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Shadowplay is the second book in the Shadowmarch series, written by veteran novelist Tad Williams. Truthfully, I have not read Shadowmarch, the first of the three books in this trilogy—but I have read almost every other book that Williams has ever published. Picking up Shadowplay was an experiment, in the sense that I wasn’t sure whether or not I would need to read the first book. The result?
Shadowplay has very little recap from its predecessor—you can glean the details as you read on—and the first hundred pages proved difficult to me as a reader simply because I hadn’t read the events leading up to the scattering of the royal Eddon family and the takeover by the Tollys.
Let me begin by writing something positive about director, Francisco Plaza’s, Werewolf Hunter. It’s ambitious. But really. What do you get when you try to combine a monster movie, a serial killer thriller, a period piece, a docudrama, and an episode of National Geographic Explorer? Answer: A disjointed mess that never commits to any of these. Rather than pulling us through a compelling narrative, we watch while Mr. Plaza meanders in circles for 89 minutes. What’s left in his wake is a movie so disengaging that the most frightening experience I had watching it was the possibility that I may fall asleep and have to watch it again so that I can write this review.
Prophecies, magic, and a powerful darkness come to life in the novel End of Heroes, written by an up and coming author. Although this is a fantasy novel, there are many elements that do not follow the mainstream cutouts you might find in your local bookstore hidden away on the shelf. First and foremost, it is strongly apparent that there is an intelligent author behind the planning of this book. Herbst has created a very, well-detailed setting with a complex wizard society and magical rules.
The movie gets right to it with an action packed wrestling match and swordfight. Antique dealer Russell Nash (Christopher Lambert) lives a quiet life in modern-day New York. Unbeknownst to the world, The Gathering of Immortals has come, and Nash is really Connor MacLeod, a five hundred year-old highlander who must fight for The Prize. Connor and the other remaining immortals must battle to the death. The victor cuts off his enemy’s head and absorbs his lifeforce, called the Quickening. Clancy Brown plays the evil and powerful Viktor Kurgan, an ancient Immortal who has a history with the Highlander.
Ultimately, the Dog Town system seems as though it could be very simple, unfortunately the explanation is confused and overly wordy (perhaps even purposefully intellectualized) to the point that it obfuscates, rather than elucidates, the mechanical components of the game. The rule explanations in Dog Town need a serious overhaul — less jargon, less “behind the scenes” exposition, and more black and white explanation. Dog Town needs to keep it simple, trimming some serious fat.
Rooted in an alternate history, The Burning ratchets up the supernatural, tones down the reality, and makes good use of graphic violence and sex to shock the reader. In many ways, The Burning is the spiritual successor to the American slasher movie in literature — and it works! As a piece of purely tongue-in-cheek entertainment The Burning delivers:
A crazed mass murderer, a nationwide massacre, a conspiratorial Presidential coverup, ghost trains, and armies of undead rising from the grave — what’s not to love, right?
Twilight of the Dead takes five years after the initial outbreak of the zombie plague, and it is told through the view of a young woman named Courtney. Courtney is a sad, depressed person who is depressed at the loss of her father and the fact that her life has been ruined by the dead corpses that have now taken over the world, and this is what makes Courtney such an interesting character. Unlike the big, bad guy heros of the zombie genre, Courtney is the center point of Twilight of the Dead , and this helps make the novel different from any ordinary novel.
Plague of the Dead takes another twist with the zombie genre, showing that the zombies can and cannot be dead at the same time. Z.A Recht, author of the new zombie novel Plague of the Dead brings a new twist to the genre.
Beginning with a strange, if not disturbing, email from a scientist in the army, it tells of the inevitable danger that the new and strange plague may bring. While the scientist tries to warn people about it, it doesn’t do any good, and that means that people are vulnerable. It hits our home of the United States when a medical examiner turns his back for just one moment.
I was under whelmed and uninspired by nearly everything I saw in 2006. Genre flicks were particularly bad. Aside from “The Descent,” one of the few notable exceptions, it was a year full of more bad sequels and blasphemous remakes. That said, I was hopeful about Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” as I made my first trip to the theatre this year. However, I decided to leave my expectations at the theatre entrance just in case—a defense mechanism against brilliantly marketed bad movies.
Dungeon Bash is obtainable via download from RPGNow.com and similar sites. A bundle of PDFs is provided for a cost of US $10, which is far from excessive. Some of the files contain D20 related material which is available elsewhere but is provided here in more user-friendly formats. Dating back to the time of Gary Gygax and Dave Arnesen, the original creators of the game, D&D rules have always combined the sensible and the nonsensical in almost equal balance. This tendency has pretty much continued as the game has grown in complexity and is perhaps inevitable when so many people have been responsible for producing officially sponsored content. Players of course contribute to the problem by gleefully ripping ideas and concepts out of their context in forcing them into their own games, generally in the hope of giving themselves an advantage in the killing-and-looting stakes. Consequently, there exists a market niche for people who can summarize and present pertinent information in a reader-friendly and comprehensive fashion.
The official Wraeththu (pronounced RAY-THOO) roleplaying game is based on a body of fiction by Storm Constantine. I should note that, prior to reviewing the product in question, my exposure to Ms. Constantine’s fiction has been exactly none. That said, after reviewing the RPG, I’m tempted to look into it. I found the game itself to be conceptually intriguing, though its execution leaves much to be desired. Something appears to have gone horribly awry between the initial spark of inspiration and the finished product.
“The planets line up, magic comes back in a torrent of confusion and mass panic, and what’s left of the general public is in chaos.” Chaos University is a tongue in cheek roleplaying game of magic and the occult published by Firewater Productions. Written by Jennifer and Daniel Schoonover, the Chaos University Student Handbook (i.e., […]
A soft-cover, perfect-bound book boasting gorgeous full color, wrap-around, Larry Elmore cover art, The Chronicles of Ramlar is a roleplaying game of high fantasy made available by White Silver Publishing, Inc. The book weighs in at a hefty 350 pages (including 19 pages of record sheets and quick references) and contains everything that you will need to run a campaign in the game’s default setting of Eranon, one of two continents on a nameless world (the titular “Ramlar” is the who created the world in question).
Into the Reach brings a small group of “heroes” together through unlucky circumstances that are forced to work together against an evil necromancer and his undead minions. Each of this tale’s protagonists have lost someone dear to them in the recent past and are attempting to start new lives on the outskirts of the Reach (a Northeastern corner of the continent, well-known for its blasted wasteland and mixed population of outcasts and outlaws). Some of them meet along the way to their new home and finish the journey together.
The most praise that I have is for the magic system. It reflects the dangerous nature of magic (as well as it’s unpredictability) and the steps needed to advance along your arcane studies. The power of spell casters is minor in the beginning, but just by looking at the math of any mid/high level spells you can tell that they will one day be capable of easily destroying hordes of enemies. In short, magic is taxing, dangerous, and a life long learning process, but well worth the effort in the end.
Rule of Rose tells the eerie and disturbing story of Jennifer, an apprehensive protagonist who must face the fantastic evil of a child’s imagination. Set in an English orphanage of the 1930’s, the game is a story of social outcasts, cruel violence, strained relationships and prepubescent sexuality. Since the cast of the game are almost entirely children, Sony was hesitant to release the game in America. Atlus, a company with a history of importing niche titles, stepped up and took the risk of bringing a game of challenging issues to the market.
My Life with Master is a self-contained role playing game of personal horror by Paul Czege of Half Meme Press. It contains innovative ideas and a workable game, albeit one which would work best with creative and probably experienced players willing to enter into a setting and help to create it themselves. The interaction between GM and players is essential both in creating the setting and in forming the style and nature of the game. As the description below will suggest, gameplay can easily veer between a type of romantic desperation with which Vampire lovers will be familiar, to Grand Guignol to something rather less serious and bizarre. Since it can be difficult to maintain an intense style over an extended period of time and because of the very structure of the game, My Life with Master is best run as a single session game or, at most, a small number of sessions building up to a well-defined ending and epilogue
Agon takes place in a mythical Greece, drawing heavily from the Iliad and the Odyssey as inspiration (along with other sources like the films Clash of the Titans and Troy). Characters take on the role of heroes serving the gods on quests throughout the land, seeking glory and fame so their names may live on throughout the ages…
Schism both builds on this game and subverts it almost completely. In Schism, there are no demons – instead, characters receive extraordinary psychic abilities that are, partly as a result of the accelerating pace of global change and its effect on the tortured human psyche, suddenly prevalent in society. Indeed, the title page uses the term ‘virulent setting.’ However, the virus of psychic abilities does not come without a price and in Schism that price tends to be psychic disorders and physical deformation. Anyone who has played (or perhaps tried to play) the Nephilim game will be familiar with at least this physical aspect. Characters in Schism progressively become more and more removed from basic humanity but have the advantage of being able to bring about powerful effects to further their own ends and those of the cabal (a kind of more or less secret organization) that they wish.
In short, Cold Space has the benefit of a setting which promotes instantly understandable motivations for action and this should at least help players and GM alike structure a campaign and anticipate what kinds of scenarios are likely to be played out. The game is not likely to promote a richer appreciation of the reality of recent history than one of basic confrontation but, then, that is not really its purpose. My immediate response is to conceive of campaigns or characters who would subvert what seem to be the premises of the historical background but then I am nearly always an outlier when it comes to these things.
