Yora's site for Sword & Sorcery RPGs
I love watching history documentaries. There are lots of decent ones and even a couple really good ones.
But why do they all have such stupid names? For every single documentary that has the words secret, truth, lost, hidden or forbidden in the title, someone somewhere needs to be whacked in the head with a stone slab!
That is conspiracy theory crap! Don’t try to make your science more appealing by begging for attention by the dumbest of people.
When Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came out in 2007 the oppinions I hear about it were mostly pretty bad and calling it by far the worst Indiana Jones movie and absolutely terrible, and it causing the series to be ruined forever!. So I never watched it in all the years and had no desire to ever do so. But I got the series on DVD for christmas and it had the movie included and yesterday my parents were visiting, and since we wanted to watch a movie and none of us had seen it before, we watched it. Otherwise I still wouldn’t have watched it, preferring to simply don’t know what’s in it. (I might do the same with the new Star Wars movies.)
Right from the start some things seem to be odd. Indy aknowledges being old and mentions his father having died, which doesn’t match the ending of the previous movie. But no explanation is ever given or the events of the movie mentioned, which I found rather odd. The second scene is set in the famous warehouse from the first movie and we get a quick lool at the arc as its box is broken, but otherwise the first movie isn’t mentioned either. It’s just like “look, we made a reference to the other movies!” That’s weak. Indy starts the movie with a new sidekick, whose name I can’t even remember, which always is a very bad sign about the strength of a movies characters and dialogues. It’s never explained who he is or what his relationship with Indy is, and except for two short scenes he has no real relevance to the plot or any meaningful dialogue. The other new character is Mutt, who follows Indy around after fat moustache guy has left for a while and after his first scene has no real impact on the plot either. Later of course we meet Marion again, who is a fun character but also has just one relevant dialogue with Indy and doesn’t really contribute anything to the plot. John Hurt also plays a character who gets picked up with by Indys crew and hangs around for the rest of the plot, but after drawing a map in his first scene does not have any meaningful dialogue or impact to the plot. Indy himself is okay, but you probably can see the problem here. Indy could have gone on this whole adventure by all by himself, or at least with only one companion to give an opportunity to explain the plot to the audience.
There are two villains in this movie. One is a Russian psychic played by Kate Blanchet, who tries to read Indys mind once but fails and then never shows any supernatural abilities for the rest of the movie at all. She keeps chasing after Indy for all of the movie but except for one scene in the middle of the movie she never catches up to him so her impact on the plot is also almost nothing. She has a henchman who commands a group of Soviet soldiers, but since he almost only speaks in Russian without subtitles and very little of that, we don’t really know anything about him. *sigh* And yes, he also does not do anything relevant for the plot. Indy has a fist fight with him, but he simply falls over ans gets pulled into a hole by a swarm of ants. It doesn’t remotely reach the fight against the random German mechanic in the first movie, which is clearly what this scene tries to allude to. At two point during the search for a lost ancient city in South America does Indy run into local tribes of Indians who menacingly sneak around with seemingly supernatura skill in the dark. But they show the Indians the skull and they back off, doing nothing at all and then disappearing while Indy explores the city.
Continue reading “Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”
Black Streams is a series of free, short supplements for the Red Tide campaign sertting by Kevin Crawford. Though they are directly tied to the setting, they are self contained enough to be eassily adapted for any setting in any OSR game and should also be useful sources of ideas for other systems.
Cults of Ruin expands on the cults of various evil forces that are mentioned in Red Tide and has a length of 7 pages. The Black Emperor was a powerful and evil ruler back in the days before the Tide, who was eventually destroyed for his dark sorcery, but somehow managed to ascend to becoming a god. Though most records of his terrible reign and evil transgressions had been deliberately destroyed or lost during the coming of the Red Tide, the truth can still sometimes be discovered by sages searching for obscure lore. Only scholars, alchemists, and other learned people can become true followers of the Black Emperor, who offers them secrets to extend their life and evade Hell and other necromantic magic. The God-Beasts are savage animal spirits that protect remote villages and can grant fertility to their fields and herds, but often demand terrible forms of tribute from their worshippers. The only salvation offered by the Hell Kings is the promise that those people who truly devote themselves to evil can gain their respect and admiration, so that when they ultimately will go to Hell after their death, they will be elevated to rank among the Hell Kings instead of suffering in eternal agony. Worshippers of the Hell Kings are expected to lead as many souls as possible into hell, but even among the high priests of the cults only very few reach a degree of evil that gets them a place among the lowest ranks of devils. The Red Gods are strange entities of evil and hunger that only reveal themselves to people suffering from famine and facing starvation. They grant the gift of great strength and vigor, but in turn those who accept it slowly transform into ravenous beasts who gain sustenance from a range of unnatural and depraved sources. Finally there are the truly mad cults that worship the Red Tide itself. They are compelled to create portals that allow the Tide to spill into the Sunset Isles and are usually the first to be torn apart by the horde of the Tides spawn that emerges. The last page describes the new Azure Minister class, a cleric variant specialized in secretly exterminating evil cults that threaten the Sunset Isles while keeping the existance and true nature of their organization secret.
The Pacts of the Wise seems to be heavily inspired by pact magic from the Tome of Magic of Dungeons & Dragons. It’s 7 pages long and describes six elusive entities that can be contacted by a wizard to be granted special powers. The ritual to make a pact take a month of preparation and have to be repeated once every year. Unless a ritual to be released from the pact is performed, wizards who fail to meet their obligations are suffering severe consequences until their debts are paid. The powers granted by the entities are not particularly powerful and more than balanced by the price demanded from the wizard, but still interesting and useful enough that players might consider it to be worth it. It certainly adds an interesting new element to the character and each pact includes ideas on how to create adventures around NPCs who have access to these powers or are struggling with meeting their part of the bargain and are getting desperate to gain the required resources. Even though there are only six entities described, they provide a sufficient base to create your own ones. Since the mechanics involved are extremely simply they are easily adapted to any game.
The Yellow Legion is 8 pages long and describes a powerful artifact and the Walking Ghosts it can create, as well as their history in the Red Tide setting. The artifact is a black rod that can be planted into the ground to grow into a large tree that produces magic fruit when watered with the blood of living people. The juice of the fruit have the power to restore any corpse and return it to unlife, and the blood of a single person creates enough fruit to create ten walking ghosts. However, the fruit can only revive creatures of the same type of creature whose blood is used to create them, so to bring a fallen army of human soldiers back to life, many humans have to be sacrificed to the trees. While those who have been sacrificed can be raised like any other corpse, they are henceforth forced to exist as undead. The walking ghost are loyal to the person who create the tree and appear just as they were in life. They do not eat, drink, breath, or sleep and they heal and can be healed like living humans, but even the terrible and horrific wounds can not kill them. Only when hacked to pieces or burned do their minds fall into delirious slumber, but over the course of many years their bodies can restore themselves and make the walking ghosta rise from their graves. Without purpose after the eventual death of their creator they wander the land with the appearance of a living person, but all living things can sense their unnatural aura. If there is a way to permanently end them, it has not been discovered.
Though short as they are, I really like all these supplements and in fact their briefness probably makes them even more interesting and useful for GMs not using the Red Tide setting. Pacts of the Wise is probably the most versatile and not at all connected to any specific settin, and I recommend it to everyone to give it a look. The other two have a much more specific cultural flavor, but since they are both short and completely free, I do recommend them all. Really nice stuff and a format I would like to see used by more games in addition to full sized books.
Angry wrote another post about the constant apparent lack of gamemasters among RPG players. Being a regular GM myself that has never been a problem for me, but then I also always was the one who initiated the groups in the first place and got all the players together in the first place, pretty much proving his point: New players are overwhelmingly introduced to roleplaying games by existing players and only when a GM is already starting or running a group. If there will be any game at all really comes down to there already being a GM. Old players may ask a GM they know to start a new campaign, but usually it’s all happening on the GMs initative. No GM, no game. Simple as that.
No matter how much companies advertise their games, it doesn’t matter how many players they get excited, only how many GMs they can reach. And they can’t get any new players to start playing any RPGs. The only way to get more people to play is to get more people to become gamemasters. GMs can train other GMs in the basics, but that’s nothing that companies can influence.
Now the question Angry is putting out in the open is how we can get more people to become GMs. Because as he correctly notes, running games is not generally treated as something desireable. It’s not usually “Who wants to be a GM?” but “Who is willing to be a GM?” If you are not already totally excited about an idea you want to run, people become GMs for a campaign because everyone else “refuses” to, or feels “unable” to do it. And I think here is the key to the whole problem. Running a game is generally perceived as being difficult, tiresome, and all around undesirable. If anything is going to change, we need to make games that are easy to run. And looking at the big names in RPGs we got D&D, Pathfinder, Exalted, Shadowrun, World of Darkness, and Legend of the Five Rings. And from what I am able to tell these are all really a bitch to run. Among the most work intensive and complex systems that are out there. So no wonder nobody wants to be a GM. Even I don’t want to run these games and I already am a GM of 15 years. Now D&D 5th Edition made a few little steps into the right direction, but why are all the big games what could be called Hardcore or Expert-Level games. These are games for players and especially GMs who already are familiar with the whole thing. For new people they are almost inaccessible.
The one shining light I can think of are the various B/X clones, because Mentzer Basic and Expert are actually the only truly introductory game products I’ve ever seen. This is a game that is easy to learn in half an hour and also puts a very light workload on the GM, and it actually makes a real effort to tech the game to new GMs. Sandly, there are now dozens of them of which most people have never heard of because they are made often by just one or two people at home who don’t have any marketing and rely entirely on nostalgia from very old GMs and word of mouth. Little honorable mention here to Barbarians of Lemuria, which seems to have gained some real popularity while also being rules light and not a B/X clone. Doesn’t try to reach new players either, though.
Spears of the Dawn is another small sandbox setting by Kevin Crawford, who also did the excelent Red Tide setting. While Red Tide uses a great number of elements from Chinese and Japanese culture, Spears of the Dawn is strongly based on various cultures of West Aftica. The book consists of roughly three parts: A complete roleplaying game, the Spears of the Dawn campaign setting, and advice on running sandbox games. These are not clearly divided into three section though, and it’s probably best to read the whole thing even if one only intends to use certain elements of it. It’s made clear in the introduction that this book is meant to be mined for ideas and its elements disassembled and repurposed as any GM sees fit. Like Red Tide, it is more of an example of how a great sandbox setting can look like and how you make one.
The SettingThe setting presented in Spears of the Dawn are the Three Lands. Two centuries ago the empire of the Nyala was close to conquering all of the other five kingdoms of the Three Lands and when the king of Deshur was forced to retreat with his remaining army into the desert he discovered the means to make himself and his followers into Eternals. The Eternals are powerful undead who neither age, nor need to eat or drink, but maintain their youth and heal any wounds through the eating of human flesh. For over a hundred years the Eternal invaded the lands of the Five Kingdoms and causing the empire to fall apart. Eventually the emperor of Nyala accepted that the other four kingdoms were no longer under his control and instead created an alliance of equals to destroy the Eternals and put an end to the terror of the Sixth Kingdom. The Five Kingdoms where victorious and the Sixth Kingdom no more, but they were unable to destroy all of the Eternals as some of them escaped into the wilderness and continue to exist in hiding to this day. In the fourty years that have passed since then, the fate of the new Five Kingdoms has remained uncertain. There is peace now, but the former subjects of the Nyala still have resentments against their former masters and there are still many bands of raiders and new settlements created by refugees from the war are not always getting along well with their neighbours. The last emperor had anticipated that some of the Eternals might escape from the armies of the Five Kingdoms and created a group of warriors, shamans, and sorcerers called the Spears of the Dawn, who were given the duty to hunt down the remaining Eternals and destroy any lingering trace of their evil. With the empire being no more and Nyala being only one kingdom among others, the Spears of the Dawn lack any real leadership or organization. However, with the threat of the Eternal and other evils still around, there are always more people who take up arms and wander the Five Kingdoms to destroy them. With many elders still remembering the terror of the Eternals well, these warriors against evil are highly respected and stand somewhat outside of the normal tribal politics and regular social classes.
It’s a nice compact setting, though I am feeling a bit ambivalent about the post-colonial character of the Five Kingdoms. I would consider my knowledge of African politics and social issues only slightly above average and tribal affiliations and great class inqualities appear to be indeed an important factor in regional and social conflicts. However, to a large degree these conflicts are the result of the British and French colonial empires and their sudden disappearance that left many regions in administrative chaos. Using contemporary Real-World conflicts as a template for a fictional medieval African-inspired setting seems a bit problematic to me. It’s not exactly a respectful treatment of a cultural region and its people to focus on one of their darkest periods which was primarily caused by outside forces. However, Spears of the Dawn doesn’t reduce the African theme of the setting to only that element and there is a lot more than that. And it isn’t like precolonial Africa was all happy paradise. There has always been as much tribal war and violence, as well as slavery and exploitation of lower social classes in Africa as in all the other continents of the world. When empires fell apart in Europe, the result was always just as ugly. So I am inclined to give this setting a pass in this regard. While I probably would have stayed clear of that aspect myself, the way it is treated here seems pretty well balanced and I think you have to actually know what to look for to notice any real world similarities at all. Continue reading “RPG Review: Spears of the Dawn”
Hey, I reached 50 comments on my posts. The visitor stats I have seem highly doubious and I think most of them are bots. But comments are actual readers who even have a strong enough oppinion about the stuff I write to make a reply to it. That gives me confidence that there’s a sizeable number of people reading this.
Though I wonder how they all get here? I don’t think there are a lot of links to this site other than various of my forum signatures.
(Oh, look! There’s a “Don’t track bots” option. I expect the visitor numbers to mostly evaporate now.)