The story is a bit of a casualty to the mission structure and game play to start with, though threads emerge and little plot arcs with the various ‘quest givers’ do emerge. The information about Pandora is there to understand its background but you really have to pay attention as you whisk through the missions to really get an idea of what happened.

Pandora was a mining world run by one of the big interstellar corporations until they decided to pull out. In so doing they left behind a bunch of convict workers and everyone who couldn’t afford to get off world. The injured, the perverse and those who simply enjoyed exploiting a frontier planet. Stories about the vault have brought other mercenaries here, along with members of larger mercenary forces, ostensibly there to keep the peace. A job they fail at.

This review is unlikely to be of a great deal of use to most people who will have seen the word ‘Bioware’ associated with it, ignored the EA also associated with it, had a happy accident in their pants and bought it anyway. For those of you who’ve been a little bit slower off the mark or have hung back unsure whether to buy it, without having the money spare or who are curious without being curious enough to spend money, hopefully this will offer something useful.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, Dragon Age: Origins is the kick off of a new CRPG franchise for Bioware, divorced from their D&D associations (Baldur’s Gate) and that of their old game engine. Dragon’s Age has been sold as a glorious, sexy, blood-spattered romp that tears down preconceptions about fantasy games and worlds, plays about with them and offers a more mature and visceral entertainment ’sausage’ at the end of it all.

Wolfsheim is a mini-adventure for Scion, stand alone, suitable for an evening’s play or as a pick-up or convention game, though it will need experienced characters to be pre-generated in such an instance. It’s fairly straightforward, if a little rail-roady (as most of these adventures from White Wolf have been) and it could easily be shifted in space and time from its modern, Germanic setting to just about anywhere or anywhen.

The basic storyline is that of Yojimbo, the famous Japanese samurai story, a town caught between two predatory groups and the wanderers coming in, upsetting the balance between the people and their antagonists and, hopefully, causing a new peace to come about (through a great deal of bloodshed in the middle).

MSG™ Executive Edition is a satirical RPG about what I shall reservedly term ‘Corporate marketing bollocks’ and the rat race. Players take on the roles of company representatives, ‘reps’ and each turn The Company (the role of which shifts between players) tries to crush the players or get them to crush each other. Yes, it’s one of those new-wave poncey indie games under the thick shell of satire and piss-taking. In spite of that, for an indie game, it’s a fairly weighty 130+ pages.

MSG™ Executive Edition is a story-focussed, semi-GMless, resource management and risk assessment oriented indie game. That’s a torrent of buzzwords that wouldn’t be out of place in the game itself. To clarify…

This is a fairly rules-light game thereby focusing more intently on the story and drama, rather than complex rules mechanics.

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

Part Four of the Scion companion is ‘Secrets of the World’ which is a rather grandiose name for what amounts to a grab bag of things that didn’t really fit into the other sections. This is the fourth in a series of ‘peeks’ at the Scion Companion which is coming to print to support the main line and is much mroe general – and therefore generally useful – than some of the other previews.

This is a toolkit of ideas, devices, groups and guidelines and as such represents the real ‘meat’ of the Scion Companion. If this is what you like from your supplementary material than buying just this companion on PDF could represent a real bargain if the other sections of the book don’t appeal so much.

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

While a lot of third party publishers have been very cautious about the GSL and 4th Edition, Goodman Games seems to have dived right in and gotten going on the very type of thing that WOTC has wanted publishers to do all the time, publish adventures. ‘In Search of Adventure’ would appear to be a sort of introduction to the line, a 120-odd page book of first level adventures.

There are six adventures listed within the book, all aimed for parties of first level adventurers.

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

Ragnarok is an expansion and adventure book by White Wolf for Scion. The book deals with the apocalypse myth, specifically of the Norse gods and, being apocalyptic, returns to many of the tropes of the oWoD. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it makes almost as bad a hash of it as the end times books of the old World of Darkness did, though it has many redeeming qualities as a publication.

Ragnarok is a hefty book at some 244 pages, not a bad size for a core book, let alone a supplement, continuing a tradition of ‘fat splats’ which has overtaken whole swathes of the gaming industry. The book is divided into two key sections and these are further subdivided into their own segments.

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

To the Flame is one of White Wolfs PDF based ‘adventure packs’ and another in the line of White Wolf’s relatively mature and developed products, specifically for the PDF market. This has been established in a line of products now, so I’ll spend less time praising and talking up the initiative they’ve taken on tailoring to the PDF market and concentrate a little more specifically on this particular product.

To the Flame is intended for Promethean, though, with a bit of work, it could be made to fit a crossover scenario, particularly a hunter based group. While the motivations of some of the ‘bad guys’ might need a little tweaking, as would the introduction, it should – otherwise – work fine.

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

Twilight 2000 was always one of those games that I read more than I played. I spent a lot of time coming up with scenarios and survivor communities but very rarely got to play it. I played a short campaign – as a player – where I blew myself up with a grenade that bounced back down the stairs to me after a bad roll – but that was about it. The whole ‘military unit’ campaign flavour, accompanied by the embarrassingly Americanocentric viewpoint of the material made it a poor fit for the freewheeling, British RPG groups I’ve always been a part of, but I loved the setting and while not a greatly played game it holds a seat of affection for me.

Review by James “Grim” Desborough

Iron Angel is the sequel to Scar Night, reviewed HERE. Both books take place in a peculiar fantasy world, fraught with demons and angels and strange gods and possessed of a near-industrial technological level, though, anachronistically, it is one that seems to be without guns. The first book took place within the iconic city of Deepgate, a massive city strung on chains over a pit that descended into hell itself. That book ended with the death of a god but, whoever evil and dangerous that god was its death had to have implications, and these begin to come home to roost in the sequel.

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

Simon R Green is the author of the Deathstalker books, a rollicking romp of space opera insanity that makes a good pulpy read and keeps you enjoyably engaged all the way through. This book, the first in a Shaman Bond series is set in the present day, sort of, amongst a madness of the occult and conspiracy theories and within the greatest conspiracy theory of all. This book was the launch of the new series which continues in the obvious vein with Deamons are Forever. I wonder if we’ll also see Doctor Om, Chandraball and On Her Majesty’s Occult Service before the series is out…

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

Reading through the books 4th Edition feels, to me, very much like an introductory game in a way that 3rd Edition wasn’t. The look, the feel, the language all seem, to me, to be angled towards bringing in new players. This is a really good thing, obviously, but I think that the targetting of the MMO market – which seems to be the aim – is a miscalculation. TTRPGs can’t beat MMOs at their own game, D&D aping MMORPGs is a bit like having your dad go through a midlife crisis, dying his hair, driving a porsche and trying to pass himself off as ‘Emo’. It’s a little embarrassing and not what he’s really good at. I think it may have been more productive to go after the areas where TTRPGs still excel over CRPGs and MMORPGs but hey, nobody listens to me.

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough