Suspended Transmission

 

Suppressed Transmission:  The First Broadcast and Suppressed Transmission The  Second Broadcast (pub 2000) published by Steve Jackson Games

Both volumes of Suppressed Transmission:  The First Broadcast and Suppressed Transmission The Second Broadcast  were published by Steve Jackson Games  back in 2000 and consist of collections of columns by Kenneth Hite, known for the RPGs, Trail of Cthulhu and Night’s Dark Agents, as well as several books for White Wolf Publishing and recently announced as the lead designer for Vampire The Masquerade 5^th Edition, published in Pyramid Magazine, which had morphed at the time from a money losing glossy paged print magazine to a (theoretically) non-money losing web based magazine. The  topic of the column was loosely defined as Hite rattling on about whatever he wanted to write about, just so long as it did not cover game industry news or gaming reviews. Given pretty much carte blanche to write on whatever topics he wanted, Hite eventually decided to focus on four genres- alternate history, horror, conspiracies and secret history-and how players and GMs could incorporate the topic at hand into a RPG campaign.

For example, the very 1^st Transmission touches on all four, looking at an early conspiracy belief among some people that Abraham Lincoln was too good a politician and lawyer to be some backwoods nobody and that he was actually the son of Supreme Court Justice John Marshall or former Vice President John C. Calhoun. After all, Lincoln leaves no historical paper trail until he begins his legal career so all we really know about his early life is what he told the public. Similarly, the theme of secret or alternate history could take the suicide of Merriweather Lewis and ague that he was murdered because He Knew Too Much. For horror, he touches upon Edgar Allen Poe, setting a campaign in a world in which Poe’s stories were real. Finally, for alternate history in the first column, he briefly looks at what might have happened in the Napoleonic Wars if Wellington had died fighting in 1809 instead of leading the campaign that defeated Napoleon at Waterloo? How would European history have changed? Could England have found another general with Wellington’s ability? The rest of the book and the next one looks at similar questions, only in more detail in each column. After all, when was the last time you read any discussion of Paul Bunyan as an American God and other larger than life American myths?

The columns collected in each book generally focus on a particular topic, (strange)historical event or conspiracy theory, along with annotations. Anyone familiar with the X-Files television series should know about Roswell and the spaceship that allegedly crash-landed there but imagine what would could have happened if the crash landing had taken place a century or two earlier? Hite looks a six potential alternative histories that games could use in a campaign. Other columns in the First Transmission look at the Philadelphia Experiment, Norton 1:  Emperor of the United States and the history of Chess, which is certainly a bit weirder than you would expect. The Second Transmission meanwhile looks at Robin Hood and his predecessors,  the occult Shakespeare, Who REALLY sunk the Titanic and why,  and the Knights Templar in America (which, if you remember , is a major plot device in the first National Treasure movie). Oh, and Hite tosses in a comparison between the Maid of Orleans, Joan of Arc and Gilles De Rais, better known as Bluebeard.

Both books are highly entertaining romps through the borderlands of history and sociology and it is obvious that Hite loves this stuff and, even more, loves talking about it. Either is the sort of book that you can pick up, open to any page and, assuming you have an interest in conspiracy theories and the secret history of Planet Earth, find yourself immediately engrossed in the subject matter. You won’t find any pre-stated NPCs in either book (for that, look for a copy of GURPS Who’s Who) but you will find plenty of adventure  seeds and ideas as well as hours of entertaining reading. Both books, are as already noted, well annotated and have a pretty exhaustive indexes. Actual reference pages at the end of each column would be helpful, if only to see what sources Hite drew upon  for his columns, but that is a minor quibble. For anyone running a pulp or modern day RPG campaign, the Suppressed Transmission books are wonderful resources. For anyone else, they are incredibly fun reads.

Review: Dimensional Outbreak

Dimensional Outbreak PAL 875 Pub. by Palladium Books Softcover, 192 pages. MSRP $24.95.

Dimensional Outbreak is Rifts Dimension Book 12 (both there are a lot of them, aren't there) focusing on the effects of the Minion War, the clash between the rival dimensions of Hades and Dyval. Contains more details on the Demon Fleet and Demon Magic (60+ new spells and rituals), a timeline for both Phase World and Center as well as maps of Center.

As is the case will all Palliadum books I have seen, Dimensional Outbreak is physically well put together. The cover is tightly bound and uses the standard Pallaidum Rifts dress. Inside, there's a very thorough 4 page TOC, alas no index though.

The last page gives some indication as to the direction Palladium plans to go with the Minion War, with ads for upcoming tie-ins to Heroes Unlimited. another Phase World sourcebook (listing the 2000 people who purchased a limited print to help Palladium during its financial woes a few years ago) and another WorldBook, this one returning to the New German Republic.

All in all, Dimensional Outbreak is a very sound release, but one most likely finding interest (and sales) among those who are already fans of Palladium's Megaverse

Player's Handbook 3

Been flipping through the new Player's Handbook 3 this morning and here are some first impressions;

We are getting very far away from the archetypal fantasy races of gnomes, elves, dwarves, etc.. Now you can play a wilden, which is a living plant or a shardmind, which is a crystalline creature fromed of fragments of something called the Living Gate. We're certainly not in Middle Earth any more, are we?

Oh joy. Psionics are back. Makes sense I reckon, since the announced release of the revised DArk Sun setting for GENCON this summer. There are your low grade psionics either, not with disciplines going up to level 29. Monks are back as well and it looks like D&D has stolen some ideas from the Runequest RPG with the creation of the Runepriest character class.

The Epic Destinies section recalls the Immortals set from the original Dungeons & Dragons game. Quoting from the Universe Mind epic destiny: " When your name is spoken, you notice, and if the need is great enough, you provide a crucial insight." Sounds to me as if you just became a god in the game.

Finally, seemingly almost banal after the new races and Epic Destinies, there're lists of new skill powers and feats, as well as more magic items, including a number targeted at teh relaunched monk class, becaeu, well, monks aren't tough enough on their own.

Eco Fluxx

Just got in a review copy of the revised EcoFluxx game from Looney Labs, 110 cards plus a color instruction sheet, Suggested retail price $16. Packaging is the same as the format Looney Labs had adopted for the revised new versions of all of their games, a 4" x 5" sliding box with a divider in the center to keep the cards from shifting.

Besic play is the same as in all Fluxx games, start with thre cards, draw an card and play a card. The Goal and Keeper cards all have ecological themes, as do several of the Rules and Action cards. There are a couple of variants in the Creeper and Goal cards included. While any of the three Creeper cards, Fire, Flood or Drought, are in play, no one can win, so it's to all players' advantage to get them removed from the game as quickly as possible.

Added to the Goal cards is the "Eats" card. When an "eats" goal is in play, such as "Spiders Eat Insects", you win if you have the Spider card in play and someone, you or another player, has the Insects card down. This increased the complexity level slightly, to the point that the rules suggest you remove these cards from the game if you've never played Fluxx before.

Looney Labs' social sensibilities are in full bloom here. There's even an Pledge Allegiance to the Earth card (not as part of the game, just a promotional piece) that notes Looney Labs will donate 5% of the proceeds from EcoFluxx to environmental groups. I've had customers asking for this (not as much as Stoner Fluxx though) since it went out of print so I'm glad to see it available again.

Review--Rifter #49

Since Palladium Books comes out with a new product so seldom (at one time the joke was that Palladium didn't have release dates, it had release years) and they sent me a copy, I wanted to take a look at the new issue of the Rifter, #49.

The front cover gives us a pretty good idea of the focus of this issue: vampires. Sure enough, insides there's a 35+ page article on expanded rules for vampires in Nightbane. There's also stuff on the stage magic occupation for Heroes Unlimited and material on the Free State of Lazlo for Rifts. Two short stories and a very good article for GMs on how to kill off the entire party and make the characters like it. Well, they'll like it afterwards and it's usable with any game system, not just the Palladium ones.

There's also about 10 pages of Palladium news, including a number of upcoming releases and a plug for the 2010 open house as well as a really annoying (from my point of view) full page ad soliciting subscriptions to the Rifter.

All in all, a good issue if you are a Palladium fan. The short fiction is pretty well written and the "Kill the entire party" article is a brilliant idea.

Review--Dwarven Dig

Dwarven Dig! 2nd Edition BGL-0044 pub. by Bucephalus Games www.bucephalus.com MSRP $49.99

Gameplay--Dwarven Dig! is a very quick moving (30-45 minutes) for 2 to 6 players, aged 8 and up. Each player controls a team of 4 dwarves, each with its own special ability. The object is for your team to "dig" across the board to the treasure tile, retrieve a treasure and exit before the other players. Of course, the mountain you dig through is inhabited by monsters which may attack you and other dwarves, which probably will.

Presentation--Much like other Bucephalus Games' products, Dwarven Dig!'s components are very heavy and high quality, there's quite a bit of heft when you pick the box up. There's also a handy storage tray to store the components. The rules are pretty compact as well, taking up only eight pages. The box is much smaller than the Kenzerco version, taking up only about half the space of the first edition.

Review Timestreams Episode 1

Timestreams Episode 1 01-TSD1 published by Bucephalus Games www.bucephalus.com 2 thirty-nine card decks in a lithographed box. MSRP $19.99

Gameplay Play begins with each player choosing a deck. In this set, there are the Stone Age and Future Tech decks. Six era cards are laid out starting with the Stone Age and ending with Future Tech. Each era card indicates one 'day" of play. There are two parts to a Timestream game. In the first part, at the beginning of each day, if two players, each players draws six cards (there is no hand limit), then take turns playing them into a row beneath the era car. Players may do one of three things each turn: play an invention, which will score points in the scoring part of the game and may cause a change in the time stream; play an action card; or pass. Only the first six cards played score for each day, but player may wish to play additional cards in order to affect the time stream. Once both players pass, the day ends.

After the end of the sixth day, the first part of the game ends, in the second part, players score their cards, resolving any actions triggers by the scoring. When all cards are scored, the game ends and the player with the most points is the winner. Suitable for ages 8+, expect a game to take 45-60 minutes.

A couple of guys in the store played a game and, while they enjoyed it, the actions on some of the cards were hard to understand or nonsensical. For example, one card with the "Art" designation said it affected other "Art" cards, but the only "Art" card in the set are duplicates of that card.

Presentation Timstreams is a deceptively simple game to play, the rules pamphlet is only 8 pages long, with three of those pages taken up by either promotional material or descriptive text. The box is designed, as is typical with Bucephalus products, to hold the decks stable, and is rather small, about an inch shorter than SJG's Munchkin box and half as thick. There's even a small packet of silica gel included. The major design problem I see is on some of the Future Tech cards with black text printed on a dark background, soe you need to look closely at the card to read it.

Review: Stoner Fluxx

Stoner Fluxx Pub. Full Baked Ideas www.fully-baked-ideas.com 100 full color cards. MSRP $20.00

Gameplay-- Stoner Fluxx uses Looney Labs basic Fluxx mechanic: start with thre cards in your hadn, draw and card, play a card, following the rules in play and win by achieving whatever goal is on the table at the moment. However, all of the Goal, Keeper and Creeper cards, as well as many of the Action and rule cards, are themed around the drug culture. In fact a couple of the cards, specifically the "Toke!" and "Weed Bonus" cards, which call for the player to light up, have warnings printed on the bottom to the effect that "Doing what this card says is illegal. Set it aside until after marijuana prohibition ends."

Presentation--Stoner Fluxx has been out of print since about 2005 and I've had hundreds of inquiries about it for the last several years so I'm glad to see it back in print. The cards are in full color and the art is much improved over the previous version. Fully Baked Ideas is an imprint of Looney Labs, created for the company to release its more controversial games. There's no doubt as to where Fully Baked Ideas sympathies lie, as 3 cards in the box have no have no use in the game, instead advocating for the legalization of marijuana. In addition, FBI will donate 5% of the proceeds from sales of Stoner Fluxx will get donated to groups working to end marijuana prohibition.

If you like Fluxx and if your store does well with Fluxx AND your customers or friends are pretty laid back, than Stoner Fluxx should do well for you, especially in areas with a strong college clientele. Stores or groups with a more conservative bent or who have very heavy family orientation, should think very hard before bringing Stoner Flux in and probably keep it behind the counter.

Review: Masters of Magic

Masters of Magic Book One: The Heart of Magic by Mark Hall and Kevin Siembieda. Pub. by Palladium Books. www.palladiumboks. com. 8 1/2 x11" softcover with B&W interiors. 96 pages. MSRP $16.05.

Gameplay Designed for use with both the Palladium Fantasy Role Playing Game and Rifts, Heart of Magic focuses on the history and mystery behind Wizardry and spell casting. It looks at Warlocks, Cobbler Goblins and Priests. Also included are new Wizard O. C. C.'s and Priest O.C. C.'s, as well as new spell. Great book if you play any of the Palladium fantasy games, not so useful if you play any of their high-tech games or any other system.

Presentation Nicely evocative comer, though I guess the idea is to mage magic mor estructed as there are basic genometric symbols spread over it. Very well laid out book and the art is significantly better than I've seen in several recent Palladium releases. No index but there is a very comprehensive table of contents as well as list of other Paladium books on the back cover, though I'm not sure why Palladium chose to put Ninjas & Superspies and Heroes Unlimited there rather thatn more related titles.

Overall: IF you like Palladium Fantasy or, to a lesser extent Rifts, pick this up. If you don't carrry or play either, save your money for something else.

Review Kachina

Kachina BGL-0046 pub. by Bucephalus Games www.bucephalus.com. 7" x10" lithographed box. 60 Kachina tiles, 1 scoreboard,5 player aid cards, 5 score markers and the rules. MSRP $29.99.

Gameplay Kachina is a tile laying game with much strategy and very little luck. Players take turns laying tiles from their set on the table, attempting to score points by having the highest number tile in the row or column. Certain Kachina tiles, drawn from Native American lore, affect the game in different ways. For example Koshari (The Clown) reduces the value of adjacent tiles to 0, while playing the Warrior allows the player to replace any tile in play with it and take that tile back into their hand. The game ends when the last tile is played and the player with the highest score wins. Designed for 2-5 players aged 8 and up. Expect a game to last 30 to 45 minutes.

Presentation I've been impressed with the quality of Bucephalus Game's releases so far and Kachina doesn't disappoint, though I'm not sure as to the reason for reprinting the same player reference material twice on the reference card. Heck they even put in a little pack of silica ge to keep the card stock dry. The eight age rulebook only needs four pages to explain the rules, though it may take playing through once to understand the effects of the various Kachina in the game. Also, for a game drawing its imagery from Native American mythos, instead of having two pages devoted to other Bucephalus products, I would have liked some background information on where the various Kachina came from and their place within the religion. Overall good game and nicely packaged.

Review--Aquarius

Aquarius pub. by Looney Labs www.looneylabs.com 80 full color card deck. 3 3/4 x5" box. 2-5 players, 10-30 minutes. MSRP $15.

Gameplay Similar to dominoes but with changing victory conditions, ala to Looney Lab's Fluxx. Players lay cards on the table, attempting to connect the element cards that match their secret goal card. This 10th Anniversary version includes the same five elements as the original edition but there's a new style of element card and a new aciton card, as well as rulse for playing a preschool version of Aquarius.

Presentation Aquarius now comes in a two part box, the same style as the company has adopted for its new versions of Fluxx and Traitor and a purchase of 6 games comes in a colorful tuck box displayer, meaning it's much easier to find on the shelf than the previous edition. A cardboard insert keeps the deck from shifiting around inside the box and the rule sheet now comes with color illustrations of the cards rather than the B&W ones on the original. A very nice upgrade over the original game and the pre-school variations are especially welcome as it can be hard to find pre-school games in the hobby game market.

Review: Savage Worlds Dawn of Legends

Dawn of Legends published by Daring Entertainment www.daringentertain.com 8 ½ x11” softcover with black and white interiors. 284 pages. MSRP $39.99.

Gameplay Dawn of Legends is a set of rules for running superheroic characters and campaigns using Pinnacle’s Savage Worlds rules engine and players must have a copy of the Savage Worlds’ Explorer’s Edition. From what I can tell, Autumn Arbor: City o Legends was originally created as a stand alone campaign setting that has been retooled to work with the Savage Worlds rules. The first 104 pages are rules for superheroic creation, the rest of the book delves into the Autumn Arbor setting.

Presentation The cover is OK but nothing striking, a group shot of superheroes flying towards the viewer. It would have been nice to see DOT hardbound as a paperback of this size is going to suffer shelf damage pretty quickly. The Table of Contents does a good job of listing all the powers but there’s only a sketchy indication of where to find info in the rest of the book and no index, which would have been pretty useful for a book this size. That said, Dawn of Legends is pretty complete, esp. in the power list and campaign setting, with over six dozen NPCs included. If you wan to play superheroic adventures using the Savage Worlds system, Dawn of Legends is a good choice; in fact, as far as I know, currently it’s the only choice.

Review--QAGS

Q. A. G. S. (Quick Ass Game System) HEX 6000 Published by Hex Games www.hexgames.com 8 ½ x11” Perfect bound softcover, black and white interiors. MSRP $15.95.

Gameplay The cover, showing an athnromoprhized die with a smirk on its face, gives you a pretty good idea of the snarky attitude towards RPGs found in QUAGS.. Character creation is pretty flexible. The GM decides how powerful they want the players, then givens each player a number of points, called Yum Yums, to build a character by allocating Yum Yums to the three basic statistics, or Words, of Brain, Body and Nerve, as well as jobs, gimmicks, skills and health. The book doesn’t give a set number of points but 100 appears standard and works best with the game system.

The system is pretty straightforward. The player declares an action,, and, after applying modifiers from skills, gimmicks, etc., to the appropriate Word, rolls a d20, needing less than the modified Word total to success.. The roll can further be adjusted by factoring in a difficulty number from Dumb Table #3, which makes the task harder by giving the player a range which the roll has to hit in order to succeed. If the player, for example, wants to pick a lock, a Tough task, the GM sets a difficulty number of 10. After modifiers, the Brain score is 16. The player must roll between 10 and 16 in order to succeed at picking the lock. Yum Yums can be expended, or eaten if using M&Ms or something similar, to modify the score as well. Then, of course, there is a statement in the book that all of the rules are optional, should not get in the way of the game and can freely me modified or ignored by the GM to keep the game moving along.

Presentation QUAGS says on the cover it is for mature readers and the insides do not belie that warning. There’s no problem with the art, which ranges in quality from “eh” to pretty good, though some of it appears recycled from other Hex Games, especially M-Force. However, obscenities are sprinkled throughout the book, especially in the examples. Everything is cleanly laid out, with a one page TOC but no index, about a dozen one page campaign settings, eleven appendices and a whole mess of character and campaign worksheets. There’s even a cartoon explaining how to roll and read dice and a page describing other Hex Games products. Not a bad deal for $16 and 96 pages.

Review: Cortex Role Playing System

Cortex System Role Playing Game MWP1019 pub. by margaret weis productions www.mwp.com 8 ½ x 11” perfect bound softcover w. B&W interiors. 160 pages. MSRP $29.99.

Gameplay 8 Written by Jamie Chambers, the Cortex system uses a game engine derived from some of the company’s other RPGs. Their Serenity and Sovereign Stone RPGs come to mind as the game uses an attribute/skill roll against a difficulty number to resolve outcomes. In fact the system is also very similar to Savage Worlds/Deadlands, in that a character’s competence in an ability or skill is indicated by the size of the dice assigned. A d6 is considered average while a d12 is at the far end of the scale. Unlike Deadlands, ability and skills levels can advance beyond d12 through adding a third dice to the roll.

Presentation—5 Cortex’ cover feature what looks like a brain cell as the focus, with the name clearly visible on both front and back covers as well as the spine. The back cover gives a pretty good job of describing the game but no indication it’s based on MWP’s Firefly system. There’s a good 2 page TOC and a one page index and tables, lots of tables. Art is pretty sparse and serves mainly to break up text and a good chapter on gamemastering. No adventure, but there are three campaign settings included ones based on Margaret Weiss’ Star of the Guardians and one on Michael Williams’ Arcady novels. It would have been nice to have these mentioned on the back cover for additional name recognition. Additionally, MWP offers a free PDF of Cortex to purchasers and this is prominently mentioned on the cover and title page.

Review: Martian Fluxx

Martian Fluxx pub. by Looney Labs. 100 card deck plus instructions. MRSP $16

Gameplay--Martian Fluxx, as you might guess, is a Martian themed version of Looney Labs popular Fluxx game. This version is packaged in the 3 3/4 x 5" box that Looney has gone to with their releases since Zombie Fluxx, which makes them easier to display and find on the shelf. The backs of the decks are still the same, meaning this deck can get shuffled together with any of the other Fluxx decks, though the card assortment means you'd need to shuffle in the Creepers, Goals and Keeper cards to keep the deck playable. Most of the Creepers are Pathetic Humans, while the Goals are such things as Take Me to Your Leader and Martian Chess, with Keepers such as The Mothership and Martian Chess.

There are two new cards in the game: The Meta Rule and the Ungoal. The Meta Rule is a rule card that plays along the Basic Rules card and stays in play the entire game. Once the players agree to put it in play at the start of the game, it can't be removed by an Action card or a New Rule. If the Ungoal is drawn and put into play, once its conditions are met, the game ends with no winner. Since its conditions specify Martian Fluxx cards, it won't be used except in games where other Martian Fluxx Cards are also used.

Salability--Martian Fluxx doesn't have the "cool" factor of zombies and and, for whatever reason, zombies are currently cool, nor does it have the name recognition of Monty Python. MF will sell because, hey it's Fluxx, but I don't expect to see it doing the numbers of either Monty Python Fluxx or Zombie Fluxx. Looney Labs does have a demo kit available which gives you posters and sell sheets, as well as a demo deck and a dozen promo cards to hand out to purchasers or demo players.

Review: Fleets of the Three Galaxies

Rifts Dimension Book 13: Fleets of the Three Galaxies published by Palladium Books PAL 873. Softcover 128 pages. MSRP $16.95

A sourcebook for the Risfs RPG, FTG presents the most powerful fleets in the Galaxies, along with ships, key figures, problems. Mainly useful if you are running a space based Rifts game or doing something with the battle between demons and Deevils in the Minion War series of Rifts supplements.

Cortex Role Playing System Review

Cortex System Role Playing Game MWP1019 pub. by margaret weis productions www.mwp.com 8 ½ x 11” perfect bound softcover w. B&W interiors. 160 pages. MSRP $29.99.

Gameplay 8 Wrtten by Jamie Chambers, the Cortex system uses a game engine derived from some of the company’s other RPGs. Their Serenity and Sovereign Stone RPGs come to mind as the game uses an attribute/skill roll against a difficulty number to resolve outcomes. In fact the system is also very similar to Savage Worlds/Deadlands, in that a character’s competence in an ability or skill is indicated by the size of the dice assigned. A d6 is considered average while a d12 is at the far end of the scale. Unlike Deadlands, ability and skills levels can advance beyond d12 through adding a third dice to the roll.

Are You the Traitor Review

Are You the Traitor LOO-037 pub by Looney Labs www.looneylabs.com ; Sliding box containing 56 full color cards and directions MSRP $15.00

Gameplay--8 Are You the Traitor is a more elaborate version of Werewolf or Mafia. Character cards are secretly dealt out to 4-10 players, with 2 players gettting Evil or Good Wizard cards, one player each getting the Key Holder or Traitor cards and the other players getting Guard cards. The object of each round is for the Key Holder figure out who the Good Wizard is and give the Key card to them. If the Key Holder is successful, all good players draw a treasure card, otherwise the evil players do. Unlike traditional Werewolf, no players are elminated each round; instead multiple rounds are played with the first player accumulating 10 points in treasure winning. The big problem with AYTT, much like Werewolf or Mafia, is that you need a larger group for effective play.