My birthday was 27. day of this month. I decided I want to get some roleplaying game products. I know that there's lots of great stuff I am not aware of. For example HACK! is awesome but I didn't know it existed before +Jonas Mustonen gave it for me.
So I decided I'll ask great people from Google plus to give me some suggestions what I should get. OSR pay-what-you-want products. I thought I'd get lots of suggestions but was a little disappointed, because I basically got only three! +Dyson Logos suggested I should get his stuff. Christopher Paul and Dyson both suggested me to check out +Rafael Chandler stuff when he showed up and gave me his creations! Thousands of thanks Rafael Chandler. Incredibly awesome and kind of you!
Dyson's stuff: http://www.rpgnow.com/browse.php?manufacturers_id=5503
Rafael's stuff: http://www.rpgnow.com/browse.php?manufacturers_id=2623
My girlfriend also gave me a couple of suggestions and rest I got from my wishlist.
+Corey Brin suggested me to get Delve! but that didn't quite fit what I was looking for. I did wishlisted it though for future purchase! Thanks it looks interesting and I'd like to hear more of it.
Here's the stuff I got. These are not reviews but quick impressions. In no particular order.
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Bad Myrmidon. This I had already bought. But I didn't pay attention that this was the Rafael Chandler I enjoy following (this sounds weird) in Google Plus. Cool looking hexcrawl.
Hexcommunicate. Novel by Rafael Chandler. In format that I can upload it in my phone. Yes, this is going to be my good night book. Technofantasytriller or something I suppose.
Roll XX and Roll XX: Double Damage. Two books of random tables of wide variety. I love stuff like this! By Rafael Chandler.
SlaughterGrid. An adventure module with small hexcrawl. I had to shuffle this and wow. This is what I like. Gruesome and weird and its got a playlist too! Not for faint hearted I suppose. By Rafael Chandler.
Teratic Tome. Hell yeah monster manual from Rafael Chandler. Fucking hell yeah! (Sorry vulgar and strong language but this is awesome!) People who whine that Lamentations of the Flame Princess doesn't have a monster manual get this. Now!
ViewScream. Some kind of hangouts application plugin to turn your hangouts into... space horror game? I have no idea what I am talking about. Interesting this is. By abovementioned Rafael.
Weird West. My girlfriend wanted me to have a western RPG so I checked my wishlist and found this. Looks like simple rules that fit into pocketmod.
The Tomb Of Rakoss The Undying. I wanted to see this so I got this. Finally.
Drop. Sounded interesting but I think this is too much indie-new-school-forge what ever... so the rules tell what happens and what you do and that's it. Interesting premise but not my style of gaming at all. Still, going to give it a shot.
Dungeon From A Distant Star. Suggested by girlfriend. Looks interesting, but presentation is dull.
Dyson's Dodecahedron, issues 2, 3, 6, 7, 8. These were most interesting and those what I could use in my current Labyrinth Lord campaign. Really good stuff. Need to buy ink and then it's booklet time!
Guidebook To The City Of Dolmvay. Finally I got this! And damn it's huge! I am a little worried it is too big for my preferences.
The Starship From Hell. Random tables to create hellish starships. Yeah. Horror scifi and random tables. Yeah! By Rafael Chandler.
Stars Without Number. Free edition. Girlfriend loves Fading Suns but now is crazy about OSR/D20 rules so she wanted me to get a scifi rpg. This is one I got.
Where Is Margesh Blackblood. This is what my girlfriend wanted. Going to run this for her then!
X-Plorers. Free no art version. Second option for scifi rpg. Let's see what my girlfriend likes more.
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So, that's it!
Saturday, 28 June 2014
[Review] Norman's Gone Missing
This is a micro adventure by +Tim Shorts . See the webpage Gothridge Manor to download it. There's also other micro adventures available you might be interested in.
The adventure is one page with a nicely colored map and easy descriptions. The adventure is easy to prepare and easy to run. It is actually more like an encounter than an adventure. The great thing is you can actually put it in the middle of your campaign very easily to make those travels from destination A to B more interesting.
The adventure is simple. Norman's gone missing, and you should find him. He's easy to find. Just follow the trail. The most fun surprise is a zombie what has a cool trick when you blast him with spells. Funny part when I ran this was that my player's character is an Elf who is used to blast Magic Missiles on anything. When the zombie's head grew my player asked me:
"Is this normal? Is this supposed to happen?" Unfortunately zombie needed too many magic blasts to make its head explode, so that funny effect didn't happen.
If I ran this the next time I would modify the magic hits so the zombie's head would explode more easily. What's the fun writing a zombie-balloon-head if it doesn't happen that easily!
And the final part of this micro adventure actually gave me a really big plot inspiration for my whole Longland campaign. Maybe that's a purpose? To start something with the ending? Worked for me. Actually it didn't start anything as the campaign had already started but it did give me a lot inspiration how the big bad would be now. So thank you for that, Norman!
A fun encounter. Not that rewarding. Easy to run. Easy to put almost anywhere in your campaign where there's a road. Funny zombie but the fun didn't happen in my game...
Nothing spectacular but I did like this! Really handy when you need to take a break in the game but don't want to take a break in gaming. Also small encounters make characters' every day travelling and life a lot better.
_____________________________
Special thanks to +Erik Tenkar because from his blog I originally found this micro adventure.
http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2014/06/find-norman-and-find-new-patreon.html
This is not only a review but also a game report! So there be spoilers, be alerted!
The adventure is one page with a nicely colored map and easy descriptions. The adventure is easy to prepare and easy to run. It is actually more like an encounter than an adventure. The great thing is you can actually put it in the middle of your campaign very easily to make those travels from destination A to B more interesting.
The adventure is simple. Norman's gone missing, and you should find him. He's easy to find. Just follow the trail. The most fun surprise is a zombie what has a cool trick when you blast him with spells. Funny part when I ran this was that my player's character is an Elf who is used to blast Magic Missiles on anything. When the zombie's head grew my player asked me:
"Is this normal? Is this supposed to happen?" Unfortunately zombie needed too many magic blasts to make its head explode, so that funny effect didn't happen.
If I ran this the next time I would modify the magic hits so the zombie's head would explode more easily. What's the fun writing a zombie-balloon-head if it doesn't happen that easily!
And the final part of this micro adventure actually gave me a really big plot inspiration for my whole Longland campaign. Maybe that's a purpose? To start something with the ending? Worked for me. Actually it didn't start anything as the campaign had already started but it did give me a lot inspiration how the big bad would be now. So thank you for that, Norman!
A fun encounter. Not that rewarding. Easy to run. Easy to put almost anywhere in your campaign where there's a road. Funny zombie but the fun didn't happen in my game...
Nothing spectacular but I did like this! Really handy when you need to take a break in the game but don't want to take a break in gaming. Also small encounters make characters' every day travelling and life a lot better.
_____________________________
Special thanks to +Erik Tenkar because from his blog I originally found this micro adventure.
http://www.tenkarstavern.com/2014/06/find-norman-and-find-new-patreon.html
Friday, 20 June 2014
[Review] Bestiary of fantastic creatures volume 1: Bizarre monsters
The whole title on the main page goes like this: A Rust Dagger Supplement, Beastiary of Fantastic Creatures Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures. Bizarre Monsters Volume 1 by Casey Sorrow.
Published by Bull Cock Press.
___________________________________________
This is an oldschool monster manual from the times when monsters still were imaginative (I might have romanticized here a bit) and the art was personal and cool. Here are 34 pages (40 in total if you count the covers) including 15 different monsters.
Published by Bull Cock Press.
___________________________________________
It is not only the art and good and entertaining writing what makes this product great. It's also the monsters which are actually really well done. Some are fun, clever, dangerous, spontaneously dangerous, profitable, disgusting, weird... Every monster has a purpose when you use it. Some might be just dangerous, but all except one entry has one or more suggestions for a campaign integration.
There is enough information for every monster to use them effectively, many in different situations and purposes too. Most are spread to two pages, some monster entries cover even three pages. It is not simply just a list, you get a nice and entertaining and useful description.
The art is great. Really evocative and fun. If cleaner and more professional I think this is what old monster manuals' style should be. Well also new ones too!
The stat blocks are wide enough to use in your favourite OSR simulacrum game. AC is descending, but that is easily fixed in many cases. You don't even have to use your brain as the foreword tells you to modify the stats and monsters as needed!
My favorites, you ask. This is lame but I liked every monster entry in this booklet. Every single one. I liked these so much I want to create a mini campaign around this booklet. So every monster is used and player character has opportunity to study, harvest, save villagers from them. My top three (and reasons) are:
Bohx. Funny, dangerous, tragic. Made me sad but with an evil Referee grim!
Plunderpuff. I am not a Pokémon fan but I think this is as close as you can get a Pokémon it still being a fantasy roleplaying game character of old-school style.
Uzhu. New intelligent giant race with a twist... of horns. And herd of fire farting cattle.
I lied, here's fourth:
Rat King. Horrible and disgusting for an animal lover.
And fifth, and... As I said, I liked them all!
You should try to get this if you:
- Like monster manuals.
- Like monsters what are not necessarily always traditional fantasy dungeon monsters.
- You like cool indie products what make you cool.
- Art is inspirational and modern take on old-school (I think, I don't know arts).
_______________________________
Honorably I want to mention Jonas Mustonen who was kind and provided me with this product to review. Now you be kind and go check his Old-school roleplaying blog in Finnish. (Use Google translator or something). There are not many OSR blogs in Finland and this is one of my favourites (yes, even before I got the booklet reviewed here).
The address to that blog is:
Vankityrmiä ja Louhikäärmeitä
Friday, 13 June 2014
The second review of The Hanging Garden after I actually Labyrinth Lorded it
Here is the original review in my blog http://cryptofrabies.blogspot.fi/2014/05/review-hanging-garden.html
What I noticed, adventures read differently than they play. I mean, I did like the adventure but it didn't yell awesome. But when I ran it using Labyrinth Lord for my girlfriend's Elf and her NPC crew I actually enjoyed the adventure a lot. And so did she!
The adventure was damn easy to run. I am not very experienced running pre-made adventures of other people in my games, so this was a success. I did not struggle a bit and everything went extremely smooth. And I didn't suffer those oops wait a second, I forgot there's this and you can't be there yet because moments.
+1 for the adventure being extremely simple to run.
But the adventure did need some preparation time using random table to generate those spoiler hidden. It was fun though and I think this table could be re-used later. Maybe even to re-skin those spoiler hidden into other monsters.
+1 for this neat little tool.
Also adventure hooks were damn simple. Adventurers want to adventure, right. I used two of the six rumors in one tavern (don't adventures start at tavern) when two guys were talking and arguing what is going on. Both rumors were naturally wrong but not that far off. As in something suspicious and bad is going on.
+1 for rumors here.
The bad professor dude wasn't described that well leaving me a lot of space. I wanted the finale not only being rolling-dice-and-hitting-stuff and wanted the professor to be someone. So I googled "fantasy professor" and chose the first what showed up. That's the picture on the left.
Then I put some Final Fantasy and j-rpg style combat music playing in background and the mood was damn prefect! The professor was so j-rpg mad fantasy scientist and those monsters were so j-rpg/Biohazard mutants. Loved the scene and combat!
And player did too. When Erymos was defeated there was a scene in Anime fashion. Dying professor in character's hand being all moody and stuff.
EPIC!
And my player left the place moody and feeling unhappy about killing the professor. Success!
I say, download this adventure (HERE) and run it for your group. Then run here and tell how it went! I am very, very curious to hear other Referees' experiences with this adventure. Because as I said, I am new to pre-mades.
So to wrap this up:
What I noticed, adventures read differently than they play. I mean, I did like the adventure but it didn't yell awesome. But when I ran it using Labyrinth Lord for my girlfriend's Elf and her NPC crew I actually enjoyed the adventure a lot. And so did she!
The adventure was damn easy to run. I am not very experienced running pre-made adventures of other people in my games, so this was a success. I did not struggle a bit and everything went extremely smooth. And I didn't suffer those oops wait a second, I forgot there's this and you can't be there yet because moments.
+1 for the adventure being extremely simple to run.
But the adventure did need some preparation time using random table to generate those spoiler hidden. It was fun though and I think this table could be re-used later. Maybe even to re-skin those spoiler hidden into other monsters.
+1 for this neat little tool.
Also adventure hooks were damn simple. Adventurers want to adventure, right. I used two of the six rumors in one tavern (don't adventures start at tavern) when two guys were talking and arguing what is going on. Both rumors were naturally wrong but not that far off. As in something suspicious and bad is going on.
+1 for rumors here.
 |
| Hojo from Final Fantasy VII became Erymos Elmyndmor of Hanging Gardens! |
Then I put some Final Fantasy and j-rpg style combat music playing in background and the mood was damn prefect! The professor was so j-rpg mad fantasy scientist and those monsters were so j-rpg/Biohazard mutants. Loved the scene and combat!
And player did too. When Erymos was defeated there was a scene in Anime fashion. Dying professor in character's hand being all moody and stuff.
EPIC!
And my player left the place moody and feeling unhappy about killing the professor. Success!
I say, download this adventure (HERE) and run it for your group. Then run here and tell how it went! I am very, very curious to hear other Referees' experiences with this adventure. Because as I said, I am new to pre-mades.
So to wrap this up:
- I liked this
- Easy and simple to run
- Player liked it
- Fun monster generator
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