Ghostbusters 2016

Neither a triumphant success nor an unmitigated disaster, Ghostbusters 2016 taps into the same comedy vein as the original 1984 film and certainly surpasses the lamentable Ghostbuster II. The analogs for Egon and Winston are great, with the prize going to Kate McKinnon's Holzman. However, Melissa McCarthy and Kristin Wiig's characters are missing in action—they are generic everywomen without much distinction between them.

One of the things that made the original Ghostbusters work was the characterization of each of the four Ghostbusters (with the lamentable exception of Winston Zeddemore being cut from an integral portion of the movie to being introduced on page 68). Each of the four Ghostbusters has a unique identity with broad character traits that we can identify immediately. Melissa McCarthy and Kristin Wiig were interchangeable. Neither was quite a straight-man (which the movie lacked), and I was always waiting for Kate McKinnon to come back on onscreen.

The plot was good for a piece of Ghostbusters media, although I felt altogether too much time was spent on "how the Ghostbusters got be" portion of the film. Building up the first specter was a wonderfully compact mythology of torment and sorrow, and the constant emphasis on how dangerous the ghostbusting gear is was a much-appreciated nod to the original. Indeed, the movie went out of its way to hang its hat on the original Ghostbusters without paying it overmuch deference.

As others have said, there was an unfortunate lack of mythologizing in the new Ghostbusters. We didn't hear about background material until it was relevant—I feel like there was much more to be done with that book on leylines, for example—and the villain of the piece did not exhibit any of the Lovecraftian awe of Gozor, or even the reduced Lovecraftian awe of Vigo the Carpathian.

Still, all in all a decent outing and a fun film. And the post-credits scene certainly layered in what was necessary to continue the series and take it down a darker and more supernaturally rewarding path. Jilian Holtzman and Egon Spengler would be a great couple, for whatever that's worth.

GIVEAWAY

There shall be a giveaway! Ten copies of Haven, signed, along with a letter by yours truly, shall be won. Simply follow the link on the gadget I'm about to put up on the side of the website on July 21st or later, and a copy can be yours.

I'd ask that you write a Goodreads and Amazon reviews if you have time and you win a copy—whatever you think of the book.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Haven

by J.D.G. Perldeiner

Giveaway ends August 07, 2016.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

The 5th Edition

I've had the opportunity, now, to play the 5th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons with my wife, Frank, and Jason. In person, even! Jocelyn didn't like it (not enough dungeon in the dungeons and dragons, and too many farmers, orcs, and above-ground fights), but otherwise I thought the session went alright. Jocelyn and Frank insisted on making two rogues, leaving Jason to play a paladin-aspirant of the Order of the Golden Swan.

My own rule of thumb in 2e games has been that paladins, knights, etc., generally aren't recognized as such until 3rd level. How refreshing, then, to find that levels 1-2 in 5e are sort of pre-levels that go by very quickly and that you actually choose an "archetype" at third level. Paladins swear their oaths, rogues get their thieving skills on, etc. Vury vury interesting.

IN play, the rules are simple but effective. They're not my beloved finicky 2e, which requires the precise calculation of every little detail, but perhaps they're better at what they do for that. 5e appears to be a game you can jump into fast, play a bit, and then leave lying around. Where 2e is a commitment, 5e is an evening's entertainment. A lot of the 5e improvements come in character creation, where you select gear packages rather than being given a load of gold to go and spend as thou wilt. Buying equipment has always been the longest and slowest part of AD&D character creation, and its interesting to see ways in which it can be optimized.

The old race-as-class dragon rears its head a little as well; elves get a single cantrip that they know, because elvish society is magical and everyone learns a little magic. Interesting! I once proposed something similar for a certain 2e setting.

Obviously the game is, at default, much higher magic than 2e--that dungeonpunk creep has been going on since 3e. That's fine, as the Nightmare-King setting is specifically designed to be higher magic; rather than relying on the alternative universe style ("what if?", or "what would the world be like if x, y, and z were the case") I've been exploring a 70s fantasy satire a-la Vance; more of a ridiculous way to highlight the foibles and worst aspects of mankind.

The important thing is that the rules feel like an older edition. Advantage is a handy way to get rid of the need to memorize bonuses (+2 for attacking from behind, +2 for the enemy being unaware, +1 for attacking from up a slope... so now I have... +5? And that means I get to do my backstab, so...) and provides a lower bar for system mastery to new players. I know, I have ranted and raved about system mastery being important and required, and the high bar weeding out those who really want to play and those who just want to have a power trip... but that's neither here nor there. Perhaps I'll address that in another blog.

Combat is sufficiently brutal. Tactics that worked in 2e still work here (flank 'em, surprise 'em, ambush 'em, etc.) Frank went down in the second round after shooting some arrows. Interesting that the charge mechanic has been removed (maybe it's in a feat?), replacing it with dash, which simply allows you to use your attack action to move a second time.

Spells aren't interruptible anymore because they only take the time of your actual initiative count to cast them. AH WELL! Magic, in fact, looks wholly different, but I haven't had the chance to sample it because no one is playing a wizard, warlock, or sorcerer.

At the end of the day I will always prefer 2e to 5e. However, 5e is a light-hearted cousin that does well at emulating an OSR playstyle. When it's time for a quick romp in the old megadungeon, 5e probably does that better. When I want to immerse myself in a fully realized world, it'll be 2e I turn to, as an old friend and companion.

I can't believe I don't hate a new edition of D&D.

Why Kingdom Death is Going to Replace Every Boardgame I Play

Uh... yeah.

So this weekend Jason, Frank, Jocelyn and I got together to play Kingdom Death: Monster. I was of two minds about Kingdom Death before playing. The first, of course, was that its exploitative artwork was idiotic and juvenile (and maybe even Bad For Games). The second was that it seemed interesting, like something I would really like in that it was supposed to be ruthless, weird, and gross. These two thoughts were held in tension throughout the weekend until I finally got to play it. The title of the review kind of gives it away—turns out the "like" side won.

Whatever problems I have with the artwork are cured by the game design. I don't have to stare at the large-breasted drawings and what-have-you. Really, all the Kingdom Death survivors should be gaunt creeps, not well-formed Adonises—which, by the by, is what I named my founder, since I had the beardless young fellow as my survivor model—but at some point I make the concession to the game that other people want things that I don't and maybe they get something out of it.

STARTING OUT
The concept of Kingdom Death is fairly refreshing. I'm assured by my friends who can play Dark Souls (because they have PCs) that its Dark Souls-like. This renews my interest in ever getting to play Dark Souls (I won't ever be able to), but that's besides the point. I have very rarely played a game that felt like Kingdom Death unless it was one that I designed. Even then, I tend not to stray into the particular realm of semi-sexualized body horror that KD inhabits.

To start with, everyone immediately writes up a character, like a pen and paper game. However, everyone's character, save for gender and name, is exactly alike. These are the Founders of the society in Kingdom Death. You get a fragment of stone and some cloth... and are immediately pitched into a battle with a baby White Lion.

That's this guy.

Before you really understand what's going on in this insane and awful world, you have to battle a beast. Only once you've slain it do you move on to build your first settlement, which we named Golgotha. Adonis, Enoch, Solaris, and the other founder who's name I've forgotten, moved in right away.

GAMEPLAY MECHANICS
There are a number of vastly different phases in the game. These have their own contribution to the gameplay loop. Settlement phase comes first, where you grow your society, picking attributes (whether or not you carefully cannibalize the dead to recover precious resources or bury them in graves, for example) that affect the shape of your culture. You discover technologies (as soon as you kill the White Lion you discover Language, for example) and they affect the abilities your characters have and the items they're able to create.

Then you move on to the Hunt, whereby you seek out a hideous beast to fight and slaughter for its disgusting organs, bones, and pelt. The Hunt phase actually resulted in the most deaths over the course of our 4-lantern-year game on Sunday. Solomon, one of the new survivors, had his brain stilled by the raucous voice of the Hooded Knight. The other deaths that occurred happened when we drew a Murder story card during Settlement and the murderer (crazy Solaris) and her victim (the other nameless founder) were lost.

The final phase is the Showdown, where you actually do battle with the beast you've been tracking. This is where the AI deck comes into play (each monster has a randomly constructed AI deck built out of a pool of that monster's card types) and where the game really shines. The battle mechanics are simple and fast, meaning you can fight, win, and die in about 20-30 minutes and then return to the settlement with your loot to spend it on shit.

WHY ITS SO GOOD
The flavor is pretty interesting, but the persistent mechanics that mirror games that are more traditionally in the digital realm are what draw me to this game. Also, its almost infinitely replayable due to the variety of things that might actually happen in any given campaign. The game is 20 lantern years long (each year encompasses the three phases) and has boss battles, heredity, research, weapon crafting, and branching story options based on card draws.

SHOULD YOU PLAY IT?
It's also hyper expensive and difficult to assemble. If Frank hadn't bought it, I never would have. So, consider the $400+ price tag before you rush off to find Kingdom Death today.

A Review: The Man in the High Castle

I knew two new shows were available on November 20th. One of them was streaming on Netflix and was based on some kind of Marvel property. The other was on Amazon prime and was based on a Philip K. Dick novel. You know which one I chose.

I haven't heard much on the internet about The Man in the High Castle, save for a single bad review that I read and that I completely disagree with. The AV Club rated the pilot episode either a B or a C, which I guess is fair, because the pilot feels somewhat clunky—but pilots often do.

Worldbuilding

From the two things I've seen, most people have divided the discussion between the story and the worldbuilding. Why is this? Well, probably because the worldbuilding is phenomenal. The Greater Nazi Reich is an interesting (and horrifying) place. I don't believe I heard a single song written before 1945 in the show. There are a lot of post-1945 songs... but they're all in German, or new songs. There's no Dragnet or Car 54, but there is American Reich on TV. As in the novel, the Nazis have considerably more advanced technology than the world of our own 1962—rocket jets, for one, and lots of public transportation.

Watching Obergruppenführer Smith run New York is enthralling. The ash-fall in episode one is horrific and beautiful. What's more, the show reveals, through the alienness of the societies depicted, the deep flaws within our own. Seeing former Americans treated as second class citizens (asked to use the tradesman's door, the subject of ethnic art collecting) is a shocking and powerful statement indeed. The wedding of the already very fascist American dream of the 50s with actual fascism is a potent and heady brew. Watching a cookout on VA day in Long Island is a terrifying experience.

I don't want to say too more, except to characterize the way in which the world of the Pacific States and the Reich is built is meticulous.

Cinematography

Every frame is carefully designed. Every frame is beautiful. The mise-en-scene is gorgeous, the props and the design of various Nazi and Japanese architecture reflects the character of those nations perfectly (at least as they appear in the show). This sort of goes to the worldbuilding as well—San Fransisco truly looks like an Asian city. New York is a dystopian Nazi-American nightmare.

Plot

I don't want to say much about the plot because its too fun to watch it unfold. In the end, it reminded me of something by Borges—the prevalence of the I Ching and how the philosophy of the Book of Changes interacts with the story itself is very Borgesian.

Should You Watch It?

Yes. Watch it now. Watch it always. Watch the whole thing. Amazon absolutely better pick this up for a second season.

Guest Review: Frostgrave, Round Two

So, after playing Frostgrave the one time in person, yesterday I managed to play again with Jason and Frank in the afternoon, making a totally new wizard (a summoner). I love this class.

That begin said when, at 9pm, the IRC folks wanted to play on maptool, I was going to use a summoner list... until I discovered that two of them were already playing summoners. So, I created an elementalist and played a very slow (but rewarding) game on maptool. One of the players, Tux, wrote this review to supplement the first.

Frostgrave, a Review in Two Acts, By Tux

Following the consideration of this review you will agree that Frostgrave is the best fantasy skirmish game. The combination of high impact combat, alternate activations and advancing your wizard offers an unparalleled experience in playing with toy soldiers which enriches your life, makes you happier and balances your cheque book. Ok, maybe not the last part, but everything preceding the cheque book stands.

What Is Frostgrave?

Frostgrave is two things, frostgrave is a ruleset to maneuver miniature toys modelled in the likeness of fantasy creatures and secondly, Frostgrave is a setting.

The setting, Frostgrave, presents  a frozen city of ancient magic having only recently begun to thaw out it has attracted treasure hunters, thieves, and aspiring mages to delve into the lost city, for better or worse. As far as interesting hooks go this is a standard fantasy trope, explore the ancient place which has treasure, ancient magic and no true ruler or owner (at least as far as this first book presents, more on that later), this looting of “abandoned” cities of course stemming from a romantic view of British Colonialism (and no surprise that this book comes from Osprey, a UK based company), however it is quaint to pretend that an invasion couldn’t directly harm someone, especially in this age of inter-connected world dominance where it is unlikely that you personally will ever discover something new, or forgotten (I do note the irony that just this year several new dinosaurs were discovered).

Frostgrave, the ruleset, is a book produced by Osprey written by Joseph A. McCullough. The rules detail creating a Wizard and his (or her, however male pronouns are used for convenience) warband to do battle with opposing warbands, how to activate and maneuver your figures, resolve spells and of course, resolve combat and looting. I had no troubles with reading comprehension, however I’ve forgotten how to play more board games and war games than most people ever play in their life. In honesty if you’re coming into this without a background in miniature wargaming you will probably find the rules a bit obtuse and awkward, perhaps requiring a few reads to understand things and their intentions (most notably activation, group activation and multi-figure combat). All in all I don’t believe they could have done a better job laying out the rules and the book’s production is great. Dmitry Burmak is the illustrator and his work really illuminates the pages and sets an excellent tone for Frostgrave, both the setting and the book.

What are Toy Soldiers?

Toy soldiers are miniature representations of soldiers, they come in all shapes and sizes from roman centurions and carthage chariots, to napoleon’s grenadiers or even modern american ground infantry. Previously (a very long time ago) they were made of lead, then pewter, these days they’re often white metal, resin or hard plastic. The most common scale is 28mm where a human (standing about 6 feet) is 28mm tall, and in this particular case we are concerned with the “Fantasy” range of toy soldier. Fantasy essentially means Tolkien, we’ll be looking at romanticized Medieval era technology, so knights, crossbows, bows, and thanks to a fantasy tilt, demons, golems, yetis, zombies, and skeleton warriors. Not truly historical toy soldiers, but still toys meant to be collected, painted, and loved.

Frostgrave The Book and More on Toy Soldiers

I mentioned that Frostgrave was two things, a settings and a set of rules, however it is also a book, a physical object which you can hold in your hand (or as a virtual book, you can hold it in your kindle, smartphone or laptop). As far as gaming books go the price is fantastic, $30 Cad for a hardback, 136 pages tome of fantasy. It’s wonderful and I got mine of Amazon off $22 mostly because I don’t currently have a local store to pop down to and remark, “Hey Mike, allow me to give you money to pay your bills and feed your children in exchange for Frostgrave by Osprey publishing.” So instead my money went to evil amazon and their evil ceo.

The Illustrations (previously mentioned that they’re done by Dmitry Burmak) are great if a bit bland, if you like wizards and fantasy you’ve no doubt seen similar images, mages with great spell effects locked in an “epic” struggle to determine who will reign supreme. While these images are fantastically done, and look stunning, they’re nothing new if you’ve opened a book about playing with toy soldiers in a fantasy setting. Often times there isn’t even an illustration, but instead a photograph of a carefully arranged diorama of North Star Military Figure’s Frostgrave line. North Star has a long running partnership with osprey and this Frostgrave line is some of the best. For twenty pounds (remember, Britain loves toy soldiers more than anyone else) you can get a box of twenty guys, believe me when I say this is the best price for the level of quality the sculpts have, these aren’t your childhood’s plastic green army men, these are exquisite renditions of men only an inch or so high. Sadly I’m already drowning in a pile of hundreds of unpainted toy soldiers so I won’t be purchasing any of North Star’s work in the immediate future. Without my pile of unpainted guys I would definitely order some from across the pond because I really like these and I’ve been rambling. In summary, physical book, illustrations, photos of well-painted miniatures (which come unpainted so you have to paint them yourself) and rambling.

The Turn (Where the Review Discusses Actually Playing the Game)

Ok, so Frostgrave does something brilliant in how it structures the turn. Traditionally, games play out with one side activating all their pieces before the other goes. I do not mind this, however in some cases it can lead to long periods of time where you do nothing but watch your guys get attacked and they cannot do anything immediately to remedy the situation. They have to wait until it’s your turn to dish out their fury, their retribution. However, Frostgrave does something brilliant, which ties your Wizard’s leadership of the warband into tangible gameplay altering mechanisms, which are extremely tactical and as I mentioned, I dare to call it brilliant.

The turn is divided into phases, and during a phase each player takes turn resolving their entire phase, the phases are Wizard, Apprentice, Soldier and Creature. During the Wizard phase you can activate your wizard and up to three Soldiers within 3 inches. Go back, read that again. You activate 4 of your 10 guys, then the other player (or players) activate 4 of their 10 guys. The caveat naturally follows that a figure can only be activated once per turn, however go back and read what I said about the wizard phase and what you do in it. Now, your wizard, who actively leads and guides his group of treasure hunters and underlings, actively guides them and leads them on the table, allowing them to move first, to claim defensive positions, to charge archers before they have a chance to react, to climb to safety, to skirt pits and ensure they can’t be pushed down to their doom. It’s fantastic and it’s a great take on alternative activation (like chess or checkers, where players take turns moving one piece at a time), it avoids the long drawn out engagements of each playing moving their whole army before the other side acts, but most importantly, it’s not free. That command range of 3 inches, is easier said than done, you will have to split up, you won’t get to activate all your soldiers quickly, some of them will have to wait and possibly get shot before they do anything. It takes a lot of planning and careful tactical decisions to truly do well in frostgrave, and even then the dice could forsake you, leaving your plucky treasure gathering fodder beneath the unforgiving heel of an enemy.

The apprentice phase, is as per the wizard phase, however your apprentice activates and up to three soldiers within three inches activate, so all the brilliance I mentioned above can be mentioned again here. Instead of rehashing it here, I invite you to return to the previous paragraph and read it again, it’s ok, I’ll be here waiting, I’ll just put on some coffee, take your time.

Now that you’re back, the soldier phase has been called the residual phase by my good friend Josh, any soldier who hasn’t been activated may be activated.

The creature phase which wraps up the turn rarely comes up, it’s the end of the turn where monsters (anything not player controller) act as per a simple algorithm discussed in the book. Monsters try and fight things, or they wander aimlessly. It’s simple and it works very well, it keeps the game bouncing along while adding in an element I adore in fantasy games. Monsters, non-player controlled obstacles (inevitably someone feels bad about turning another player’s character into a pincushion with their archers) which are still threatening and enjoyable to defeat.

Moving Your Toy Soldiers

It might seem odd to you that I’m discussing the movement, but in these games with glorified miniature Barbie dolls, tape measures are (often) used to determine how far something can move and precision and the exact whereabouts of creatures is very important. Frostgrave does an excellent job laying down simple rules to govern important movement functions, climbing, running, jumping, moving through rough terrain, moving while carrying treasure. All of these are excellently done and easy to remember. Climbing, rough terrain and encumbered with treasure is half movement. Jumping is a straight line equal in distance to how far you ran before jumping with a maximum of four inches, jumping from standing still is one inch. Ironclad, simple, effective, very tactical.

The only thing I could ask for more regarding these rules is how does jumping interact with your movement allowance? If you jump at the end of your move you could move an extra 4 inches, does your guy stumble if you try to do this? What if you count the 4 inches in his total move? There’s a lot here that I’m picking at, but these kind of corner case scenarios are important to a wargamer, and I have some excellent ideas on house rules to expand this jumping section. Not that it needs expansion, the rules are fantastic as is, I’m just worried about Todd who jumps all his guys to get extra distance when he moves his prancing, leaping, warband of thieves about the ruins.

Battle With Your Toy Soldiers (Dice Rolls in Frostgrave)

In these games of dungeons and dragons and swords and sorcery battle can be a dreary thing, with tables and charts and thingamajigs to determine who stabs the hobbit where and how much blood has he lost, frostgrave does another elegant solution, where hitting and damage is resolved with one die roll, cutting combat time down to the absolute minimum (of course deterministic combat could reduce this, but I’m personally not a fan of deterministic combat, I like the thrill of lady luck fucking me, leaving my best soldier dead at the hands of a two foot tall imp).

Furthermore since combat is an opposed roll it’s very thrilling as both players dice off against one another, seeing who lady luck wishes to fuck over the most, who she hates with the entirety of her cold dead bitch-heart (that’s a correctly hyphenated word “bitch-heart” the demonic heart within the chest of a bitch). Did I mention that I love dice? I’ve got over 100 of the cock-sucking egg-shaped rigged-to-fail pieces of garbage that always roll fucking ones.

That said, while I love dice, I love rolling them less because it makes the game faster, rolling dice is fun, and exhilarating, anything can happen, but since combat is ONE ROLL it’s very fast, very explosive, and the dice that Frostgrave uses are twenty sided, they’re numbered 1 to 20 and each side has a 5% chance of coming up. You’re as likely to succeed brilliantly as you are to utterly fail. It’s extremely swingy, very brutal. It feels like Conan trying to kill Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yeah they’re the same person and they’re going to smash each other’s face in, maybe.

You can stack everything in your favor, wall off his reinforcements, pile in your soldiers, but when the dice get thrown I’ve seen them go any way and every way. Frostgrave presents the results to you immediately and with minimal simple arithmetic your face will drain as you watch a warhound tear the throat out of your apprentice. It’s a blood soaked battered melee and I can’t get enough of it. Even if lady luck is a two-bit truckstop diving whore soaked in the seed of a thousand sutors. I still love her and couldn’t leave here even if I wanted to.

Casting Spells

As above, with combat, casting a spell is one d20 roll, and then the spell happens, typically you’re trying to roll above 8-12 but more difficult spells, or types of spells your wizard struggle with will be harder to cast. As above the nature of the twenty sided die is pure unbridled excitement, casting a spell is never guaranteed, and multiple times I’ve been scorned with my soldiers left in the open at the mercy of enemy arrows as my shit-bag-wizard cocks up the wall spell meant to mask their approach. It’s just as swingy as combat and just as exciting. I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Creatures

As I mentioned before, I love it, a kind of neutral party which is immediately hostile to everyone. Players will form alliances, they will move to engage different targets and ignore certain people, however the monsters might always be there, they could show up based on scenario rules, or optional random encounter rules. I love them, my only complaint is there isn’t enough wandering monsters, I want to be drowned in them such that deciding to cripple an opposing soldier might leave me helpless as an extra monster rushes down my warband, overrunning me because I betrayed a temporarily ally against the mutual threat of zombie-demon-ghost-bears, or whatever, technically there aren’t any zombie-demon-ghost-bears, but you can definitely make zombie-demon-bears with the spells in the base game.

The Campaign

One of the most alluring features of any game, be it video, board, card or war, is a persistent character who you improve. Some of the most popular games center around improving your character and evolving them into exactly what you want (or in the case of injuries, exactly what you don’t want).

Frostgrave plays brilliantly on the table, but how it handles itself off the table is what makes it the best Skirmish game for Fantasy battles.

Your wizard will level up by casting spells and personally solving problems (like enemy soldiers, or monsters, or enemy soldiers). You also get experience from any member of your warband capturing treasure, but the rewards for getting your hands dirty and pretend-murdering the toy soldiers of other players poses a much greater risk and a much greater reward.

With your spoils you also setup a base which you can furnish with some gameplay boosting items, powerful effects at steep prices, definitely worth it and definitely well balanced. While players pull ahead they may spend a bunch of gold to get a measly +1 to a die roll (5% improvement) so they won’t outpace lesser wizards truly.

Treasure recovered takes the form in many ways, mostly gold (to buy items and soldiers) however potions, scrolls, magic swords, spell books, all of these crop up and feel appropriately strong in comparison to one another, nothing is obviously better than everything else, however the magical weapons with damage modifiers are notably weaker than their fight bonus cousins. You could house rule this quite simply but it doesn’t seem like much of a problem to me.

Injury in the Campaign

When a Soldier, or Apprentice, or Wizard, is “killed” on the tabletop, they’re not truly dead, and more often than not they manage to crawl, drag, or be carried to safety and make full recoveries, however just as you improve, those less fortunate may degrade.

Injury is checked with a, GASP, SHOCK, AMAZEMENT, d20 roll, with soldiers dying on 1-4, missing one game on a 5-8 and on a 9+ they make a full recover.

Wizards and apprentices die on a 1-2 and again on the 9+ they make a full recovery, with multiple different hindrances between 3 and 8, including two tables for dismemberment and crippling injuries.

There’s a good amount of depth and penalties which are all different and suitably flavoured. Losing toes makes you move slower for example, losing an eye makes you rubbish at ranged attacks and parallel parking (ok so there’s no parallel parking in frostgrave) and while unpleasant, it’s very rare for a wizard to be downed and require a roll on the table, even then the table is mostly harmless. Again, with careful playing and defensive planning you’ll never roll on these tables, but they’re perfect at what they do. A sword of damocles hanging over your warband, silently reminding you of the threat of each combat, and of course, since each combat is one die roll, anything can happen.

Closing Thoughts

I love it, it’s got more meat than the Songs series over at Ganesh Games, I still love the Songs games, and I’ll run them for quick battles, I’ll still run songs campaigns, I feel that Songs does simple bash-dudes-in-the-face-and-push-them-around while Frostgrave does high lethality fantasy combat. It reminds me a lot of Knights & Knaves over at HisEntCo where combat will be brutal and exacting, and you need to carefully pick your battles as your soldiers strength is whittled down.

The coolest upside I’ve found for frostgrave is how well it handles multiplayer games, due to the structure of the turn and activations it’s fairly fast moving (assuming no one player is overly slow) and players are well engaged. I know Josh’s dream is to play huge six player games on huge terrain filled tables, but that will have to wait for a little bit. The mini cottage needs another coat and the stone tower needs to be textured. A grove of small trees needs to have their leaves put on and I need to make some larger trees, spackle a guard wall, paint a guard's shelter. Truly the life of a terrain builder is never boring.

I hope I’ve convinced you to at the very least check Frostgrave out, it’s very fresh and very distinctly skirmish based. In a world of Wargaming where companies try and sell you as many toys as possible it’s rare for a game to tell you that you can only use ten figures (sometimes eleven, twelve, thirteen and I think with extreme prejudice 14 is the hard-cap-max after base building and manipulating your warband sheet).

It’s earned a spot on the book shelf, but it won’t spend much time there, I’ll be taking this one out frequently in a couple different campaigns, and probably writing scenarios for warbands to battle it out.

Cheers, happy painting, happy gaming, and tell lady luck she can go fuck herself.

Tux

Frostgrave, Round One

Last Friday when the board game group got together (haven't been able to get them all to play one of the roleplaying games of choice yet, they're all over the map and I refuse to run Pathfinder, 3e, 4e, or 5e of D&D), we played Frostgrave. We didn't invest in the Osprey minis or any terrain because we had no idea if the game was good or not. Instead, we had a mishmash of Battle for Skull Pass, 7th Edition Warhammer Dwarfs, and Warmachine miniatures. It was a nightmare of styles. For terrain we used gourds, boxes, and other such trash, so the ruined city of Felstad wasn't in top form.

NEVERTHELESS, it was pretty fun.

The concept of Frostgrave is similar to Games Workshops' now-discontinued Mordheim. In fact, the two games could be siblings. The ruins of Frostgrave are littered with treasure. Each player creates a wizard to be their "character" and hires up a warband to hunt that treasure. There are excellent campaign rules for running games with multiple encounters, giving levels to your wizard, and recovering magical items of various potency.

Setup
This took the longest time. We only had one copy of the book, I was the only one who had read it before, and I sprang the game on everyone as they appeared at my house. Therefore, there was a lot of needless rules explaining, re-reading, and list-making. However, Frostgrave contemplates very small "armies" (warbands of no more than 10 models, 11 if certain optional rules are used) and therefore it didn't take too long at all to get three lists made. I, of course, made the list for myself and my wife ahead of time.

The most time-intensive element is making your wizard.

Not including painting, obviously

There are a number of classes based on the available schools of magic (Chronomancy, Elementalism, Enchanting, Illusion, Necromancy, Sigilism, Divination, Conjuration, Thaumaturgy, and Nature) with each getting access to the spells of most others. However, casting spells from outside of your home school is more difficult. Wizards get 3 spells from their home school, 3 from one of each of the "allied" schools, and 2 from any two neutral schools.

This makes the creation of the wizard critical to the functioning of the warband. I, for example, picked what is objectively one of the dinkiest wizard classes (Sigilist) in the vain hope that it might encourage Jocelyn and Frank to beat the shit out of me and enjoy learning the game. Instead, I got into a casting conflict with an experienced wargamer at the table and came out on the losing side of that exchange. Still, even with his carefully built warband of powerful knights, my one reserve combat spell (from outside of my school, even) nearly knocked him out of the game by killing a number of his very expensive units.

Gameplay
The game is fast for a wargame. Battle is a contested d20 roll with the winner dealing damage. Spells are critical. But the most interesting facet of gameplay is that there really aren't very high incentives to knock out other warbands save insofar as you want the treasure they're grabbing. What this amounts to is a disincentive to fight if you don't have to and a real incentive to push two enemy warbands into each other and grab all the loot.

These incentives are codified in the experience chart for wizards, which is tallied at the end of every battle. While knocking down enemy warband members grants some paltry xp, casting spells also grants a little experience. Killing an enemy wizard is worth a great deal, but each treasure is worth 50 experience at the end of the battle as well. This means that treasure, which allows you to upgrade your warband, may contain magic items and new spells, and is worth a sizeable chunk of xp, is the most valuable goal to pursue in the game.

Jocelyn, who never fought another person in any kind of combat, managed to secure 5 treasures to everyone else's 2-3. She gained as many levels as combat-hardened wizards and now has a huge stock of items and gold to boot.

The Campaign
The campaign factor is what makes everything interesting. I got the snot kicked out of me and had to withdraw early with no treasure. However, due to the fact that each warband can choose a "base" in the city after their first game, I managed to secure myself a treasury vault and make up for some of my awful gameplay. There are inns, libraries, and other such places to make your own as well.

The ongoing continuity between battles presents an interesting conundrum for the players, as my experience now shows that they will tend to ally to limit the expansion of the leading player and provide extra treasure for themselves in the battles to come.

There's no point-balance system; you hire your warband with the gold you won in the previous matches or stored from matches before. This is an intriguing mechanic, and one that mirrors the most interesting parts of Warhammer campaigns whereby victories in certain campaign battles may lead to additional (or restricted) point-buys in later ones.

Balance
The balance seems weighted very well. Melee is not overwhelming, and ranged attacks won't destroy a warband that doesn't have them if their wizard deploys correctly and makes good use of terrain. The spells, at least at level 0, aren't game-altering. They certainly shift the tables of victory, but they don't obliterate entire gobs of men.

Overall
Would play again. Very enjoyable. Considering getting Osprey miniatures for it and putting together some real terrain.

Why Wet Hot American Summer (First Day of Camp) is better than The Brink

Note: This was written before I saw last Sunday's episode of The Brink. I think that, while this argument still holds true for earlier episodes of the show, starting two weeks ago it finally began to hit its stride and find a place where it was comfortable with itself. This past week's episode was actually directed quite well and the transformation of the show from a sitcom romp into something more, which has been underway for several episodes, is finally complete with the tension surrounding Alex Talbot and Zaman.

Essentially, the Brink is manifesting into the thing I knew it could be. I can only hope it continues to improve from here.

I love everything that The Brink wants to be. It's a smart, well-written show with well-developed characters that spool out over a very tightly plotted arc. It's doing everything right... right?

Contrast Netflix's new Wet Hot American Summer (First Day of Camp). The writing is tight in terms of plot, but the show plays for low gags, basic humor, and sequences that occur completely outside of narrative time (just like its successor, the Movie). Character development is ridiculous.

Yet Wet Hot American Summer is a better television show. It's more affective than The Brink. Where I wonder why I'm supposed to care about the characters in The Brink, outside of the excellent manner in which they're written, I wonder why I do care so much about the characters in WHAS.

The answer, I think, has to do less with the writing and more with the cinematography, acting, and direction. That's right. David Wain, the voice of Superjail's the Warden, is a better director than... The Brink's showrunner and writer, Benabib? Well, whoever is responsible for its style. Because it has none.

WHAS is oozing with style. Cinematography is great, imparting monumental importance to the most mundane activities. That's the real difference: the Brink is filmed like a modern comedy. Everything is irreverent, and very little has any weight. The comic timing is thin, even from Jack Black. Tim Robbins is carrying that show, and that's a shame because there is golden writing lurking in there. The American head-of-mission? He's written like one of Salman Rushdie's darkest lunatics, but he's portrayed (through no fault of John Larroquette, who is great) like a complete ham.

Where is the sense of gravity that makes this work? Where is the comic timing of Dr. Strangelove? It can be seen in flashes and flits, but even when Jack Black turns on his friend and refuses to allow him to leave the embassy, it still "feels" like a comedy.

I have very high hopes for this show. Even if it never matures into what I want it to be, its writing is great. But I want it to live up to the potential of its scripts.

ADDENDUM: I watched the end of True Detective Season 2. Episode 7 surpassed it by far. With all the endings accounted for, its just a failed film noire. Very interesting in that they made the femme fatale a man, but all in all? A failure for Pizzolatto.

On True Detective and Weird Fiction, a Defense

I loved the first season of True Detective. I wasn't one of those naysayers who saw the end and held my nose. I loved the way the Chambers/Lovecraft stuff was wrapped up: maybe it was part of Rust's dreamlike hallucinations, maybe it was real. We'll never know. In fact, my entire circle loved TD1. Everyone I know was floored by it. It was my first introduction to the depressive and dark Thomas Ligotti and it eventually opened the floodgates for me to delve into some of R. Scott Bakker's darker musings a la Blind Brain Theory. It made the Prince of Nothing even more poignant to me.

Then came season two. I was already prepared for the weird fiction elements to be stripped out. Pizzalotto said as much in a few interviews. But I held out hope season two would match season one in quality, whatever the tone and subject matter.

I wanted dark, brutal, uncompromising weird fiction out of season two. What we got was a Noire through the Pizzalotto lens. You can hear it in the trumpets, see it in the dark sleek atmospheres. Almost no one I know likes season two. My close friend stopped watching somewhere in episode two. "It's not as pretty. It's too [visually] dark. It's all shadows," she said. She's right. It doesn't bear up to the beautifully composed rot of season one. The cinematography was off in another world. And the acting, maybe, doesn't bear up to the career-defining performances of Woody Harrelson and Rustin Cohle (I mean Matthew McConaughey).

Yet there's something there. By no means do I argue that season two is as good as season one. It simply isn't. Pizzalotto tried to branch out and experiment and the limits of his craft as they currently exist were revealed. He is best when his characters are moving through an ugly dream of life, absolutely at his worst when allowing his characters to go off the rails and become caricatures of themselves, belching semi-deep and fake-heavy dialog. How did season one manage it? There was always a straight man to look at Rust and laugh, to remind him how creepy or weird or overdramatic he sounded.

We don't have anyone with any ground here. Sure, Woody Harrelson's Marty turned out to be a real piece of shit scumbag patriarchal misogynist codswallop. But we didn't know that at the beginning. Indeed, we have been given almost a negative of season one: the truth of the characters unfolded with the truth of the murders. The "mystery" was never that mysterious: we got an easy breakdown and wrapup, which is what irked a lot of people. The whole thing came out in the last two episodes. But the characters were slowly and methodically revealed the entire time. Just as the Mexican gangs Cohle mentioned, who pull back your face and show it to you before you die, season one was an exercise in showing people who they were and showing the audience at the same time.

Season two gives us everyone immediately. We get to know their flaws right away, before there's even a story. We don't discover them in the course of the tale, we know them, or feel we do. Sure, there are surprises along the way, and those are great surprises about them.

But fundamentally, the issue I think everyone is having with season two is an issue I'm not having. I bucked the noire atmosphere for a few episodes. I didn't want some neo-noire, I wanted fucking yellow signs and the existential threat to the human race of its own false consciousness. But once I realized what I was dealing with (at the end of the first episode) and learned to cope with the difference (end of the second episode), I actually began to enjoy season two. A lot.

Now sure, there are problems. Problems I would never have poked at in season one. For example, can it really be that only the main characters survived that shootout? That's lazy writing. Characters sometimes groan heavy with the depth of philosophical weight they're forced to murmur to each other in the car (note: for Pizzalotto, the car is a place of intimacy, perhaps the only place in the entire series where people are straight with each other). Exposition sometimes comes in big thick globs.

But seeing Frank Semyon and Ray (who's last name I forgot) stare each other down over the death of the wrong man? Hearing Semyon say "Don't you shoot me, Raymond," or "You may be the last friend I have left"? These are moments, just flashes mind you but they're there, of the beautiful glorious writing of season one.

Pizzalotto is still in there. Season two isn't pure genius straight from the tap of Valhalla like season one was, but it's still good (if confused) television. And Pizzalotto has the power in him to tell more season one True Detective stories.

If we destroy him now, we'll never hear them. And season two isn't worth crying over unless you're comparing it to season one. Don't do that. There's no comparison. Season one is the pinnacle of television perfection, second only to the Wire and Rome. Season two is just ok. But it's not bad.

Jess and the Ancient Ones

I don't know when I started wanted to write up reviews of music that I was listening to, but I think this is the very first time such a review will appear on this blog.

I started listening to Jess and the Ancient Ones because of Ghost. Spotify somehow, through hook or by crook, led me to this Finnish band. They're a psychedlic rock band with a few EPs and an album out and, from what I can tell, very little recognition. They haven't written music that'll revolutionize the industry or anything, but they're very good at what they do. Their one complete album is worth listening to.

It's self-titled and begins with Prayer for Death and Fire. This is one of their strongest songs, and I can appreciate that they started off the album with it. The instrumentation isn't overly complex, but the lead singer, the eponymous Jess, has a voice reminiscent of Stevie Nix. Its her presence that elevates the music from being rather mundane psychedelic rock-verging-on-metal to something altogether better and different. When she wails the final chorus, the song is perfect.

Twilight Witchcraft is alright. Good driving beat, simple chord progression. I just want to hear Prayer for Death and Fire again, though, until the breakdown when Jess takes over. It's not as bright as Prayer and stays well within a certain range rather than branching up and down the scale. At that point, the song comes into its own. The vocal progression is more interesting than the guitar—intentionally, I'd wager. On repeated listen-throughs, I think this is a good cooldown song to come off of Prayer.

Sulfur Giants is next. It's got a little more going on, with a long instrumental intro that picks up at around two minutes and shifts back into your regular rock chord progression. Vocals start up around 2:45. The instrumental segment returns at seven minutes in for one more flip back. It's all very nicely balanced.

Ghost Riders starts out with a series of broken chords that pay homage to whatever country-western folk roots are going on in this song. I appreciate what they're doing here, with bells and running chords, and low smoky vocals... but I want to hear Prayer for Death and Fire again. I definitely heard "through the gates of the Silver Key," so there's some Lovecraft in here with all the rest of the general occult stuff.

Once the chorus starts up, the song really gets into gear. Jess and the others seem to excel at the choral sections. It's almost enough to get me to forget the aural dynamite of Prayer for Death and Fire's chorus. Almost.

13th Breath of the Zodiac opens strong with Jess high up in her register. Music is doing more interesting stuff now to support her. Once again, the chorus is the best part of the song. Eminently listenable. The breakdown is pretty good, also.

The Devil (in G minor) is a sudden tonal and modal shift from the other songs. It's great, it's nothing like anything else on the rest of the album, and I don't hear the echo of Prayer for Death and Fire while I'm listening to it. It's a dark, folksy, almost southern gothic number. Jess' range is obviously the best thing about it, and its at its best during the chorus. Obviously.

Come Crimson Death is the last song on the album and returns to the heartland of its psychedelic rock roots with some very King Crimson instrumentation as it opens. Mellow and contemplative, with good hooks, it's much more peaceful than the rest of the album as well. Yes, indeed, come crimson death—and then bring me back to death and fire.

The flow of the album is great. Prayer has a sustaining drive that's cooled down by Twilight Witchcraft and even further by the contemplative instrumental section of Sulfur Giants, which itself contains a number of speed-ups and slowdowns.

However good Prayer may be on its own (and it does stand out, markedly, as the best song on the album), the entire album is composed like a well-structured meal: better for the juxtaposition of its elements, more than the sum of its parts.

The Exhaustive Fantasy Grounds Review

I've been using Fantasy Grounds actively for about 3 weeks now. I've been waiting to write this review until all the data is in. I think I can safely make an objective and unbiased judgement at this point. To be clear, I got a review copy for the purposes of writing this review—but that plays no role in the words you're about to read.

Part One: Mac and PC

I'm a mac user. I've always been a mac user. I will always be, for the foreseeable future, a mac user. This means that anything that doesn't work with some ease on the mac is something I'm not going to use. Especially not a roleplaying tool—I've deleted my bootcamp partition, I'm not going to rebuild it. Installing a wine wrapper counts as "some ease" for me at this point due to my quest for usable windows software that I can run on my mac. So props to FG for not only having a product you can put in a wine wrapper, but for hosting a thread on their forum that tells you how to do it if you're not familiar with things like winebottler.

Part Two: The Rules

Fantasy Grounds comes with some rules installed. These are, predictably, 3.5E D&D, 4E D&D, the Fantasy Grounds "core RPG" rules (not rules at all, merely a framework), Pathfinder, and Numenara. These were DEFINITELY not rulesets that my group was going to use. We play AD&D 2e exclusively when it comes to D&D games, and that's what we play most. For me to get any use out of this thing I was going to have to go on a quest.

It wasn't very long or hard to find pointers to other rulesets. The FG community has been developing them on their own time. And what's that? An AD&D ruleset ready for use right there. Not to mention Mongtrav, WHFRP, Ars Magica, and a bunch of other stuff? Alright, seems like I was worried for no real reason. Of course, once we all installed the AD&D rules and looked at them we realized that A) they weren't complete and B) they didn't integrate well with the updated version of Fantasy Grounds. You couldn't resize image windows or the chatbox. There were no X buttons to close character sheets, necessitating a right-click close operation. Yuck. Before we could use this thing, we had to update it.

Alex and I went on the monumental task of parsing the .xml rule files and figuring out how things worked. Over the course of a 20-30 man-hour week we managed to hack together a frankenstein ruleset out of the old AD&D 2e rules and the new coreRPG rules provided with the updated version of FG. It was not easy. It's still not done. It's usable though, if you click that link you'll find yourself at my dropbox address for it.

This was a massive barrier to entry, but luckily it only had to be done once.

Part Three: The Features

I'm gonna break this down real easy to start. Things I like: linking stuff together, importing images, battlemaps, party roster sheet, calendar, /ooc voice so I don't register all that greentext the players are constantly spouting, auto-calculated AC hit when making attack rolls. Things I don't like: shuffling through pages to find NPCs to spoof or stat, shuffling through pages for ANY REASON, rewriting vast swathes of rules, having broken the tables in our ruleset due to the way the AD&D sheet interacts with the chat box, my players complaining about the difficulty of learning and adapting.

Linking. You can link stuff together. Seems simple. Hyperlinked notes are a wonder. Unfortunately, they are much harder to navigate in practice. I'll stick to keeping my notes on paper.

Images. Best part about this system is the fast way to share images. I have maps of the great city of Miles, its environs, etc. all shared. I play online exclusively these days. This is the only way to ensure everyone's getting the information.

Battlemaps. I'm against lots of drawings and character portraits that are generic and all that. However, battlemaps can be handy in certain situations. Served us well in the manticore fight.

Party Sheet. Awesome way for tracking communal items and treasure. Hands down good feature.

Calendar. Boom, no more linking to a google spreadsheet I custom tarted up. Great feature. Had to program the calendar myself, struggled with zipping the folder that contained it over and over (har har, just zip the FILES, idiot) but GREAT feature. Needs to have the ability to keep track of multiple years, though.

Voice Modes. Great. Love it. Certain players hate it. Hate holding the extra button, typing /o, /a, whatever. Bad times for me, but at least it cuts out all the OOC chatter that clogs up the channel in IRC.

AC-hit. Thought it would be amazing. In practice it saves not that much time.

Shuffling through stuff. Screen real-estate issue and tactile nightmare. I prefer my actual notes.

Spoofing NPCs. I thought I'd hate this, but I've become proficient at it in three sessions. I'm cool with it now.

Writing the Rules. MAJOR bummer. We did it so you don't have to.

Player Complaints. A few. They will be given voice at the end.

Part Four: To buy or not to buy?

Do you have a large amount of disposable cash burning a hole in your pocket? Buy the Ultimate Edition so your friends don't have to pay anything. Otherwise, weigh your options. If you play PRIMARILY or COMPLETELY online, this is a way to bring that "table feel" back to the game. It allows for easy file management and image sharing, which is paramount in my experience.

HOWEVER, the price is very steep. Do all your friends have money to spare? Can you just play on IRC instead? Don't worry about it. This is a gaming luxury item. It's great to have, even with the headaches (unless your rules don't exist on it, in which case you have to be a masochist and a programmer to get them working, and aren't those two the same thing?) it adds a lot to the game.

Bottom Line: You got the dough and it has your rules, buy it. You don't, stick to IRC. If you want to ask me about specific features, email me at kestar@gmail.com and I'd be happy to go over them further and help you decide.

Player rebuttals and additions coming soon.

What Realm Works (and what doesn't)

So the kind folks over at Lone Wolf were gracious enough to give me access to a review copy of their Realm Works software which is, as it appears, a note-taking aid for GMs. My first hurdle is one I experience all the time: it's only for PCs, which means I had to dig up a copy of VMWare Fusion to install and run it. Ok, fair enough, I'm no stranger to emulation. Hell, I ran a boot camp copy of windows off my main computer for 3 years before I decided the hell with it.

Salient points, for those of you who don't want to read an essay:

• I already, manually, do all the things Realm Works does.
• If you have a deeply complicated setting already built with reams of notes, digitizing them all into the Realm Works format is a daunting task
• It does provide very interesting ways to manipulate your data

In summarizing these points, I realize that Realm Works is like any database software anywhere; it has a massive entry cost if you haven't started your project using it, that not really compensated by its flexibility and the ease of manipulating your data. In this case, because for me most of the relationships that it can display are already firmly ingrained in my head after five years of developing the 10th Age setting. To put it another way, if I was starting a new setting, I might very well use Realm Works to help me organize everything. As it is, my own setting has been digested and redigested, thought about and re-thought about, to the point where I can almost instantly access any piece of information about it that I want, rearrange that information to make sense in a different way, and just know by muscle memory certain inter-informational or meta-informational relationships.

I make thought maps. Realm Works makes thought maps. I make relationship maps between characters, nations, etc. So does Realm Works. The problem for me is, with Realm Works, I have to plug in a LOT of information that is written down in other places.

I can see what makes Realm Works really great. I could build a setting using it. Unfortunately, my setting has a history that precludes easy integration. I'm going to continue puttering with it, slowly updating the data there, fleshing out things I hadn't thought about, etc. Perhaps someday the box full of notes that I keep will make it into Realm Works... but I strongly feel that the skills I've developed to keep my setting organized in my mind and on paper are going to override my desire to enter information into a new system.

I recommend everyone try it out to see if it suits them, because for those it suits I imagine it will take away a lot of pain. Indeed, it may encourage you to see your world in a different way. It may make you (dare I say it) a better DM as it encourages more complete note keeping and different types of note keeping. I don't want to sound pompous, but I already curate my notes the way Realm Works does—perhaps with slightly less attention to hierarchical detail (I don't think I've ever written down a chart of the Imperial Provincial Hierarchy, mostly because I understand that the level of Empire is above Province, etc.)

I want to enjoy it, I want to use it. I have some organizational issues with my notes

The Starbund

Been sick lately, so things are backed up.

So, in the absence of regular gaming a lot of folks from my IRC channel have been playing Starbound, myself included. For those of you who don't know, Starbound is a sort of sandbox sidescroller in which you play one of a myriad of weird and intriguing races out to build your place in the galaxy. It has the same sort of editing as Terraria does, enabling you to build houses, barns, towers, complexes of techno-wizardry, and that sort of thing. IT has a huge procedurally generated universe, a wiring system of logic gates (which is a sort of analog to the redstone capacitor system of Minecraft) and a strange but compelling pixel-art aesthetic.

I was going to write an extremely detailed review, but the new patch is coming out in a few days plus I'm sick and whatnot. Consider this a warning that a review is coming (with the new patch probably) and some day next week may be taken up by my ranting on how great a game Starbound is.

A Board Game of Thrones

Having gotten this game for a friend and subsequently discovered that it also works on Vassal thanks to some modules designed by a few clever-boots, I've played it a few times recently. The connection with the old favorite Diplomacy is not to be denied. Like Diplomacy, it's primarily about lying and manipulating, with the actual mechanics of the game being secondary to these tricks, temporary alliances, and other such friendship-ruining agreements.

The game reminds one of Birthright though of course with less detail on the actual ruling of places and more emphasis on warfare. Its alternate-history Westeros is one in which the families of the land more or less stay together and don't fight each other (Renly and Stannis, for example, are both commander cards in the Baratheon deck regardless of their disputes in the books) and in which Eddard Stark was never beheaded. That's ok, though, because the game is FUN AS HELL. Instead of writing your orders down on a slip of paper like Diplomacy, you put face-down markers on the table and then everyone flips them over at once. Even once you've declared your orders, you can still choose WHERE exactly you want to march that dangerous army, eliciting the possibility of further diplomatic talks before your troops shred the much-needed provinces of a neighbor.

Also interesting (and by interesting I mean great) are the uneven starting positions of the great houses. The Starks, for example, have the vast and unpleasant wasteland of the north at the beginning of the game. On balance, however, they are only adjacent to one house. The Lannisters, on the other hand, have a clear road to the heart of the kingdom where all the finery of the realm awaits them... but they are surrounded by other Houses and an alliance against them is likely to form early. The play styles of each house are markedly different, as are the abilities their various cards give (Kevin Lannister makes footmen as valuable as knights, meaning Lannister armies will tend to allow more footmen in their ranks).

Rarely is the game measured as a slugfest between armies. Victories or defeats on the battlefield must be followed by sound strategy on the rest of the board else you will be certain to lose. I was playing the Lannisters and the Baratheon and Stark players (there were three of us) pushed me back to Lannisport and then took it... and meanwhile, the rest of my armies were sacking the central kingdoms and the Bay of the Ironmen and I won by taking my 7th castle with Stark wolves baying for blood at my very doorstep.

The influence tracker is a great way to represent complex political realities within the simple world of the game. It shows how close each house is to controlling the "legitimate king," which presumably changes as the influence changes, to controlling the most important and warlike fiefdoms of Westeros, and to commanding the court of the king. Each of these things alter the way the game is played. Holding the Iron Throne allows you to break ties and go first. The Valyrian Steel Blade (fiefdoms) grants you bonuses in war, and the Messenger Raven (king's court) allows you to change some of your orders AFTER everyone has committed.

The wheeling and dealing necessary to win the game is a cold business. As players fall behind, it behoves the smart and right devious lord to recruit them into his cause and promise to shield them as they rebuild. In this way, their meager remaining forces can be put to good use. In one game I forced a shattered army out of the Eyrie and southwards towards King's Landing... thus infuriating the Baratheon player and causing her to turn, not on me, but on the Lannister player who's forces were moved by treaty.

Well, when you play the boardgame of thrones, you win or you die.

Royal Flash vs. Flashman and the Meaning Thereof

A digression.

George Macdonald Fraiser created one of the greatest characters of the 20th Century, even though Harry Piaget Flashman is from the 19th. The Flashman series is an unending delight of English bigotry, misogyny, and cowardice, the curtain drawn back on the Imperial experiment to get a look at the pulsing muscles underneath. You can't help but love Flashy, even though he is literally the worst. In the 70s, a movie was made out of the second Flashman book. It wasn't great.

Though it was written by George Macdonald Fraiser and acted by the inestimable Malcolm McDowell, it failed to capture the spirit of old Flashy. I've a litany of problems with it, starting the common adaptation blues (Rudi is too old, Flashman too weedy, Bismarck not scary enough, Krafstein turned into a Bond villain, de Gautet barely present, Lola not young enough, etc., etc.)

Let us cut right to the most damning change at the heart of the matter: nothing is serious. The Flashman novels are undoubtedly comedy. There's no denying that they are meant to be a cruel and biting satire. We are encouraged to laugh with and at Harry and his contemporaries without mercy. But, at the end of the day, the Flashman books contain real human emotion and tragically moving segments. When the Residency is overwhelmed in Kabul or Flashman is languishing at Piper's Fort, when he's upside-down in the pipe under the Jotunberg or Carl Gustav is learning that his best and oldest friend has been casually slaughtered by the grinning Rudi—these are real, human, and heartbreaking. Flashman's tales are built on heartbreak: he's an arm of the Imperial government, and he witnesses the darkest parts of the 19th century first hand.

Royal Flash (the film) has none of that. The tone is more like Dumb and Dumber. Flashman, far from being a cunning evil coward, is portrayed as a bumbling fool. Things happen to Flashman, not because of him. Tellingly, in the Jotunberg when Rudi is outlining a plan for Flashy to go back into the fire for the sake of money and good ole Harry decides the safer thing to do is hit Rudi with a bottle and run away (later lamenting that he didn't kill the bastard when he was down and he had the chance), McDowell's Flashy accidentally brains him and then actively decides not to hit him again. Who's this Harry? A dope, not a coward and murderer.

It seems that Fraiser (who wrote the screenplay) tried to steer away from the darker parts of his novel: the torture Harry inflicts on de Gautet, the accusations of rape, the true baseness of Henry Piaget Flashman's character. He's a hapless dope, not a murderer! the movie screams. Because of that, the true spirit of Harry Flashman is lost. It's a fun enough movie, and it fills a few hours, but it has none of the lasting impact of reading a Flashman novel.

Ah well. Maybe HBO and the BBC will team up to make a miniseries.

Green Ronin's Black Company Books

I hate d20. I hate 3rd Edition. I hate adaptations. I hate, I hate, I hate.

I love Green Ronin's d20 Black Company RPG adaptation. I love it with all my heart. I played it for an extended period with Frank and Jason (Keir and Cain respectively, in the Hounds) and we all enjoyed it thoroughly. There's just something about Green Ronin's products that I can't help myself but love. Their d20 Medieval book (complete with rules for disputation and "social" combat wherein scholars send letters to each other and refute philosophical treatises) is also just fucking great.

Writing rules to resemble a book is hard as hell. I threw out their Black Company setting stuff because I always have to design my own settings. So instead we played in a pseudo-Black Company world that included lots of things that "felt" like the Black Company but weren't actually. The Company of the Crow was our stand-in and Nah'Khud, the infamous mercenary leader who had etched on his breastplate "Enemy of God, Mercy, and Mankind" the Captain. Sergeants like Dealer, Hammer, and Sand led the platoons and the desperate, nearly destroyed, betrayed, and ruined Company battled its way out of the Valley of Drown (after the disastrous engagement at The Saw, a series of narrow canyons near the edge of the Red Lands) and towards the ancient city of Torch.

This gave us a chance to use the platoon fighting rules. Frank played Diver, a mercenary picked up in the ruinous land of Drown, while Jason played one of the sergeants: a veteran archer named Twitch. Together they led one of the platoons breaking out of the Valley of Drown (by fighting the notorious knights Crouch and Tyle). The medium scale combat rules (the game has skirmish, platoon-scale, and full battle scale rules) worked smoothly and with little calculation. They reminded me, in fact, very much of the Birthright skirmishing rules.

Once that was done and the Company's rag-tag remnants safe in Torch (where they signed up with the councilar family of the Sabines, serving Sabius Lutrius) most of the gameplay devolved to street level encounters with rag-tag elements of the Qualaeine conspiracy. We got a chance to test the magic system (the Company wizard, Smoke, traveled with Twitch and Diver on several occasions—this was before I'd read the Books of the South and met the ACTUAL Smoke of the Black Company novels) and it worked... beautifully.

The permanent crippling affects caused by CON damage, the maximum hp cap, and the CON damage on surprise rounds worked together to create real memorable play as well as that feeling of gritty down-to-earth combat. Sand, a huge Obsidian Lander, was crippled forever in an ambush by the Qualaeines; his knee was sliced from behind and his movement rate permanently reduced by a hitch-step limp. This is the kind of stuff that games need. Desperately. Less glowing swords and super-high-jumps and ten-thousand-arrows and more of this low to the ground fighting. This is the where the magic happens.

Pride of Carthage, a review

I'll admit it: I wasn't that thrilled with the beginning of Pride of Carthage by David Anthony Durham. It seemed pedestrian. Throughout, there was something about the use of language that was somehow blasé to me. Yet, my intense and developing interest in various bits and corners of history that I'm not well versed in (the Civil War, the Punic Wars, pretty much anything outside of 200CE-1350CE) has been growing exponentially.

The workmanly quality of Durham's writing at first detracted from my enjoyment of the book; I have no idea what New Carthage looked like, unlike the very clear image of Republican Rome I've formulated through reading, seeing the modern city, and watching countless Roman movies and television shows (movies about Rome, not from it). However, once the story really got rolling, the writing faded into the background for me before the grand drama of historical figures.

What Durham really captured well were the little quirks of the various commanders (extrapolated from their behavior in the histories) as well as the troubles of the campaign. Hannibal's inability to bring Rome to heel due to those men back home in Carthage who wanted him to fail, the march across the Alps, even the dealings of his men with the "straw-haired" barbarians. The most memorable characters have to be the Molochite Monomachus (a gruesome man with a gruesome devotion to the Devourer) and the Massyli prince Massinissa, who was condemned to exile.

Massinissa's attack on Numidia is perhaps the greatest moment of the book. All of the previous writing seems to somehow work in this section, clicking into place and providing a powerful resolution to one of the B-storylines.

If you're not interested in the Punic Wars, this novel probably isn't for you. If you are, and you're somewhat turned off by the blandness of the writing to begin with, don't despair. The book isn't really about the textures of the environment, but rather the textures of the characters within it. Give it a chance. By the time Hannibal Barca's crossing the Alps... well, if you still don't like it then, you can abandon his mighty army and shut the book. Before then, you really don't know what you're getting involved in.