Review: Pathfinder Chronicles - Heart of the Jungle

This is an easy review for me because I've used this book extensively over the last three years. Heart of the Jungle was one of the earliest Pathfinder RPG releases after the Core Book came out, and focused on two elements: adventuring in the Jungle wilderness and the region Mwangi in Golarion. As with most Chronicles books, the content here is going to be about as useful as you are willing to make of it, with a mix of general content that can be applied to any game mixed with campaign-specific content that you can cut and paste from or just mine for ideas; the most use will be gained from a GM who needs lots of rules and setting material, and uses Golarion, of course.

Luckily, Mwangi is very much designed to be an archetypal Jungle Land, a quasi not-Africa designed in the vein of many campaign settings from the old 2E era of AD&D, in which thematics and setting were designed to evoke the sense of a certain style, region, culture or genre without having to rewrite the whole game to accommodate the exotic feel.

The first chapter looks at Life in Mwangi, with some useful general content that anyone can take advantage of. A discussion of natural hazards, plant life, useful diseases and infections and other dangers (from insects swarms and weather to quicksand and humidity) are all useful to any jungle campaign you might want to run. The material is not so rooted in Golarion that it would be at all problematic lifting this content for your own campaign.

Denizens of the Expanse continues this chapter with a more Golarion-specific discussion of the many monstrous, demihumand and human races of the region. It's worth reading and you could easily lift some ideas for your own setting here without much difficulty. Not sure what your jungle elves would look like? Borrow a few ideas on this elven culture descended from a great ancient kingdom now lost in the untracked wilderness. About the only problem with this section right now is it includes no ideas for additional races and monsters after 2010.

This chapter wraps up on a section about village life and religion in the region. There's barely anything on village life outside of basic organizational stuff; no one who wrote this book went and did any extensive research on any period of any particular African culture from which to model Mwangi civilizations, best as I can tell. Likewise, the religion section is really just a way to frame the ur-patheon of Golarion in the context of local belief systems and rituals. It includes no folklore or mythology specific to or derived from traditional African belief systems.

The next chapter is Mwangi Campaigns. This section is where you're going to find the largest volume of Golarion-specific content, but the first few pages are useful for any GM interested in ways to setup of a Jungle-exploration themed campaign. The subsequent material is actually well worth reading through for ideas you can mine, or lift whole cloth and drop into your own jungle settings; little here is so specific to one setting that you couldn't extrapolate easily enough. Note also that there are plenty of useful maps of the wilderness and cities in this world.

Lost Kingdoms is up next, a section on the ancient ruins and lost history of Mwangi. Like the previous section with its focus on the modern settlements and cultures of the region, Lost Kingdoms provides plenty of interesting details from which you could readily cut-and-paste to your own game, or borrow from as you see fit.

The book wraps up with a smattering of monsters and some useful encounter tables. Here we have the high girallon (anghazani), botfly swarm, giant botfly, hippopotamus and tobongo (Mwangi treant). A nice smattering of extra monsters.

Overall this book is a must-have for GMs using Golarion as a setting and an interest in running a jungle campaign. If you want some content for jungle adventures but don't use Golarion, then you'll get about 26 pages of material which you can use as presented, and an additional 38 pages of interesting setting material that is fairly easy to lift and plant in your own games, or borrow ideas from. For me, it was essential to a series of jungle-traversing campaigns I ran in 2010 and 2011, and a book I keep on hand to this day because of it's overall usefulness.

Because most of the general content in this book contains Pathfinder rules and terminology, some of the content of this book would require conversion for use with a non-Pathfinder ruleset. The setting material is universal, however, and could serve as a springboard for any D&D-like. Note, however, that for OSR games we have Spears of the Dawn, which I would recommend to old school gamers over Heart of the Jungle as a more useful resource overall.

Third Sundering Module in PDF only???

Dungeon's Master talks about it, that the Scourge of the Sword Coast module will be the February kick-off for D&D Encounters and apparently will be in PDF only (no link provided to the source, though he may be referring to this release notice). If this is PDF only....and it's the official third module in line for the Sundering series that started with Murder in Baldur's Gate....then I am concerned that WotC is about to make yet another silly mistake in it's attempt to bring D&D back into relevancy.

The idea of a PDF-only release for the only current lineup of D&D modules prior to 5E's arrival seems weird to me, especially when you already released the first two modules in print. The likelihood it will be priced reasonably is also in question; $35 for a print book was acceptable if pushing it slightly given that these weren't even hardcover books. If this module goes for more than $12 in PDF I will be interested to see if that many people are really desperate for new official D&D content to cough up.

The idea of publishing PDF only also flies in the face of the current dominant competition: Pathfinder offers all its books in both print and PDF format, which is honestly the best way to do it (imo). You can pick and choose your medium, or mix and match as needed.

Another thing: someone tell me what game store is going to want to keep supporting D&D Encounters if the only way to get the module to run games is to bypass the retail store entirely? Where's the product on the shelf that's going to help generate sales for the game store? I see no incentive here to get stores to participate in this event.

The Console Shelf Got Very Crowded Last Night

My wife took it upon herself to buy us (and by us I mean me) a Playstation 4 for Xmas. And because neither she nor I can resist giving out gifts to each other two second after we get them, I got it last night. I reciprocated with a Deadpool Omnibus Vol. I (she's a big Deadpool fan) but it felt a little...off kilter. Might need to find some more lewt for her....!

So yeah, despite not planning to get a PS4 I now have one. Which means this is all I have to blog about today. But a few observations for those interested:

1. I received Killzone: Shadow Fall and Need for Speed Rivals with the PS4. Both decent games. It's impossible not to notice that they are suddenly in 1080p. It's hard to believe it took us this long to get a console that displays games natively in 1080p.

2. The selection of free to play titles on the PS4 is modest but important: Killzone: Retribution, DC Universe Online, Warframe and a few others (such as Contrast and Resogun as PSNetwork freebies) are vital downloads, since outside of this there's a pretty skimpy lineup of launch titles. Also, near as I can tell no one is making splitscreen co-op anymore, which is a damned shame.

3. If you were not a fan of the old Playstation interface you might like the new one. It had a few quirks, but once I got used to it I find its pretty easy. A bit odd how one closes out a game or app, though.

4. A weird negative: don't try to watch Netflix on the PS4 while downloading games. It does not like this, and will make you sorry by corrupting the download files.

5. I think this has been fairly well established, but in case you didn't know, the new generation of consoles are not backwards compatible. So....don't chuck your old PS3 anytime soon. Unless you're completely done with it, the PS3 may still have some life left in it. For me, I've still got a couple dozen games I'd like to finish on the old machine.

On Need for Speed: Rivals....this is a pretty addictive game. Damned addictive. Despite there not being a way to pause while actually rolling around the tracks, primarily because this is a sort of "racing MMO lite," if you need to pause you just go into safe drive mode or quit out to your garage screen. This may cost you winnings....assuming you don't suck like I do....but it's not nearly as problematic so far as some gaming outlets might have suggested. Beyond that, the pick-up-and-go multiplayer racers vs. cops is very addictive for those who are into racing games.

As for Killzone: Shadow Fall the game looks very nice, and starts off promising. It's got a very comfortable interface and the gameplay feels very right. I like the drone you acquire. The forests you stalk through are very impressive. It bodes well for what we can see on these machines in the future. Note that you do not need to have played the prior Killzone titles to enjoy this one, as the story takes place decades after the end of Killzone 3.

Beyond all that, the new PS4 game controller is extremely nice, and I like it much, much more than the older sixaxis controller for the PS3 and prior versions. The revamped controller was long overdue but well worth the wait. So far the only oddity about it is the placement of options button....for me, anyway.

So....more later on the PS4! I'll try to do proper reviews of the aforementioned titles, and also plan to snag Call of Duty Ghosts and Battlefield 4, too. I already have Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag for the PC, so that will have to sit out, I suppose. I do have CoD:Ghosts on Steam but....my wife would kinda like to play it as well, preferably in splitscreen mode....which I've heard this one might actually support (internet rumors are hazy on this though...)

Spell Points in Pathfinder

A couple years ago when Pathfinder was still young and new, I worked up a campaign setting called Enzada, the core theme of which was "nonwestern societies are dominant, and there are thousands of gods/pantheons." Since then it's evolved a great deal and I have run no less than four large campaigns and several small campaigns to completion...it's made a nice home on my shelf in the campaign section.

Once core conceit of the setting was a spell point mechanic, which I am reprinting here for those interested in how I do it. The principles work great with any edition of D&D, and I used this spell point system extensively back in my 2E AD&D days too.

The Pathfinder Enzada Campaign Spell Point System

   Magic users of Enzada do not memorize and then release spells; they cast them from engrained Patterns in memory, and kept safely in spell books. As such, all spell casters of the world can spontaneously cast any spells they have learned, provided they have the magic for it.

   Characters must keep track of spell points for orisons (and cantrips if necessary), standard spells, bonus spells (such as for domains) and spells for classes. Within a range, they gain spell points equal to the level of the spell they would normally memorize, plus bonus points by intelligence or their dominant trait. For example, a character who can memorize 4 1^st level spells and 2 2^nd level spells would have 8 spell points.

   Spells cost a number of points equal to the level of the spell being cast. So a 1^st level spell costs 1 point, and a 9^th level spell costs 9 points. Material components are still needed if required.

   Spell points are recovered at the rate of 1 point per 10 minutes of rest, or are fully recovered after a full night’s sleep. Morning rituals of preparation and renewal are required for vows, to study and aid in imagining the words, mandalas and gestures which activate the Patterns to cast spells, usually no more than one hour in length to do so. A spell caster who does not spend one hour a day refreshing his talents suffers a cumulative -10% spell failure chance per day.

Spell Points earned by Spell System

Main Attribute:    12-13: 1, 14-15: 3, 16-17: 6, 18-19: 10, 20-21: 14, 22-23: 19, 24-25: 25, 26-27: 32, 28-29: 40, 30-31: 49 

Spell Point Conversion for Classes

You gain spell points equal to slots times level. So a Level 1 spell slot grants 1 spell point, while a level 4 spell slot grants 4 spell points and so forth.

Cost of Spells in Points by Level:

Spells have a cost equal to the actual level of the spell.                      

Orisons and Cantrips

   Orisons and cantrips are cast with their own special spell point reserve equal to the number of orison spells normally memorized. These are kept separate from normal spell points, although one orison point is worth one quarter of a normal spell point, and a GM may allow conversion between the two if desired. Under this mechanic, all orison/cantrip points are replenished with a short (ten minute) rest.

Spells with Other Uses

   If you have spells from a domain or other source that allow X number of uses per day, you can optionally convert those number of uses to spell points by multiplying the total by spell level. I personally do not allow such conversion, keeping those special exception spells as they are, however.

The Idea: Aging Heroes and Campaigns that Span Decades

It's been a hellish month for work so I'm not caught up...or even ahead, really...on my posting, so this one may be short and sweet. As I've been thoroughly immersed in the Assassin's Creed series, it's been interesting playing through the Second game and its two sequels (Brotherhood and Revelations, the "trilogy within a trilogy" if you will) focusing on Ezio Auditore de Firenze, the assassin who inherits the legacy of his father at a young age and goes on to become the Mentor of an order he founds to defeat the machinations of the Borgia (the greatest villains Italy ever put forth) and ultimately seek out his destiny in Constantinople. It's a fascinating journey, because with each new game you see an additional slice of Ezio's life, a progression from young tough at age 16, hitting on the ladies and generally up to no good...to a twenty-something roving young adventurer-assassin, to the man who eventually conquers Roma and ultimately the wizened sage of the order, looking for lost relics and lore of his ancestor in the Ottoman Empire.

The games do a surprisingly good job of making Ezio look his age....in the first game you see him up to his late thirties. In the second game (Brotherhood) he's in his forties, and by the time of Revelations he's in his fifties and it shows. The young Ezio barely notices when he makes astounding leaps and jumps, but the old man Ezio grunts and bitches with spills he didn't even notice in his youth. It's a really interesting touch.

So this got me to thinking about ways one could structure a campaign around characters over a period of years, rather than the typical passage of time seen in RPGs. I've run linked campaigns that stretch over decades or longer for PCs in the past, but in recent years my campaigns are often year long affairs that cover (in game time) less time than the real life play time takes...on occasion. It would be interesting to consider a narrative arc which encompasses two or more decades of time. This might not have as much impact for a party of elves or other long-lived PCs, but for humans, halfings and such it could pose an interesting challenge.

Not only would a campaign built around a multi-decade long narrative be interesting for its dynamics, a book like Ultimate Campaign might make more sense, providing some unique ways to flesh out lengthy downtime. You could have a campaign that ends with a four story arc involving the liberation of the city from an evil baron...then next session picks up five years later, with the PCs the legitimate saviors of the city, and a "catch up" session to see what everyone did. It might not suit everyone's tastes, and it depends strongly on a measure of GM control over the story process, but if done right I imagine it could be rather compelling.

I imagine another way to approach it would be in full disclosure: let each player know you'll be telling a series of narrative arcs, spaced out X number of years apart....then find some thread that links these periods of time together, and in turn the PCs (but don't tell them what it it is). This way the players have a head's up to think in terms of discrete time blocks for their character's development...and between each time period for the campaign you can include a lengthy catch-up/downtime session to fill in the between-time gaps.

The purpose of such a narrative approach would be one of novelty, and also to look at how the story changes when it is designed to take place of a long period of time....not to mention what the characters would look like. I'll have to consider this approach for my next campaign arc, maybe.

In Defense of Magic World

About two weeks back Erik Tenkar posted a comment from an anonymous contributor who didn't particularly like Magic World. I spent a fair amount of time defending the game in the comments section, primarily because while I have no problem with the idea that someone might dislike it, the blog itself phrased the discussion in terms of whether an anonymous poster's vague opinions constitute grounds for asking if that makes the game a critical failure. I've never been a fan of the Glen Beck method of stirring the pot, but that issue aside Erik invited me to post a rebuttal which he would link back, so here I go. I'm doing this because I really don't happen to feel that Magic World is in any way a failure, or even as problematic as the blog post implied (despite an absence of specific examples, unfortunately, which makes some of the assertions hard to rebut). So...take a look at the original post so you have a frame of reference, and here goes. I'll summarize each set of complaints as they come:

1. There are 30 issues of errata in the book.

Good news is I didn't have to search methodically through the book to find these errors. I've found a couple, during the course of play mostly from my MW campaign earlier in the Summer, but thankfully the author himself (known as Zomben at the basicroleplaying.com site) was gracious enough to locate and post errata for us right here.

So, the poster on TT is correct: from looking at Zomben's list I count roughly 28 errors. However, in looking through these I find that Zomben is being overly charitable in what he considers errata. His first two examples were not unclear to me from the rules as written (about possible opposed characteristic roll increases and major wounds) so I'm guessing someone, somewhere somehow got confused but I don't see how.

The third point of errata is more relevant: a missing pioneer profession. Not a gamebreaker. It goes on like this, and there a number of documented minor changes. The list is shorter than I have seen for most RPGs in the last two decades, though longer than I have seen for a very few specific RPGs over those same years which were given a thorough edit by a well-paid professional. YMMV here, but I have errata lists for other very popular current games that are enormous by comparison, often with game-changing bugs.

Now, it's not much consolation I suppose to those 1st print adopters who are also very pedantic about this, but as anyone who buys from Chaosium knows they are generally very good about correcting this stuff in later printings. Take that as you will. But no errata here is sufficiently egregious that I would feel a need to purchase a replacement edition in order to get the game "working." Contrast with two other examples which are clearly egregious: the Monsters of Legend book from Mongoose which was missing half the monster trait descriptions in its first printing; I never did get an answer from Matt Sprange on his forums about whether future reprints would fix this issue, either....and Mongoose, unlike Chaosium, is notorious for not fixing errata, even long, long after its been caught and the product has been repackaged with plenty of opportunity for corrections (i.e. Pirates of Legend; try to find the damn swashbuckler ability, I dare you). And not to keep picking on Mongoose, but let's try to keep it real here and all remember Mongoose's 1st release of Runequest (what would be MRQ, alias RQ 4). That was a game which I ran one campaign for, and ultimately ended the campaign because the rules as written were pissing me off, badly.

Other examples for contrast and consideration: Tome of Horrors Complete's errata is here. Thirteen pages as the forum posts, though I concede that's not bad for 800 pages. Then there is Runequest 6's errata here. It's got more than MW and doesn't discuss typos. I would strongly defend Runequest 6..even more adamantly than MW....that the typos do not break the game.

2. Copy and Paste Issues.

I haven't been bothered by this, nor was I surprised either, because it was well-established that MW was a revival of older products in a new Elric-free format. Given that the lead-up to this book along with interviews and discussion with the author was very clear on the idea that Magic World was going to be a genericized version of the Elric system, retooled for compatibility with BRP, it could be that for me this was essentially a non-issue to begin with because I knew what I was getting long before it was released.

That said, there is a fair amount of copy/paste/revise going on in the book, and a couple of the identified errata issues stem from this, obviously. However I read through the whole tome, my player group (only one of whom was an old pro at the BRP/RQ system like me) read through it as well and no one was confused by any of the rules. We did find a couple spell descriptions that took people by surprise, or left us with some need to make rules calls...but the feeling was not "this is broken" but rather "this is kind of cool, because the spell seems to let us do X exotic things by virtue of not specifically forbidding it." I'm not sure this is something I will call out as a "Magic World's magic system is so cool" sort of thing (though I do like it, having always liked the original it was based off of from Elric/Stormbringer) so much as a "my players are so used toPathfinder's regimented magic system that the openness of a BRP-based system freaked them out." They are used to a ruleset designed to cap them, not the more open-ended style of magic BRP is known for.

3. Art issues.

This is purely subjective, and I like the old art in this book -much of it evokes a fond sense of nostalgia for me- so it's hard for me to relate, but I will provide a defense on behalf of the anonymous critic in this sense: because this is a mix of old, new and recycled art, it lacks a consistency that we tend to see in a lot of current RPG publications. Runequest 6, for example, relies on the art talent of four artists with a very consistent, complimentary style and for that reason it has a more coherent feel to its style and look. I'm not going to argue that Magic World is not the coolest looking book out there, nor that it is better than average, even. But I will argue that it's functional, looks good, is not in the least bit embarrassing to show off (you won't find this locked in the top shelf of the closet with everything Raggi has ever published, half of White Wolf's backstock and of course Cyberpunk 2030) and the practice of recycling art like this is painfully common in the industry, hardly anything unusual for Chaosium.

4. Pixelation and low res issues.

I can see someone getting worked up about this; these things can bug a person on a conscious and unconscious level. The pixelation in some of the art is noticeable to me, but I have to pay close attention or I don't catch it. I will concede this one because it's not honestly a good idea to stick anything in your book that is too low resolution at all, but honestly because of my eyesight issues I think this just doesn't stand out for me like it should.

MW's ancestor

Summary

So...that sort of hits the key points in the disgruntled anonymous critic's points of contention. Do these collectively make the book a "critical failure?" For the person who wrote the critique, obviously it did. But the problems with this book are far more subjective than objective: the whole game is here, and it plays very well; I know this from experience, and I am someone who will terminate a campaign midstream if I don't like the way the rules work or are explained. The errata is modest and while issues of errata are pervasive in this hobby that's no good excuse, so the question boils down to what your tolerance level is. My tolerance level is just below "Mongoose Level" but definitely way above "Chaosium first printing" level. I played D&D 4th edition for more than two years...and they had enough errata that I was able to print and bind it all into it's own book. Maybe not a sterling example, but the point I'm getting at is that I was able to read through Magic World and not get confused or tripped up about how to play the game, no single or collective issue of errata or typos causing me to panic in terror that I would be somehow unable to grasp this system or run it properly. And then I went and ran a campaign with it with five players new to BRP and one old pro, and they had a blast...and not one of us got pissed off that the pioneer's skill set was missing, or that elves was misspelled at one point.

Anyway....this reviewer is speaking to people who do find a typo or a missing bit of data or an example where the math is off to be egregious and unforgivable, and he is speaking especially to those who are demanding of the art in their games and feel that the price tag is too much for their entertainment dollars. He's doing a good service for those people, and they know who they are. But he's also objectively holding this game to a higher standard than most RPGs get held up to, period. Perhaps there's a change going on in the industry that may force Chaosium and other older publishers to consider more carefully their approach to art and layout in the future. With the arrival of indie RPGs and the OSR publishing crowd there are many, many examples out there of products carefully nurtured to fruition by those who take the time to make their book as perfect as they can get it before release. If it turns out that Chaosium needs to consider the idea that Magic World actually has to beef up its image to compete with OpenQuest 2 then I can only ever consider that a good thing.

I plan to snag a copy of OQ2 as soon as time and cash permit, and maybe I'll have an opportunity to compare it to MW and RQ6 soon. For me, no matter how much I've enjoyed MW, I'll definitely state that if it turns out there's an equal or better product which gets the job done with that extra little something that makes it that much better than the competition, then that game, whichever it is, should probably win out (or deserve to, anyway). Of course, fans of the BRP/RQ/CoC family of games know the awesome, dirty little secret: it's stupid-easy to utilize material across all of these systems, which all adhere to a fundamental core that does not shift dramatically from one iteration to the next. So an OQ2 powered game which snags the MW magic system and then pits the PCs against monsters from Monsters of Legend II is legitimately do-able with very modest effort on the GM's part. And that is why I like the D100 family of games so much!

I'm looking forward to the next scheduled MW tome...

Dyverse shows off how Diverse the OSR Blogosphere is

Thanks to Tenkar's Tavern for pointing out this blog. Chris Atkins' Dyvers is, aside from an interesting blog, also providing the most comprehensive directory of active and dark OSR related blogs out there. He even says some nice things about RoC so fair disclosure and all that! If you'd like to expand your range of blog options for gaming online this is a fine resource....I have discovered quite a few blogs I'd never heard of before but wish I had just in the last few dozen minutes' browsing.

Catching up on Pathfinder: a Review of Ultimate Campaign

Realizing my Pathfinder backlog had grown to terrifying proportions, I decided it was time to forge deep into to the miasma of Paizo and Third-Party goodness that festers upon my shelf like a pixie wizard trapped in a troll's nether regions. There's a lot on the shelf...frankly, an enormous number of books that, in the tradition of whatever dominant mass-market D&D-like is in full bloom, populates book shelves across the nation with endless scenarios and splatbooks of incredibly pretty but sometimes dubious usability. Of these books I decided to first delve deep into...Ultimate Campaign.

Ultimate Campaign is a thick book with a lot of systems, ideas and mechanics to try and fill a bewildering variety of gaps in any given campaign. If you utilized every idea in this book then I would predict that your players will dive deep into combat and dungeoneering just to avoid the intensely tedious slog of book-keeping that adventuring downtime could end up taking.

If, however, you take each system in this book as a single enhancer for your campaign and choose only the ones that are likely to benefit your group's play styles then you will find Ultimate Campaign to be most welcoming and useful.

The first range of options provided is the one I immediately warmed up to the quickest: Backgrounds are presented in great detail, a way of creating interesting prehistories for your characters at the start of a campaign, or for any newly introduced character. The system is fairly simple, and can be randomized, answering questions such as the homeland, parents, siblings, and othere details, focusing first by race then later by another set of parameters for class, which expands the background to look at how your character came to be what he is, followed by influential associates, moral relations, the full traits system and much more. It's got a lot of detail but it's all designed to add flavor to your PCs and give both player and GM something to riff off of for new adventures, ideas and hooks that bring the PCs into the story.

Backgrounds like this have appeared in many other games in different forms, from the 3rd edition Campaign Book that was released with D&D 3.0 to the Cyberpunk lifepath generator and beyond, but what Pathfinder offers here works well for 3.75 with custom concepts and ideas for Pathfinder's specific take on classes and races. Take note that this material is all generic, designed for any fantasy campaign; a separate tome was released with Golarion specific content.

With backgrounds behind us we're 73 pages into this book. I give backgrounds a big thumbs up.

Part two is all about Downtime. The last time I can legitimately recall an RPG providing a set of mechanics to figure out what happened to the PCs between adventures was Cities, a supplement originally published by Midkemia Press as a generic sourcebook for RPGs, and later bought out by Chaosium/Avalon Hill and reissued, ultimately, as a sourcebook for Runequest 3 that was also coincidentally fairly usable with any game system.

The downtime mechanics in Ultimate Campaign are nothing like the Cities supplement, which I still use to this day. While Cities focused on personal events, random occurences, and a few modest choices for the players to decide on, the bulk of it was aimed at creating an odd narrative for your players to enjoy, in which they gained some unexpected insight into what their characters are doing in the fantasy world when no one's looking, essentially. You could start the process post-dungeon delve and end up married to a halfling social climber while being hounded by the local thieves guild due to unexpected gambling debts.

Downtime in Ultimate Campaigns has some fun random events, but you have to play this strange property management and investment minigame to get there first. It's very off-putting to me, though I am sure there are gamers out there who would love this thing. If an adventurer decides to spend his wealth acquiring a tavern, for example, I am prone to looking at or inventing a price sheet, building a narrative around it and making the acquisition part of that PC's story over time. Downtime here is about applying build points and designing the structure, managing it like an accountant, real estate agent, broker, or merchant would. It probably rubs me the wrong way because that's something I deal with on a certain level in real life (business management) and I want none of that garbage in my gaming. It's probably nowhere near as bad as I am making it sound....and the events listED later on intrigue me....but if I use this I will need to simplify it and/or make the process more holistic to the roleplay process and less of this whole build point mechanic nonsense.

You know, Downtime reminds me of the side quests in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood where you gradually buy up old properties in Rome and renovate them, invest and basically prop the city up on the ill-gotten blood money of the Assassin's secret cabal. Except in the video game it's fun and here it's just god awfully tedious.

We are now passing page 131. I'm going to give a thumbs down to Downtime, with the conditional that I may pillage it for events and ideas on doing this in a more holistic fashion.

Part three is labelled Campaign Systems, and it's all about a metric ton of little add-ons you can plug into your campaign to enhance the experience in ways you may never have realized you didn't care about in the first place...or never knew you couldn't live without. Here are the systems in a quick rundown:

Alignments: this is basically an elaboration on the alignment system, with a focus on how to make incremental changes to alignment over time. If you, like me, have had no problem over time telling someone, "hey it looks like Fred is acting chaotic evil these days, so I think he is now chaotic evil," then this system is going to seem fairly useless to you. If, however, you have always felt uncomfortable with such declarations, wanting to know just what gradient on the axis of chaos and evil you fall along, then you may find this worth your time. I rank this one: Neutral.

Bargaining: If this happens a lot in your campaigns (as it does mine) these short two pages are a nice addition to give you some additional ideas on making the next bargaining session more interesting. Surprise your players with some extra layers of goodness! If your players are decidedly not into lowering costs and improving earnings on stolen loot at the marketplace then this may be less useful to you. Thumbs up to this system for me!

Companions: a long fluff piece on adding life (and also returning to life) companion characters, chiefly eidolons, familiars, animal companions and such. Call me neutral on this, but to someone who is mystified as to how to approach companion creatures to PCs this might be useful.

Contacts: this system reminds me of contacts in Traveller, in that it codifies them and provides some mechanics for what to do with a contact when a player tries to take advantage of it. When your campaign lets these things grow holistically out of play rules such as this may be less useful to you, or provide a modest bit of structure. Still...I like the approach, and it's fairly rules-lite, just offering a bit of structure. So...thumbs up!

Exploration: It's only 6 pages long but damnit, this book should have spent half its content on the subject of exploration. The good news is lots of stuff in the Gamemastery Guide and other tomes lend to the subject of exploration, but Paizo could easily do an "Ultimate Explorers" or "Ultimate Hexcrawl" and they'd get my money.

Exploration provides a suitable framework for those who don't get outside much on how to guage travel times while hiking or riding, a bit about hex mapping, sandbox style campaigning, and randomly generating maps. The thought that they put 6 pages in here on this and did close to 70 pages on that god-awful downtime system (plus see more later) sickens me. A Huge thumbs up to this section with the caveat that most of the book should have been about this stuff.

Honor: a short system for handling honor points if you're into that stuff. I am exceedingly "meh" about it but these systems have their use and this one is easy to add on and use.

Investments: what is it with Paizo's writers and adding financial witchery into their swords & sorcery fantasy game?!?!?! I deal with investment management all the time at work, and I am not so enamoured with the subject that I want to deal with an abstract and painful sub-mechanic in my fantasy games. Huge thumbs down and also not detailed enough for anyone who might actually want this stuff, imo.

Lineage: lots of ideas and fluffy exposition on setting up family lines and histories, compliments the first chapter a bit and has some interesting ideas for those who are into building lengthy family backgrounds for their characters (presumably in campaigns where the GMs flinch and hide crit rolls behind a screen so they don't accidentally kill any of the level 1 characters with seventeen page long family histories). Interesting read though so thumbs up.

Magic Item Creation: I liked this section, as the subject rears its head periodically in my campaigns, and this part provides a lot of useful ideas for expanding on the subject of creating, selling, altering and bartering for magical devices. Thumbs up.

Relationships: this is just some interesting rules-lite ways to add more elaborate PC-NPC relations to your campaign, and had some interesting ideas. Thumbs up.

Reputation and Fame: another point-based system for tracking PC infamy as they advance in level. An easy enough system to use, but pointless in holistic games where this sort of stuff grows organically out of PC actions anyway. I rest neutrally on this. on.

Retirement: a couple pages of discussion on the subject, and while fun reading for a moment it sort of missed a golden opportunity to consider the idea of really integrated retired PCs into the narrative framework of future campaigns as NPC patrons for new adventurers, just to think of one random idea that comes to mind.

Retraining: a few pages, but well worth looking at. In the 3.5 era the Player's Handbook II introduced the idea of retraining as you leveled up, and swapped out certain features for others in a system that made such actions legal instead of a fudge. Here we have a decent system for the same in Pathfinder, even including training time to change things in-game. Cool stuff, and my players will take right to it. Big thumbs up.

Taxation: a couple pages on some interesting ideas on the subject that GMs can torture players with. Modest thumbs up.

Young Adventurers: two pages on playing kids as characters. The core nugget of an entire specialized campaign rests in these two pages, waiting to be exploited, probably in some future Paizo tome if I'm lucky. Thumbs up but not enough to do much with here beyond provide some rules for that special snowflake in your group who has to play the young princess.

So ends the various little systems. We rest now at page 196, facing the largest system in this tome...

Kingdoms and War. This stuff will look familiar to those who played one of the Adventure Paths (name escapes me). Let me get this out of the way: it's got build points, and alignments for your kingdom and locales, event phases and distinct wargame mechanics. It has it's place in the right campaign with the right batch of players, but that is not my group and I definitely lack the temperament for this sort of structured approach. Kingdoms under the control of my players grow organically, out of the dust of a lengthy history of adventures and tales.

Now, in defense of the kingdoms system I could see it working very well with the right group, probably a smaller group, of players who find the idea of true wargaming blending with role playing to be tantalizing. I think I've had a group in the past that could not only handle this approach, but even relish in it. Alas I am still the wrong GM for this sort of thing, but I suppose I could try it if prompted, and the mechanics do look quite sound. The mass combat looks interesting, and I like the concise stat blocks, including the Tarrasque if you want to field a particularly large miniature on the map.

In the end, I will remain cautiously neutral on this system, with the caveat that it ends on page 250 and takes up 52 pages of the book. Not a deal breaker as I see it, unless more than half of the previously described optional systems also sound bad to you, in which case I suggest passing on Ultimate Campaign and looking elsewhere for inspiration.

So for me I found a variety of small systems plus the Backgrounds to be most tantalizing. The warfare and kingdom mechanics look like something I could find use for with the right group, but that group doesn't exist in my current continuum. The downtime mechanics just make me feel tired and deflated. Everything else is of variable interest but only Retraining, and Exploration were absolutely essential to my core needs as a GM and players, so that means that in this tome roughly 100 pages is content I will definitely use, and the rest is either suspect, anathema, or extremely particular to the right conditionals.

So can I recommend Ultimate Campaign? Sure, if you think that it speaks to you with enough of what is offered to enhance your Pathfinder experience. It is decidedly a Pathfinder tome, and while many of these systems can readily be used with any D20 game or D&D-like, the truth is many of those other games work just fine without these mechanics...and to be honest, so does Pathfinder; so I'd have to say that Ultimate Campaign is probably only worth it for the hardcore and those who see pure gold in the Background, Downtime and Kingdom/Warfare systems, which comprise most of this book. Take note that the PDF is only $10, so at that price you may feel that even if only a few of the optional systems on offer are worth considering at that price point they're worth checking out.

Black Friday Haul - Marlow Briggs, Enslaved, State of Decay PC and More

Most of my loot acquisition consisted of graphic novels and video games, nothing unusual there. I haven't bought much in the way of new RPGs, and none this weekend....I'm saturated with games that I don't have time to read or play as it is, and these days graphic novels, video games and books are a bit more accessible with my limited free time than RPGs are. Hell....my backlog just for Pathfinder is about twenty books strong (including Ultimate Camaigns and Mythic Adventures!) so there ya go. If I add more to that pile I'll never get anything done...

On the Steam sale I snagged Dark Void for $2.49...I've tried it before, but it seemed intriguing enough to have on hand should I get a chance to play it some day. I also grabbed State of Decay for PC plus it's first DLC, as well as Alien Rage Unlimited. Alien Rage looks great and I want to play but a cursory opening shot left me dying two seconds after I meet the first enemies, consistently. Not a good sign.

State of Decay is the first successful open-world zombie apocalypse game, and well worth checking out. I have previously played it on the Xbox 360, and am looking forward to a playthough on the PC, along with the release of the expansion pack which provides more open-world, infinite survival goodness. I'll probably talk about it more, later.

Green Man Gaming, Impulse and others also have their weekend Black Friday sales. I grabbed a severely discounted Enslaved: Odyssey to the West for PC edition, a fantastic game which I enjoyed on Xbox 360 years ago and like to replay. It's as fun and engaging on PC as it was on Xbox and looks much nicer now. For those unfamiliar with this game its an action-adventure style game with a lot of climbing revolving around a post-apocalyptic future in a tale derived loosely from the Chinese epic Journey to the West.

I also found a hidden gem: Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death. Holy cow is this game fun....it's a classic action-adventure that feels very much like the "good old days" of this style of game from the PS1/Dreamcast/PS2 era, when you could still get unabashedly fun adventure titles involving fighting, jumping, leaping and endless killing, all wrapped in a glorious display of crazy storytelling and over the top characters. Most of the industry abandoned this style of game ages ago, but it is very nice to see something like that back again, and extremely fun and playable. Marlow Briggs is a rough and tumble fellow who just wants to visit his archaeologist girlfriend at the shady dig site she's been working at, when the evil Bad Guy decides to off him with an artifact weapon. No sooner is Marlow on the trash heap of dead bodies than does a Lord of Xibalba resurrect him to become the instrument of destruction against the infidels....a job Marlow is absolutely suited for. I love this game!

More on these as I get time to play through them. May be a while, as I am currently on a massive Assassin's Creed kick (blasting through AC: Brotherhood now, so a ways to go).

Deluxe T&T Update 43 is out...and it actually worried me a bit

If you're a backer you can go read Update 43 on the Kickstarter page (or in your email) and see what Liz has to say about the ongoing development of Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls. It's a bit past due (originally slated for August iirc) and as most KS's are wont to do it is going past the original deadline.

The update Liz Danforth provided is interesting...perhaps too interesting for comfort. I admit to being a 90% purist when it comes to T&T. The 5th edition of the game was pretty much the gold standard for me, not only for what defined T&T but also for what defined a reasonably robust yet mechanically simple system. I have only ever had two issues with T&T:

I've always had an optional set of rules for slightly more nuanced combat, which were generally little more than a few tricks and options to spruce up the standard combat systems. In T&T combat is either a group vs. group comparison of "hit point totals" or you try a snazzy maneuver, make a save, and either reap the rewards or suffer the consequences; my rules additions mainly served to enhance these options, though on occasion I worked out a more blow-by-blow style of combat as well.

The second thing I always wanted T&T to have was skills. A skill system for the game was actually presented in Sorcerer's Apprentice Magazine, as well as used for the modern sister game Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes. That system saw its way into the anniversary edition of T&T (edition 5.5) and then T&T 7 and 7.5 arrived with the talent system, which worked quite well.

Beyond that.....the core of T&T, a game about humans, elves, dwarves, fairies, leprechauns, halflings (hobbs), and other kindred taking on the classes of fighters, rogues, wizards and warrior-wizards (or paragons if you will) and delving deep into the dungeons of the world was pretty much the defining point of the game for me, conceptually. Also, silly spell names. Those don't usually make much sense if you're trying for serious fantasy, but they do a fantastic job of reminding you not to take fantasy too seriously, if you know what I mean.

Mechanically, T&T is about the save mechanic, leveling up by stats, hit point totals, adds, and thinking creatively to stay alive; also, being able to roll up a replacement character in less than five minutes.

So if the Deluxe T&T edition manages this, it will have succeeded for me. That means that I would please hope that the new edition does not make the following mistakes, and based on Liza's update it sounds like the game won't, but not for lack of consideration:

1. No racial classes. No overthinking what the game is about; a handful of core classes and a bunch of racial options have worked fantastically well for forty years now, we don't need to start going all Marc Miller on the subject of nonhumans and their perceived alien-ness. Even Tolkien's elves and hobbits were definable in terms of a few classes.

2. Keep the classes, please! Removing classes fundamentally changes the style and feel of the game. If I want classless systems I have Runequest 6 and GURPS 4E for that, among others. If I want to play a crazed hobb warrior delving with his leprechaun wizard buddy, I've got T&T for that, thank goodness.

Thankfully it looks like Liz is of this mindset in her update, indicating that classless was trashed, and the idea of race-as-class was also dispensed with. The game's core sounds humanocentric, from what I am reading, but I also feel this seems like a needless distinction; humans have always been "core" as a conceit but the rules themselves presented plenty of kindred options without much fuss.

I love T&T, but I love T&T when it's managing to be somehow larger than its rules would suggest it is....and the writing style of the 5th edition ruleset is archetypal for how to write a game system that is inherently simple yet enormously dynamic. I hope Liz makes Deluxe T&T just as great.