Review of Gods and Icons

Let me just begin with saying that this is a MASSIVE supplement. There is so much information and so many resources that can be pulled from this, it’s incredible. The page count is 162 pages which can seem somewhere in the middle but don’t look at the number, what’s actually written in this is the important part.

Gods and Icons is a supplement for 13th Age put out by John W.S. Marvin over at Dread Unicorn Games. Coming from a successful Kickstarter Campaign, I was interested in this from the start. As a disclaimer, it’s only fair to mention that John did send me a reviewer’s copy of the PDF to read for this website. As always, I will try my very best to be objective about the supplement and give you a clear idea of its strengths and weaknesses.

The first impression of the piece was good. The cover art isn’t the most attention grabbing to me, simply because I enjoy very realistic art. The art isn’t shabby or half-done throughout the book, it simply doesn’t always pertain to my tastes. That doesn’t mean I think it’s bad, because the art within is consistent with, and sometimes even better than the cover art. What’s notable about the art in particular is that there isn’t just people/icons/gods depicted in it. We get weapons, action shots and even religious symbols throughout the book. The variety of such is really nice and helps you sink into the setting that the author is trying to portray.

Moving on to the actual content, all I can immediately say is , “Wow.” There is so much to digest in this book. What surprised me is that yes, we get various gods and icons, but what’s not explicitly mentioned in the title, we get some new abilities for the druid, cleric, paladin and the much needed ranger. I was surprised to find these inside, considering I hadn’t done much research into the project beforehand due to some time constraints. With that we get some tips on how to use icon relationship points, random loot tables, random places to find loot tables, and even some tables on how the gods work with alignment in case you don’t want to read the whole section. That last one is really great because there is a lot of detail oriented information with the gods, which is the first section of the book. For a player looking at this book for the first time, that table will help you get an idea of what there is to be pulled from this, the basic flavor of it and then where to find it. It streamlines the process of finding exactly what you want beautifully.

                                                         Lady Akuma, one of the Icons presented in the piece.

The Gods themselves are split into three different pantheons (The Bright Gods, The Thirsty Gods and The Old Gods) with their own history of how they came to be worshiped and such. What’s nice about the pantheons is that the concepts of the gods/structure is familiar in a sense that they line up with historical religions. On the other hand, they’re unique enough to give you that fantasy essence that we all know and love. The elaborate stories and practices of their followers really helps bring them to life and would immensely help a player in role playing their devotion.

With the icons in the work, they also hold that “familiar but unique” sort of mindset. All of the icons coincide with a Dragon Empire (the base 13th Age setting) but are unique in their story, behavior and relationship with the gods presented in the first section. What I mean by this is that there are clear parallels to the Orc Lord, the Emperor, Archmage and so on. This makes it really easy for players and GMs alike to grasp on to these icons and use them, but are different enough to bring a different feel to the table. The added depth of relationship to specific gods brings a dimension to the setting that the Dragon Empire simply doesn’t have, though by design.

And then they went the extra mile. There is a wealth of magic items toward the back of this book that really surprised me. Not only does it encompass every type of magic item category, even wondrous items, but it also introduces some new magic items. Magical instruments, holy swords and a sacred branch reinforce the ideas of the gods put forth.

Slithik, a new playable race

Within all of this wonderful ammunition that the supplement gives you, there’s also some new playable races for your characters to mess around with. The one that resonated with me the most was the Dhampir, a half vampire type race. The rest, I probably wouldn’t use personally but the Half-owlbear and Hobgoblin are really awesome. That, yet again, is another personal preference, one that I tend to stick with races closer to humans because they’re easier to relate to and role play for me. Each new race is really unique in the way they work and your players that like playing weird and funky things will get a kick out of these.

One last thing of note that really grabbed my attention; NPC tables. There’s a random NPC generator built right into the book. It’s a random roll table that includes gender, race, personal quirks they could have and what icon they could be tied to. This is a really interesting idea and useful for either manually designing NPCs or using the table to randomly make one. Within the same vein of concept, at the end of the icons section of the book, there’s a random table for both agents of icons and iconic enemies. It’s useful in the same way as the former and really impressed me.

In conclusion, Gods and Icons is a very relevant supplement. It has some things that I likely won’t be using in the races section and some of the random magic items tables, but the flavor and overall setting of it is invaluable. If you’re looking for something new and refreshing but don’t have the time to manufacture your own setting, wipe out the flavor Dragon Empire and plop down the concepts presented onto the map!

Pick up the base book and the Players’ Companion here.

 

Stay Metal \m/

At A Glance: Age of Rebellion

Fantasy Flight Games has the licencing for the Star Wars IP in a death grip, and man, are they doing it right! I’m a little late to the party, seeing how Force and Destiny is already out to either augment this game or stand by itself, but this is what I’m playing at the moment. So why not talk about it?

Star Wars: Age of Rebellion Role Playing Game is the ultimate cinema-to-tabletop experience. The setting is during the original Star Wars film trilogy and the rules in place really help bring that feeling to the game. Although we know that Disney is running Star Wars now, this game takes a lot of the extended universe into mind. HA! Take that, nerfherders! For me, it was love at first sight when it came to the art. I was totally invested in playing this game before I even read a single word out of the damn book because of how well the art was done.

Upon cracking this sucker open and devouring the contents inside, I wasn’t disappointed. There’s enough complexity to the system to keep you interested, but it also heavily leans on story telling and dramatic situations. Hell, it’s even built right into the game! At the start of the session, each player rolls a special, white d12 (though, that’s not saying much seeing how all the dice for this game are unique to it) to see how many Light or Dark Side points are available for use in the session. What does this mean? Well, for all you guys that follow me regularly on here, you know that I’m a fan of the Icon Relationships mechanic of 13th Age. This is basically the Star Wars equivalent. The difference here is that the Light Side points are for the players where the Dark Side points are for the GM to use. It’s essentially an auto-succeed type mechanic but to create an interesting situation, whether it’s dramatic or comical.

So I mentioned unique dice, and it’s truly marketing genius on Fantasy Flight’s end. You either purchase these dice separate, or you buy the starter box before you get the core book. Personally, I don’t mind shelling out cash for a quality product, but the unique dice could be a drawback for someone who’s less liberal with their budget than I. Anyway, how do they function? The game focuses on the idea of a cancellation system. Green dice are ability dice, yellow are proficiency, purple are difficulty and red are challenge dice. Based off the picture above, you can see that they have special symbols instead of numbers on them to kind of iterate how they work. The little hit symbols cancel with the triangles and the U-shaped symbols cancel with the Imperial insignia-like symbols. Uncancelled results determine the outcome of the check. It’s a pretty nifty way to handle it, very different from d20 systems and a very refreshing way to play. Anybody who is familiar with their X-Wing Miniatures game will be very familiar with the concept.

Anybody who reads this blog knows that I love simplicity, and this game has it nailed down. Everything is rolled at the same time, so you get to roll the difficulty dice directly against your dice. It adds this layer of tension to any roll because you can tangibly see what happens, as opposed to an arbitrary target number that the GM comes up with in d20 games.

Having yet to GM this game, I can’t give it a truly proper review. This was my GM relief system when some people from my group and I came back from Gen Con. We had someone else from the group that didn’t come on the trip run the game, seeing how he’s the epic Star Wars nerd out of all of us. With around a hundred novels of knowledge under his belt, who better to run the game? Needless to say, he knocked it out of the park and helped make the rules system in place play like the movies feel. Age of Rebellion will definitely be in our regular rotation of tabletop games! Keep your eyes peeled for a proper review once I gain some more experience with it.

 

Stay Metal \m/

Things That Jingle: A Double Feature!

Anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock in regards to 13th Age for the past month has surely seen the amazing work of Campaign Coins and their Icon Tokens kickstarter. The fantastic work has inspired Rob Heinsoo and Lynne Hardy to cook up a special edition of 13th Age Monthly talking about currency! I figure, since these two pieces go hand in and, why not cover both?! Make sure your reading glasses are clean, because this one is going to be a doozy.

Mark Morrison over at Campaign Coins was more than generous to send me a review sample of the Icon Tokens with one of each of the Dwarven Tower Coins to review on here (seriously, I can’t thank you enough) although I had already backed the kickstarter and planned on doing a review anyway.

As a first impression, all I can say is one word: Wow. The detail on these is simply amazing. It’s a little difficult to tell from the picture, but there’s little bits of the work metal-type finish even within the colored surface of the actual icon symbol, giving the image this really amazing depth to it. The detail on the scale of The Three is so intricate and small that if you don’t have this thing under a big light, it’s almost easy to overlook it. As my girlfriend had pointed out, as a mother of her late lizard, the similarity to an actual scale is quite striking.

The Dwarven Towers, the pieces I will probably never use in-game, are actually my favorite pieces. I’m a bit of a sucker for dwarven art and these really smash my soft spot. These coins are split into three different tiers:

1. Soldiers
2. Captain
3. General

Each coin represents a different value in dwarven society, much like we have pennies, nickels and dimes (if you live in the U.S). But the beauty in these in both the rule book and the real life manifestation of the Dwarven Tower does not lie in the parallel to reality, but to how they relate to dwarves culturally. They stack perfectly, with each other and with their larger/smaller counterparts, thus earning the name towers. Campaign Coins knocked it out of the park bringing this idea to life.

At first, when I stacked my Towers, the fact that they didn’t fit snugly kind of bothered me. I almost expected them to be expertly machined by a computer, but then it dawned on me. Even dwarves are mortal and can’t craft as perfectly as they lead us to believe. The small, and I mean small, amount of play between the stacked Towers really brings to life the idea of these being crafted by the calloused hands of dwarven craftsmen.

Craftsmen they certainly are, might I add! The Towers have very Tolkien-esque artwork on them depicting typical geometric patterns associated with the race, but with a helmet as well symbolizing the rank of the Tower. This makes them recognizable beyond their size, and is very visually appealing to the one who is looking closely at their Tower. Too bad Peter Jackson couldn’t get in touch with these guys, because if Erebor had been full of these coins, MAN that would have been awesome!

This being a review piece, I almost feel obliged to point out some negatives in this product. If I’m being completely honest with everybody who is reading, however, these “negatives” are complete and total nit-picks on my part. Firstly, I wish that some of the Icon Tokens had stayed true to the color scheme of the original artwork. If the Emperor token had the purple on the outside, the star remained gold, and the dragon symbol on the inside had been the red or green toned piece, it would even further capture Lee Moyer’s art. Or if the scale of The Three had been a blue with the fade to white towards the center as opposed to the copper color it is. Like I said, total nit-picks. I understand why it wasn’t made this way, considering it would likely drive up cost and/or make the green/red lacquer hard to see. However, I still would have liked to at least seen it either way. Perhaps it was there in the initial design of them and the team decided against it, who knows, but the visual would have at least been nice to choose between. Secondly, I wish that the scale of The Three was a tiny bit bigger, so that we could see the lacquer a little better since the logo itself is so large to fit on such a small piece.

So! In essence:

Pros:

• Detailed
• Accurate design to original art
• Aesthetically pleasing
• Double sided for a 5 Icon relationship or a 6
• Dwarven Towers stack

Cons:

• Not 100% accurate to original color scheme
• The Three symbol seems a little hard to determine color due to size

This may be updated once the kickstarter is over and I get my full set of Icon tokens, so keep an eye out for that! If you check back and this message is gone, my opinion stands as is.

Coin Tricks

The newest edition of 13th Age Monthly, Coin Tricks, is a clear companion piece to this marvelous kickstarter. As a person who doesn’t use currency in his game, I almost overlooked it at first, if I’m to tell it true. But I figured, hey, what the heck, I bought the subscription and these guys rock so I might as well read it.

Boy, am I glad I did! Coin Tricks is less about currency than you would expect. Overall, it touches on how currency effect culture in the Dragon Empire and the realms of dwarves and elves. Not only that, but how they intermingle with one another. The subject was touched upon in the core rules on pages 56 and 57. We see a refresher at the beginning of this edition of 13th Age monthly before is spins in a downward spiral to the interesting world that is the Dragon Empire.

However, it is noteworthy that the big Icons talked about in this edition are:

1. The Lich King
2. The Emperor
3. The Dwarf King
4. The Diabolist

and how they handle currency and make each others lives miserable, in essence. As standard with their products, everything is presented as rumors or possibilities rather than cold, hard fact. Furthermore all the ideas presented can also be made as reality together, though that approach would be very politically complex. If you and your players like that sort of complicated structure in your games, let’er rip!

 

What would an edition of this fantastic product be without some form of monster/adversary? Coin Tricks doesn’t fail to bring the heat. We get two new monsters that pertain to the theme of the piece; Coin Zombies, a creation of the Lich King in order to trap the weak willed and simple minded and New Imps, a joke created by the Diabolist to get under the skin of greedy adventurers or get into the minds of wealthy merchants.

Both of them come with a write-up on perhaps how they came into existence in your campaign. Again, the beauty of this is that you can use all of them at once if you so choose. These new creatures have such depth and use outside of just being something to absorb hit points that they may be among my top 5 monsters in all of the 13th Age Monthly editions.

So, there you have it! A great physical product and another fantastic supplement to the wonder that is 13th Age. Here are some links to go a-searchin’ for either Campaign Coins or this edition of 13th Age Monthly:

• Coin Tricks
• Campaign Coins Twitter
• Campaign Coins Website
• Campaign Coins Facebook

Once again, a huge shout out goes to Mark Morrison for giving me a sneak preview of the product I backed on Kickstarter. Words can’t describe my gratitude and I’m more than impressed with the product.

Stay Metal \m/

Book of Loot Review

Magic items make the world go ’round, right? The Book of Loot is a fantastic piece that further cements 13th Age as the ultimate balance between role playing and combat. As I’ve stated in my All That Glitters… post, I’m not a huge fan of money or anything similar to that. Good thing this book isn’t about money, gems or precious metals! This book covers magical weapons, armor and trinkets that you can use in your 13th Age campaign.

What’s fantastic about this book is that it feeds into the system’s unique mechanic: The Icons. The entire book is full of Icon related magic items and categorized by the Icon affiliation they hold. Pretty neat! Even better, not all of the magic items contained within are for offensive/defensive use. As an example, the Boots of Dancing do nothing besides make you a really good dancer. Well… inherent bonus aside, anyway. While on that subject, the book also contains the table from the core rules in regards to inherent bonuses for magic item type. To be precise, it’s the first actual content page of the book. Coincidence? I think not!

The obligatory index in the back of the book is categorized by item name alphabetically, in case you know what item you want but can’t remember what page it’s on. The overall layout of the book is horribly convenient and makes it a serious charmer.

Before getting into the list of magic items but after the inherent bonus table, the book gives you a list of items that demand a story, relentlessly practical items, campaign defining artifacts and unforgivable puns. The more story driven stuff is really awesome from the GM side, and the puns are awesome for the witty player that likes to make their mark on the game outside of character. Almost every Icon had at least one ludicrous magic item that is completely useless outsideof being random or fun as hell to role play.
Some of the evil Icons have some more dark and macabre items associated with them, which is something that really does call to me and my style of GMing/gaming. The Unyielding Plate in the Crusader section is really awesome for a heroic character, and slightly morbid for someone who identifies with the Icon. It should go without saying, but you need not have an association with an Icon to choose one of their items from the Book of Loot. Unless, of course, the item itself is tied to that Icon in its’ description. Such are rare cases, but I believe that the point of classifying the items into Icon categories was to give the player or GM some serious inspiration to give the item a story. In my experience, this has worked insanely well.

An easily overlooked beauty of this book is the fact that each Icon entry in this work has an “Adventure Hooks” section at the end, giving GMs some ammunition as to how your PCs may stumble upon or be associated with these magic items. Another brilliant stroke from the folks at 13th Age.

Probably my favorite thing about 13th Age magic items is the entry of what is called “Wondrous Items.” These items don’t fill up any of your Chakra slots and are basically things that don’t fall into the category of weapons, armor or implements. Wondrous items are novelties, seemingly mundane items that hold some immense and interesting magical power. That item might be as simple as something like a  Dwarven Mug, a magical mug that turns everything put in it into Dwarven ale. Useless as far as a combat items could go, but completely awesome in a role play scenario. These make for interesting interactions between player characters and NPC’s alike, while also having some degree of utilitarian application.

To build upon the small empire they created with the magic items section of the core rules and furthermore the magic item section of 13 True Ways, this books also has a section for one use items such as potions and oils. The section is rather short, considering the book is more for Icon related true magic items, but still there are some really awesome gems in there.

In regards to what I said about coins and gems earlier, I totally lied. To me, it’s the more mundane part of the book because I don’t use such things. HOWEVER! The way the Book of Loot approaches non-magical items of particular value such as jewels, currency and other treasures in an interesting way. The folks at 13th Age provide you with a random roll table with some pretty great descriptions of what coins, gems and treasures you could possibly incorporate into your game. Conversely, you could bypass the roll table and choose the entry that fits your campaign or specific adventure. Even me, as a person who hates tracking wealth, can find value in these guidelines as proposed in the Book of Loot. They provide a description of some unique jewels, coins and treasures that could be found that have more of a story impact than a mechanical one. My favorite.

Overall, this book was amazingly done with some really brilliant creative minds behind it. The Book of Loot is essential for any 13th Age enthusiast that wants to add an extra edge of creativity and uniqueness to their campaign,

As always

Stay Metal \m/

Jomsviking – Amon Amarth

Break out your drinking horns and two handed axes! Because Amon Amarth is going to take us on another journey with their newest album, Jomsviking. Can i just start with something? I have been absolutely stoked for this album since there was even a whisper about it. Usually I’ll listen to an album before buying it, but the second I could, I bought this one.

Unsurprisingly, the album starts with their single, First Kill and it got me amped to hear the rest. While the beginning of the album overall is captivating, once One Against All came on, it took me back to their Versus the World album and made me horribly nostalgic. The overall rhythm of that song is straight out of that era of the band. Raise Your Horns is an awesome song that has a good chant in it, because what good drinking song doesn’t? During the track A Dream that Cannot Be, the vocals of Doro Pesch caught me off guard because I wasn’t listening to the lyrics. Listening to what the song is about, it makes sense to have the clean female vocals. Just to be clear, I’m not saying that they are bad because actually, when I listened a second time for content, it was truly brilliant and insanely well done. However, the first time through, it did take me out of the metallic trance I was in. The overall sound of the song is so damn good that I couldn’t help but headbang in my living room as it was playing. Back on Northern Shores brings the album to a clean and satisfying ending in the golden halls of Valhalla.

Overall, this album kicks ass. Solid purchase for both an overall metal album and even more solid as an Amon Amarth one. Jomsviking really highlights how Amon Amarth has developed and matured as a band yet still keeping to their fantastically heavy yet simple style. As always, I’m more than satisfied with their work and will definitely be listening to this album way too often for months to come. That said, I do wish that the album was a track or two longer. But, I do think that’s just me being a huge fan of this band. Go out and buy this album!

And most important of all…

STAY METAL! \m/

Night’s Black Agents Review

Investigation, action, and vampires. What more can a game need? We’re here today to talk about a really great RPG called Night’s Black Agents. This game was put out by Pelgrane Press and uses its d6 based GUMSHOE system, also used in their Lovecraftian game, Trail of Cthulu. Quite often in the rule book for this game, the author, Kenneth Hite,  refrences some action movies that this was inspired by, including the Bourne Trilogy. This alone made me extremely excited to play this game, and unsurprisingly, I wasn’t disappointed. It takes place during an interesting time period that we don’t see too often, post Cold War and post War on Terror (for the most part). Sticking it in a very modern setting makes the game even more intriguing, vampires and the supernatural aside. The fact that the game beyond that is about a vast conspiracy of vampires behind the scenes, with each species being vastly different depending on region, really hammers it home. Just to get this off my chest now, I’ve actually never run this game, only played as a player. Seeing how I recently purchased the rule book, this will change in the near future.

Maybe it’s just Pelgrane’s overall style, but this RPG does a fantastic job at making your character feel like a total badass. The basic premise of the game is that you pretty much always succeed in regards to investigation, and simply spend a point from a pool belonging to a skill relevant to the clue’s type to get some sort of bonus information. The only time you actually roll dice to see how successful you are in regards to something is an action, called a Test. The idea is that you shouldn’t possibly fail unless there’s some serious consequence if you do. Test rolls can include things like driving a getaway car, jumping a fence while being chased, shooting a target etc. In other words, things we’re very used to rolling for in most other RPG’s. Your character? A former agent in some sort of government organization (MI-5, the CIA,  the IRA etc.) that you are able to choose yourself (of course) that has either gotten out of the business due to being burned out or simply was sick of the structure and wanted to handle things their own way. And what would an RPG be if you didn’t have an arsenal of skills to utilize? This game is obviously no different. The difference does lie, however, in the way they’re used. You have a couple classes of abilities: Background, Investigative Abilities, General Abilities  and your MOS (Military Occupational Specialty). Backgrounds are what your agent did in their “old life” or in their respective organization, Investigative Abilities are the ones that always succeed, General Abilities are used in Test rolls,  and your MOS is one of your General Abilities (Shooting, Driving, Athletics etc.) that you designate as such and can invoke once per session to automatically succeed at that task using the ability.

Story-wise, this game takes a rather popular trope of the vampire conspiracy and turns it into something that I feel is actually very unique. Super spies coupled with vampire overlords just really makes me excited. When I first played this game, Kevin Kulp ran it for my Tuesday group and we weren’t told about the vampire aspect. We were told it was simply a spy action-thriller. So at the end, when it was revealed that the Russian crime lord we were chasing was a vampire, we were all just taken off our feet. It was glorious. In general though, you almost have to be a political genius to run this game well, I feel. Unless, of course, you’re running the adventure in the back of the book. Thanks, Pelgrane, I love that you guys do that. There’s just a lot of the factual world that has to be translated to the game, depending on what scenario you’re cooking up, and form there you have to create this ever twisting and weaving story to keep your agents on their toes.

What really makes this a little less daunting, however, is that the chapter called The Addenda , in the back of the book has some tools to make this easier. the most interesting that I saw were the Vampiramid and the Conspyramid. they’re basically pyramid charts to help you keep your vampire and conspiracy hierarchy straight, simply genius. The Thriller Skeleton Worksheet is also brilliant. It helps you write down and built a basic outline for your story including the premise and goals, locations and targets/opposition. The  layout is simple and elegant, making it really easy to read once you get writing.

Seeing how this is only half of a review, considering I haven’t run this game yet, keep an eye out for the follow up once I’ve run a session or two! maybe some perspectives will change/improve.

For Now…

Stay Metal! \m/

The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt Review

 

Stepping away from tabletop games a little for this one, but it’s definitely worth the mention! Having just finished the main story for this game with a large handful of side quests, I think it’s time to talk about this. Simply put, The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt is stunningly beautiful, masterfully created and emotionally gripping to the very end. This is actually the first installment of the series I have played, but I will without a doubt be back tracking to play the other two. The start of the game plops you down into the middle of a plot, searching for the sorceress, Yennefer. It’s shocking how quickly the plot blows up and becomes this elaborate story that captivates you in every way imaginable.

Looking at the overall gameplay I can honestly say that until this point, I had never played a game that had such an interesting and genuinely challenging combat system. Playing this game, you rely on patience, exploiting your enemy’s weaknesses and counter attacking to come out on top. With that said, it’s also pretty realistic in relation to real sword fighting. There’s some things (like exposing your back/spinning) that remind you that this is a fantasy game, but as a real sword fighter I can immensely appreciate the attention to detail that the game designers paid. On the subject of realism, The Witcher 3 actually has the best animation to date for horse riding.  The environment is highly immersive, with a large amount of books to read, lore to discover and small conversations to eavesdrop on. Phenomenal graphics also help make this game a world to escape to from our own. I was amazed at the first close up of Geralt of Rivia, the main character. You can see each and every hair follicle on his face. It’s simply amazing. What really cements this as an immersive game though is the voice acting. During cut scenes and conversations, I found myself almost forgetting that this is a game. It feels like a film. For me, it’s really what made me love the story and connect with the characters. In most video game RPG’s I play, I find myself making decisions with my own opinion. In the case of The Witcher 3, I found myself more slipping into the skin of Geralt of Rivia, trying to think and act like a witcher. It made my end result not my personally preferred, but the way it happened made sense for me.

With the characters themselves being well acted and believable, it helped make the rest of the world as such. Taking it a step further, the monsters themselves are totally off the wall. Each beast is unique, even the ones based off of stories that we may have been told throughout our whole lives. The realism of their physique really gives this game a gritty atmosphere and makes you understand why humans need witchers in the setting. The first beast you run into in the game is a griffin. I was simply stunned when I saw it because it was so beautifully animated and textured. Better still, the game continued to amaze me as I discovered what other creatures lurk in the dark places of the world. Every now and again, games capture the human nature of asking the question, “Why?” The Witcher 3 brought this forth by making the implication that the monsters in the universe are actually studied scientifically. That they have habits, specific biology, mating/living practices, much like how we classify and understand creatures in our world.

Lore usually is what sets the quality of an RPG. No good lore, usually the setting is disappointing. The Witcher has some of the best lore I’ve seen. It’s almost like the setting is supposed to be placed in actual European history. The architecture, the small amount of non-humans, the prejudice and eradication of oddities really makes it feel like medieval Europe, giving it that element that maybe it’s a history of our own world we haven’t discovered. I love it! You see soldiers walking around with English bill hooks, which totally blew me away. Not exactly a weapon that is commonly used in fantasy settings. The fact that sorceresses are hunted by kings, witchers are seen as abominations that humanity still needs, that Ciri is the last of a prophesized bloodline of power and importance really makes this game feeling the shifting of an age.

A big problem with video game RPGs is usually the scope of story choices. I can’t help but feel limited when there’s only three or so choices for every situation. I didn’t feel that anxiety with this game. Every choice I wanted to make was available to me. Sometimes the text for the choice was a little misleading causing a result I didn’t intend, making me load the previous save and try again to convey the message I wanted to. A minor issue, but it’s still worth mentioning. Other than that occasional hiccup, this game is amazing as far as making you feel like you’re in control, definitely on-par with, if not better than, Dragon Age: Inquisition.

In conclusion, this game blew me away in every way imaginable. I will definitely without a doubt go back, read the books and play the two other Witcher games. Yet again, there’s a fantasy setting that I can’t get enough of. Hopefully someday we’ll get a peak into what witchers were like in their hey-day. Until then, this game is more than enough to keep me satisfied.

Stay Metal \m/

Syrinscape: Add Some Atmosphere

 

Hey everybody!

So today we’re here to talk about an RPG accessory as opposed to an actual RPG. Behold in all its’ glory, Syrinscape! Syrinscape is a cool little application created/run by Benjamin Loomes (and of course, his wonderful team) to bring some atmosphere to your tabletop experience. It provides a multitude of sound effects and music that really helps your players become immersed in the situation you’re presenting them with. The app is friendly to both windows, Mac OSX/iOS and Android. Currently, I run it off of my iPhone and it works beautifully.

The way Syrinscape works is that you download the application, for free mind you, from their website. From there, you get two free sound sets (you guys are the best) and after that you can buy sound packages for specific environments and encounters, also from the site. It seems like there’s a lot of Pathfinder RPG specific sound sets, which I think is actually pretty cool. Obviously, they’re universal across the fantasy genre, but if you play Pathfinder, it’ll definitely come in extra handy. Conversely, if you have a sci-fi RPG that you play, there’s also a sci-fi version of the app with its own sound sets! The sound sets are reasonably priced and come jam packed with sounds effects including monster sounds, environmental ambiance, spells being cast, doors creaking, footsteps and the like. Better still is that they’re non looping! The music and sounds are very high quality. If you don’t feel like  buying the sound sets individually, you can always become a subscriber and get ALL the sound sets for a monthly rate. How awesome is that?

What really sold me on this app isn’t even the content itself, or the idea behind it. IT was the fact that most of the sound sets have a preview video with some snarky commentary from Benjamin, so you can hear the sounds before you purchase them. This is huge to me, considering that sometimes these kind of things can be a little disappointing. Syrinscape? Hasn’t disappointed me with any of the sounds presented yet. The app itself is very user friendly, with all of your sound set titles in a neat little column on the left side of the screen it’s easy to find exactly what you need. Syrinscape has a hefty lineup of sound sets and sometimes it can be a little difficult to find what you want when using the app, or you find yourself bouncing back and forth between sound sets to create a mish-mash of ambiance. These guys heard our cries and created an amazing little bit for the app. You can actually add individual sounds or entire sound sets to a little custom “playlist,” if you will, so you can control exactly what you want and need when you need it. Simply fantastic.

All sounds can be paused or played simultaneously or individually, which is very nice. The same concept can be applied to the volume of the sounds. If you’re short on time as far as preparation in selecting the sounds you want, there’s also pre assembled sound combinations for every sound set, each with their own little title.

So what’s my experience with Syrinscape? To be honest, I regret the fact that I don’t use it more. It’s such a great system and when I do use it, everybody at the table loves it. As a GM, I find that I often have other things to worry about to get the session under way and hastily jump into playing the game, leaving this behind. The flip side, I don’t feel bad about it because everything I own in the app is so cheap!

However, here are the downfalls I noticed when I use this app. If you run this app off of a phone, it can be very hard to use. Before I upgraded to my iPhone 6 plus, I had an iPhone 5 and it was nearly impossible because the screen was so tiny. Also, it was very slow to respond to what I needed it to do creating much frustration. The app was also slow on my laptop when I used it. I have maybe five sound sets or so, and if that small amount of media is bogging down my computer/the app, it becomes infuriating. I could see this working very well on an iPad/tablet computer as far as usability for the layout of the app, save the speed issue. Besides these two minor (in my opinion) hiccups, this application is awesome and I can’t recommend it enough for GMs that are a little more prepared than me.

Stay metal \m/

 

Blood and Lightning

Another amazing feat from 13th Age, the first rule book comes with a built in first/second level adventure. It goes by the name Blood and Lightning. What more could you want out of a book, I mean seriously. It’s a player’s handbook, dungeon master’s guide and bestiary all built in one with a nice starting adventure to get things rolling. So cool.

Now that I’m done fan boying yet again about this game, we can talk about the adventure. The adventure summary in the book as written: “The PCs journey to a magical location under attack from one villainous icon from without and betrayed within by an agent of the Three. Eventually they must cope with an insane mutating traitor and a crippled dragon.” Sounds cool to me. So right off the bat, I’m going to lay a disclaimer: I actually have not run this little adventure… yet. I have, however, read through it and was very impressed.

For starters, one thing you’ll notice about the description in the book, it doesn’t tell you what icons are involved besides The Three. In the beginning segment on how to run the adventure, it poses a couple different bits of information for some heroic icons, and tells you to pick the icon that has the most relationship points dispersed about the group. I really like this about the adventure because it brings the focus to the players and their characters’ personal stories. Depending on which Icons come into play, it tells you what the characters know about Boltstrike Pillar (the main place the PCs need to go) and what it looks like. This is nice because it keeps the same over arcing story, but it makes each game and set of PCs have a slightly different and unique experience with the adventure. In the first combat of the adventure, it does the same thing in the opposite manner with the enemies. It gives you a couple of different iterations of what the goblins might look like, depending on the villainous icon that they are associated with, in accordance to what relationships are present amongst the group. Flavor text is my favorite, but what makes this even better is that depending on the villainous icon, the enemies also can have some different abilities. Of course, this is designed with players new to d20 in mind also and tells you to forgo the extra boons for the enemies if your players aren’t comfortable with d20 games yet and are still learning. Thanks Pelgrane Press!

Falling in suit with how they wrote the adventure to begin with, when the PCs get to Boltstrike Pillar, it’s guarded/garrisoned by some NPCs in league with the heroic icon in play, and the book displays who’s there according to such.  So basically what happens when the PCs get to Boltstrike Pillar, the NPC running the place sends them somewhere else to investigate a town called Greenstand, which is often times a massing place for enemies who are going to attempt to attack Boltstrike Pillar. The NPC knows this is common, and thinks the whole situation is futile on the enemies’ end and is a bit of joke. The plot twist revolves around this and I don’t want to spoil it for any players that may play this adventure but it is really something that happens by the end of this.

So besides the icons being so influential in the adventure, what’s there to like about it? It’s really good at making the players feel badass. 13th Age as a whole is good at this but this adventure really displays this well for the game as a whole. The flexibility of the situation also is very nice and seems like it wouldn’t make the players feel rabbit holed into following a path too bad. Moreover, the small story itself is simply good. It shows how the idea of the icons can impose political complexities and complications that make the game just interesting as a whole. It sets a fantastic example of the story potential this game has for good story writers, and how easy it can be for even novice story writers. Buy 13th Age for this experience alone, if nothing else!

Stay Metal \m/

Lasers and Feelings Review

This game is a weird one. It’s called Lasers and Feelings and was put out by One Seven Design Studio. What makes this game unique is that it’s based off of song lyrics from a group called The Doubleclicks, who have an actual song called Lasers and Feelings.

In essence, this game is designed as a quick pick-up Sci-Fi RPG rather opposed to the other larger RPG’s like some of us are probably used to. By quick, I mean the rules in their entirety is one page, that includes character creation and how to run the game. It’s a foolproof d6 system that has stupidly quick character creation. You only really have 4 aspects of your character to create, the name being one of them and the other three being a simple word or number, such as “android scientist, 5). That’s your entire character minus the name. Interesting.

Running the game is equally unconventional, there’s a table to randomly generate a threat, their goal and subject of the goal with the result if their goal is met. Basically rolling a d6 four times and referencing the table creates the subject matter of your session. So outside of these rules, the only lore for the game is in the songs and the rest is simply improvised.

To be one hundred percent honest with everyone, I had my doubts about this game. It seemed really strange and easily overlooked at first but once I played it with some friends not only was I right and wrong at the same time, but it is actually insanely fun. The tone of our session was more silly, with me playing a gunslinger, pilot type (basically Han Solo). I got to be badass in a star fighter, fight my companion who didn’t want me to be captain of Raptor, the main cruiser you’re on, and I got my arm shot off before being thrown in a stasis chamber.

Silly, spontaneous and ultimately fun. I’m almost tempted to say this is a hybrid of a party game and an RPG because of how fast it can be. In short, I really enjoyed this game and highly recommend it.

You can download the pdf here

Have fun

Stay Metal \m/