[Review] CthulhuTech “Dark Passions”
I’ve played a great deal of 1920’s Cthulhu since my recent introduction to it, and loved it. I never thought it would translate well into a modern setting… I was very wrong! The art alone has me inspired to run a modern setting with Lovecraft’s weird and creepy “twist”. Throughout H.P. Lovecraft’s work you get a sense of reality but not quite as we know it. It’s like viewing our own world through a steamy window. CthulhuTech has captured this well in my opinion.
“Dark passions” has myriad of stuff on the impact of cults on the world; from their recruitment methods to the government organisations which monitor them. I like the NPCs included. They are well filled out with a good mixture of Fluff and crunch. There is short stories sprinkled throughout the book, perfect for inspiration for that twisted adventure factory of a brain you have. I really like the stories not only for the quality fiction, but also the nice breakup they offer in the text. Nobody likes reading from a PDF, these little stanzas provide nice little spice to a cool book. Like pepper (sic) :)
My two favourite aspects of the book is the art and the dense content on cults, there are ALOT of cults in here with plenty backstory. Perfect for slotting seamlessly into your current campaign or as inspiration for that story arc you’ve been plotting.
The art is fantastic. Good art in a game book always adds a great deal towards their usability in my opinion. For me; if a book is beautiful, I end up reading it more often.
What I liked; The top quality art, the creepy fiction, NPC fluff and the heart of the book the Cults.
The only thing I think could have been done a little better is the layout of the NPC crunch. The stats for the NPCs are all run squished up in a sentence rather than an easier to read table format. However this is a minor gripe and to fix it would have increased page count significantly, therefore reducing the cool content. So I’ll let you off this time Catalyst game labs.
You can buy Dark passions here. I think it’s good value for money.
Want to learn more about CthulhuTech? Read on…
- WildFire: CthulhuTech Quick-Start Rules
- Atomic Array: Episode 013:
CthulhuTech RPG - Mad Brew Labs: CthulhuTech:
The Game That Almost Wasn’t - Critical Hits: When
Horror Meets Awesome: CthulhuTech - Kore Dice: Interview
with CthulhuTech’s Mike Vaillancourt - Stan!: The
Stars Will Be Right - Arcane Underground: The
Saga of CthulhuTech (Updated) - Atomic Array: Episode 040:
CthulhuTech - Blog of a new RPGer: [Review]
CthulhuTech “Dark Passions”
Wizards drop Star wars!
It’s official, Wizards of the coast have confirmed that they will not renew the star wars license in May. WOTC will no longer sell the books or their miniatures after august.
Eh? What’s happening here? Am I being obtuse when I say “If you cant sell Star wars licensed products what can you sell?”
Selling Star Wars to geeks is like selling warm ale to Englishmen. If Star Wars is an untenable franchise, what state is DnD4e? The Economic downturn has hit my local area very hard. Thousands have been made redundant here.
I didn’t realise it was this bad.
You have more power than your Government!
The boxing day tsunami was a terrible disaster. The online community mobilised, inspiring citizens to donate and contribute in their millions. Citizens donated much more than their respective governments. YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
Drive Thru RPG has ganged up with LOADS of publishers, If you donate $20 (USD) they will double it; AND give you over a thousand dollars worth of RPG eBooks.
Please help. DrivethruRPG will reward you if you do.
Product Link here:
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=78023
[1km1kt] Cyberpunk revival project Banner and Logo Unveiled
Rob Lang of the free RPG blog has produced some lovely new art to advertise the contest.
Thanks Dr Lang! Head over to http://1km1kt.net/community and enter now!
[CONTEST] 1KM1KT CYBERPUNK REVIVAL PROJECT
"Adam Zuro" by Chad Michael Ward
I’ve decided to run a contest through 1km1kt. I love Cyberpunk, I want to see it revived. UPGRADED
Here’s my post on the 1km1kt project forum
****
£30 in Amazon vouchers to the winner!
Cyberpunk is dead. We want to save her! Bring her back and you could win £30.
Here’s what you’ve got to do
- Tell us here in this thread that you intend to enter
- Write a Cyberpunk setting
- Include Keeton as an NPC (Glorious benefactor also acceptable)
- Submit before 2359Hrs(GMT) on the 30th of June 2010
- Make a thread here about your game (optional, but we really want you to)
Rules
Gamers need rules. Here they are.
- No Copyright Infringement (or you die, seriously)
- Must include Keeton as an NPC
- £30 will be in Amazon vouchers
- This is not a team effort. One author. However…
- You may use art or system/mechanic with permission.
- Must not exceed 30 pages
- Must be complete, playable setting
- Must be PDF or RTF format (ask for help if you are unsure)
- Open to all Professionals and amateurs alike
- The judges -WILL- enter but cannot win
- I am the law. (The Judges’ decision is final)
Judging criteria
You really, really wanna win £30? Here’s how we’ll judge it.
- Keeton or Glorious benefactor as an NPC
- (Goal) Is this game modern Cyberpunk?
- (Complete) Done? Is it playable?
- (Attractive) Is it pretty?
- (Professional) How much effort went into layout and style?
- (Extras) Did you include an actual cover, index, character sheet or any other cool things you get in a proper RPG?
*****
Enter Now!
Kobold Quarterly: A magazine review from a newbie
First impressions count
My first impression upon seeing the front cover was utter amazement. I always thought Kobold magazine is a fanzine. It’s not. What immediately strikes you is the art; it’s a very pretty front cover by a Nicole Cardiff called the “Winter Druid”, according to the credits.
My initial intention was to skip through the magazine, speed read to get an overview. I kept stopping to read articles and letters. The Style is good and the content is excellent. I’m glad to see plenty of Pathfinder specific stuff too. I guess that’s not really a surprise considering it’s the current pet favourite. It’s also the only d20 rule set I own, I love it.
A couple of my favourite articles
The Elves: the fallen ones.
The idea seems to be to reinvent the core races over several issues. This particular issue was focused on the Elves. The Article provides three pages of fluff and crunch. They seemed heavily influenced by Dragonage, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s nice to see the races redone. You could use one of these articles to add unique flavour to your setting, instantly. No conversion required.
The Ecology of the Froghemoth.
This little piece introduces a cool new monster. A Froghemoth complete with fluff, life cycle, stats and really top quality art. What’s cool for me is the stats are provided for every stage of the life cycle. There’s even a rare variant included “the Electric Froghemoth”.
Lessons from the shadows: History’s greatest assassins.
This article is about ninjas, seriously. Need I say more? There is never enough ninja.
Spice up your Combat Encounters: the Combat Skill Challenge
The Chatty DM’s first ever published article. It’s full of good advice for a GM fed up with “You kick down the door and are faced with two Orcs, Roll initiative”. All in chatty’s familiar friendly, fatherly tone.
The Conclusion
Feel the love? I’m going to subscribe to a print copy.
Kobold has some amazing art and great content. I would wholeheartedly recommend it. If you play another fantasy system which is not d20, you could mine it for ideas. However it is a d20 mag. It’s just nice to see a RPG exclusive magazine. The last one I seen was a friend’s old (1983) copy of white dwarf.
Oh how times change.
What’s wrong with a good ole Dungeon delve?
I’m getting ready to run my first pathfinder game with my two players. As I’ve been preparing for the game I realise how unfamiliar I am with the whole system. Pathfinder/D&D 3.5 is NOT “rules-lite”. As an inexperienced role-player a 500-odd page rule book like pathfinder is intimidating, especially considering I only have until Sunday to learn it and get an adventure ready.
Ok, time to admit defeat. It’s freaking impossible, the game will be piss-poor and I’ll embarrass myself.
Until I hit a realisation. You don’t need to build an entire world, with cultures, factions, intrigue, political tensions and allegiances. Not yet anyway. If I can get a vague familiarity with the combat mechanic and the skill check resolution system I can run a dungeon crawl. Reference obscure or unfamiliar rules as I go.
100% old school hack and slash
Ok that’s not going to be fun long term. For me anyway. I can add complexity as my knowledge and understanding of the rules gets better. The setting and world can just evolve through play. Don’t get me wrong I love the creative challenge a cohesive setting will present. I just can’t take it on right now.
Perhaps little baby steps, just to start off with.
Character Generation by email, impossible?
Ok, I’m going to run a pathfinder game. I think having the characters 99% done before game-night, gives you more “game-night”. I understand character generation is part of the fun, but who wants to slog through the nightmare that is Pathfinder Chargen. Don’t get me wrong it’s not that I don’t like it. I love it. I don’t yet fully understand it.
I’m still new at this!
I emailed the two players step by step instructions on what they should do. I’ve had to trust them not to cheat. But if they want to cheat, hell mend ‘em.
Neither of them have played pathfinder so I was expecting the usual Human, Fighter, Lawful good that I suspect is the overused default.
How pleasantly surprised I was to find human ranger and a Half-elf bard in my inbox.
The advantage I have found with this remote method is the masses of time it gives me to go through the rules, trying to work out which bonuses and modifiers go where. Perfect for a newbie. Now it’s all generated I can also work on an adventure, knowing what characters I have helps to lubricate cogs in the old ideas machine.
Here’s looking forward to a good game and great Christmas!
Merry Christmas and happy Hogmanay!
I’ve been bloodied, i’m now a GM.
I ran a little adventure the two of my friends who make up our motley game group. I chose the star wars D6 system. Needless to say I made a few minor errors but I enjoyed myself. Hopefully the players did too.
What I enjoyed:
I liked that familiar feel I got with the universe. We’ve all seen star wars. It was really cool to tell your own star wars story. I loved throwing hundreds of dice! One of the NPCs was a force user. He was really quite powerful; 12d6 for DEX is a huge number of dice clattering around the table. All roleplayers love chucking die!
I stole the wild dice idea from the 2nd edition rule set. I’m very glad I did. On a couple of occasions the characters attempted to roll against something really difficult to near impossible. The wild die managed to allow them even though they are not skilled enough to roll high enough to pass normally. I think this adds a great Cinematic experience. They are heroes after all.
What I didn’t enjoy:
Counting all the rolls, especially for the hugely powerful NPCs! I know that I will become much quicker in the mental arithmetic area, but it does slow the game down a little. In the end I just had to glance at the roll and judge on a scale 5 point scale of dud to excellent. Just to keep things flowing.
What I did well:
I managed to avoid railroading. The player who gives me a lift after the sessions really emphasised how much I should avoid this, so I put a lot of effort into open-endedness.
What I should improve for next time:
I don’t think I gave both players equal opportunity to fully use their characters. One of them was a Pirate and the other a Scout. The pirate was easy because he’s a Womanising, drink riddled gambling addict. The strong silent type was hard to play in this adventure. I will not let this happen again. It will balance out over the course of the campaign, but no one likes spending a 4 hour game session being left out. I will try to cater the adventures to get the most for both players.
REVIEW: Dog Town- Free RPG about gangsters
I’m going to start by saying this RPG is FREE! You can download it at Drivethru RPG, 1km1kt or direct from coldblooded games.
If you want the dead tree version it’s on LULU for cost price.
This is a 1970’s Gangsters and streetpunks Roleplaying game, accordingly the language and themes are for a mature audience.
I’ve been sitting on this review for a while as I really wanted to do a play test as well as a review, but alas i’ve haven’t yet had the opportunity. So I can’t hold it in any longer. I’m like an over agitated bottle of cloudy lemonade, ready to burst.
What a game! For £0.00 you get NINE professional quality e-books, including core rules, adventures and locations with maps. The Layout is easy to read with evocative street language that really brings the setting to life.
Character generation has three options. The first is the crunchy generation using an extensive skills set to get your punk “just right”. The second is to choose a character from the “20 punks” book, which has pre-made characters. But to be honest if you are incapable of creating your own character using the original rules set, even with the Excel spread sheet to guide you like lassy, Go for the lighter version of the rules “Dogtown, stripped”.
I think the author has reached his goal of recreating our favourite gangster films of yore (Scarface, Reservoir dogs etc) with an added dash of GTA.
With the influences of this game so obvious, adventures and plots are never-ending!
I think the only thing requiring a little improvement is the book covers or titles. They don’t make it clear what the book is. For example Dogtown stripped, is this 2nd edition revised or simply a rules lite version. Grenson park, The missing mafioso etc could all have a little subtitle on the cover which says “An Adventure module for Dogtown” or some such thing. 
From a new readers point of view it’s a little difficult to understand which books i should be using and which books do what. Otherwise thats my only little gripe!
Having read this game I want to rob a shark, to pay my smack dealer.
Highly recommended!
I promise I will playtest it soon as I can!
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