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Showing posts from 2009

Diaspora

It's hard science but it is also FATE! What's going on? Surely as a FATE book this should be massive book not a slim attractive hardback book? Diaspora is a book that is actually designed to be a book, not a magazine. It also has a powerfully stripped back FATE system that seems to retain the key ideas of the system and only expand it to include ideas key to implementing the genre.

Pathfinder #27: What Lies In Dust

The previous adventure path in Pathfinder left me a bit cold, despite loving the Arabian theme. I was feeling that the adventures were becoming quite rote with the inevitable escalation to the demons and devils that made up the end of adventure opponents. This one is quite different, there's already been a scenario based around a play and I'm enjoying the current issue which involves a sealed Pathfinder lodge, vampires, assassin priestesses and pit fighting with summoned monsters.

Thousand Suns: Foundation Transmissions

I bought this one by mistake, thinking it was the main rulebook. It's actually a collection of articles and expansion rules that are the result of a writing competition. It's nicely presented but that's all I can say about it for now.

Pathfinder Bestiary

Another nice book in the Pathfinder line, an old-school style Monster Compendium. What is interesting is that it seems a lot more readable and enjoyable than the ultra-slick 4e books. I think the secret is that this is a genuine bestiary full of a variety of monsters and creatures including D&D classics and fantasy staples. It also includes some of Paizo's Lovecraft crossover creatures which are nice additions.

Rogue Trader

It's a hefty slab of book that came from Amazon, however like Dark Heresy it seems to be fairly comprehensive. If you've suffered sticker shock from the price then it is worth noting that it seems to be the lavish production values that We've given character and ship generation a go and had a tremendous amount of fun. It's a whole different scale to Dark Heresy, the PCs are very much among the Imperial Elite, able to travel freely, purchase planets and generally have a good time. One thing I think is immediately important is that you have to create some reasoning during character generation as to why the characters have not stopped and are just enjoying the fruits of their endeavours.

Wild Talents Essential Edition

I have been enjoying Reign so much that I decided to get Wild Talents as well. The book is paperback sized and cost me £7 from Leisure Games which really is a bargain. So far bits of the book have been good, the One Roll Engine (ORE) seems to be a good fit to the superhero genre but at the same time there are the same problems I felt existed for Godlike. The system is a weird mix of grand heroic superpowers and really detailed and fiddly sub-systems for damage, armour etc. It doesn't really feel coherent.

Song of Ice and Fire

It's a great looking book with a lot of atmosphere and at first reading of the rules I can't help but think that Green Ronin have created their own version of WFRP. The rules are certainly not d20/True 20 derived and the layout of the books is very similar to the books produced for Black Library.

Starblazer Adventures

This book is so big you could kill someone with it. It's actually so big that its daunting to read it. What I have seen so far is that it is very similar to Spirit of the Century , with collective character generation and Stunts hanging off Skills. SotC was a much smaller book so where is this massive bulk coming from? The reproduced art from the Starblazer comics is very nostalgic though.

Players Handbook 2

It is a bit of a necessary purchase if you have anything in the Dungeon and Dragons 4e line. For a start it restores Druids and Gnomes to the player mix. Interestingly it also seems to introduce the "good" counterparts of all the "evil but cool" races like Drow and Tiefling that were in the first handbook.

Dragon Warriors: Sleeping Gods

I'm slowly making my way through Sleeping Gods the adventure collection for Dragon Warriors. It is really more of a re-reading as I remember a lot of it from the original paperbacks. All of the adventures are packed with a kind of Arthurian gothic feeling of pagan spirits and ancient ghosts. It is interesting that it mixes a kind of realistic feudalism with really quite high fantasy elements. It reminds me of how Warhammer should feel.