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It’s February in Pennsylvania, which means we’re alternating between cold and icy, cold and muddy, and just plain cold. Oh we get theoccasional spring tease, when temps spike up to the mid-40s, but thoseare quickly gone.
Now granted, it’s not New England, which just got another foot ofsnow, but it’s still miserable enough to get me looking forward tospring. And spring naturally gets me thinking about baseball, and thenine-ticket plan I just bought to see the Lehigh Valley IronPigs play.
I've heard generally good things about Castles & Crusades, Troll Lord Game's house game system, but I haven't checked it out myself. My sense from what I've read is that it's a little too old school, and a little too scaled down, for my gaming group. As such, it hasn't really been in the running for a D&D 3.x replacement system (the leader there is still Pathfinder). Still, it appears that a goodly number of people do enjoy Castles & Crusades, since Troll Lord is expanding it's house magazine to 36 pages to support it:
One of the things I enjoy about my Mac is stumbling across different applications (or uses for applications) that I never knew it had. Some of these are legacies of earlier versions of the OS, introduced before being supplanted by some later software, while others are simply obscure, lurking in the corners of your Applications folder until the time you need them.
Here are five such apps that you might never have known you had, but which can be exceedingly useful in your day-to-day work.
The mid-February edition of SF Site is online, with reviews of The Stepsister Scheme by Jim C. Hines, Stalking the Vampire by Mike Resnick, Gaslight Grimoire edited by J.R. Campbell and Charles Prepolec and Shadowbridge by Gregory Frost.
A number of regular columns have been published as well including "SF Site's Best Read of the Year: 2008" compiled by Neil Walsh, "Novel Delights in 2008" reviewed by Dave Truesdale, and a list of new arrivals compiled by Neil Walsh.
Mongoose is ending its Babylon 5 game line, apparently because of lagging interest in the franchise (and one presumes slowing sales as well). Fortunately for fans they've decided to go out with a bang: The Deconstruction of Falling Stars is a 636 page PDF containing all of their remaining unpublished material for the line. It includes three novels, the such as the Dilgar Imperium supplement, and a huge mass of editor and writer notes.
Mongoose warns that much of the hasn't been fully edited (or edited at all) but at $24.95 for 636 pages of content, I'm sure diehard fans will overlook any editing faux pas (I mean, hell, this is Mongoose; we're used to dealing with editing mistakes in published books, let alone PDF rough drafts).
I wish more gaming companies did this sort of thing (or had licensing deals where they could do it). There was a whole treasure trove of material for the Stargate SG-1 RPG -- including a Season 3 source book -- that never saw the light of day after AEG lost the license. I would have happily paid for a chance to get this kind of infodump, even in PDF form.
My review of The Force Unleashed Campaign Guide for the Star Wars: Saga Edition RPG is up on GameCryer.com. This book covers the "Dark Times" or "Rise of the Empire" era that runs from the execution of Order 66 and the establishment of the Galactic Empire up through the Rebellion era.
I wasn't sure I was going to get this book. The video game of the same name didn't thrill me, and my Star Wars campaign is set in the KOTOR era so a lot of its background content doesn't apply to what we're doing. But the guys on the Order 66 podcast kept bringing up these cool rules in the book -- like a framework for creating organizations that player characters can join/create -- as well as prestige classes like "independent droid" that looked like they'd be a good fit for our game.
Goodman Games, creator of the Dungeon Crawl Classics and Xcrawl, has announced Level Up, a new magazine dedicated to Dungeons & Dragons 4E:
"Level up your 4E game! Level Up is the official 4E RPG magazine from Goodman Games. Covering all things 4E, Level Up includes adventures, character options, new monsters, Azagar’s Advice for Adventurers, and the endearing wisdom of Dear Archmage Abby. All for only $1.99! Look for the first issue at your local store in April.
Goodman Games is a strong supporter of retail game stores. We believe they are the best vehicle for spreading our love for this great hobby to new fans. Level Up will be available in bricks-and-mortar retail stores for the low, low price of only $1.99. It will also be available via subscription and PDF for the still-reasonable price of $4.00."
Two big story arcs have concluded in the comics universe over the last few weeks: Marvel's Secret Invasion mini series, in which the alien, shape-shifting Skrulls attempt to take over the Earth, and Batman R.I.P, in which the Dark Knight dies. Or appears to die, because really, what are the chances that he's actually dead?
As a result, we're into the clean-up phase of both story arcs, as their respective universes attempt to deal with the consequences that have been unleashed upon them.
I haven't read Secret Invasion #8 yet because my comic book store sold out of it, and hasn't gotten any reprints in. I enjoyed this series; it was a little silly and a lot of over the top, but I liked the 1950s paranoia angle, which fit in well after the Civil War storyline that saw such an expansion of in-world political power.
Star Wars Omnibus: Tales of the Jedi, Vol. 1 reprints Dark Horse Comics' Knights of the Old Republic era comic books printed back in the early to mid 1990s. It consists of the first three such stories -- The Golden Age of the Sith, Ulic Qel-Droma and the Beast Wars of Onderon, and The Saga of Nomi Sunrider.
My review of Lord of the Rings: Conquest is up on SCI FI Wire, which is SCIFI.com's newly redesigned and re-launched hybrid of the old SCI FI Wire web site and Science Fiction Weekly. This is my second review for the new site (the first was of Prince of Persia, which ran back in late December). The new format is a challenge to write for because the word count is much lower, but it's a good kind of challenge to have. It's certainly helped me flex my shortform writing muscles.
As for the game itself? It's a definite "meh". There's no really strategy to this strategy game; it's almost entirely about hack'n'slash button mashing. It also has one of the most annoying narrators of all time, who admonishes you to "take that tower" or "slay those orcs" every 15-20 seconds, which is particularly annoying when you've wandered off the battlefield and really aren't sure how you're supposed to get to your next objective.