Rappy’s RPG Reviews: 100 Conspirators

Last week, I reviewed Postmortem Studios’ 100 Conspiracies, a system neutral conspiracy theory idea farm for roleplaying games. If you haven’t read that review, go do so, because this is that book’s sister title and I will be referring to it.

What’s the Gist?

While 100 Conspiracies gave the conspiracies themselves, 100 Conspirators gives out the skinny on the people that actually perpetuate these schemes. As with its sister title, this book’s entries are all born out of the ravings of real world conspiracy circles and real world organizations that said conspiracy circles have exacerbated into fictional uber-entities with sinister plans.

 

Rappy’s RPG Reviews: 100 Conspiracies

Well, now this is something I haven’t really tried before. I’m going to be reviewing a book that is indeed a roleplaying game supplement, but one that is system neutral. While any roleplaying game book with a high enough fluff-over-crunch ratio could be used for the purposes of researching for another system – for instance, while I have no real desire to ever play the system, the amount of research and data that goes into GURPS books has ensured that my RPG library has a fairly solid section of said titles – a system neutral sourcebook is tailor-made to create no assumptions based on rules sets or game setting beyond a general idea of what direction the title is going for.

I’d actually been meaning to do a review of such a title for a while, but the logistics of trying to keep such a review in a roleplaying game context and not stray into just a generic book review was somewhat difficult. I think I’ve finally found a generic (if sometimes somewhat brief) system that works for such reviews, however, so let’s get our tinfoil reading caps out to look at the book 100 Conspiracies from Postmortem Studios.

 

Rappy’s RPG Reviews: Mars-A Roleplaying Game of Planetary Romance

Hello audience. With the recent passing of my grandmother and general blah-ness, I haven’t had much oomph to get a blog done before now. But hey, we all move on eventually, so here’s something special just for you.

With a relatively recent film – Disney’s John Carter – made out of A Princess of Mars, the first of Edgar Rice Burrough’s old classical Barsoom series, you might say that a review of a Martian roleplaying game with heavy ties to Barsoom might be making an attack of opportunity. You’d be right in saying that, of course, but I’m doing it anyway. It’s time to review Mars: A Roleplaying Game of Planetary Romance (hereafter referred to as MARG, for Mars: A Roleplaying Game), a d20 Modern campaign toolkit created by Adamant Entertainment.

For Barsoom Alvalia!

While the first Barsoom novels are indeed completely public domain, it is worthy of noting that this book is not specifically a Barsoom setting so much as an amalgamation of tropes gathered from the various reflections of the “planetary romance” genre. And what better company to cover such an amalgamation than Adamant Entertainment? After all, planetary romance is a sub-genre in both Victorian and pulp fiction, and Adamant has covered both – Victorian fiction with its Imperial Age series (the bestiary of which I reviewed back in March of 2009; apologies for the primitive nature of those posts compared to my more modern blog entries) and pulp fiction with its Thrilling Tales series (whose omnibus edition I also reviewed, in January of 2009). The Mars of MARG is pretty much the classical interpretation you’d expect, being a dying, arid world with mysterious ancient ruins, distant polar forests, and those ever-present canals. It is ruled by the Red Men, who are the Red Martians of Barsoom right down to being humans-that-are-actually-monotremes-for-some-reason, with the exotic places of the world being divided up amongst other beings born of the red planet. All of these species are detailed in the character creation chapter right after the introduction to MARG’s Mars, so let’s make haste and look at those.

 

Rappy’s RPG Reviews: Testament, Part 3

Welcome to the third and final piece of the Testament review. Here, we’ll be going in full steam and taking a look at the remaining chapters, from 7 to 25 and reaching our final verdict. Is this title anointed by the Heavenly Host, or cast down into the Pit of Despair? You’ll just have to stick around to find out!

 

Rappy’s RPG Reviews: Testament, Part 2

Alright, after that last tangent, we’re back with part 2 of the Testament review. And with increased font size, I might add, since I got some notes detailing the fact that my normal PDF-writing font size came out – well, odd, to say the least – in WordPress’s blog format.

 

Rappy’s RPG Reviews: Testament, Part 1

Greetings, my viewers. You may notice that the format of this blog post is different than usual. Don’t worry, it’s not your computer screen or a hallucination brought on by the vengeful spirit of Horace Wells come back from the grave to take revenge on you for your last successful trip to the dentist. Instead, the reasoning is quite simple: this isn’t a written-in-WordPress post (dun dun dun)! To cut things short, with how often I’m on the road and out of the house lately, it’s far easier to type up a post in OpenOffice and copy-paste it later than keep waiting until I’m at a good Wi-Fi point before I continue writing. So think of this as a test run of that formatting; if you don’t like it, feel free to give some feedback in the comments, but hopefully it won’t be too abrasive to the eyes.

Moving on to the topic at hand…

 

Rappy’s RPG Reviews: Pathfinder Chronicles-Classic Horrors Revisited

Welcome back to another RPG review from yours truly.

…Yes, yes, I know, the whole Animorphs blind readthrough thing still hasn’t been done. I promise it will before the year is out, at least. For now, though, I’m reviewing a title from the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Yeah, I know, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of those! Indeed, last time I did was all the way back in 2009, with the then-recent Pathfinder Bestiary. Now I’ve finally returned to this D&D offshoot to look at one of its most totally terrifying titles: Classic Horrors Revisited!

Introducing the “Monsters Revisited” Concept

Classic Horrors Revisited is just one of what I like to call the “monsters revisited” titles. In a way, they are

 

Rappy’s RPG Reviews: Star Wars Saga Edition-Threats of the Galaxy

The third book to come out for Star Wars Saga Edition (after Starships of the Galaxy…for…some reason), Threats of the Galaxy basically acted as the Monster Manual for SWSE. While it would be impractical to go over each and every stat block in the game, especially after I already reviewed the rules basics of the game, I do have a plan for this. Yes, really. Plan. I totally have one.

 

Rappy’s RPG Reviews: Star Wars Saga Edition Game Rules

Hello again, dear viewers. For this review, I’m going to be taking a look at the basic rules changes of the latest – and, as of yet, last – Star Wars roleplaying game: Star Wars Saga Edition. First, let’s have a little backstory on what got us to this point.

In 2004, the Star Wars Roleplaying Game (not to be confused with a Star Wars roleplaying game) produced the sourcebook Ultimate Adversaries, a tome of beasts, baddies, and battle droids from all over the Star Wars universe. It was a great collective title, gathering up and revising monsters from previous books, introducing a veritable rogue’s gallery of NPCs, and putting in a fair amount of droids and gadgets for use by allies and adversaries alike. What could ever top that? Well…nothing, apparently, as that was the last title produced for the Star Wars Roleplaying Game as it was. While some free web enhancements – including RPG stats for characters, droids, vehicles, and vessels from Revenge of the Sith – trickled in on the rare occasion, things were basically dead, and it looked grim for the RPG franchise as delivered by Wizards of the Coast.

Fast forward to 2007.

 

Rappy’s RPG Reviews: Blood and Relics, Part 2

“The Power of Christ Compels You!”

Heading into chapter 2, we are introduced to a new game mechanic: “spiritual afflictions”. This is really one of the few spots where the specific type of religious conspiracy/Heaven vs. Hell setting that runs more covertly through the generic occult conspiracy of Blood and Relics bubbles violently to the surface, presenting itself plain and clear for all to see. Spiritual afflictions are similar to the Taint from Ravenloft; they are not diseases of the body or the mind so much as they are of the soul, a corrupting tendril of influence from the things of darkness. Some of the generic afflictions include self-explanatory things such as