Monday Musings...Saints Row: The Third as a Premise for a Modern Day RPG (mildly NSFW)

This was the NSFW one!

I realized as I was playing Saints Row: The Third this weekend that the D20 Modern system would work really well for this sort of game. You'd have level progression, hit point mechanics, a rule set just buff enough to handle some weirdness....

I suppose it goes without saying though that Hero System or GURPS could both do the "Saints Row" genre (because it really is its own weird thing) rather well, too....GURPS especially if you do it with every possible cinematic rule and quick-use short cut turn on (i.e. the group skills and such). Not sure how fun such a game would be, though....Saints Row: The Third has the distinct advantage of being so wild because of it's medium (open-world GTA-esque game in which you run around causing trouble for a virtual city) which not only allows for characters with remarkable resilience, but in a break from convention it sort of assumes that the game universe really is a "game" universe, the sort of place where the rules can and are broken Just Because There Are No Limits. Hyper deadly Japanese game show? Sure, why not! Gun which fires mind-controlling cephalopods? You got it. Gun which sprays targets with chum, attracting ferocious burrowing land sharks? Absolutely! There are no bad ideas in Saints Row: The Third, only fully realized dreams and madness. Hell...it's sequel (#4) features an all-out alien invasion of the city....so there ya go.

Anyway...the thing I get from playing this game is that sometimes it pays not too take one's fantasy realms too seriously. Also, internal logic is only as reality based as you care to make it. I am definitely considering how I can apply these lessons in some future game campaign...

Okay, the SR3-inspired idea I have: a world in which the most flamboyant and over-the-top super villains won, and society has been operating for decades (or longer!) based on some principles (such as they are) established by those winning villains long ago. While society madly plunges along into a state of increasing anarchy, it turns out that the super villains won so long ago due to the meddling of clever aliens, who are pulling strings behind the scenes; the aliens have a massive ship in space powered by a reality-warping engine, which is accidentally responsible on occasion for especially strange and bizarre manifestations on Earth, up to and including worm holes to other times and dimensions (pulling in everything from dinosaurs to cowboys and zombies). Meanwhile, the heroes --okay, protagonists-- are out to profiteer from the whole sordid mess....

One game I haven't considered, but which I really should: Mutants & Masterminds 3E. Seems like this sort of crazy would be very easy to execute in MnM!

A Random Friday: Tunnels & Trolls updates, Neverwinter and more

Just a short post as I am behind my Monday-Wednesday-Friday quota this week (sort of). News bits and other random stuff:

Tunnels & Trolls

Tunnels & Trolls Deluxe will be running late, as Rick Loomis announced in the latest update, due to Liz Danforth being sick and also behind schedule due to a round of conventions going into August. They wanted to have it ready for Gen Con apparently, but no go. On the up side, the second PDF module is out, and I now have a nice copy of City of Terrors on the tablet.

Speaking of Tablet gaming, there have been a number of releases in the last year or two featuring revamped Fighting Fantasy books (and others inspired by such) which are pretty effective in the ios/Android format. I wonder if Rick and Ken have considered what it would take to turn T&T into an app-based gaming experience, at least for the solo adventures?

Runequest 6

 I am still reading Book of Quests for Runequest 6. It's a great book, and will provide some detailed discussion on it, hopefully next week. I've been talking to some of my players, and we have a new game interest brewing, just need to find a way to squeeze it in. My Wednesday regular campaign is Pathfinder-only, unfortunately; the player collective I have for that night comes for the Pathfinder, and deviating would be to seriously upset the apple cart. Maybe an off-weekend, played at home, so my wife can bring her gruesome RQII elven blood sorcerer out of retirement....

Max Payne 3

Last weekend (July 4th weekend) was very productive in terms of moving "games I've been playing for a while" to the "games I've finished" list. Max Payne 3 was on that list, and I wanted to discuss it at some point as I really enjoyed it, albeit in periodic short bursts, and feel it was one of the better titles of the last few years out there.

Long story short: fantastic campaign (as it should, the end credits for this title was insanely long) and when I could get into multiplayer it was a lot of fun, but strangely (or not) when I finished the single player side of the equation I found myself utterly and totally disinterested in sticking around for the multiplayer experience anymore.  The drive behind this game is the Max Payne story, and that was now wrapped up; continuing the never-ending cycle of violence in Brazil that the game depicts in MP just seemed sort of....pointless? I may revisit it at some point, if only to see how long the community lasts, but... Well, let's face facts; I'm getting old and apparently that has an effect on one's interest in highly repetitive video game tasks (of which MP is easily a component). Also, with like a million games in my to-do roster it's hard to take time for MP unless it's so compelling that it smokes the prospect of something better around the corner. Plus that Steam Summer Sale dealie just started. So...yeah.

Neverwinter

Remember Neverwinter? I've been playing it occasionally (not much), a game here and there, enjoying it in short bursts but not finding it the sort of game that I am motivated to plow through or keep up with, unfortunately. That could change if I find some willpower to stay focused on it (as I recently did, at least for a short while with Guild Wars 2). Maybe once the novelty wears off with Rift's F2P model.

My experience in Neverwinter isn't the interesting bit, however. My wife, who absorbs these games like most humans breathe air, recently seemed to stop playing Neverwinter entirely, after a month-long gorge-fest. I asked her why she had stopped and migrated back to WoW and Defiance....as it turns out, she explained that they all played through at least one or two characters to max level and hit the end game...or lack of it. Best as she can tell, the end game in Neverwinter is nonexistent, and it mainly seems to be an expectation that the community content through the foundry is the source of new material to explore. Anyone who's messed around with the foundry content by now may realize what a problem this actually is; although there is some good stuff in there, the general consensus on the foundry now is that it's lacking the tools for the sort of nuanced and detailed scenarios that it's predecessor titles allowed for. Also, for every gem there are mutliple steaming piles of code you have to dodge, and the Foundry's menu is atrocious for just finding something....I never could successfully locate my wife's own scenario through navigating its menus, for example.

Post Mortem Review: Star Trek the Computer Game

Hey look, I played another movie tie-in game all the way through to the end. Unlike Aliens: Colonial Marines, the general dislike for move tie-in games hit Star Trek with a soft glove, rather than a heavy mallet, but Star Trek took some hits, just as they all do. Unlike A:CM there may not be as much deserved hatred here, although Star Trek is far from perfect.

Star Trek TVG is effectively an episode of the adventures of the new Abramsverse Star Trek that slots in between the two films. It's also the unholy love child of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Mass Effect and Gears of War; if you've played any of the above titles, then you will find Star Trek to be extremely familiar territory.

One thing this game isn't is a triple-A budget title. When I got to the finish I was pleasantly surprised to see a credits roster that lasted maybe two minutes at the most, and was considerably shorter than the credits roll in most games I've played in the last three or four years. This explains, among other things, why the game has a lot of odd little glitches on occasion, but it's also commendable that they got a game like this to work so well without having a thousand people on staff. To contrast, sit through the credits on Max Payne 3-it felt like I was scrolling through the phone book of a modest city!

So who is Star Trek TVG for? It's at least partially for fans of the movies, of course; the J.J. Abrams Star Trek universe if actually rather well-suited to video game logic and plotting. It's definitely not for fans of the older Treks, as like the current movies this one takes very little time to slow down and think about what is actually going on. In many ways the Abrams take on Trek is about misrepresenting the extent to which Star Trek is or was an inheritor of classic pulpy space opera; it's about grabbing that "western in space" feel that Roddenberry mentioned and ignoring all the other stuff Trek was about. But hey....if you're enjoying it (and I do enjoy it, with the caveat that it feels more like parody and fanfic than a real inheritor of the Trek legacy) then this game could be fun to play.

The game has several strong points: it's got the crew from the movie doing all the voice acting, and it really lends to the quality of the game. If they had used substitute actors or relied on read-only dialogue the game would have suffered for it. The game also plays very well, and occasional glitches aside it's a competent chest-high-wall shooter ala Gears of War, with a huge dollop of Mass Effect-style run and gun mixed in, occasionally broken up by Uncharted-style wall climbing and platform jumping. Kirk and Spock occasionally like to jump out of airlocks with some handheld rocket packs for some Dead Space-styled flying sequences, too. At no point does any of this feel uncomfortable, although as I said earlier, older Trekkies might start to wonder at what a dangerous universe this iteration of Trek portrays.

The game's plot focuses on the founding of New Vulcan, as a planet is chosen for possible terraforming using an enigmatic plot device (the sole purpose of which appears to be to open wormholes in space and blow up) which becomes the target of the gorn, who pop through one such wormhole and decide to wreak havoc. Despite not having been encountered by humans or vulcans before (to go by what the game stated) gorn are nonetheless well versed in alien physiology and have these robots which inject people with a zombie-mutagen, turning Starfleet personel and vulcans alike into rage monsters who are out of control. The game gets momentarily ethical with it's secondary goals, which include disabling and knocking out victims of this injection rather than phasering them into oblivion.

Once the gorn invade, the Enterprise arrives in time to beam down it's Captain and Commander into the thick of the party, after which Spock and Kirk single-handedly carve their way through a mound of zombified personnel and an endless array of gorn, in locales which include New Vulcan, the Enterprise, the gorn warship, the gorn homeworld, a starfleet space station and occasionally the depths of very debris-cluttered space. In the end, you will have single-handedly neutered the gorn navy, although it does feel like a majority of the remaining vulcans and Enterprise officers in this universe have now been subjected to zombification (don't worry, they get better) in the process.

In a very disappointing scene, two redshirts appear and do not die.

Aside from the rollercoaster plot which propels itself along at a breakneck pace, the game pulls out plenty of movie-quality stunts and makes a complete mess of the previously messy but now totally FUBARed physics and internal consistency of the Star Trek lore. Star Trek has always been about inventing lots of imaginary particles, subspaces, and other nonsense in the past to help justify its stories, but previous efforts usually (with mixed success) tried to maintain some level of internal consistency, if only for the sake of the fans who take this stuff very seriously. The new Trek does this, but tends to do so with a complete disregard (some might say "lack of respect") for what has been previously established. The game is pretty much no exception, and in all honesty, much like the movies, you have to accept that things work the way they do in this version of Trek because it's Unified Theory is "Rule of Cool" and not anything remotely related to real physics, logic, or even prior Trek canon.

Why, for example, do Kirk and Spock regularly jump out of fast moving objects to sprint with handheld jet packs to another distant ship or location, despite the fact that no one mentioned whether or not the transporter is working, or even that they could transport them to within meters of their goal, at which they could use the handheld jet packs to travel safely a few more meters for entry? Rule of Cool.....it's not as fun as jumping out of one space ship to fly through a debris field to another ship.

The gorn get a major face lift here, the first one as best I can tell (unless they showed up somewhere else that I am unaware of). They are now apparently multiple species....or one species with multiple different subtypes (no one comments on or notices this in the game, best as I could find). The gorn are basically what happens to a rubber-suit lizard monster who's job is to fight Captain Kirk in the California desert for a 45 minute TV show when the core nugget of lore is extrapolated forward into a post-Halo, post-Covenant, Post-Gears of War Locust universe in a video game world where enemies must fit different types. But hey, good news....it was an excuse for the developers of the game to get the requisite odd variety of exotic weapons into the mix, all freshly reskinned from Mass Effect 3 and Halo.

Star Trek TVG is actually set up so you can play it as a two person co-op adventure, with one person as Kirk and the other as Spock. I played it single player, and admit that it would have been more fun with a second live person, if only because Spock's pathing as an AI was awful, and on occasion I would have to restart due to the AI taking him somewhere to die quietly. Once, and only once, I got to watch him sink through the floor and disappear, then die later. Sigh.

There is also a multiplayer option, of which I can say little because each time I tried to get into a game I could find no other players (go figure).

So, having finished the game, was it worth it? Yes, if you fit the following profile, as I did:

1. First, find the game on a very nice discount. If you may more than $20 for it you may feel buyer's remorse.

2. Second, you liked the movies even though the Rule of Cool physics and inherent plot monstrosities they actually are still vexes you. Double plus if the movies didn't bother you like this at all, or you can't see what the big fuss is all about.

3. You like adventure games of this sort, and want to support the industry by showing them that an audience does exist for games which involve guys in space suits running around and doing stuff, and not always just shooting things. Actually this game is a relatively poor example of "games that require more than just shooting" but in it's defense most sequences include a non-violent "do this stealthfully or quietly" option which is an extra reward if you succeed; it just so happens that shooting your way through the game is the easiest solution most of the time.

4. you want a co-op game to run around in with a buddy.

5. You freakin' love Trek and are exceptionally forgiving, and you happen to think Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine make an excellent Spock and Kirk.

A Very Late Post Mortem on Diablo III

This is a very late post mortem because, of course, Diablo III has been out for more than a year. I share these thoughts because...why the hell not, it's my blog! Plus I know that there are many other fathers, mothers, wives and husbands out there who, like me, are just happy to play a game, let alone find time to play one through to the end, and hearing about last year's left-overs might help one to make a decision about whether the time invested is worth it.

Diablo III After Action Report

I played a variety of characters up at least a few levels, and took one dour male witch hunter all the way to level 31, with the murderation of Diablo himself at the end. I logged a grand total of 34 hours in Diablo III according to Raptr, and I think about 28 of that was in the main campaign.  According to How Long to Beat, had I been a younger man with spazzier reflexes I would have knocked it out in about 19 hours. That fact that a sought out every text and bit of data I could locate in the game on the story (and paused to read/listen to them) probably contributed to this time increase.

In the course of playing through the campaign I learned a few important details:

The Diablo Difficulty Curve is more of a Gentle Slope: The game was clearly designed to be relatively easy...as in, click this repeatedly easy....for most of the way. If you find yourself in a pickle, it's because you haven't thought about your skill choices lately, or you're getting tired....or you're lagging. The game's difficulty really doesn't even begin to ramp up until late in the third act, and even then it's still fairly trivial to plow through most encounters. In the fourth act you finally get monsters and bosses that do interesting things that require you to pay more attention....but it would have been much nicer to have more features like that early on; I'm just not that thrilled at the button masher genre anymore (okay, I never was; this is the first button-masher ARPG I have ever finished, let alone gotten halfway through!)

The Nightmare and Inferno Modes at Locked to Character and Come Later for a Reason: Or put another way, Nightmare mode is really just Blizzard's way of saying "difficulty aimed at level 30+ characters" and Inferno mode is even tougher. Hell mode or whatever comes last is for level 60, I think. I cleared one campaign on Normal mode, discovered that unlocking Nightmare meant only for a second playthrough on the same character, and decided I was done with the game. The interest I had in playing through a new class on normal, or seeing what new stuff my witch hunter could get on a second playthrough of the storyline, with not even a smidgeon of effort to explain why he'd be doing it all over again; typical "lack of RPG logic" style of computer games, where RPG has nothing to do with story and all about stat leveling. I could neither tolerate a repeat of the same content purely on the off-chance that they might make those first three acts slightly more interesting, nor did I care enough to kill things with fists, magic missiles or axes with another class just for the slightly different novelty.

It's Still Better than Torchlight II: but that doesn't mean Torchlight II isn't good, it just means that, for a single play-through, Diablo III was more rewarding in terms of story content and graphic design. For me, of course. YMMV.

The Always-On Connection Problem: this was only a problem for me once when playing the game, a few months back when I couldn't get online to play due to Blizzard authentication servers being down (or something). However, a bigger issue which I could only attribute to lag was the tendency for the game, after starting up, to have a lot of herky-jerky actions for monsters and laggy response for characters in the first encounter or two. On rare occasion or when playing on my laptop wirelessly I could get some serious lag that made the game effectively unplayable. This was, as so many have said before, total nonsense. I tried hardcore mode, and this opening lag got my hardcore barbarian killed. I realized then it wasn't worth it.

The Auction House: this became the only real way to make money and get gear. However, it was also probably the most damaging to the game's internal consistency as a whole, as it was definitely packaged as an outside fourth-wall event breaking in to the game's world-space. You had to leave the game to engage the auction house, and in doing so you guaranteed that loot would drop like magic into your character's lap, usually far better than most of what was actually found on play-through. Selling "grey items" was only for vendors; anything else would be guaranteed to net you more cash on the auction house. I have no idea who would spend real money there, or why; I never once needed to do so, nor could I find a compelling reason to do so, not even the matter of prestige. I think that's something only the hardcore hell mode crowd can answer.

The Chat Screen: it was like having the Barrens Chat in a single player game! Yay! Seriously, 90% of the time it was dead, but when it wasn't you were occasionally forced to ignore the random yappings of infantile players. Business as usual for online gaming, I guess.

And so, after trying a monk for a few levels, trying nightmare mode for a short period and finding it no different than normal mode (relatively speaking) I realized I had gotten exactly all that I wanted out of Diablo III and sliced it free of my hard drive. It was a fun story with an interesting twist....but like An M. Night Shyamalan film, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have the same impact the second time around. I shall reload it in the distant future when Actiblizzard finally, theoretically, releases an expansion for it.

Runequest 6 Hardcover on Indiegogo

There's an Indiegogo event for Runequest 6 in hardcover format, which has been much requested by fans (including myself). At $65 (which includes S&H in the US) that's not a bad deal, especially for what is easily the best and most well-conceived fantasy RPG to be released in the last few years. Anyway, there are thirty days left on it as I write this, so plenty of time for me to plan to contribute.

Recent History of Eredoth

Recent History of Eredoth

   Eredoth was founded approximately 250 years ago under the guidance of the expatriate Syrgian king Gareden Voranius. Garedan had made a power play against the throne, to seize control before his elder brother Garast took rightful ownership of it, and he failed. He was given the chance for exile instead of death, and so he took the opportunity to leave Syrgia, migrating west with a fleet of ships carrying his family and loyalist followers. They eventually found their way across the expanse of the Glittering ocean and into the channels that led to the Grey Sea, where they settled what appeared to be a vast wilderness of deep forest and high mountains, occupied only by a barbarous local people called the emac. He called the land Eredoth, which means “far land” in the Syrgian language.

   The emac were initially friendly, but as the Syrgian expatriates soon discovered they were not so receptive to exploitation, and a series of local conflicts arose during the initial colonization. The first thirty years of Eredish expansion was a bloody affair, but the superior arms, armor and tactics of the Eredoth soldiers prevailed.

   In the following two centuries, the population of the emac broke into two distinct groups, consisting of those who accepted the occupation of the foreigners, and those who rebelled. The independent emac continue to dwell in nomadic forest and mountain tribes throughout the region, and have come to carefully guard their territories against the foreigners, who occupy mostly the lowland and forest regions along the coast. In contrast, a number of emac tribes eventually integrated with Eredoth’s new culture and rulership, and became clients of the kingdom. These emac are called “iquiri’san” by their independent bretheren, a word which means “willing slaves” in the emac language.

   After two and half centuries Eredoth has become its own power. The people speak Eredish, a dialect closely related to Syrgian but sufficiently removed in time that it now requires some study to properly interpret. Syrgians “rediscovered” Eredoth about a century ago, and infrequent trade has ensued ever since.

   Although Eredoth came from Syrgian culture, it also lost much of it with the transition to this new land. One of the first changes was in religion. The Syrgians are notoriously non-religious, even atheistic by Chirak standards, and eschew all forms of faith and religion when possible. The Eredish where of similar bent until they arrived in the new land, where they discovered that the local emac worshipped something they called the Divine Wind, a force of nature that was a willful manifestation of something they called the “World Spirit.” The World Spirit would choose from among the deserving and humble, granting them the gift to do good things. They said this was important, because the land was suffused with evil spirits who crept out of the Outer Darkness, spilling like pools of shadow into the world  to corrupt men. They called these shadows the Yagoth.

   It did not take long for the Eredish to believe in the emac’s religion, as actual manifestations of the Divine Wind took more than one colonist over the years, changing them into something that the newfound theologians called “spirit saints,” roughly translated from the emac term for them, the iniar’quiam. Just as impressive but more disturbing were the first Eredish to succumb to the corrupting fleshwarping touch of the Yagoth. Over time, the men and women who devoted themselves to understanding, following and eventually worshipping the spirit saints founded the Church of the World Spirit. To be chosen by the Divine Wind, sent from the World Spirit, was considered the greatest of honors. The adoption of this local belief was at least partially responsible for the integration and acculturation—on both sides—of Eredish and emac alike.

   Today Eredoth is divided into three chief lands. The northlands, along the coast of the northern Frostmounts are held by King Seviron of Calladania, the collected northern duchies, which reflects the united northlands. In the south there are two kings, including King Emerad of Duchies of Ghaellan, and King Sarnaris of Saagerast. Though the land is presently divided between three kings, they all regard themselves as part of Eredoth proper. The current division derives from the War of Winter Blossoms, so named for the fact that it started during the middle of winter thirty years ago, an unusual time for conflict to arise, and pressed on for two decades until the major powers sued for peace, then divided the lands three ways, with a treaty that asserted that all of Eredoth would unite in times of need against foreign powers. The ever-present threat of the Xiang-Kotonos, Nindragom, the giants of the Frostmounts and other threats insure that this treaty is taken seriously.

Player's Knowledge of the Relic Kingdoms

Player’s Overview of the Region

Eredoth is a northern empire, embedded in a thousand miles of rocky coast. They are a relic empire, descendants of expatriates from long ago who colonized the region and fought back against the barbarianst of the Frostmounts. The people of Eredoth are divided, in that there is no stable king. In southern Eredoth two major powers vie for control: the kings of Ghaellan and Saagarest. Saagarest is centered on an island in the Grey Sea roughly the size of England, along the coast dominated by the duchies of Ghaellan. You are all starting in the city of Ghaellan, where self-appointed king Emerad rules. Finally, Eredoth's religion is based on the worship of something called the Vestiges and the Spirits.  The Spirits are saint-like figures that are believed to be granted godlike power by the enigmatic Divine Wind, a manifestation of the lost Ancient Divinities of old that was said to have been worshipped by the ancient colonists of Eredoth, and the reason for which they were exiled and forced to colonize this distant land. The Vestiges are described as the ancient Spirits of the Earth, immortals which perished eons ago and of which only the power of the Divine Wind still exists. Vestiges might be seen as undead gods. Eredoth also has a beliefer (fear) of demons, calling them the fiends of Yagoth.

Nidragom is located to the south of Eredoth, and it is best described as a land of madmen and wild barbarians. They are fiercely warlike, tribal, and disorganized, but by virtue of their own ferocity and dedication to something they call the Mania (which is worshipped both as a philosphy and a god) they are a formidable force of berserkers and killers. When Eredoth's polities are not warring amongst themselves, they recruit from Nindragom for mercenaries.

Easter of both lands is the Xiang-Kotonos, an eastern empire of warriors and godless men who revere the blade before all. The Xiang-Kotonos are made less threatening only by virtue of the thousand miles of desert tundra between their kingdoms and the region of Nindragom and Eredoth, but an occasional warlord will brave the barren lands to seek out battle with the western powers.

South in the deep high mountains of the east is Laiwan, a remote kingdom of mountain dwellers who are the gateway of trade between the westerlands and the distant east. They are small in number but safe by virtue of their isolated mountainous homeland. They are mysterious and mystical people, said to worship the Sun itself, although they have a complicated pantheon of Demon Gods that they feel dictate the trials and tribulations of their daily lives.

Across the Grey Sea from Eredoth is the largest mountain range in the known world, the immense Anantes mountains, The people of this region are called the Capac, and are divided into two cultural groups: the lowland Capaci of Narasco, who subsist on trade and the sea to survive in the harsh, dry deserts along the slopes of the great mountains that touch the Grey Sea, and in the immense highland regions of the Anantes Mountains is the mysterious and very ancient culture of the Astananku, said to be ancient magicians and nearly immortal descendants of a lost race of old. No one knows much of who the Astananku worship, although the lowland Capaci strongly favor the water goddess whom they call Mataki, and her counterpart, the storm god Hukil.

Finally, there are known to be other, more distant lands which the Eredothian sailors sometimes trade, far beyond the dominion of the Grey Sea. Westward beyond the Anantes Mountains the Capaci people speak of a terrible empire of evil, dominated by demon worship and sacrifice. South of Nindragom is a vast, trackless desert waste from which occasional merchant caravans emerge, claiming to come from the distant kingdom of Dragos across the desert.

Elves in the region of Eredoth are known as the Asharion tribes of the frostmounts, a cunning and secretive race that lives in nomadic tribal groups. They are often at odds with their dark elf counterparts beneath the frozen glaciers and deep in the mountain caves of the region, who are called the Kaddan. The Kaddan worship the vestige Zaramast; in the elvish mythology, it is said that the Kaddan were normal elves who stumbled upon the burial ground of the ancient vestige thousands of years ago, and his dark tendrils corrupted their flesh and spirit, turning them into what they are today.

There are haflings all along the coast of the Grey Sea, and there are several enclaves of stout dwarves in the Frostmounts and Anantes mountains. As with all other lands, gnomes and goblins exist, though the goblins are seen as pests of the Arescu Forest and the lowland, warmer Iargan forests of the south, while the gnomes gravitate toward cities and towns of other races.

Dragonborn are extremely rare, but tieflings are extremely common, especially among the Nindragom, who prize the blood-induced madness of some tiefling warriors, and often rely upon rituals of the mysterious Demon Gods to call upon the Mania and allow them a bonding with infernal beings to create such offspring.

 

Minotaurs are known in this land, but they are found chiefly in wandering tribes in the southern deserts and eastern tundra. Orcs are present, as ever, existing primarily in a vast network of caverns Gazad Mountains of Eredoth, though many orcish tribes can be found in the Frostmounts and Anantes mountains as well.

Runequest: Monster Island - an Overview

I'm still working through my physical copy of Book of Quests (don't have it in PDF) but I also have Monster Island in PDF format thanks to some timely PDF sales at rpgnow. This means I can provide some more details for those interested in what they get for the $14.99 PDF sale price.

Monster Island is one part sandbox setting and one part monster manual for Runequest 6. The book consists of a lengthy introduction to Monster Island proper, including a map. The print version has a full color pull-out version, and a separate Companion download for $4.99 includes this map with some collected charts and tables; presumably this keeps the price down on the main PDF. For those concerned about price, the black and white maps in the main book are perfectly serviceable. I haven't picked up the Companion yet, but will let you know if it's worth it when I do (come on rpgnow sales, don't fail me now!)

The  book spends roughly 187 pages on the island itself, although that includes 15 pages on the general nature of sandbox campaigns and how to run them. The latter half of the book is about 94 pages of monsters, and the book includes a wide variety of new beasties for your Runequest campaigns (and easily adapted to Legend, Magic World or BRP if you're using any of those systems, too). Here's a summary of the new monsters for those interested (note that some campaign specific monsters that appear in the setting section are not included):

Adaro (shark men, samebito)
Ahuizotl
Alan (moon bats)
Alicanto
Allosaurus
Ankylosaurus
Giant Ant Lion
Carnivorous Ape
Arumco (hellfrog)
Assassin Conch (terrifying sea snails)
Aswang (yes! I love Aswang as monstrous foes)
Bakunawa (a very neat and freaky shadow eel)
Bone Wraith
Bultingin (werehyenas!)
Bunyip
Byangoma (wise, fortune-telling magic birds)

...let me pause a moment to state that this monster list is AMAZING so far. Loads of fascinating and decidedly non-western mythical beasts, ripped right out of mythology and folklore....

Cannibal Spirit (wendigo)
Giant Centipede (welcome to Interzone, biatch)
Giant Clam
Cob Hobbler (probably one of the neatest new monsters in the book....a parasitic infestation that turns the victim into a spider-monster)
Giant Cockroach
Deathdrip Flowers
Deinonychus
Dudreyas (a carnivorous plant with a siren like twist)
Dune Haunter (a sand ghoul!)
Dziwozoana (succubus-like swamp demons)
Giant Eagle
Giant Eel
Lightning Eel
Ettin (treated as a template applied to other humanoid creatures that would like more than one head; did not include a sample...i.e. an ogre-ettin or something, unfortunately, but the template is easy enough to apply)
Febrilis (winged snakes)
Flocks, Hoards, Packs and Shoals (a mess of tiny monstrosities and how to manage the swarms of such, includign bats, leeches, pirahna and more)
Flying Worms (oh yeah, they went there...purely awesome here)
Gibberer (a template for one possessed by a dark spirit)
Heterodontosaurus
Hitotsume-Kozo (a jump to Japanese legend, cyclopean Japanese boys....and we all know that Japanese children are terrifying)
Huakaipoor (warrior ghosts)
Ophidian Hydra (OMG a hydra at last statted out in Runequest. The world may end soon)
Isnashi (skunk ape meets King Kong)
Ivory Impaler (another deadly plant....Monster Island is a tough place....)
Succubus Ivy (...)
Giant Jellyfish
Jempulex (okay, I love this one...a hand-sized wasp that stings you to turn you into its zombie servant)
Kanaima (a werecreature formed from people bonded with/possessed by shape-shifting spirits)

...This is already my favorite monster book, fyi....

Kapre (bear men)
Kitsune (fox folk, natch)
Kraken (!)
Kulamyu Pod (we're in little shop of horrors land here now)
Lakooma....okay, this is one of my favorites....it's...well:

Lammasu (the classics! yay!)
Blood Lizards
Thorny Lizards
Lizardfolk of Monster Island (at last...at long last....lizardfolk, real, honest-to-god lizardfolk in the rule system most suited to their use and presentation in classic pulp fantasy....swoon; EDIT: sigh, I keep forgetting that RQ6 has lizardmen in it, too; its MW and some other D100 system books that are missing them. My bad!)
Malcathorn (a nasty beast)
Manananggal (a terrifying form of vampire....one of my favorites, used it extensively in it's Pathfinder incarnation)
Mantithorn Cactus
Megalonyx
Mokele-Mbembe (my wife, being the cryptozoologist she is, should be happy to see him show up here)
Moonflower (there are a lot of deadly plants on Monster Island...)
Morko (a unique monstrous hag)
Lotus Moth
Naga (ah yes, one of my favorites)
Nanaue (weresharks of a fashion....disturbingly so...)
Nukekubi (a variant head-detaching monstewr ala the pennangalan, sweet zombie Jesus this book has a lot of cool monsters)
Olgoi (nasty worm)
Ophidiodis (literally a ball of snakes)
Oviraptor
Pachycephalosaurus
Panopticus (terrifying giant amoeba)
Pihuichen (another flying snake, this time vampiric)
Possessed Plant
Polong (a hideous thing created from the collected blood of the murdered)
Quathil (Runequest gets its version of the flumph)
Rokurokubi (long necked demons who masquerade as normal by day)
Saltasaurus
Giant Scarab
Sentinel (giant golem-like animated entities)
Spellbreaker Serpent
Serpent People (one cannot have a place called Monster Island without both lizardfolk and serpent people; I can now put my Malleus Monstrum book away, MI has all I need)
Snapdragon (one can imagine at this point the list of safe flora on MI is tiny)
Spineapple Tree
Tengu (for those who are accustomed to playing Tengu as PCs, I think these would work for such just fine, too)
Tetrapus (yet another great aberration; on MI they exude from the Smoking Mirror)
Therizinosaurus (hey....there are a lot of dinosaurs in this book...)
Tikbalang (another of my all time favorites; monsters of the forest formed from fetuses aborted by black magic)
Triceratops
Trifrond (read; triffid)
Tiger Turtle
Palm Vampire
Vorompatra (giant predatory flightless birds)
Vorslurp (brain eating slugs!)
Giant Vulture
Waheela (giant bear dogs)
Yeti (voormi...degenerate humanoids)

And that's just the regular bestiary. Many more sample monsters, NPCs and location-specific entities are detailed in the campaign section and the appendix is loaded with specific sample monsters. The best part of the appendix is on "The Gods That Walk," which is a polite way of saying "Kaiju!" Yep, we've got, among others (find the analogues...) Gamaru, Ghidoru, Kangu, Varanru (hint: Varanru is Gojira, m'kay) and more.

This is a loaded book. Will be buying the print version ASAP and now need to set my RQ6 campaign intentions to IMMEDIATE.

Monster Island is here!

It's out on RPGnow, as The Design Mechanism is always timing their releases for when I've just had a huge number of expenses and can't afford to buy something at that moment (very long and depressing story). Looks like it's available in print on TDM's site as well (here), and there is also a "Companion" set in PDF at both locations, too. I still don't see the sourcebooks showing up on Moon Design, though.

I snagged the Book of Quests on Ebay through one of the reliable regular vendors over there (Troll and Toad) as my FLGS has had a hard time getting this stuff in. I'll have to keep an eye out for it there, or maybe I can order it through TDM in a week or two.

Anyway.... I need to get a campaign going with the new RQ6 rules, I am way past due for starting one up. Maybe I can squeeze it in on a bi-weekly Saturday evening. FYI Book of Quests is so good that I might break my long-standinjg habit of not using modules to actually run the scenarios in that one. Pete, Loz and co. are doing some out-of-the-park amazing stuff over there.I should post a formal review, come to think of it. Maybe in a week or so.

Lost History of the Relic Kingdoms

The Undiscovered Lost History of the Relic Kingdoms and the First Gods

   No mortal knows the secrets of the Yagoth. Their legacy extends back to a time when the Relic Empire was young, and the first gods were born into existence. The people of this lost time sought the first great power over their realm, forging a crystal of such power that it contained within it the energy of creation and all existence. This power was too great for any one mortal to contain, and so twelve candidates were chosen, twelve mortals who were tasking with caring for a piece of the stone, while the final, thirteenth stone was place at the edge of the stars themselves, to serve as the binding force of creation, the conduit through which their twelve lesser stones drew all power.

   In this ancient time, a time before human men existed, there was great and lasting peace as the prehumans of this era could mold existence as they saw fit, granting immortality to their kin and peace to all. It was not until they experimented with the creation of lesser slave races that things changed. Humanity, elves and others were created to serve the gods and their divine kindred. The first men were no more than mindless slaves, but over time the designs of the gods grew more complex, and soon the divine race saw men as complex playthings. They enjoyed the games and conflicts that seemed to come naturally to these lesser beings. They toyed with them.

   These first humans and elves and others grew tired after untold centuries of slavery, and by way of events long lost to time they rebelled. They overthrew their masters, rose up in arms, and in revolt succeeded in slaying the gods. How this was properly accomplished was not entirely known to any save for the Yagoth.

   The Yagoth were an entire race of beings, who existed in the supreme darkness at the edge of the star system. They had lived in eternal darkness for untold eons, and predated all other creatures in existence, dwelling in their ancient cities upon the Thirteenth Planet of the star system. That was, until the Heart of the Crystal, the source of the first twelve Zodiac Stones, was set upon their world by the twelve young gods, who in their hubris saw fit to exterminate the Yagoth as vermin, so repulsive did they find the creatures, that they drove them from their planet and into the darkness between the stars.

   The Yagoth sought revenge. They plotted for eons, until they at last saw the gods make an error, for as the gods created life, the Yagoth learned quickly that they could possess and manipulate the lesser mortals, and they sowed the seeds of discontent amongst the slaves. They drove the creations of the gods to rise up, and through dark gifts in the form of the God Slayer weapons they granted them the power necessary to slay the first gods. The Yagoth granted this power to the mortals in exchange for the promise that the humans and elves would in turn seek out the Heart of the Crystal and take it far away, that the Yagoth could once more dwell on their dark world.

   The first humans who rose up and destroyed the gods were quick to seize the Zodiac Stones. They flung the god-slayer weapons then into a pit that led to the center of the earth, that there was no temptation to use them, though one long-forgotten avatar is said to have kept a single weapon hidden away. They then turned on the Yagoth, for the men who the Yagoth had thought so easily manipulated were clever and cunning, and with the power of the Zodiac Stones they could not be touched by the Yagoth. They cast out the demons, and swore to never let them return.

   Thus it was that the first in a long lineage of young gods came to pass. Men learned that they could never contain the power of the Zodiac Stones for as long as their forebears, for the immortal Nakal/Klippath were unique in this ability. Though none today remember it, no god has lift more than twenty thousand years before eventually dying; it was inevitable that the Zodiac Stones would require successors.

   Of the original gods, only the vestiges remain, and of those, only seven are known to manifest as forgotten shades, and possibly two which still seem to exist as mysterious forces (the Mania and the Divine Wind).

   And of the Yagoth? They dwell at the edge of existence, waiting for those curious moments when a hapless mage or scholar of Eredoth, Capac or Nimdragom finds one of the ancient summoning mirrors that allows them to manifest in the world of Chirak, that they might seek a time and place where opportunity will allow them to do the most harm to the descendants of those who killed their world and betrayed them, driving them out into the endless void of space. They have an undending hunger, and are immortal, impossibly old beings with an intense desire for revenge.