Sunkenlibrary

Tag: review

  • Fire on the Velvet Horizon’s incredible love letter to RPG Bestiaries

    Fire on the Velvet Horizon’s incredible love letter to RPG Bestiaries

    This isn’t a post about Fire on the Velvet Horizon, nor is it a post about how good Patrick Stewart (no relation)’s writing is. Perhaps some day I’ll do a full review of Fire on the Velvet Horizon. No, right now I want to talk about the back of the book, the space traditionally reserved for a sales pitch. Fire on the Velvet Horizon is (ostensibly) an RPG bestiary, illuminating the monsters of a campaign world that doesn’t exist.

    Stewart put a poem here.

    I am like no other thing.
    A gem not famed for brightness.
    Dead, but only listen and I live.
    Voiceless, I speak.
    Thoughtless, I lie.
    Deeper than dark water.
    Sharper than a swift sword.
    Stranger than a drugged dream,
    I serve in ordered ranks that never
    change.
    Till night,
    When a gallery of shadows paints your thoughts,
    with more colors than a careless artist’s hand.
    Lose me or be lost in me.
    I am a place you may not go.
    Once there I will not let you leave.
    Though made of broken things I am
    yet whole.
    And guard one hundred murders.
    Let’s kill your friends for fun.

    Let’s all just stop a moment and bask in the sheer brilliance and the utter inscrutability of this poem… riddle… thing? You have to know RPGs. You have to know bestiaries. You have to be someone who’s poured through a Monster Manual page by page, daydreaming what it’d be like to introduce them to a game.

    Let’s kill our friends for fun.

    Damn that man can write.

  • The Real Ghostbusters Animated Series Season 1 Episode Guide

    The Real Ghostbusters Animated Series Season 1 Episode Guide

    I couldn’t find a good essential episode guide for The Real Ghostbusters animated series, so I decided to write one up. These reviews are entirely biased and wholly unscientific. Don’t like em? Make your own!

    S1 E1 – Ghosts R Us (Skip) – This episode centers around the antics of a trio of ghosts who escape containment (?), pass themselves off as human (??), and then start a rival ghostbusting business to embarrass the Ghostbusters (???). The whole thing culminates with a different ghost possessing some toys and turning them into a giant monster that attacks Brooklyn bridge. The plot is nonsensical and the threat isn’t threatening. The only bright spot is the brief appearance of Ecto-2, a 2-seat helicopter that’s stored in the back of Ecto-1 (okay seriously who wrote this?).

    S1 E2 – Killerwat (Maybe) – This one is… fine? The villain of the episode is a ghost named Killerwat who’s directing other ghosts to possess electrical systems. There’s a decent fight in a department store against some (legitimately creepy) possessed appliances, but that’s about all this episode has going for it.

    S1 E3 Mrs. Rogers Neighborhood (Watch) – Now we’re talking! The Ghostbusters are called to investigate an old lady’s house. She’s terrified that it’s haunted, so they send her back to the firehouse while they investigate. Things aren’t what they seem and the Ghostbusters need to figure out what’s actually going on. Wonderfully threatening main villain and some actually creepy scenes.

    S1 E4 Slimer, Come Home (Skip) – This episode was penned by J. Michael Straczynski (of Babylon 5 fame). As such, the banter and dialog are a lot better than other episodes. However, it’s still a Slimer-centric episode and those are a HARD pass for me. Slimer is a pest, and the other characters love/like him for entirely unstated reasons. He causes way more problems than he solves but he’s the designated “lovable” kids mascot. I first watched The Real Ghostbusters when I was maybe 8 years old, and I could tell I was being pandered to back then. Slimer grates all the more on my adult nerves.

    S1 E5 Troll Bridge (Maybe) – A horde of Trolls take over a bridge after one of their number goes missing. The Ghostbusters have 12 hours to find and retrieve the wayward Troll before the rest of them invade. It’s a perfectly normal episode, but nothing really jumps out. The threat is goofy and not much interesting really happens.

    S1 E6 The Boogieman Cometh (Watch) – The Ghostbusters are called in by a couple of children who are terrified of their closet. The terror turns out to be real, as their closet is a portal to the realm of The Boogieman, a supernatural creature that feeds on fear. Wonderfully creepy visuals and some nice Ghostbuster-y action sequences.

    S1 E7 Mr. Sandman, Dream Me a Dream (Maybe) – The Ghostbusters go to investigate a case, only to find a slew of surreal happenings. Turns out a rogue Sandman has decided to stop giving normal dreams and instead make everyone sleep for 500 years. There’s some nice back-and-forth between the Sandman and the ghostbusters as the two sides try to beat the other’s plans. Unfortunately it’s impossible to take the Sandman seriously because the voice they gave him is so goofy.

    S1 E8 When Halloween Was Forever (Maybe) – The ghostbusters face off against the original spirit of Halloween, Sam Hain. For some reason the animation quality in this episode drops sharply. It’s never great, but it’s noticeably worse here. The villain is fine, and there’s some neat parts to the episode, but I’d probably skip it.

    S1 E9 Look Homeward, Ray (Maybe) – Ray heads back to his hometown in upstate New York to sit at the head of a parade. He meets his old crush and his high school buddy/bully. Shenanigans ensue. Ray gets made a fool of, but eventually saves the day. The level of high school drama in this one is cringe, and Ray’s motivations exist largely to service the plot. Dude quits being a Ghostbuster because of one embarrassing incident and decides… to be a mascot for a shoe store in his home town? He has a doctorate. Quitting doesn’t make sense, but even if he did he’d go back to academia, or open an occult bookstore or something. Despite all this, the plot is still stronger than a lot of Season 1 episodes.

    S1 E10 – Take Two (Watch) – This one is kind of clever. The premise is that the live-action movies are based on the exploits of the Real Ghostbusters. It takes real hutzpah for the spinoff kids cartoon to tell a story about how the movies are dramatizations. For the premise alone, I’d say watch this one.

    S1 E11 Citizen Ghost (Watch) – This episode is a flashback to right after the end of the first film. Some neat continuity (such as explaining why their uniforms changed in the cartoon and why the containment unit is bigger). It is, sadly, a slimer-centric episode, though maybe the most tolerable of them.

    S1 E12 Janine’s Genie (Skip) – Janine asks to come with the rest of the team on a job, and manages to actually bag a ghost, but the building’s owner can’t pay them and gives her an old lamp instead. The rest of the plot unfolds exactly as you’d expect. Despite being Janine’s first time with a Proton Pack, I’d skip this one.

    S1 E13 X-Mas Marks the Spot (Skip) – The Ghostbusters time travel (?) back to Victorian England and accidentally capture the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future (??). This alters the future, so they have to go back and fix the problem by releasing the ghosts (???). I mean, come on.

    Final assessment

    Out of all 13 episodes in Season 1, I’d only say that 4 are actually good. Even the “Maybe” episodes are merely serviceable. Mrs. Rogers Neighborhood, The Boogieman Cometh, Take Two, and Citizen Ghost are probably worth your time, but this season is definitely the series “finding it’s feet”.

    Hopefully Season 2 will be better.

  • RPG Review – Wildsea

    RPG Review – Wildsea

    A forest has consumed the planet. Trees the size of skyscrapers cover every inch of airable land. Only isolated mountaintops remain as proof of the ground far below. You command the crew of a chainsaw driven ship that “sails” this verdant expanse. Your crew are humans, cactus-people, humanoid insect colonies, and mushroom men. Not to mention the “weirder” members, like reanimated ship-golems, octopus people, and moth-folk. You are those who ply the rustling waves. Welcome to Wildsea.

    Wildsea is an incredibly imaginative RPG packed with amazing weird fiction. I have some complaints with the included ruleset, but I also have to call out the book’s focus on approachability and it’s robust GM’s toolkit. For a book about such a weird world, it’s one of the most down-to-earth and approahable RPGs I’ve seen.

    Let’s start with the world because the world of Wildsea is sodding fantastic. The whole surface of the planet has been choked over by a cataclysmic event called “The Verdancy”. This event claimed practically all low-elevation land, leaving only scattered mountaintops as viable refuge from the endless growth. Civilization exists only in dense pockets perched atop these precarious heights. Trade is handled by merchants who cross the dangerous Wildsea on ships rigged with massive chainsaws along their hulls. These chainsaw ships tear through the upper canopy, pulled along by immense metal teeth. The sea grows back behind them, so verdant that all evidence of damage is gone within hours. The players take the role of the crew of one of these ships. This world is rich with detail and ripe for adventure. I want to to play in it. but that brings us to the elephant in the branches: The rules.

    While I adore the worldbuilding, I’m not the biggest fan of the “Wild Words” engine that fuels the fiction. The engine has some sound underpinnings, but I feel that the resolution mechanic is sadly lacking. Basically, Wild Words is a D6 “dice pool” system. You add 6-sided dice to a pool of dice based on your character’s stats, skills, and resources. You compile together your various advantages, then roll the dice. You then look for your highest roll. A 6 is a flat success, a 5 or a 4 is a success with a cost (lose resources, etc.), 3, 2, and 1 are failures that add a narrative complications. There’s some other rules, but this is the core of the system. The issue I have is with “The Cut”, which is how the GM (cutely/superfluously called a “Firefly” in Wildsea) can adjust the odds. The Cut takes away your best roll. So a Cut of 1 takes your highest die, a cut of 2 takes your 2 highest dice, etc. The problem with this system is that it’s mathematically kind of garbage. I may do a deep dive on it sometime, but basically it’s impossible to tell at-the-table whether a roll is easy, average, hard, or Very Hard. It’s a messy mechanic, and I like my resolution mechanics fairly clean.

    Despite my complaints about the rules, I do have to applaud Wildsea’s approachability. Unlike a lot of other indy RPG products, Wildsea dedicates a good chunk of the book to training players and GMs alike in how to play, both how to play Wildsea specifically, as well as how to play RPGs in general. The book assumes you’ve never run an RPG before. One could argue that stance is staggeringly nieve, but it’s also refreshing to see a book that refuses to speak to the obvious audience of hardcore RPG fans. This book wants to be your first RPG, and critically, tries to make that easy. Even though I don’t agree with the ruleset, I’d highly reccomend reading this book just to glean it for ideas.

    So can I reccomend Wildsea as an RPG? Sadly, no. I’ve got serious issues with the Wild Words engine that powers this product, and I just flat out think there are better RPG engines. However, it’s phenomenal worldbuilding and its sheer unrelentingly inclusive attitude stop me from writing it off altogether. GMs should read this book. Even if you’re never going to run it at a table, there’s too much good stuff in here to just ignore.

  • Blades in the Dark – So edgy we put knives in the title

    Blades in the Dark – So edgy we put knives in the title

    Old man yells at cloud time. Except the clouds are missing and everything’s dead and the last cities are protected by lightning barriers fueled by the blood of demonic whales. And you’re a gang of cutthroats looking to get as much coin as you can at the end of the world. You’ll probably wind up dead along the way, but hey that’s what happens when your life is

    Blades in the Dark

    Sounds pretty metal, right? Because of the blades? See what I did there? Unfortunately, Blades in the Dark is a brilliant RPG mired in a few (sadly fatal) flaws.

    First the good: Blades is a study in focused design. It isn’t everything to everyone. No. It’s one very specific thing and if you don’t like that thing it will cut you. It’s peaky blinders in a mashup of Fallen London and Dishonored.

    The setting is a rich tapestry of horrible people all being horrible to each other. It’s a pressure cooker of opposing factions. It’s rife with potential for drama, conflict, and adventure. Sorry, did I say adventure? Crime. I meant crime.

    This focus is most of it’s brilliance. Every page of the rules feeds into telling this exact story. Do you want to play cutthroats in a dark enchanted London at the end of the world? This is the perfect game for that. However, it’s the perfect game ONLY for that. If you’re not looking to tell a bleak, ugly, and gritty tale about the slow decline of a gang of thugs as they try to better themselves through crime, you’re not looking to play Blades in the dark.

    It is also, sadly, mired by one of the worst resolution mechanics I’ve seen in an RPG. Let’s break it down:

    • Dice pool – Cool, I’m with you.
    • Succeed on a 4, 5, or 6, but a 6 is a big success – Fine by me
    • You only ever need 1 success – Hey, this sounds pretty easy to read at the table!
    • Now let’s talk about your position and effect – My what now?
    • Are you in a Safe, Risky, or Desperate position? Please see literally every chapter of the rulebook for how this gets modified by like a dozen interconnected systems – Umm…
    • And your effect, is it limited, standard, or greater? Here’s an index of all the rules which can impact that. – Now, hold on…
    • Oh and are you taking a Devil’s Bargain! They’re a great rule where you get an extra die by screwing yourself over. Not a success, mind you, just a die. – Are we doing this with every roll?

    Every action feels like taking a law exam. I loathe it. There’s too many knobs to turn. How big is your dice pool (there’s rules for that) and what’s your position (there’s rules for that), and your effect (check these other rules for how that gets impacted)…. Every. bloody. action. needs to be adjudicated like we’re negotiating a lease.

    These mechanics slow the game to an absolute crawl as you try to adjudicate all the different elements of the dice pool and the potential outcomes. You don’t roll as often in Blades as you might in another RPG, but somehow it feels like half the game is taken up by these negotiations.

    I think Harper (the game’s designer) backed himself into a corner on this. Harper wanted to simplify the resolution mechanic (an admirable goal!) but accidentally turned it into a convoluted mess as he added more and more factors which could impact dice pool size, Position, and Effect.

    But hey, it’s all D6’s and the target number never changes!

    The result is a massive tome (308 PAGES of rules and lore) that has magically gained a reputation as a “simple” RPG. Blades is an incredibly clean RPG, but it’s not a simple one. All the rules feed into each other, the subsystems all click, and that tickles the brains of a certain category of RPG fan. They conflate that synergy with simplicity. They might call it “elegant”. I wouldn’t, but I get where they’re coming from.

    At the end of the day, the thing that ultimately turned me away from Blades in the Dark is the story it wants to tell. Blades isn’t a hopeful game. It’s not a game about beating the odds or carving out some kindness from an uncaring world. It’s a game where you “drive your character like a stolen car”. The goal is to get into a spectacular wreck so you can watch the flames.

    Some folks find that fun. Me? I prefer a bit more escapism in my games. “Try all you want, the system is going to grind you down” is a bit too real for my tastes.