Tuesday Reviewsday: Corto Maltese

Corto Maltese is a series of European action/adventure comics by famed Italian creator, Hugo Pratt, chronicling the life of its titular character through the early decades of the 20th century. Though related to Tintin, Gil Jordan, Lupin III, and other continental adventurers, Corto carries himself more as a pulpy Sinbad the Sailor. Embarking on adventures for lost Imperial Spanish gold and thwarting Nazi spies for the sake of outrunning boredom than the allure of wealth or pursuit of truth. Along the way he crosses paths with historical figures like Rasputin, Butch Cassidy, Ernest Hemingway, and Jack London.

With striking black and white art from an artist at the height of his powers and narrative depth belying comics, Corto Maltese is well worth the time. Especially if you love pulp adventure tales staring colonialism's ugliness full-on. This series is definitely in the Old Man's Bar DNA. The stories have most recently been translated and printed by IDW and some animation was done 4-5 years ago.

Tuesday Reviewsday: The Sinner

We're all spending time at home as the Troubles extend into a 4th month and probably watching a lot of TV. If so, you've found you can only watch Terriers (on Hulu right now) so many times before you need a new crime drama. You can replace Terriers with something else more fitting your tastes - True Detective, Black Spot, The Shield, Bosch, The Glades, or what-have-you. But the sentiment is the same.

There's a LOT of good media out there but we consistently return to the crime drama/police procedural well for some degree of comfort. Even in the most hardboiled or noir story offer a structure delineating the good, the bad, and the bad-but-good-enough-to-live-with into boxes and delivering some sort of justice in an increasingly unjust world. The Sinner dumps those comfortable boxes out on the floor and kicks the contents into the wall where hey break and spill, leaking their contents into a runny mess defying a shallow viewing. In the first season Jessica Biel plays Cora Tanetti, a seemingly placid housewife, who stabs a man to death at a public beach in upstate New York. Bill Pullman plays Detective Harry Ambrose, a police detective on the rocks, who feels a pull that Cora's crime is a part of something larger and, like a bad tooth, just can't leave it alone.

If you enjoy being pushed out into deep water and feeling your way back to shore, then The Sinner would be for you.

The Sinner seasons 1 & 2 are currently on Netflix.

Tuesday Reviewsday: Space Dandy

Hey everybody, Aaron here. It's been a long time since my last post, but I've been really busy writing adventures and mysteries for games such as: Savage Rifts, Trophy, and Brindlewood Bay. Besides being the Head Writer for a ZineQuest 2 Kickstarter project Oligarchy - a game of political folly. Those are all wrapping up in the near future so I have time to get back to Tuesday Reviewsday. 

Earlier this month we finished watching Space Dandy! a science fiction comedy anime from Shinchiro Watanabe of Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo fame. Over the course of the series, the titular character travels the star in his tiki themed spaceship searching for alien lifeforms, falling in love, and hanging out at an interstellar Hooters. It's a love letter to fishbowl helmets, rayguns, scantily clad ladies, Americana, and high adventure across a lurid galaxy. Every episode shares a loose continuity but rarely impact one another. Which is probably for the better since that gives each episode room to breathe, no matter how gonzo or ridiculous the individual premise may seem. 

Overall the show alternates between lighthearted and poignant, delivering  a heartfelt salute to its influences while leaning on animation's strengths. Similar to Watanabe's other series the soundtrack is impeccable. I mean, watch this:



If you like pulpy sci-fi stories like Flash Gordon, the Original Star Trek, Secret of Sinharat or Barbarella you should check out Space Dandy! You can watch it on Hulu.

If you'd rather have dandy adventures in space for your next tabletop game, then check out Troika! the Otherworld's Favorite Roleplaying Game (art free SRD here) and try out Across the Humpbacked Sky, Baby! from Carol and I. It's a collaborative framework for creating weird aliens and some weird planets for them to hide on.

TUESDAY REVIEWSDAY: They Mostly Come Out At Night & Lorn Song of the Bachelor

 The first book in Benedict Patrick's Yarnworld series, They Mostly Come Out At Night opens a window into a primeval forest, helpless woodsfolk, their fears, and the vicious beasts that stalk them beneath shrouded boughs. An atmospheric fantasy that marries subtle world building with the dark heart of fairy tales. Composed of three interweaving narratives: the present plight of the protagonist plagued by nightmares, the lessons taught by the mythical(?) Magpie King to his son, and the folktales comprising the forest folk's oral tradition. They form a tale and setting that still sticks with me despite the 2 years since I read it. Everything has a weight of mythology and meaning to it, though we don't spend a lot of time ruminating on that meaning in the text. It's fast paced, like a roller coaster.

If you're a fan of Scott Snyder's Batman run, Grimm's Fairy Tales, or The Sandman then you owe it to yourself to check this book out. You can find it here.

Written by Zedeck Siew, presented by the Hydra Cooperative, and published by Exalted Funeral. The Lorn Song of the Bachelor is an adventure focused on a stretch of tropical river haunted by a seemingly immortal crocodile. Whether hired by an exploitative company or following rumors of their own volition your adventurers quickly find themselves in deep current far enough from shore that they just can't reach. Brimming with Zedeck's fantastic prose (check some out here) and Nadhir Nor's evocative illustrations, Lorn Song presents a well organized adventure location and the forces, internal and external, coming to bear. Dripping with flavor and sense of place, the climate and environs of the SE Asian Pacific really comes through. We should all take notes on this and how the adventure grapples with complex themes of colonialism. Overall, it shows what independent creators are capable of and show why the SE Asian RPG scene is one to watch going forward.

You can find it in print here or in pdf here.

Reviewsday: TROIKA! and PROSPECT

Published by the Melsonian Arts Council, TROIKA! is a science fantasy RPG sharing a wavelength with Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion, Book of the New Sun, Vimanarama, Etched City, and the Archive 81 podcast (I’ll talk about these later). Humanity escaped the crushing grasp of Earth’s gravity a long time ago and things have only GOTTEN STRANGER. Bollywood space gods plunging through eldritch portals to explore the crystal spheres are the tip of the weirdo iceberg when you thumb through the randomized backgrounds. Some quick examples – questing knight, cacogen, thaumaturge, rhino-man, and monkeymonger for starters. The setting is filled out and explained in item and background descriptions, in the margins of the text like a Dark Souls or Bloodborne game.

Mechanically speaking, it does everything you want an OSR-style game to do – create tension and sense of danger – and only uses the D6. It also leans on D66 tables which I’m a huge fan of. The most unique design feature is how it handles initiative via a blind grab bag, very similar to the system used in the miniatures game Confrontation. You pull a token from a grab bag and the corresponding character takes their turn, but there’s also an End Turn token so… someone might not get an action that turn.

It’s elegant, it’s pretty, and gets the most out of the book-as-physical-artifact with tables inside the covers.

You can find a no-frills/artless version here under the SRD and a physical copy on Amazon here.

PROSPECT was released earlier this year and it’s a space western focused on activities nearly always overlooked – prospecting, mining, and claim jumping! Not gonna get too deep on this, I’ll just say – if your favorite parts of Ridley Scott films are the world-building via material culture and how the camera feels in the scene then you should carve out the time and watch PROSPECT before the year is over in…
13 days? That sounds about right.

You can watch PROSPECT on Hulu right now.

You can browse the props here and the concept art here.

2019 Gift Guide

Full disclosure: some of the products below were provided by the publisher for review and I contributed to the Tome of Mysteries.

With Christmas around the corner let’s be honest , it can be difficult to shop for us. For as much time and money gamers spend accumulating geegaws: books, maps, miniatures, dice towers, dice trays, dice bags, and, hell, dice in general. Folks outside the Culture are likely not aware of differences between core books and supplements (ex: White Wolf used to publish player’s guides in addition to core rulebooks but the player’s guides weren’t really useful) or which games utilize extra components that are evergreen presents (ex: Savage Worlds’ reliance on playing cards means a cool deck is always welcome). So if you have relatives who don't know what to get you for Christmas or your birthday next year, point them at this.

Gaming Adjacent:

A Dragon Walks Into A Bar by Jef Aldrich & Jon Taylor

Do you like D&D as a core cultural touchstone? Do you like all those D&D-centric episodes of cartoons, sitcoms, and video games?
How about dad jokes?
If you loved Cameron’s sense of humor from the first 3 seasons of Max’s Minions and want it distilled in a book, then this is it. Just released last week, this original work by the hosts of the System Mastery podcast is sure to elicit a chuckle or guffaw from your friends or loved ones who are into this sorta thing.And it’s not just a book of jokes, there’s some tables useful sidebars which impart information or insight into this weird, young hobby we all participate in.

Here’s a good joke:

Where would you find a blink dogs?
About three feet to the right of where you left them.

Because they.. teleport…
never mind.

The Ultimate RPG Gameplay Guide & The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide by James D’Amato

Covering both of these at once because they contain complementary materials. If you regularly GM the Gameplay Guide provides advice for effective preparation and communication with your players to lean into engagement, exploring themes, and maximizing the stuff your group wants to see at the table. James’ thoughtful essays ring with his experience both as a Second City trained improviser and GM/producer for one of the top Actual Play podcast networks around. The book’s exercises, worksheets, and prompts help you (the GM) with praxis – walking the walking, applying the ideas and shaping table behaviors so you get the best out of yourself and your players.

Conversely, if you’re on the other side of the GM Screen 9 times out of 10 then the Backstory Guide provides prompts and exercises rooted in improv theater that prompts new ways of thinking and applying the most staid and dullest part of character creation – the backstory. The book’s organization is divided into echelons corresponding to character level, over time you develop themes and motifs to form a throughline. Enabling your GM to bring these elements into focus. Something you can hear James do on his current Campaign podcast – Skyjacks.

Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master by Michael Shea

The title directly addresses the 400 lbs. gorilla in the RPG scene but embodies a solid thesis usable in any game – YOU (the GM) will never be as creative as all of THEM (your players), so pull a Tom Sawyer and get them to paint the fence for you. Distribute the cognitive workload.

With great advice, pertinent examples, and checklists this book doesn’t provide as many hand’s on applications as the Gameplay Guide. Instead Return dwells in greater specificity on its topics, whether pros & cons to different styles of combat or conveying the value of reskinning existing monsters instead of creating ones from wholecloth. If The Ultimate RPG Gameplay Guide sounded too hippie-dippie to you then Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master occupies a cozier middle ground.

Games and Game Accessories:

Savage Worlds Adventure Edition by Shane Hensley

The latest edition of our (Carol and I) favorite game dropped back in September and you can get this gorgeous hardcover for only $30. A more in depth review can be found over on Tommy Brownell’s blog over here and I’ll do my own dissection and discussion of the text for the benefit of folks who’ve never played Savage Worlds before at a later time. This thing is the real deal, people often complain about carrying around too many books and D&D is a $150 buy-in for the 3 core rulebooks.

What takes D&D 3 bloated books, Savage Worlds does in 1 sleek volume for 20% of the price.

Monster of the Week by Michael Sands & The Tome of Mysteries by Michael Sands and assorted authors (including me)

Tired of dungeon delving and want to do something else? Love weekly procedural shows but aren’t sure how to get that to the table?

Then Monster of the Week and it’s companion volume have got you covered. Based on the popular Apocalypse Engine you’ll only need to print out the playbooks and 2 six-sided dice to start playing. Character creation is fast and let’s you hit the table running in interesting directions, you’ll have a game full of interesting conflicts and complications in no time.

And, yea, mysteries are hard but there’s a WHOLE TOME OF THEM! Want more Fringe and less Supernatural? The Tome of Mysteries has that too! It’s covers a lot of ground very quickly with scenario seeds, additional playbooks, a ton of sample mysteries, and custom moves you can re-work for your own game. And if you’re doing Call of Cthulhu or another investigation game then use the sample mysteries anyway so you can still inject some weirdness without it necessarily being the Usual Suspects (Cthulhu, Dagon, Yog-Sothoth, etc).

 Dice from Metallic Dice Games

You might think any set of clack-clack stones are the same as any other but if you ask Carol or Larissa or any other person with the dice fever, you’ll find you’re wrong. Can’t go wrong buying more dice, and I recommend Metallic Dice Games’ products, they’re lustrous and have nice hand feel. They have some great color combinations and they’re timely with their deliveries. Their latest kickstarter arrived a little earlier than estimated, a far cry from the Kraken Dice fiasco earlier this year.

Review: Codex Dark 2 and Doom Patrol

 Codex is a monthly pdf zine published by The Gauntlet, a roleplaying community and podcast network. Codex is an anthology of small RPGs, supplementary materials, and miscellany centered around a particular theme that has been tied together with use of a color palette and clever graphic design. The free sample issue rotates, and this month's issue is a really good one, so grab it while you can because the games are delightful.

The star of the current is Ghost Drums, a short horror game by Gerrit Reininghaus inspired a Guatemalan ghost story. I can't really say anything else about it without giving away too much, but I am hyped to run this with the Minions in the future and, hopefully, turn it into a limited series podcast. This issue also has the rules for Trophy and a sample adventure, a dark fantasy game about flint-eyed scoundrels plunging into a wilderness that doesn't want them there and won't let them leave. Think of it as what might happen if your OSR play-through of Keep on the Borderlands turned into the Texas Chainsaw Massacre about two-thirds of the way through. Trophy also echoes the thesis of our current limited-series, Tales from the Old Man's Bar™, Don't be surprised if you see Trophy show up on our feed down the line as well.

Both games highlight a subtle shift in design philosophy: rather than playing to find out what happens, the party is playing to find out how it happens. The ending is never in doubt - you're all going to end up turned into sausage; however, the shape and texture of the grinder is flexible. Do you end up bratwurst or chorizo? I expect we'll see more horror games take similar approaches going forward because a strong framework provides a solid foundation for play.

UPDATE: Codex Dark 2 is no longer the freely available issue. Now it's Codex Gold which contains the rules for Trophy Gold. Also an excellent game, which can be found here.

In a similar vein, our present saturation of superhero stories reveals a rhyming pattern - the heroes will triumph at the end but how they'll triumph is the real question. Do they lose a loved one? Do they sacrifice themselves? Does a city get leveled? Do they find family along the way? DC Universe's Doom Patrol takes advantage of our foreknowledge to get weird - like really weird. If you're familiar with the Patrol, then that shouldn't come as a surprise to you. However, if you're new to the team, buckle up.

The show makes nods to the larger DC Universe, but quickly leaves the familiar world of flying strongmen and billionaire vigilantes behind in favor of extra-dimensional snow globes, doomsday prophet cockroaches, boys from Brazil, and a sentient street. Despite the high weirdness, though, the show doesn't divorce or alienate the characters from their humanity. If anything, the intense contrast heightens their all-too human frailties resulting in a satisfying drama.

Anyway, I know people hate spoilers so I'll just say this - Doom Patrol has consistently been one of my favorite comics and the show does not disappoint.

Check it out when you get the chance!
 

Book Review: Do: Fate of the Flying Temple

 In the years since its release Fate Accelerated (aka FAE) has become my favorite flavor of Fate.  It's quick to kick off the ground, and fundamentally challenges the way we think of resolution in role-playing games.  Mark Diaz Truman penned Do: Fate of the Flying Temple, powered by FAE, a sequel to Daniel Solis' Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple. Both games cater to families with young/first time players, though Fate is probably better for older players than Pilgrims.

The games' core idea is the characters are adolescents in a Little Prince universe on a problem solving pilgrimage answering letters they received. From there the two games diverge thematically. In Pilgrims, the characters eventually return to the titular Temple at the center of the Universe and discover destinies shaped by their experiences. In Fate, the Flying Temple is gone and the characters steward a young Dragon on their pilgrimage. Each player defines the Dragon with an Aspect and a new Aspect after each letter. Shaping the future Flying Temple through their escapades. 

Mark Diaz Truman has a deep understanding of Fate and a deft hand explaining the core concepts and applying them. For more of his excellent work, check out the Fate Codex on Patreon. If you're looking for a game to introduce Fate to kids pr the young at heart, then Do: Fate of the Flying Temple is worth picking up.

Book Review: Bubblegumshoe

Confession time:  I love mysteries and crime fiction, and nothing hits the nostalgia like teen detective stories: Encyclopedia Brown, Veronica Mars, Lumberjanes, Leave it to Chance, the 3 Investigators, Goldie Vance, Gotham Academy, Durarara!!, Persona 3 & 4, Scooby-Doo, the Hardy Boys, Danganronpa, Atlanta Burns etc.  So I'm an easy mark for these kinds of stories. Ever since Ken Hite mentioned Bubblegumshoe (BGS for short) over a year ago on KARTAS, I've been eagerly awaiting its release.

What is Bubblegumshoe? BGS applies the fantastic GUMSHOE system to the teen detective genre. Your sleuths assemble clues, expose secrets, snarl relationships, avoid the police, solve crimes, and generally get into trouble.  And since it's high school the stakes are incredibly high and incredibly low.  The GUMSHOE skill list is refined to bare necessities and more specialized information is obtained through WHO you know, rather than WHAT you know.

There are three ingredients that differentiate these stories from their adult counterparts: sleuth focused, entangled relationships, and verbal sparring.  When creating a Sleuth you define their place in school through socio-economic class, clique, clubs, etc. and their Goals.  Goals are outside the investigation and ground the character in the larger narrative, ranging from being class president to evading that bully.   Accomplishing your goals feeds into your character's Relationships, increasing their ratings.  Defined by a paradigm, (Like, Love, or Hate) that's how your get access to university book learning and adult resources (a car if the characters don't drive or a weapon from your mom's gun safe for example.)

Physical conflict isn't really a point of focus in these stories, in parallel BGS emphasizes social over physical confrontations. Called Throwdowns, they emulate the verbal cut-and-thrust of teen double speak and questioning. Interpersonal skills fill the role of more traditional fighting skills, allowing the characters a wide array of social tactics to get what they want. Reassurance, intimidation, flirtation, and more provide creative, and complicating, strategies than just talking at GMC's with an anemic diplomacy check.  I could write another blog post about Throwdowns.

One of the best things about GUMSHOE products is the modular campaign drifts and tools provided to assemble your own.  Pelgrane has cracked Bookhounds of London, Mutant City Spies, Shadows Over Filmland, Moondust Men and others.  BGS carries on this great tradition with some great examples in the back covering diverse teen sleuth flavors. For example, want super powered Hogwarts? Danvers Academy fits the bill. What about some sleuths with a weird sidekick? Then Ruby Hollow lets you assemble your own secret riddled township, complete with creepy old men driving down property values dressed as monsters.

The hardcover is only $20, it's the high quality typical for Evil Hat, the pdf is complimentary,  and the game design is top notch. If you're interested in playing teen detective stories then BGS is the best game for the job. Emily Care Boss, Kenneth Hite, and Lisa Steele have outdone themselves capturing the spirit of these stories. 

Meat Pinata

School has me busy and a bit scatterbrained.  Random things keep falling out of my ears, maybe these baubles interest you.  Maybe they don't.

In Fragged Empire news, the Protagonist Archive will be coming along soon-ish with four new races.  One of them is the Palantor are the last true remnants of humanity:, digitized from their meat bodies, uploaded in Minecraft for millenia, and infugees downloaded into robot bodies fleeing the Mechonids.  They are going to have a Japanese naming convention and definitely represent the furthest transhuman edge of the game's technology.  A reddit thread expanding some of it here.

Swords and Stitchery put together a fantastic table detailing what you find inside a vacuum frozen corpse.  My favorite is number 6 - "A classic walk man with a Back To The Future soundtrack tape within."  There should always be weird things floating in the Black, update it to the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack if there's younger players.  You can find that here.

Finished Priest, Matthew Colville's first novel, it's equal parts The Big Sleep and the Fisher King in a D&D influenced setting.  Retired priest Heden is charged with an off the books mission by the bishop, redeem an isolated Order of feral knights.  Nothing is what it appears, and everyone is working an angle.  There's several Green Knights, a magical sword, oaths aplenty, one good knight and a Lady of the Lake to boot.  If you enjoy modern crime fiction in other times and places you'll enjoy it.

Picked up the first three issues of Dan Abnett's new cosmic Marvel series Guardians of Infinity.  For $4.99 I'd like to get one whole issue of a single story, rather crippling Abnett's ability to tell a complete story with an obnoxious back up story.  In typical Abnett fashion the story starts small and gets larger.  This time it's a space fortress that cuts across multiple timelines and there are three teams of Guardians, the current team (2000), the classic team (3000), & a team from the distant past (1000).  The writer is known for killing his sweethearts but with the Guardians of the Galaxy riding an all time high of mainstream recognition, the Guardians 2000 & 3000 aren't really in danger. But the Guardians 1000 feel like they are just around to get sacrificed. 

Real world weirdness: digital maps in China are slightly off as a matter of national security.
Find it here.

Finally getting in another session of my monthly lucha libre campaign, Habrá Sangre, and it'll be pretty good.  Last session ended in a cliffhanger with our intrepid heroes facing off against brujas against a stormy backdrop.  What further revelations will they discover as La Hora Cero draws near?

Book Review: God's War by Kameron Hurley (Book 1 of the Bel Dame Apocrypha)

When God's War,  Kameron Hurley's debut novel, was published in 2011 science fiction communities moaned and wrung their internet hands about the increasing prevalence and prominence of lady genre writers.  Since then Ms. Hurley has won a Hugo, and those fearful discussions evolved into the Sad/Rabid Puppies bloc.  God's War was a hand grenade when it was published and introduced us to the new breed of brutal women.

In the opening scene Nyxnissa, our heroine & ex-government assassin, sells her womb in order to survive and doesn't look back. From there Nyx becomes our guide through the scuzzy, bug riddled, Islamicized marble that provides the backdrop for the series to follow.  Whether it's her team of bounty hunters, two nations continually at war, shapeshifters, or all the bug powered technology, Hurley's world building is top notch.  Did I mention the bounty hunters?  There's a lady-loving shapeshifter (the process is messy - which is great), a conscientious magician (if Jedi had mutant pheromones that controlled bugs), and a hacker who worries for his sister.  Their dynamic is great, the dialogue and interactions are stained with familiarity and disappointment in equal measure.

Opening with the visceral surgery where Nyx's unwanted organ is literally held up to a light and an object of admiration, the narrative rockets along and doesn't let up.  Every few chapters we are given a recollection from Nyx's past, providing insight into the team's primary case and the team itself.  There are some rough patches, it was a debut novel though, and the pacing keeps the pages flipping through them.


Pick it up next time you see it; you won't regret it.  There were two other books in this series, I'll review them in the coming weeks.

To get an idea of her writing I recommend: We Have Always Fought (an essay) & The Women of Our Occupation (short story)