocentric, gritty, feudal fantasy; someone described it as the “fantasy version of The Sopranos”. While there is a hint of a supernatural threat looming, that’s very much in the background; the real threat here is very human, and revolves mostly around vicious power games between various noble families. The viewpoint centers at first on the Starks, a family from the north who are drawn into the troubles surrounding the current king of the realm – but the viewpoint shifts between the members of a quite large cast of characters. What’s refreshing here is that the characters aren’t black & white stereotypes. Even the “good guys” have (at times) a very feudal mindset and don’t worry too much about the deaths of the “smallfolk”, and the “bad guys” aren’t shown as totally “evil” (though some do come close). This is not a book for those used to nice and fluffy “hollywood fantasy”: there is rape, murder and harsh treatment of children, murder in general, thoughtless oppression of “the masses” in the name of semi-divine right, incest…. you name it. Women are the “weaker sex” here in general, and stay at home to do needlework & plot while the men ride off to war – with a few notable exceptions, who are sometimes shown as paying a price for “being different”. Martin is also not afraid to kill off characters, which lends an additional degree of tension to everything.
The story is set among the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, a continent set on a world in which the seasons can stretch to years, sometimes even decades. A long “summer” is drawing to an end, and, as the House Stark motto has is, “Winter is coming”. Along with that winter comes extreme political instability and possibly much worse. Out in the icy wilderness beyond the Wall, something is stirring, but few notice because most eyes on set on more human but no less dangerous threats.
I liked the general grittiness of it all. I liked the characters. I liked the fact that most of them seemed to act like feudal lords and ladies, not like modern-day people in funny clothes. I liked how violence was portrayed as violent and nasty, not all that glorious (without downplaying the cool battles). I liked how magic and the supernatural were shown as rare, dangerous things – no throwing of fireballs, here. I liked the Machiavellian plots.
I can’t really find much at all to fault in this book. You may want to skip it if you like your fantasy “nice”… that this isn’t. You may also skip it if you don’t like books the size of bricks, this first book is well over 800 pages and the rest are if anything even bigger. The four published books come up to something like 3,500 pages in total (looking at the paperback editions). The fifth book (A Dance With Dragons) is due sometime this year, and there are two to come after that… so that gives one more reason to skip this (for now): if you want to have a series be complete before reading it. You might have a long wait ahead of you, in that case.
…but who am I kidding? I’m probably one of the last people on the planet who hasn’t read this yet. Of the people who read in general, that is. Fox News viewers can carry on as normal.
Minireview: Heimot
Heimot is a rarity, a Finnish science fiction rpg. Well, to be sure, any Finnish rpg is a rarity in itself, but at the time it was published it was one of the few in the scifi genre (Taiga is the only other one that directly comes to mind). It was published a few years back, and since then we’ve seen the publication of Stalker, yet another Finnish scifi game. Whee. Heimot is still the only Finnish space opera game I know of, both Taiga and Stalker go firmly in the “post apoc” subgenre.
I bought my copy of Heimot at Ropecon when it was published, but has taken me up to now to actually read the thing. My reading list is… long, and I pick and choose from it at semi-random.
Heimot was written and designed by Miska Fredman and has (excellent!) art by Olli Juutilainen. The text is in Finnish, so for once the English-speaking hordes are out of luck. The name translates as “Tribes”, by the way.
All things considered, it’s an impressive book. The production values are excellent, with stylish art, good layout, sturdy hardcover binding etc. This thing looks and feels professional. The content doesn’t dissapoint, either. While it’s not the most original of settings, it is a fun mishmash of pretty much every scifi cliche out there and then some. I don’t say that in the negative sense at all: a lot of other scifi books, TV series and films are also cliche collections and work great. Heimot reminds me of Firefly in places, of Dune in others, and I found nods to all sorts of scifi books and films scattered all over the thing. Good stuff.
The story is set in the far future. Humanity has fled doomed Earth to populate the galaxy, met alien races, built a vast empire… and had that empire crash and burn, hard. Lots of similarities to Hyperion in that regard, including the destruction of a galaxy-wide instant transportation network. The game takes place some 500 years after that collapse; the surviving remnants of humanity have banded together into various tribes (thus the name) and spend a lot of time squabbling with each other even though an extremely hostile locust-like alien incursion threatens all that they know.
The mechanics are pretty old-school, but as such seem competent enough though nothing special either. I don’t think you’d have much problems using whatever system you like to run this, the main value here is the game universe, backstory, etc.
So… pretty cool. Of course, publishing an indie pen & paper rpg in the first place means that you’re looking at a small audience, and doing it in Finnish means that you’re targeting a tiny portion of that small audience. I have no idea how well this has sold, or if there are any plans for continuation. It’s been 2.5 years since the game was published and I haven’t heard much more about it after the initial (favorable) reviews – though I haven’t exactly dug for info, either.
In a perfect world, this game deserves to sell. It’s well-written, looks and feels beautiful (still by far the most professional-looking published Finnish rpg), and targets something else than the tired old fantasy genre. Kudos to the guys behind this.
Minireview: Northern Vehicles Compendium Two, Tanks & Artillery: Swords of Faith
Well, this is an extremely straightforward book, even more so than the previous vehicle compendiums. As the title suggests, Northern Vehicle Compendium Two: Tanks & Artillery fills in gaps left by the earlier gear-oriented Northern vehicle compendium. It contains technical specs and some history on the non-gear military vehicles in use by the North. Even though gears work better on Terra Nova than traditional tanks do (due to extremely rough terrain and the quick-strike nature of most Terra Novan warfare), tanks still pack a huge punch and are invaluable in many places. Compared to gears, the variety of models used is tiny… there’s one light tank chassis and one MBT one, with variants.
Like the previous compendiums, this one also figures a somewhat opinionated authorial voice (it pretends to be an IC document for people interested in military hardware). Not all of the information is totally objective, by design. I find this brings a nice flavor to the whole thing.
Still… this is “just” a collection of technical data on a subset of Heavy Gear military vehicles. Very useful if you want that stuff for your game, not so much otherwise.
Minireview: The Underplex
The Underplex is a compact Paranoia supplement which details the “spaces in between” – the abandoned corridors and levels that lie between, under and over all the inhabited areas of Alpha Complex. As such it’s a fun and natural idea, and quite useful as a place where secret society meetings could sometimes take place… and also as a shortcut between point A and B, where nasty and lethal thing C is blocking the usual route. Naturally enough, it also serves as an excuse to throw new hazards in the PCs’ direction. Where do all the hungry & dangerous mutants live? Why, in the Underplex of course!
The book contains ideas on how to populate these “uninhabited” areas and also presents an “adventure seed” on the same subject. This is by no means a “must have” book for Paranoia, but neither is it bad. Sure, you can and should just invent most of this stuff yourself… but getting extra ideas is rarely a bad thing.
