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The Lord of the Rings
Series: Coda
Publisher: Decipher
Type: Corerules
Media: Hardback
Review: here
Review Intro:
There are some people who’ll tell you that whether it’s any good or not you really should buy Lord of the Rings RPG. Why? Would you dare risk having to admit in five or ten years time that you were roleplaying back in the great Lord of the Rings "revival", when the movies where coming out and the man on the street knew who Grima Wormtongue was but that you didn’t get around to buying the brand new RPG? Sure. I can see some strength in that point but I think it is far better to buy a game because it’s good and not just because it is famous.
Thankfully, the new Lord of the Rings roleplaying game is pretty good. It’s not amazing. It isn’t the one game to rule them all. It is pretty good. Quite a few people I’ve talked to laboured under the impression that it’s a d20 product. It’s not. I think this is a good thing. It’s not wise to put all your eggs in the one basket, or in the case, all your famous fantasy worlds in one rule system. I don’t think the magic of Middle Earth suits the levels of magic spells in the d20 system either and as you’ll read in this review I think one of the most notable successes in the game is Decipher’s treatment of magic.
Decipher choose to make a song and dance about the pictures in the book. The game is chock full with photographs from the movie. I don’t see why this is supposed to be a good thing. I didn’t like the idea at all and assumed straight away it was a licensing requirement from the various companies with the rights to Lord of the Ring’s merchandise. The inclusion of photographs is better than I worried about, there are few glossy pictures that look incredibly out of place and in fact most of the images have their borders blurred and faded so to reduce any glaring contrasts between bold colour pictures and text. I do think there is some struggle to avoid being reduced to a photo gallery though; the full page pictures do look striking but they also suggest to me that this is the roleplaying game based on the movie and not the roleplaying game based on the books. I’d rather be playing the latter. I do mean "movie" and not "movies". There are ... [ more ]
Oathbound
Series: d20
Publisher: Bastion Press
Type: Campaign Setting / High Fantasy
Media: Hardback
Review: here
Review Intro:
Oathbound is a truly impressive book. Physically the book is impressive; a scary tally of 352 pages, solid hardcover, full colour and plenty of sinewy illustrations. Oathbound: Domains of the Forge is a campaign setting, a high fantasy, high powered campaign setting and done with elements of grit and tangibility that are so often missing from other attempts on the genre. Oathbound makes no attempts to hide the world’s secrets from the players. The reasons why things are as they are tend to be spelt out. I think this forthrightness suits the high fantasy of Oathbound for two reasons; the answers help define the setting, helping the players and the DM get to grips with the original world and also because at high character levels the players often like to know why the heroes they’ve worked so hard to mature no longer have things their own way. The Feathered Fowl are perfectly happy to strip powerful magic weapons from new arrivals to the Forge and that’s just one example of the sort of thing once all conquering heroes might encounter. This telling of secrets will continue into the review with the exception of "Dark Welcomes" the adventure at the end of the book which won’t be spoiled. 
The name of the world is Forge but the name of the campaign setting is Oathbound. The seven bound servants of an ancient and powerful god forged the world (hence the name) around the prison of the captive god. These seven supremely powerful (but not divinely so) beings are bound by oaths (hence the name) to guard the prison and keep their master locked inside. Now, if your mind is anything like mine then you’ve probably already imagined a scenario where a powerful PC beats seven shades of crunchy out of one of these beings and thus wrecking the very premise of the setting. But no, this is the whole point; this is the very premise of the setting. The seven (well, some of them) want this to happen because their divine oaths are written so that they may only be freed from their position as jailer by finding a more powerful being to replace them. The members of the Black Flock, the name given to these creatures, actively search the Planes for heroes or villains with the promise of power. As it happens, one of the seven has already been replaced and a once-mortal now reigns in that part of the Forge instead. There are seven parts of the Forge since each of the Foul built their part to their own liking. The seven have access to different parts of the Planes through different star gates and so over the millennia the Forge has existed different races have come to become more dominant in these seven parts. The PCs do not need to play one of these "seeds", one of these promising individuals, since there’s also plenty of scope to play a local. This set up ensures that Oathbound is a robust campaign setting. [ more ]
Hellboy RPG and Sourcebook
Series: GURPS
Publisher: Steve Jackson Games
Type: Urban Fantasy / Graphic Novel
Media: Paperback and Hardback available
Review: here
Review Intro:
Steve Jackson Games were so pleased when they secured the rights to produce the Hellboy RPG that they told the world in a carefully marketed special announcement. By all accounts, this special announcement left many people wondering what the fuss was about. People were expecting news of the fourth edition of GURPS. What’s so special about Hellboy? Have you even heard of Hellboy?
Hellboy’s a popular set of graphic novels by the respected comic book author and artist Mike Mignola. It manages to be popular and removed from the mainstream at the same time. That’s why it is perfectly respectable never have heard of Hellboy and why people who know all about Hellboy are perfectly right to wonder why all these people haven’t found out about the comic yet. There’s even going to be a movie. The free web comics are a good way to quickly get a feel for the heavy lined artwork and the style of storyline.
The Hellboy story style and setting really does lend itself well to roleplaying. Characters belong to a bureau where they’re likely to get handed assignments. Work for the bureau typically involves some level of investigation and then much blood, guts and gore. The plot can safely be black and white or introduce shades of grey and ethical dilemmas if the GM and players prefer that. For example, its safe to say that the Nazis are the bad guys but the GM might also introduce a perfectly friendly creature who just happens to need to consume other people’s psychic powers in order to survive. In the graphic novels the plots tend to be character driven; although there are missions and investigations and face offs against enemies the key focus tends to be about what happens to the heroes along the way. I don’t feel as if the presence of Hellboy himself or the other characters from the comics runs too much of a risk over shadowing the player characters either. The bureau setting really does make it easy for the GM to avoid any contact with Mignola’s characters if he wants or to make use of them should that appeal. The setting is strong enough to stand up on it’s own. You could run a British spy game without having to include James Bond, you could run scenarios in Mega City One without having to encounter Judge Dredd and the same applies for adventures in the supernaturally infested take of our world that Hellboy inhabits.
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The Book of the Righteous
Series: d20
Publisher: Green Ronin
Type: Gods & Mythology
Media: Hardback
Review: here
Review Intro:
It was sacrilegious. I read most of The Book of the Righteous either in bed or here beside the PC. You just have to pick up the hardbound tome to know that the correct way to read the book is to rest it on an altar or pulpit, light a respectful amount of candles and share the carefully composed mythology with an eager congregation.
The back of the Book of the Righteous claims; "[…] the most comprehensive religious tome the d20 system has ever seen." It’s an entirely justified claim. The same paragraph goes on to say, "While other books waste pages on god stats you’ll never use, The Book of the Righteous gives you a dynamic, lifelike religion that add depth to any campaign". Interesting use of the word ‘dynamic’ but this claim is pretty much true as well. I love god books but I hate god stats; I love god books because I like to piece together the implied mythology and the relationships, if any, between the gods. The Book of the Righteous really does play straight into my Perfect Book zone. It’s always possible to do better and Green Ronin wasted no time in publishing an errata that’s more than an errata. The Tree of Life is a bit like a software patch for the book in so far as it fixes a few points and offers up some extra material all for free. As quickly as the Tree of Life came out, this review is just a review of the hardback book.
This is a huge book. 320 pages. That’s not the biggest tally ever but The Book of the Righteous has a strongly sewn spine and you can clearly see the groups of bound pages by looking down the top of the book. The Book of the Righteous also uses small and dense text. If the text size used was similar to other books in the $39.95 price range I guess that that we’d be looking at about 380 pages instead. The size of the book is an interest rather than an important gauge on whether the supplement is any good or not. However, I suspect that you can tell that I think the Book of the Righteous really is rather good.
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Chain of Being
Series: Higher Arc
Publisher: Limestone Publishing
Type: Humour / Fantasy
Media: PDF
Review: here
Review Intro:
One of the most surprising inclusions in the game is the 25-paged chapter for the various organisations that exist throughout Terrek. The curse of the PDF bookmark strikes again though and the Dungeon Enthusiasts have all the section bookmarks for the entire chapter in their part of the hierarchy. The Dungeon Enthusiasts are a loose nit collection of rich people who build dungeons as a hobby, as a work of art. They’re the people responsible for how the term "dungeon" is tends to be used for any underground area. They’re also why your players might spend a scenario rounding up monsters for the dungeon rather than trying to rid the place of them. Special attention, I believe, must be given to the "Meta-Oracles of the Sacred Polyhedra". These people have worked out that their world is just a roleplaying game. They’re right too. Once more I just can’t help myself quoting from the text. This in on the philosophies of the organisation and the Cobbler is the GM.
"To this end, the Meta-Oracles are interested in somehow harnessing the power of the Cobbler. They may not know exactly who or what the Cobbler is, but they do know that it's an almost incomprehensibly powerful being who words shape the very fabric of their universe. The Meta-Oracles figure that just as other mortals once replaced the gods of the Olympiad, their organization will eventually replace the Cobbler, giving them nearly unlimited power over everything. That's the long-term goal, anyway.
The Meta-Oracles have learned from their studies that the Cobbler controls NPCs. Naturally, this makes every NPC a pawn of the Cobbler, and necessarily an enemy of the Meta-Oracles. The Meta-Oracles thus ban NPCs from their organization." [ more ]
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