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Last week I ordered Tiny Wastelands and Tiny Taverns from DRTPG. I avoided Tiny Wastelands for a while as I've got a mountain of Post-Apoc RPG books (Barbarians of the Aftermath, The Wasted Hack, The Wasteland Hack, Cthulhu Apocalypse, Rifts and at least a dozen more). However, I bloody love Post-Apoc games! So, I admit it, I'm weak and I completely caved in. I ended up ordering it on impulse as I was ordering Tiny Taverns. Which I was buying for some of the extra social mechanics, I doubt I'd run the game itself, that sounded like good additions to use with Stranger Stuff. I'm waiting on the physical copies now.

Yesterday I ordered DWD's new game Art of Wuxia (also from DTRPG). I loved their Covert Ops game and it uses that system and throws in a whole bunch of Kung Fu goodness. When I first saw it it reminded me of Palladium's Mystic China book. I remember that coming out towards the end of my time as a Palladium fan and it looked very cool but it was never going to get played so I didn't pick it up. Art of Wuxia and Mystic China are very different eras but the former could be easily combined with Covert Ops material. On the subject of Palladium, I figured that the Alien creation rules in FrontierSpace might allow me to create mutant animal characters, while Art of Wuxia could allow me to recreate Japanese Martial Art styles, and therefore I could use the 00Lite system as an effective replacement for TMNT. I also like the idea of 6 stats instead of 4. As a result I bought the two FrontierSpace core books as well. I'm now waiting on the physical copies of those too.
 
Zombie World by Magpie Games.

While zombie media is getting dull, I really like the focus on interpersonal drama here.

The Apocalypse World mechanic of 2d6+stat is replaced by cards. There’s a great tension-building mechanic for damage; eventually someone is going to draw that one “Bitten” card and it’s a death sentence (this deck is never shuffled until someone draws it).

The production values are nice. It all fits into a small box and includes a custom dry erase marker.

‘Can’t wait to run this with some non-gamer friends. It seems really simple and easy to explain and to run.
 
I got my hardcopy of Mike Evans' Barbarians of the Ruined Earth yesterday. I really liked the PDF, but the layout really seems to pop in physical form. Maybe it's the yellow and orange borders (NOT retina burning!) or the perfectly-sized fonts floating in seas of whitespace. But I really like it more now that I'm holding it.

The cover is just awesome, too.

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Looks like:
There's also an alternate cover, but the main one I posted above is better IMO.

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I was all set to get this one when I saw it, until I saw the other one. Note that the same three characters are used in almost all the art. Very DCC! Unlike DCC, they're by different artists, (Kovacs seems to do all The Crew art for Goodman Games), so it's interesting to see the different takes.
 
There's also an alternate cover, but the main one I posted above is better IMO.

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I was all set to get this one when I saw it, until I saw the other one. Note that the same three characters are used in almost all the art. Very DCC! Unlike DCC, they're by different artists, (Kovacs seems to do all The Crew art for Goodman Games), so it's interesting to see the different takes.

I like this cover better as a piece of art, but the other one makes me want to play the game.
 
Picked up a couple cool items recently (cool to me anyway).

First, the one elusive item for Golden Heroes that I didn't have:

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And this next item, which I found in a local store and is surprisingly complete:

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I also just scored a copy of the 2nd edition Boot Hill boxed set and the Top Secret S/I boxed set, although they haven't arrived by mail just yet.
 
Call me contrary, but I would really love to put together this team lineup with Heroclix:
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Unfortunately they don't seem to make Vibe or Steel and the Gypsy and Vixen I came across have lame-ass modern costumes. Heck, I can't even find Aquaman with the correct costume!
 
I know part of the appeal of the Champions, New Defenders, and Justice League of Detroit was that, at least in my experience, an oddball team comprising Angel, Black Widow, Ghost Rider, Hercules, and Iceman (for instance) felt like something you'd end up with after a Champions character creation session. You have the guy who just wants wings and doesn't really care that much about combat maximization, the gal who wants to play a sexy spy chick martial arts expert, the guy who thinks he's cool and edgy, the guy who just wants to fight, and the guy who actually read the rules and used elemental control to maximize his abilities. :dice:
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The West Coast Avengers are a somewhat oddball congregation as well. Plus the West Coast is inherently superior to the rest of the continent.
 
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Picked up a couple cool items recently (cool to me anyway).

First, the one elusive item for Golden Heroes that I didn't have:

View attachment 20485

NGL I'm a little jelly about that GH module. But I'm on the fence about getting it myself. The completist in me wants it. I have 2 GH boxed sets, but neither of the modules. Then again, I haven't been really impressed with the Legacy of Eagles Module (the maps & minis are GREAT, however). QVatHG looks to be a lot better, but it's just so damn... British. I'd need to tweak it quite a bit to make it suitable for my group. And while the minis are still great, the maps are two different scales, which is a pain in the ass. The big battlemap-style maps from LoE, that correspond nicely to the scale of the paper minis, is such a nice touch. So, completism or no, either GH module looks to be a chunk of change for something I'm not likely to use (that street scene battlemap from LoE, tho - could definitely be reused). Shipping fro the UK is spendy, and you don't find too many American sellers of GH stuff (tho I did get one of my box sets that way). In all honesty, I'd probably be more likely to run some of the shorter scenarios from White Dwarf, or the handful of scenarios for the ceased-and-desisted 1st edition of Squadron UK.

And if this all sounds like sour grapes, it totally is. I want those scenarios, anyway lol.
 
I have a chance to pick this up for a decent price:

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It is a complete boxed set with all the contents. I guess this is a 2nd edition of the original Traveller 2300? I think the original came out in 1986 and this one in 1988.

I also can grab about 10 adventures and supplements too.

The thing is, I don't know much at all about this game. Anyone have any thoughts? Is it any good?
 
I have a chance to pick this up for a decent price:

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It is a complete boxed set with all the contents. I guess this is a 2nd edition of the original Traveller 2300? I think the original came out in 1986 and this one in 1988.

I also can grab about 10 adventures and supplements too.

The thing is, I don't know much at all about this game. Anyone have any thoughts? Is it any good?
The setting is a bit reminiscent of the Alien-verse, but was developed through a historical empires game run by a bunch of GDW staff, extrapolating from the WWIII history described in Twilight:2000. The setting is more defined by its grand, sweeping politics and history - with stuff at the level the party might interact with feeling like a bit of an afterthought. It's harder sci-fi than Travelller, with a fair amount of tacti-cool gun porn if you're into that sort of thing (which I was at the time). There are some original aliens in the setting, although not necessarily that feasible to play, tending to be mainly useful as NPCs.

Reading Traveller:2300 was a bit of a milestone in a process that led to my concluding that hard sci-if isn't intrinsically all that interesting as a medium for a RPG. Mostly it tends to mutate into dystopian cyberpunk, space horror or hard sci-fi themed space opera in order to find something that players actually want to do, meaning that the hard sci-fi tropes are usually playing second fiddle to something else. I could go off on a huge tangent about this but I'll spare it for another time.

I found it uninspiring - I don't think I'd ever bother running a game, and maybe not even playing in one if I had other options (although a good DM can, of course, forgive a multitude of sins in the game or setting). However, if it comes with a bunch of modules you might be able to plunder it for ideas.

Some of Donna Barr's illustrations are quite funny.
 
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I liked the setting for 2300 - most of the action was on colony worlds with a non-unified Earth responding to an alien invasion of their colonies.
The rules are mostly based on Twilight 2000, which are very crunchy and quite different from Traveller.
 
I guess this is a 2nd edition of the original Traveller 2300?
Yes, that is is the second edition.

The thing is, I don't know much at all about this game. Anyone have any thoughts? Is it any good?
I tend to agree with everything Nobby-W Nobby-W says about the game. I collected most of the books for it a teenager, as I found the hard science nature of the setting interesting to read, but I barely ever ran it. Most of the setting is painted in very broad strokes, with very select areas that are heavily detailed, such as the planet Aurora. Because the detailed areas are brimming with hard-science details, it felt intimidating to fill out more myself. The realism of the world means that players are expected to be part of military or scientific organizations. You have jobs and you get sent on assignments, which is a format a lot of players bristle at.

After the Cyberpunk RPG came along, they released the Earth/Cybertech sourcebook. The sudden intrusion of cyberpunk into the game, felt like a retcon of the setting as originally presented. I never felt tempted to run a cyberpunk campaign with this when I could use the much more colorful Cyberpunk.

The setting for the game came from an in-house simulation/game that the GDW staff played. They all took on the roles of countries and played out 300 years of history starting from the situation in Twilight: 2000. It was clearly an interesting exercise in world-building, but the idea of how PCs fit into it was clearly an afterthought.
 
For some reason i spent a ridiculous amount of money for the print copy of this last month. It's about a foot thick and weighs a ton. 778 full colour pages of awesome.

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That's a great cover! What's it about?
 
That's a great cover! What's it about?

D&D in Spaaaaccceee

There's an intro adventure (which is pretty good in itself) where you can start off as a usual fantasy campaign, but where an alien menace is uncovered. You can either play that - then get abducted and continue with the campaign or start with the 2nd adventure where you wake up in a specimen tube on a prison ship that is crumbling apart as you wake. Talk about in-media res. Then it becomes a typical sci-fi campaign with you trying to find your way home but inadvertently uncovering a threat to the whole galaxy. It's quite cool that you reach a point about 2/3rds of the way through where you can choose to go home or you can save the galaxy. Of course, if you go home you'll have a happy reunion and then most probably die in a few months as space and time is ripped apart, but hey, you got home right?
 
Just picked up a nice hardcover of The Incal. I have had it on the radar for years, but finally pulled the trigger, so will take a good read this week
My copy of Gateways To Terror also arrived - three investigation scenarios for Call of Cthulhu 7E - also looks pretty good :thumbsup:

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[ . . . ]
I tend to agree with everything Nobby-W Nobby-W says about the game. I collected most of the books for it a teenager, as I found the hard science nature of the setting interesting to read, but I barely ever ran it.
There was something about it that was quite sterile, much more so than the Third Imperium stuff they did for Traveller. I think it was the lack of attention to the low level detail. The material gave the impression the authors were quite pleased with themselves over the geopolitical work they did and neglected to look at the adventure level stuff that made Traveller work. GDW had previously produced some nice, low-key and accessible adventure modules and a heap of good material in the Casual Encounter, Amber Zone and Bestiary articles in the JTAS. They did almost none of this for 2300, and it really felt like their heart wasn't in it. Maybe they were burned out with Traveller at the time.

I think the setting also had some key design flaws. In their hard sci-fi ethos, they made starships boring. Traveller had interesting adventurer class starships like the Gazelle, Type S or Type A2 - something a party could go tooling around in, having their mid-life crisis in space. They also didn't pay any attention to the playability of the aliens. For all their rubber-suitness, Vargr, Aslan and even Newts and Droyne are actually playable as characters, and there are a multitude of playable races in the Star Wars 'verse.

While you could say that maybe it's a function of the core design conceits of the setting, it makes things boring in a way that they really didn't need to be, and makes the setting far less flexible than (say) the Third Imperium of Traveller. I think these were serious mis-steps in the underlying design of the setting.

From this perspective, I'll argue that pulp space opera, maybe with a dollop of science-fantasy added to taste, is a far more flexible and accessible medium for setting an interesting and fun campaign. Something could have been done with 2300, but I think a successful attempt to make it interesting would have either been much further into the cyberpunk/dystopian space or essentially space opera with tacti-cool projectile weapons instead of blasters - i.e. something with fundamental differences to 2300 as published.
 
Wow! I know Mongoose has a new edition of 2300 AD coming. I'm glad you've both posted the above as it probably would have been a purchase for me. I'll be more careful now.

They also didn't pay any attention to the playability of the aliens. For all their rubber-suitness, Vargr, Aslan and even Newts and Droyne are actually playable as characters, and there are a multitude of playable races in the Star Wars 'verse.
I think this and its inverse are often forgotten. I remember when Wrath and Glory was coming out there were complaints that you couldn't be a Tyranid, but how would one play a Tyranid.

What are you taking "Hard SciFi" to mean here by the way? SciFi that tries for less than average speculative or fictional science like Red Mars, or SciFi that deals with abstract scientific and philosophical issues like Greg Egan's works. I could imagine a Red Mars game, Solaris less so.
 
Wow! I know Mongoose has a new edition of 2300 AD coming. I'm glad you've both posted the above as it probably would have been a purchase for me. I'll be more careful now.


I think this and its inverse are often forgotten. I remember when Wrath and Glory was coming out there were complaints that you couldn't be a Tyranid, but how would one play a Tyranid.

What are you taking "Hard SciFi" to mean here by the way? SciFi that tries for less than average speculative or fictional science like Red Mars, or SciFi that deals with abstract scientific and philosophical issues like Greg Egan's works. I could imagine a Red Mars game, Solaris less so.
More the former than the latter. It's not quite as grounded as Robinson, but definitely on that side of the aisle. You could probably spin it in the direction of Egan though. As an sci-fi RPG game of the mid-80s, it's definitely carrying some Aliens influence as well.
 
D&D in Spaaaaccceee

There's an intro adventure (which is pretty good in itself) where you can start off as a usual fantasy campaign, but where an alien menace is uncovered. You can either play that - then get abducted and continue with the campaign or start with the 2nd adventure where you wake up in a specimen tube on a prison ship that is crumbling apart as you wake. Talk about in-media res. Then it becomes a typical sci-fi campaign with you trying to find your way home but inadvertently uncovering a threat to the whole galaxy. It's quite cool that you reach a point about 2/3rds of the way through where you can choose to go home or you can save the galaxy. Of course, if you go home you'll have a happy reunion and then most probably die in a few months as space and time is ripped apart, but hey, you got home right?
I've been thinking about picking this up, but as you say, it's a lot of money for something that I don't know when I'd read, much less run. Thanks for the positive rundown, though!
 
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