Dungeons of Time - Horror Edition

Okay, so I've been MIA for a few weeks.  I was on a forced hiatus due to two factors: my new job and one vicious fucking cold.  Between the two, I didn't have the time or energy to make blog posts.  But, since my favorite holiday, Halloween, is fast approaching, I had to have some sort of horror post for the occasion.

Now some people celebrate Halloween by going to parties or taking their kids out trick-or-treating, perhaps watching horror flicks on television, which that's perfectly fine.  But what if that's not your cup of witch's brew?  Maybe you want to have a few friends over for a special game night.  Now, there are plenty of options for tabletop gaming for Halloween.  If you like board games, I seriously recommend Betrayal at House on the Hill and Zombies!!!  Let's say, though, for the sake of argument, that you have a copy of Savage Worlds just begging for you to utilize for some All Hallow's Eve gaming.  You're in luck, for this RPG has plenty of horror supplements that allow you to create the horror experience of your dreams.  So let's take a look at the treasury of terror for Savage Worlds.

Let's say you don't have a lot of time and money to put together a campaign or you have players who've never played Savage Worlds before.  Is there a horror filled Savage Worlds adventure that has all the components you need (including pre-generated characters and figure flats) for free?  In short, yes.  Just download The Wild Hunt, which was the test drive adventure Pinnacle put out for this year's Free RPG Day.  The adventure takes a group of unrelated people thrown into a sleepy town that is under the thrall of a malicious spirit and his legion of zombies.  It's completely self contained - all you need is the Savage Worlds rulebook, and is perfect for a quick one shot with little preparation.

If your players have already experienced the terror of The Wild Hunt and crave more zombie armageddon, look no further than Daring Entertainment's War of the Dead, which is a serial adventure of surviving a zombie outbreak.  So far, three chapters have been released, covering almost 40 adventures, with a fourth chapter coming soon.  War of the Dead is perfect for zombie fans looking for a long campaign.

Perhaps survival horror is not your bag.  Perhaps you wish to subject your players to inevitable terror, death,  and madness when they encounter the star born horrors from the works of H. P. Lovecraft.  Then you should not hesitate to pick up Realms of Cthulhu from Reality Blurs.  While the Call of Cthulhu RPG has been terrorizing players for decades, Realms of Cthulhu brings the minions of the Elder Gods to Savage Worlds.  Whether you play in the classic era of the 1920s - 1930s or a more modern setting, you'll find plenty of cultists, forbidden texts, and creatures that defy human logic to add to your campaign.  If you want to add more of an espionage element to your Lovecraftian horror (or to any modern horror campaign setting) you can also find plenty of use from Reality Blurs' latest (and long developed) setting, Agents of Oblivion.  Many have said that you can create many different styles of campaigns, from an occult version of James Bond, to X-Files or Men in Black, which makes this product extremely versatile.  Check out both of these titles.

Then again, your players may be less interested in monster investigating and more on monster hunting.  If they also would like some Victoriana with their horror, then Pinnacle's Rippers is perfect.  Imagine if the movie Van Helsing didn't suck, and you have something close to Rippers.  Player take the role of Victorian era ladies and gentlemen of various nationalities and social strata who live a double life.  By day, the go about their normal business.  By night, they hunt the servants of a sinister organization known only as the Cabal.  They gained the name Rippers from their use of Rippertech, which infuses the powers of the monsters they hunt into their bodies to give them an even playing field.  However, as Nietzsche once said, "he who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster."

 Regardless of which horror campaign you wish to use, any Savage Worlds gamemaster can make use of the brand new Horror Companion, which replaces the Horror Toolkits from the old edition.  This handy book allows you to improve your games with new systems, tables, spells and gadgets, horror races for players (including one I've been interested in, the dhampyr), and other tools.

If you're planning on running a horror adventure for Halloween, or any other time, any of these products are a great idea.  If you're interested in picking them up, make your way over to DriveThruRPG.com.  You'll find them by clicking Savage Worlds in the Rule System drop down menu or typing them in the search bar.  Hope you and your friends have a happy and haunted game session this Halloween.

If you're not the kind of person who prefers a little solo gaming, don't worry.  I'll bring to light some of my favorite horror and Halloween video games tomorrow.

Dungeons of Time - Sagave Worlds of MARS

I think it's time we go back into the dungeons, once again.  Today, we're going to take a look at a game from Adamant Entertainment.  These guys have been making products for numerous RPG systems: Mutants & Masterminds, d20 Modern, D&D 4th Edition, Pathfinder, and, of course, Savage Worlds.  Some of their upcoming projects that might interest you include a mash-up of wild west and wuxia (like in those classic kung fu movies) called Far West and an RPG based on the adventures of the original six-gun, six-string samurai of science, Buckaroo Banzai.  Whether or not these games will be available for Savage Worlds is unknown to me.  We'll just have to wait and keep our fingers crossed.

However, today's game in question is actually from a few years ago.  Back then, I became enamored with Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series of books, which dealt with a civil war veteran, John Carter, being astrally transported to a fantastical version of the planet Mars and his adventures there, among other things.  He became one of my favorite characters, along with Conan, in fantasy/sci-fi literature.  With the Barsoom series, Burroughs popularized the Planetary Romance genre (also known as Sword & Planet).  His stories inspired writers, filmmakers, and game designers.  To prove that, I present to you the first Sword & Planet game for Savage Worlds: MARS.

MARS originally started out as a campaign setting for 3rd Edition d20 system.  After 4th Edition came out, Adamant decided to move the game over to Savage Worlds.  MARS will be very familiar to fans of Barsoom, but there are many differences.  For instance, almost every race in MARS only has two arms; no four armed Tharks or White Apes, here.  Speaking of White Apes, they are a sentient, warlike race with their own kingdom (think Planet of the Apes meets ancient Rome).  The Grey Martians, an octopoid race, battle in giant tripods, just like those found in H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds.

What you will find in MARS that is reminiscent of Barsoom is exotic locales filled with ancient ruins and strange beasts, once venerable empires using strength and cunning to survive in a fading world, savage races to wage war with, cool gadgets, such as flying ships and radium guns, and all the action, adventure, and intrigue you'd expect.

While three of the native races (Red Men, Green Men, and White Apes) can be selected for player characters, many people will probably want to play a human (like John Carter or Ulysses Paxton).  Not only is this option available, but there are published adventures that deal with one or more Earthlings mysteriously appearing on the Martian surface, whether they're the player characters or NPCs.  The Grey Men, however, are strictly an NPC race, as they're meant to be the strange, subterranean menace to the surface dwellers.  Another "race," the Synthe-Men, are homunculi who were charged with the duty of maintaining and protecting the Martian canal system (which makes it difficult to justify one as a player character).

If this sounds like your idea of adventure, then check out the entire line of MARS products at DriveThru RPG (this page contains products for both 3rd Edition d20, which are now defunct, and Savage Worlds).  While Adamant is busy working on other stuff, at the moment, they did promise more adventures and supplements will be available in the future.

If, however, you are interested in a more authentic approach to Barsoom for your Savage Worlds game, I recommend Savage Barsoom.  This blog contains lots of helpful information for creating games in Burroughs' version of Mars, including articles on races, creatures, culture, religion, technology, and more.  He also has links to companies that sell gaming miniatures for the different races/creatures of Barsoom.  Definitely go check it out.

Until next time, make sure to keep your hands of my dice.

Dungeons of Time - Savage Worlds

Believe it or not, dear readers, there was a time when I was completely jaded with the hobby of tabletop roleplaying.  In 2003, Wizards of the Coast came out with Dungeons & Dragons 3.5.  Since this made the hundreds of dollars worth of 3rd Edition D&D books I bought obsolete, I got pissed and parted ways with their products (and if 4th Edition is any indication, I'm not coming back anytime soon).

The other system I played, White Wolf's World of Darkness, was improving their system.  But, in 2004, my "rpg mistress" went from being this dark, mysterious, sexy, and sophisticated piece of ass to a mopey, depressing, juvenile bitch.  They basically wrote the end of the world for each game in the system and it ended up being a poorly executed doomfest.  I promptly ignored their little pity party and kept playing with the old story they wrote before they ruined everything.  Then, White Wolf dropped a bomb: they retconned the entire World of Darkness.  Some things seemed familiar, others were interesting, but, as a whole, I was severely disappointed.

I was also tired of the same old crap.  I fooled around with other sytems over the years: Rifts, Legend of the Five Rings, etc., but none of them inspired me.  All of their dice systems were getting stale and I got sick of having to remember complex rules for dice mechanics or being frustrated by bad rolls ruining a game (especially those game sessions when all of my die rolls sucked).  I also felt that systems like d20 didn't give you as much of a heroic feeling (unless you were high level, then, it just got boring).

At this point, I came to one conclusion about roleplaying games:

Fuck this shit!

I was about to hang up my dice bag for good.  Roleplaying was one of the few hobbies that I cherished since I was very young and I was about to abandon it.  The spark wasn't there, anymore.  I loved her, but I wasn't in love with her.  It was killing me.

Fortunately, I think it was toward the end of 2007, I discovered a game that reignited my love for the hobby and reminded me why I got into it in the first place.

That game is Savage Worlds.

Free RPG Day followup

Dungeons and Dragons 3.5
without the boring parts.

Anacronus, Alchemilla, and Kspaz walk into a nerd store*. No, it's not the start of a joke, it's the opening line for my article on our local Free RPG Day. Ours is at the Fantasy Shop in St. Charles. We went up there to get free swag and see demos on different Role Playing Games (RPG's). I got a one shot for Pathfinder (my favorite system.) as well as a dice tumbler, and a one shot for The Walking Dead game, (because I had an idea for a zombie game a while back and was interested in the mechanics.)

Then we signed on to play in a demo of Savage Worlds. Savage Worlds and I have a strange history. I was told of the RPG and how it was centered around story, and characters rather then rules. Dnd has a list of rules long enough to intimidate anyone coming into the game (which makes it hard for people to get into role playing at first.) So I bought it, the only book you need to run the game is $10. A plus since games usually cost anywhere from $50 to $200 to start.

Small in size and price,
Large in fun.

However after buying it we tried a few times to get a game going, but always had issues. Having someone who knew the game, and had a well thought out story helped a lot. This game was awesome, the combat is easy to pick up. And gives either side in the battle a chance to win. Luck plays a lot more of a role in Savage Worlds. Never in combat did I think "Okay we can take these guys", but neither did I feel like we had no chance to win. And this is coming from a group were one party member died.

The story was that of a team during the Revolutionary War, who was charged with finding a certain man who has ties to the British Loyalists (tories to those who know the era). Later we find out he is involved in the occult and, well I don't want to say all hell broke loose, but crazy things did happen. Very fun game, and it showed me finally how a session of this game should be handled.

So you may want to seek out Savage Worlds, I know Anacronus is a big fan of the system, and really I've always been waiting for a real game of it to judge how great it could be. This is an excellent system for people new to role playing, and for a group that may want to try different games every couple of weeks, but don't want to pay a lot for the different books.

I'll not say too much more so Anacronus can do a full review of the system someday.

*Nerd Store being my title for any store which deals in primarily in Board Games, RPGs (think Dungeons and Dragons not Final Fantasy), comics, ect.