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826 pages, how is that even playable?

I mean holding it open, let alone knowing the parts you need to know?

That would be either way too many rules, or way too much setting for me to remember at the table. I'm sure you can use only parts, but then why not put it out in usable parts?
 
826 pages, how is that even playable?

I mean holding it open, let alone knowing the parts you need to know?

That would be either way too many rules, or way too much setting for me to remember at the table. I'm sure you can use only parts, but then why not put it out in usable parts?

I bought the D&D 5e version, which is a slightly different (but similar) length, and I've found it to be pretty sturdy and well put together. Mind you, it's only been opened and read on about a dozen occasions.

You can get the tome in a bunch of separate volumes too. I think there's Player and GM books as well as a bestiary and a campaign book. I think it worked out slightly cheaper to get it all in one big volume. Slightly cheaper that is until FedEx screwed up royally and I ended up paying £120 in extra shipping and associated costs!
 
Does it do any organization tricks? Ptolus was really manageable, but mostly because of all the "hyperlink-sidebar" shenanigans that was a bit like GURPS and Underground taken to 11.
The FGG products I've seen thus far tended to be on the… AD&D 2E type of level, layout-wise.
 
Got a set of Holmagr Retro Rejects dice. Not 100% reproductions, but a nice old school look. They are very lightweight. The numbers are very deep, making them quite easy to read even without inking. Inexpensive. There are more expensive versions with "authentic colors", if you want to spend $30 on a set (I don't).


I also picked up a set of "Spooky Dice", basically "Ghost Dice" for Spooktacular. I had put off buying these when they were on IPR, because the dice were $5 and the shipping was $15. But now that they're on Etsy, it's closer to $5 and $5. So, I picked 'em up. I gotta say, these are really gorgeous dice. Absolutely beautiful color. The pic doesn't do them justice.


Couldn't resist and ordered.
 
Couldn't resist and ordered.
I'm tempted, though I'd never use them.

I'm also tempted by the can of Whoopass dice. It's actually a decent price with 12 sets of dice for $15 but the packaging is the selling point.

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Stupid reasons to buy an RPG.

#17 The cover looks cool and reminds you of the cover of another RPG supplement from bitd. See Aetherium: The Roleplaying Game.

And I also picked up Monsters Macabre, the monster manual for Cryptworld.

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Ranka wants to keep this on the down low, but she got blu rays of SDF Macross, Macross Plus, and Macross Zero with english subtitles.

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Totally legit, she assures me.
 
Let me know what you think! I eyed it on Amazon quite a while until I decided I didn't need it.

It's down to $25 on Amazon right now.

Of course, then you need "Aetherium Dice" which are specialized d12s. Task resolution is d10 dice pools, but the Aetherium dice are used for something I haven't read up to yet.
 
I just got the main book, Beyond Darkness and Madness & Screams and Whispers. I did some reading for the author on Beyond Darkness and Madness and it's pure gold.

I have those in PDF and they are damn good. The bible edition of the core is what I use at the table but the first printing is sometimes a little hard to read, while the layout in the 2nd printing (pictured) is much, much better. The Forbidden (which will never be available in retail) is a gift.
 
Once again nothing super exciting from me. (Pretty much describes my life though i am getting more enthusiastic about a trip to Rhodes in a few weeks so I can take some geeky pictures of old stuff and medieval places).

First up we have Inked Adventures which are playing cards/dungeon geomorphs/D20/D6/sorta D100 randomiser and... ordinary playing cards.

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My thumbnail looks really dirty here. I can assure you it's not and I can take another picture for proof! Rassen frassen lighting piss poor camera angle rassen frassen.

The cards might come in hand for the various dungeon crawls I plan for the T&T play by post I started running a week ago or so. It's buzzing along with only three players so far but slots for a couple more if you are committed (or need committing). Check out Trollbridge for Tunnels and Trolls related goodness and chat.

Next up some might recall I print PDFs and have 'variable' success with turning them into soft or hard back books. Softback books are pretty easy and I should turn them out with alarming regularity but I seem to be fixated on making hardbacks. More durable? Probably.

I've been getting lots of use out of the Deluxe Tunnels and Trolls 'dog poo cover' edition (a 1 off, guaranteed no one else has this) that was supposed to look like antique oiled leather but turned out like shit. The book itself is very durable, usable and has seen some use. The cover is starting to look aged I must admit but don't mind.

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This was an impulse buy because it was on sale at £69.99 delivered. Book press. To be honest I have no idea how they can sell them at that with all the various bits, putting them together and painting them and shipping the thing (which is quite handy for weight training) for that price I mention, all in. It would cost me more to get the bits together never mind make a ham fisted job of cutting the thing. Plan is to have a couple of books on the go as I have a home made press (which is more useful because I made it to exactly how I want it) and planning on another once I source various bits of cheap (read: free) wood.

I haven't tried the new press out yet but will in the next print project. This time I used the old tried n trusted battered but serviceable home made wood thing and printed out:



The ultra limited edition (of one) hardcopy version of Astonishing Superheroes - the Kettlebell edition. I finally found a use for my too light (at 7.5kg I could throw this around theoretically forever and forget its there apart from all the smashing noises of stuff I bump into) kettlebell. Too light for weight training (and extremely hazardous in a living room in front of the tv) but fine for squishing books between two bamboo chopping boards.



It's not perfect as the three hands required method of setting the printed block of pages inside a cover needs three hands and I have two. Therefore I need another solution and I think I have one. We'll see next book.



These are the normal weights I heft about but at 25kg apiece possibly too heavy for the book squishy thing. Xbox one needs a dust. Gets played occasionally as the youngest son has a thing for two players Plants vs Zombies (the ancient original) especially if he plays zombies and gets to beat me 100% of the time.

Astonishing Superheroes

What is it?

Somebodies house rules for Marvel Superheroes/FASERIP basically. It's generated a bit of buzz in a couple of places and was on sale as print+PDF (£10.32 plus delivery as of the time of this writing). Maybe (we'll see) has some fixes for what (some) see as issues with the venerable Marvel game. It's weird how the release of a new marvel game got me instead excited about checking out other supers games. I haven't even got the playtest yet but there's so much negativity/disappointment about it I'm not sure I can be arsed with a medium-high crunch game where the mechanics and maths are at least off if not downright iffy. Don't get me started on the Thor is smarter than Spider-man and more agile come to think of it because of the rank bullshit.

How does it play?

Probably as you would expect a near clone of Marvel Superheroes to play. Some things have changed like the names of ranks...

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...but it's a D100 game with white/green/yellow/red successes, column shifts, karma and all that on the 'Uni Table'. Honestly if you ever played Marvel (TSR Classic version) you can probably play this with a pre-gren. The details (Character creation, rules tweaks) probably need a skim over but I would not expect this to be anywhere near the impenetrable crunch that Mutants and Masterminds or Champions/Hero thrusts at players when trying to get to the easy mechanics through a frankly quite shit and off putting way of making characters. Your mileage may vary.

How does it look?

Well in the kettlebell edition its printed on 120gsm bright white best quality paper and hand sewn with minty fresh™ dental floss (other brands are available. In fact I think this one says 'Pro' on it which is Tesco's brand). The point of that is that all the books I make will last. No pages falling out glue is garbage blah blah. The problem I have and continue to have is covers so every new book I try to do something different. This time I clear coated with contact/sticky pvc roll before the cover was attached to the book and hey presto! No bubbles or crinkles! A first for everything. Helps if the contact isn't like, ten years old like the stuff I have been using because it sticks better. I also finally tweaked the printer settings so it doesn't print hi/lo on alternate pages which was annoying but liveable. Might reprint the DT&T book (pages 1-166) again in a softback or non 'dog crap cover' edition.

The book itself has a decent look to it being a home grown thing and amongst others is art by Storn Cook who can draw/paint and has done so for some of the Mutants and Masterminds books (up to 2e I think. I would have to check 3e and DC but have to scrape the eye glaze off to view pages for more than a few seconds). In terms of a small press 'Mom I need to 'borrow' some of my inheritance. How much do you really need a car...?' budgets it must have cost a fair chunk to fill the book with art. Impressed though there's lots of white space so maybe some kind of border or something for V2?

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The Kettlebell edition isn't quite finished yet. It's the first book I've put together with mostly glue sticks instead of gallons of PVA and so far everything seems to be sticking down. If anyone knows of a glue stick brand that is a) available in the UK b) cheap c) sticks like, really well feel free to suggest something. It may need its own thread as even by Pub standards veering off to discuss brands of glue is like WTF. Various breeds of flying bird native to Canada? Sure! Glue brands not so much. Maybe a 'Creative' thread somewhere if there is one to cover things we make instead of stuff we buy.

The POD version is softback and on its way (takes weeks) so I thought I'd try out a few new techniques. The join two pages of A4 to make a full page cover thing seems to work but I gotta work on the joins.

Definitely better than the Against the Darkmaster softback I made with bubbly and wrinkled cover, pages hanging over the lip of the cover and a ham fisted attempt to trim them resulting in a raggedy ass ghetto book look. It's the 'only fit for the bin' edition which is fine. I don't pretend or claim to be a pro and this is a learning experience/something sorta fun to do.

In Summary

Still iffy at covers? Check. Managed to finally cover one without bubbles? Check, YAY! Oh, yeah the game. I don't know how compatible this is with existing write ups but I will take a look (once the glue has dried) and see if I can give it a proper how it plays critique. Might not ever run it as DC Heroes/Blood of Heroes is my thing but I always see what i can take from books I buy, even if it's a 'why didn't I think of that?'. Print on Demand and Kickstarter have given us a golden age where someone with a streak of creativity and an idea can get themselves in print and feel justly proud of what they have done.

Mind you there are some right 'why did they bother' games too...
 
Was about to leave the house when the postie turned up with this:



There's a thread elsewhere extolling this games virtues so I'll not comment here.




Ahhhh Rolemaster - the Marvel edition.


Layout is fine. Deja vu with the Marvel Heroic game but that gets the nod I think. We'll see if they go new layout for the full fat version.


In which marvel universe do Black Panther or Captain America mop the floor with Spider-man and Wolverine - maybe at the same time? I don't know (yet) how to read all this mumbo jumbo but I've seen suggestions that Black Panther could beat Spider-Man and Captain America at the same time. I think that's universe 23206 (which coincidentally spells WTF)


"Swing away Mr Sniktbub! I'm so far out of your league we may as well say you never deserve a place on the same team as me! BWAHAHAHAH!" Then "Wait what? Wolverine IS in the same team? How... when? We'll have to find him something to do. Oh I don't know... can he make the coffee with an 'A' swirl in the middle? That'd be cool."
- The Mighty Avengers. Thor's conversation with Captain Marvel.


What I will comment about is the quality of this product. The cover is chopped slightly too short at the front (can you tell I've turned into a book binding snob?) and the paper is like the stuff that British Rail used to furnish their toilets with back in the day. The stuff of nightmares as you'd literally break out into a cold sweat from fear of having to use the toilet on a train because the bog roll was this shiny plasticky stuff that turned your 'in out' visit to the toilet into a panicky mess of scraping and smearing, rushing and... *shiver*.

Dad (also a train driver) used to bring this stuff home from work and you'd rather wait till you got to school than use the stuff. Times were tight in the late 70s/early 80s but we still had some standards dammit.

Anyway, it feels like its printed on that. Very thin, see through and ripped slightly when I opened the book on one page. Probably 60 maybe 70gsm at best. Cheap.

Sure its a playtest but the point - surely - is to sell players on the game and get everyone all excited and frothy mouthed at the prospect of a new game, right?

Someone somewhere at Marvel must be thinking "We wasted our time and money with this." if they have anything about them.
 
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What I will comment about is the quality of this product. The cover is chopped slightly too short at the front (can you tell I've turned into a book binding snob?) and the paper is like the stuff that British Rail used to furnish their toilets with back in the day. The stuff of nightmares as you'd literally break out into a cold sweat from fear of having to use the toilet on a train because the bog roll was this shiny plasticky stuff that turned your 'in out' visit to the toilet into a panicky mess of scraping and smearing, rushing and... *shiver*.
Ye gods, sir, that's visceral.
 
I just bought 'The Ministry Initiative' and a few supplements. Needless to say, I'm pretty pleased. It's a steampunk game based on the FATE system. The characters play in an organization called the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences which is dedicated to protecting Queen & Country and investigating all manner of oddities. It reminds me of a Victorian James Bond mixed with a bit of Hellboy. ;)

I know not everyone likes FATE but I think it's great when you have a good group that utilizes its freeform nature. Sorry, I can't post pics as I only ever buy pdfs these days.

 
Oh yeah, that's another one for the Licensed RPG list - it's based on a series of books.
 
Well holy shit. Look at what finally freakin' arrived.

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Back when I kickstarted this, I figured it would arrive sometime around October of last year. I figured I'd have it in my hot little hands by Christmas at the latest. I also figured I'd only pledge for the limited edition, because the regular edition would show up in online stores for cheaper anyway around the same time I was getting my pledge reward. I also figured the limited would be available later, but FOMO got me on that point.

So last summer I was actively thinking of what I could run with this. I was excited about 5e at the time. I waited.

And waited.

And here it is May and I'm only now just getting it. If I had got it late last year, it would have seen immediate play. But now? It's going on the shelf to collect dust for a while and look pretty. Which, honestly, it's the limited edition version, so that was always it's ultimate fate.

In this particular instance, it's not Dyskami Games's fault that this was so late. It's the fault of the world supply chain which has been FUBARed. It's irritating. First world suburban problem, I know.
 
I looked a lot at Anime 5e but I couldn’t get a sense of it was any good despite the extensive preview. It seemed better than Anime d20 but still pretty heavy.

With the Konosuba RPG providing a well designed light D&D fantasy anime ruleset, I probably won’t look back to this now, but your thoughts would be appreciated.
 
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I looked a lot at Anime 5e but I couldn’t get a sense of it was any good despite the extensive preview. It seemed better than Anime d20 but still pretty heavy.

With the Konosuba RPG providing a well designed light D&D fantasy anime ruleset, I probably won’t look back to this now, but your thoughts would be appreciated.
Is Konosuba D&Dish or is it based on D&D? Anime options in D&D would be fun so I'm casually interested in this and Anime 5e.

I've been out of the anime rpg loop since BESM's creator screwed people on the way down.
 
Konosuba is about a teenager who dies goes to an world based on a JRPG MMO. The MMO is no doubt in turn ultimately inspired by D&D (as they all are :smile:).

The Konosuba RPG doesn't use D&D though and is instead based on an original 2d6 system. It does have a lot of familiar D&D trappings (classes, levels, races, HP etc) and the default style is D&D style adventuring. Its pretty great IMO. Its solid, has lots of fantasy flavour, the humour is not in the foreground (instead coming from how many people play D&D style fantasy), and simple and easy to use.
 
Was about to leave the house when the postie turned up with this:



There's a thread elsewhere extolling this games virtues so I'll not comment here.




Ahhhh Rolemaster - the Marvel edition.


Layout is fine. Deja vu with the Marvel Heroic game but that gets the nod I think. We'll see if they go new layout for the full fat version.


In which marvel universe do Black Panther or Captain America mop the floor with Spider-man and Wolverine - maybe at the same time? I don't know (yet) how to read all this mumbo jumbo but I've seen suggestions that Black Panther could beat Spider-Man and Captain America at the same time. I think that's universe 23206 (which coincidentally spells WTF)


"Swing away Mr Sniktbub! I'm so far out of your league we may as well say you never deserve a place on the same team as me! BWAHAHAHAH!" Then "Wait what? Wolverine IS in the same team? How... when? We'll have to find him something to do. Oh I don't know... can he make the coffee with an 'A' swirl in the middle? That'd be cool."
- The Mighty Avengers. Thor's conversation with Captain Marvel.


What I will comment about is the quality of this product. The cover is chopped slightly too short at the front (can you tell I've turned into a book binding snob?) and the paper is like the stuff that British Rail used to furnish their toilets with back in the day. The stuff of nightmares as you'd literally break out into a cold sweat from fear of having to use the toilet on a train because the bog roll was this shiny plasticky stuff that turned your 'in out' visit to the toilet into a panicky mess of scraping and smearing, rushing and... *shiver*.

Dad (also a train driver) used to bring this stuff home from work and you'd rather wait till you got to school than use the stuff. Times were tight in the late 70s/early 80s but we still had some standards dammit.

Anyway, it feels like its printed on that. Very thin, see through and ripped slightly when I opened the book on one page. Probably 60 maybe 70gsm at best. Cheap.

Sure its a playtest but the point - surely - is to sell players on the game and get everyone all excited and frothy mouthed at the prospect of a new game, right?

Someone somewhere at Marvel must be thinking "We wasted our time and money with this." if they have anything about them.
Thor has a Resilience of 4? What is that all about?
 
Thor has a Resilience of 4? What is that all about?
Well if I recall he 'only' had Excellent 20 Body Armour in MSH (dense Asgardian flesh) and used the hammer (twirled) to defend against powerful attacks as a shield when required in the comics so he wasn't super tough. However it seems Resilience is more like Endurance in the MSH game as far as I can tell and Thor had Unearthly (100). Yeah, 4 makes no sense. I look at Thors' Super Strength power 'Mighty 4' and don't know whether to chuckle or roll my eyes.

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Honestly though, the whole 'Spider-man/Wolverine isn't fit to lace Captain America/Black Panthers boots because of the Rank thing' makes this game a dud to me. The tables, the ranks, the iffy write ups, the negative reaction (or at best 'it's ok but <insert game> is a better supers game), the sense of disappointment. It's a missed opportunity. I don't have enough interest/experience with D&D 5e to see if it's targeted to snag some of those players so maybe someone else can comment on what they think about that but the previous game - Marvel Heroic - was better than this and I wasn't a great fan of that (didn't hate it, just, it's ok).

The diceless Marvel game has its problems and detractors but I think that's a better game. The Marvel Saga (card) game certainly is and the original is an RPG classic, hall of fame game to my eyes. It brought supers gaming to the masses and certainly to our group when Champions, V&V, Superhero 2044 barely made an impact and vanished off our play list (despite my repeated attempts to sell them on Champions).

I haven't done more than skim this thing so need to give it a proper look over but so far I've seen nothing that will budge me from DC Heroes/Blood of Heroes/House rules.

The wait for a quality, lasting, new Marvel game goes on for me.
 
Thor has a Resilience of 4? What is that all about?
That's his base score as a rank 20 polymath. Essentially all PCs have the same points to spend on base scores. These are then amplified by the relevant power rank and archetype.

Thor's final Resilience mod is +16, which is greater than Black Panther, Captain America and Wolverine's Resilience mods.
 
That's his base score as a rank 20 polymath. Essentially all PCs have the same points to spend on base scores. These are then amplified by the relevant power rank and archetype.

Thor's final Resilience mod is +16, which is greater than Black Panther, Captain America and Wolverine's Resilience mods.
Well, he shouldn’t be a Polymath either, but that’s their flaws in the design. The archetype is like a bucket where they put heroes and villains they don’t know what to do with.
 
My all in for Savage Worlds Pathfinder came in this afternoon. Since I'm not supposed to lift over 10 pounds(per my surgeon as of yet) my wife had to get the box for me. (chuckle) I went all in at the Runelord level. Like Free Leagues, Pinnacle knows how to have their boxes packed. Both boxes were snuggly packed.

Here's the reference for those who didn't know about this one.

 
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