Earthdawn LiveJournal

Official RedBrick news:

To sweeten the wait for Kratas: The City of Thieves, we are running a couple of teasers for you. In this last installment, we present the Kratas Character Codex--a massive PDF featuring the game statistics of dozens of gamemaster characters featured in the sourcebook: simple thieves, greedy merchants and vicious gangmembers. The Kratas Character Codex is offering gamemasters a handy ressource for adventures based in the City of Thieves.

Available now! Click here for more information!

Also, find Part One here (scroll down) and Part Two here!

For an interview on Kratas, click here!

Additional comments:

Well yours truly is interviewed in the group Kratas interview and I did the 102 pages of number crunching for stats and some of the Commentary text for the gamemaster characters in the Kratas Character Codex. Anyway, this is a must FREE PDF download for all you Earthdawn fans out there. Not only is there Commentary text and stats, but there is artwork, some of it very NEW and from some NEW artists.

Shutter is a movie that simply believes in style over substance. Along the way, it forgets that it was made out to be some kind of Horror movie in the previews. The supposedly scariest moments? All in the previews. Worse, the pacing is just god-awful. The first forty-five minutes of the movie crawls to the last forty-five minutes where stuff actually happens. They could have easily left twenty to thirty minutes of this movie on the cutting room floor. The basic plot is that a newlywed couple goes to Japan for their honeymoon, and on the way to their honeymoon suite, Jane drives over a Japanese woman and the two go careening off the road. When they awaken, there is no sign of the woman, and the road is covered by ice and the trees with snow. They continue on their honeymoon, with Jane distraught and Ben uncaring. Ben is a photographer and takes pictures of everything. When their honeymoon photos come back with odd apparitions on the photos, Jane starts to wonder if they are being haunted by the soul of the girl they ran over. She goes to a Japanese magazine specializing in the occult and she convinces Ben to take her to a Japanese mystic guru, trying to figure out what is happening in these photos. Meanwhile, Ben is affected at work as his pictures of Japanese models now have the weird apparitions in them as well. The whole first forty-five minutes of the movie is essentially a ghost mystery ala Scooby Doo with pictures, not a Horror movie. This movie suffers from an expectation problem. The previews gave you an expectation of some kind of Horror movie, and then you get a Mystery with a Horror ending that might frighten say a child instead. Anyway, this movie is a waste of an hour and a half of your time, so stay away.

Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter for Playstation 2 did what not even Breath of Fire III's Desert scene could do, end the Breath of Fire series.

The plot of the game is that you are in some sort of post-apocalyptic underground situation ala Starblazers. Your basic goal is to get to the surface from the lowest levels driven by Nina's dying from the pollution in the underground and Ryu's mysterious Dragon powers. My big question is why doesn't anyone seem to know the history that caused this sealing away of the remnants of society from the world? Anyway, there is the anti-government Trinity group that Lin is a part of and the government Rangers group that Ryu and Bosch are a part of that are opposed to each other and both groups seem to want to capture Nina for their goals. So boiling it down, Ryu is protecting Nina from everyone and trying to save her, and Lin as far as I can tell is simply there. She doesn't have a personality or a character at all. As far as I can tell, the genic creating Biocorp is responsible for the rogue genics that make up the game's monsters. I can't really reveal the whole story, since that would require that I somehow beat this game. I've so far lost twice and I had to restart. I am really irritated with this game today.

Graphically, the game is cel-shaded. So you have a dark and dreary underground world, so let's use cel-shading to depict that. Real genius idea there. Unlike the bright colorful Breath of Fire games, this one is extremely dark and blocky with these bright cell-shaded heroes on the screen. It looks like Saga Frontier, one of the worst looking games in recent memory, had a secret love child. Most of the characters look like emaciated blotches of color, the only character design that looks any good is Lin. Playing this game will literally hurt your eyes.

The music and sound isn't actually that bad. The sound effects are mostly rehashes from Breath of Fire IV. The town music is pretty annoying, but the battle themes and underground music are actually quite good.

The battle system would be good if it did not require you to be near perfect. Your XP is determined by several ratings, such as whether you initiated combat (You gain XP) and surprised the monsters or if they surprised you (You lose XP), how much damage you take (So you lose even more if the enemy goes first and emphasizes efficient combat rather than having fun), and tactical maneuvers. To aid you to go first, there are about ten baits and traps that you can use to fool monsters, making them eat, sleep, confused, or just plain out damage them to gain an advantage. But actual combat is initiated by you either swinging Ryu’s sword or Nina’s wand or through shooting Lin’s gun. (Lin’s your best bet for her range, but this completely screws Ryu, and only Nina’s spells seem to damage enemies later in the game.) The worst part is when you cannot even see the enemy, they’ll hide on the ceiling, in an alleyway behind you, as treasure boxes, etc. And all of this would be quite cool, except for the fact that healing items are very rare as is money. So most of the items that you find you’ll end up selling just to buy healing items that you’ve used up. There are no inns to rest at either. So you are stuck with your damage until you find healing items.

Worse, there is an inventory cap, so you cannot carry a lot especially early in the game when healing items are very rare. Since you are spending most of you money on healing items, you won’t be able to buy bait or upgrade your weapons and armor beyond random unidentified weapons and armor you pick up. You cannot use unidentified weapons and armors right away, you have to identify it first, and on top of that, you have a cap of three weapons, three shields, and three armors. You need more weapons that that, there are three elemental properties, so ideally you could have say three elemental weapons and a physical weapon, but the game does not allow that. Three shields are fine, since there are shield skills that you can thread to basic shields, shields with bonuses to physical defense, shields with bonuses to magical defense, and shields with no threaded skills at all that you would never use anyway. Where the system breaks down the worst is in armor. With three elemental attacks and multiple status attacks, you need a ton of different armors to cover situations. Worse, there are Death attacks in this game that seem to have a 100% chance of success (I died to Karons last night, small almost impossible to see creatures that have Death, Regenerate, and up the power of their undead minions, who don’t die unless you kill their master Karon, and that is not a boss, just a normal enemy! There were four of them in one battle, and I didn’t get a turn since they surprised me). So you need to have some sort of anti-death armor at a minimum and cannot even afford to have all three elemental armors. There is a weapon and item locker, but since you can only access it in towns, it is practically useless. Sleep and stun are equally annoying, making me want to have some good armors, you know like elemental resist or status block armors that are actually decent so that I can have those two armors and a light armor to get Ryu into position quicker.

The combat system is a real time strategy system that is actual the only reason to play this game at all. Traps that you put on the field before you activated combat can be triggered to harm foes, Nina can place magical spell fields, and then Ryu and Lin can use knock back or pull forward attacks to knock them into the spell fields or within range of the traps. The biggest problem for Ryu is trying to get into range for his melee attacks costs most of his AP, making him near useless first turn, and making Lin and Nina that much more important. Characters can use their moves by equipping skills to weapons with each button corresponding to a PS2 controller symbol such as Triangle, Circle, Square and can make combos. Unfortunately there is no learning curve to the game, I actually had to restart in the first dungeon since I got killed by an enemy that had a huge HP score and scored initiative when my characters were like Level 4.

After an early boss, Ryu gains the ability to become a Dragon (looks like the old Aura dragons). And the dreaded D-counter (Dragon-counter, more like Doom-counter) begins. This is a doomsday clock to Game Over. Every turn in battle adds .01 % to the clock, and a few steps also adds .01% to the clock. Transforming into the dragon and using dragon attacks adds huge points to the clock, around 1 to 2% per attack. Using Ryu’s special D-Dash adds about .04% per press, or more depending on how long you use it. So the big feature of the Breath of Fire series is that the main character can become a dragon, and they totally nerfed your ability to use this feature. If you use it for a couple of bosses you probably can make it to the end, but that is about it. Forget about going backwards to town or exploring, you’ll waste time off the clock that way.

This is not even the worst. The worst is that they brought the Resident Evil Ink Ribbon system to Breath of Fire. That’s right to save your game; you need a Save Token. These things are so rare; you are lucky to get one per dungeon. There is a Temp Save (Quit) system, but the data erases after you load it, you know so you cannot cheat like the game does through quick-save and try again. I just do not have the time to sit down and go through a four-floor dungeon in one sitting and have to do everything in town that I need to do before I get to save. I am far too busy for that. So what happens is that you run out of save tokens and then you have to rely on temp saves, you die once you lose all your progress since your last save token. Or you can use the SOL (Scenario Overlay System, but we all know what that really means…) to restart the game with your equipment and skills, but lose all your items except what you had at the beginning of the game. Since your items are your key to survival, this is the worst thing the game could do to you. Restart game, and I have 1 Tonic (50% Revive) and 5 MedKits (50 HP, when the PCs are at 300 HP and routinely take 50 HP a piece per enemy attack?). Might as well restart from the beginning. The D-counter and the save system keeps driving you forward towards your inevitable doom one way or the other.

Mini game wise, you have the Fairy/Ant colony project but no fishing or hunting at all. This is really bad since some deep cave genic fishing or some genic hunting could have resulted in you being able to actually get some items and recover after an SOL.

I just don’t have the patience to play through this drivel a third time. I feel like I wasted $15.00 USD in buying this game with a strategy guide (and the truth is that is a really good deal usually).

The Prelude to Dune prequels by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson are about the near past of the original Dune novel. All three books are entwined, with the fates of House Atreides, Harkonnen, and Corrino all held in the balance. The Atreides and Harkonnen feud reaches a fever pitch just before all-out war in the original Dune and we get to watch it all unfold. The Corrino Emperors hatch a plan to create artificial spice and relegate Arrakis to the dustbin of history, pinning their hopes on the outcast Tleilaxu to genetically create an artificial spice called amal in their axlotl tanks. It is up to Leto and the Spacing Guild to stop the Emperor’s plans. We also get to watch the events unfold that bring the cast of the original Dune together and set the stage for Paul’s battle for Dune in the next book.

If you are a fan of the original Dune novel, this trilogy is a must read.

(AUCKLAND, New Zealand) 8 July, 2008—RedBrick Limited confirmed today that the Age of Legend™ campaign setting for Wizards of the Coast's DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® 4th Edition roleplaying game is currently in development. Age of Legend™ is based on FASA Corporation’s popular Earthdawn® fantasy roleplaying game.

James Flowers, RedBrick’s Managing Director, said "FASA Corporation brought us fantasy roleplaying in the Age of Legend with their Earthdawn® game in 1993. Now, fifteen years later, RedBrick Limited is excited to be bringing the Age of Legend™ to DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® 4th Edition players."

RedBrick Limited look forward to announcing their first Age of Legend™ products in the near future. In the meantime, your Age of Legend™ adventure begins now by visiting the Age of Legend 4e™ web site at http://www.ageoflegend4e.com. Register on our Forums for discussion about gaming with DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® 4th Edition in the Earthdawn® milieu, chat with other Forum and RedBrick's 4e development team members, learn about the Age of Legend™ campaign setting—Barsaive® province—and much more!

RedBrick Limited is headquartered in New Zealand, and also publish the Earthdawn®, Fading Suns™, and Blue Planet™ roleplaying games under license from FASA Corporation, Holistic Design Inc., and Biohazard Games, respectively. RedBrick's company web site is http://www.redbrick.co.nz. Age of Legend™ and Age of Legend 4e™ are trademarks of RedBrick Limited. Earthdawn® and Barsaive® are trademarks of FASA Corporation. Used under license. DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast in the U.S.A. and other countries.

(AUCKLAND, New Zealand) June 20, 2008—RedBrick Limited are pleased to announce they have successfully concluded the signing and acceptance of the first Game System License for Wizards of the Coast’s DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® 4th Edition Roleplaying Game.

James Flowers, RedBrick’s Managing Director, said "This is an exciting opportunity for us. We have been looking forward to working with Wizards of the Coast for some time. Now that Wizards have accepted RedBrick’s application for a Game System License, we can move forward with our plans for publishing DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® 4th Edition compatible products. Once details of our forthcoming product releases have been finalized, we will make a separate announcement."

RedBrick Limited are headquartered in New Zealand, and also publish the popular Earthdawn®, Fading Suns™, and Blue Planet™ roleplaying games under license from FASA Corporation, Holistic Design Inc., and Biohazard Games, respectively. RedBrick's company web site is http://www.redbrick.co.nz. DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast in the U.S.A. and other countries.

Keep in mind that this is NOT an abandonment of the current RedBrick Limited's Earthdawn product line, and is instead a concurrent path of development.

Daylen Jagaro was never a very good merchant. A failure in his homeland of Barsaive, when he hears that the Golden Empire of Cathay opened its doors to the West, he sets out on a quest for riches and glory and to explore an ancient and exotic culture filled with opportunity.

RedBrick Limited is pleased to announce that Dark Shadows of Yesterday is now available. This novel, written by Hank Woon, is a new and original story about the merchant Daylen Jagaro and his adventures in faraway Cathay.

Available Now! Click here for more information.

Time to start learning about Cathay people!

I watched the anime movie and some old cartoons from the Iron Man 90s cartoon before watching the live-action Iron Man movie which basically follows the same early storyline progression as the anime movie. Tony Stark gets caught by bad guys, they try to make him make weapons, he makes an Iron Man suit instead and escapes from the bad guys using the suit and is later forced to face the truth about his company selling weapons for profit without regard for human life. What is cool about this plot device is resetting the old story in a modern context of the War against Terror in Afganistan and Iraq. The casting is good, Robert Downey Jr. is Tony Stark, no question about it. Gwyneth Paltrow does her best Kirstin Dunst impression from Spiderman, but makes a decent Virginia "Pepper" Potts. Leslie Bibb from Crossing Jordan makes an appearance as smoking hot reporter Christine Everhart, trying to get the scoop on Tony with all means at her disposal. The interaction between Tony and Pepper really drives this movie forward near the end. There is also a lot of humor in the movie, taking a page out of the last Fantastic Four film. The suit animations are awesome and there are some good tunes. The villain is basically a rival board member from Tony Stark's company Stark Enterprises, and the traitorous board member creates a rival iron suit and becomes the Ironmonger and fights Tony in his original Iron Man suit. A lot of elements are put in place for future sequels, everything from S.H.I.E.L.D. to Nick Fury to the Avengers to War Machine is referenced by the end. I highly recommend this movie and I can't wait for the sequel.

The next movie I really want to see is Hell Boy 2. So much so that I want to rewatch Hell Boy again.

This trilogy of prequels is really cool. The story is of an Old Empire that falls to a group of Twenty Titans who use a computer AI network to take over the Empire world's robots and declare a Time of the Titans, with them acting as dictators over planets. They all eventually remove their brains from their bodies to live in an electrafluid mix and attach them to mechanical bodies becoming cyborgs known as cymeks. The AI network, Omnius becomes self-aware and takes over the Titan's worlds, transforming them into the Synchronized Worlds. Due to Barbarossa's programming Omnius is unable to kill the Titans directly, so they become his unwilling puppets. Some humans resist Omnius and form a League of Humans, with some worlds unaligned in the conflict. The humans mostly defend against Omnius until the martyring of Serena Butler's son, Manion, sets off the Butlerian Jihad, and the humans go on the offensive. The machines counter back in the Machine Crusade, and the trilogy concludes with the final Battle of Corrin to eliminate Omnius and the cymeks forever.

The cool thing is that we get to read how the Dune universe really came together. We learn about Arrakis and the spice, and how it became important to the war effort for the humans in many different ways. We learn about Norma Cenva and VenKee enterprises as Norma creates the spacefolder ships, and turns herself into the first Navigator through the spice gas, and the ships built by VenKee Enterprise and the navigators created by Norma become the Spacing Guild. We learn about the Sorceresses of Rossak and how they slowly changed into the Bene Gesserits. We watch as the machine Erasmus raises Gilbertus to be the first Mentat and sacrifices everything to ensure he survives. Finally, we learn about the fateful moment that led to the feud between House Atreides and House Harkonnen.

Next I plan on reading the second set of prequels, House Harkonnen, House Atreides, and House Corrino.

Earthdawn is a roleplaying game set in a world of high adventure, high magic, and terrible danger. Shards are a series of unrelated adventures and encounters for the Earthdawn game, intended as an inexpensive resource for Earthdawn gamemasters.

This volume contains the adventure Westhrall's Passage, designed for Novice characters of any Discipline. In this adventure, the characters are taken on a journey into the depths of the Kingdom of Throal, where the Pale Ones dwell and survival is always uncertain... Requires use of the Player’s and Gamemaster’s Compendiums.

Available now! Click here for more information!

Westhrall's Passage is a revision of the First Edition Earthdawn adventure The Way Out from Throal Adventures.

Medal of Honor: Frontline is like a Playstation 2 continuation of everything that was great about the first two Playstation games. Seriously, land at Normandy and kick ass all the way to a secret German factory for their new jet bomber. This game rocks.

Medal of Honor: Rising Sun is a good game, that feels incomplete. There are like 9 missions, and the first two are very short. Instead of fighting germans, you are fighting the japanese, which makes melee combat a lot more dangerous because of their banzai charges, bayonets, and katanas. And those chefs do not mess around tossing cleavers at you. The ending of the game feels like there should be more missions coming as well. Still not a bad game.

Medal of Honor: European Assault has you leading a squad of three allies with a suicidal AI that you can attempt to control and heal to keep alive, but mostly exist as cannon fodder to draw the heat off of you. Some new improvements include being able to store medkits and revives so that you can use them later, and an adrenaline system that makes you temporarily invincible. There are enemy leaders with tons of Health this time too. There are only like 10 missions, and there is not even much of a story this time. The series is getting worse.

Medal of Honor: Vanguard is even shorter European Assault and Rising Sun. The game has you in the Airborne this time, and you fight through several paratroop missions leading up to the Allies' fiasco at Market Garden. The health system is bizarre, featuring a red splotch on the screen when you get hit that grows in intensity as you keep taking fire. Just surviving requires you to take cover and allow yourself time to recover from enemy fire, as there are no medkits or revives or adrenaline anymore. The big bad Nazis are gone too. The last battle is you defending a factory against several waves of German troops. Not even a final boss like in the the other Playstation 2 games. It is a huge step backward, even from European Assault. As far as I am concerned, Vanguard is the last Medal of Honor I am going to play. Series end.

Defender for Playstation 2 attempts to recreate a classic Atari 2600 shooter game. When I first started playing, I was having a blast as it does significantly upgrade the original Defender with mission-based progression. There are six ships and multiple power-ups per ship that can be bought with credits earned by successfully completing missions. The game has decent graphics, sound, music, controls, and action. Unfortunately, the game has a serious difficulty problem. This problem actually has nothing to do with the fighting, it has to do with the missions. You are somehow expected to save colonists from the landers and prevent the landers from turning into mutants, save vital facilities, destroy enemy spawning zones, and reposition other defensive units such as tanks and AA, while fighting the enemy 24/7. So I have to be in four places at once? Impossible. On top of that, the dumbest autosave in the world saves even your failures, so eventually you end up with zero credits and one life in an extremely difficult game. The farthest I got was Earth, I could probably go back to the beginning and try again, but when you have to be perfect and fast in order to maximize credits and preserve your extra lives, it makes things way more difficult than it has to be. So I was like bring on the cheat codes, and could not find any even on gamefaqs. I had high hopes for this shooter too, as Midway made Colony Wars III, which was fun and easy. It really is like an Atari game, unbeatable and uncheatable!

FFVII: Dirge of Cerberus for the Playstation 2 continues the story of Final Fantasy VII after the events of both FFVII and the movie, FFVII: Advent Children, revealing the tale of Vincent, Hojo, and Lucretia in great detail. Unlike FFVII, a RPG game, Dirge of Cerberus is an action game with RPG elements. Much like Medal of Honor, you'll find yourself running around trying to not get shot and try and use the L3 button to zoom in and snipe buttons while Vincent is in his normal form. Using the Limit Breaker item, he can change to his nearly invincible beast form for a short time and maul opponents. Attack Materia of Fire/Ice/Lightning can be attached to your three main weapons, a machine gun, pistol, and rifle for added punch to bullets. The characters, story, graphics, and FMVs are awesome, but the game controls are awkward and leave a lot to be desired. The music and sound are about average, a couple of tracks are good and the sound effects adequate, but I did not feel that the music lived up to FFVII's music. I also do not like Auto-save. I like being able to control my own saving. There is a New Game + option, where you can carry over your gear, but not your experience, and also some extra missions. Another quest is getting all the secret items in the game by shooting them in the stages. The fact that this is an action game at all is dumbfounding since FFVII was a RPG game, and most RPG players are not renown for their mad action skills. A must for FFVII fans, everyone else should ignore this game.

Dot.hack Volumes 1-4 is an interesting take on the MMORPGs for the Playstation 2, as a single player RPG. Yeah, I have had a Playstation 2, since about October 2007. The basic concept is that you are playing a MMORPG called The World that has been infected with a virus. The gameplay occurs in two stages, one you play as a 14 year old boy going through his e-mail and news on his Operating System (OS) menu and the other as the 14 year old boy's character "Kite". He is introduced to the game by his friend who plays "Orca", a legend in the game, who takes him to an easy dungeon where they encounter a mysterious lady and a boss who should not have been there. Orca is attacked by the boss and the Kite's friend goes into a coma, and he is bequeathed an item called "The Bracelet" by the mysterious lady that gives him unique powers and abilities. He quickly garners a group of friends in the online world with real life counterparts, but not all of them are available at all times, as they may or may not be logged into The World at that moment. The World slowly decays as a result of the virus, resulting in various on-screen graphic flaws and white noise effects, all of which give me a headache and make me nauseous, one of the reasons I will not be getting the sequel series, dot.hack GNU. The fights are Action-RPG style with you able to use "Chat" commands to give instructions to your NPC allies. The AI is pretty stupid, so you need to constantly give your companions new instructions, and it gets annoying. The virus manifests itself in corrupted monsters that are invincible as well, which require Kite to use The Bracelet to rewrite their code into monsters that can be beaten. This action though causes the virus to spread, and if the virus level gets high enough, a System Failure results in a game over. As the game progresses we learn more about The World and its creation. At the end of each Volume, you can keep your progress everything from levels to items saved for transfer to the next volume. Overall, the story is solid, and the voices are adequate, but I never enjoyed the graphics and sound. Another problem I have was the shoving of the anime dot.hack series characters at me during the dot.hack game, almost like they want me to buy the anime too and using the game for advertisement. In some ways I guess that is smart, but I don't have to like it.

Yeah I know, I said I wouldn’t buy the Shadowmoor Fat Pack, but they added two more boosters! Card Crack!

The Shadowmoor Anthology does not even continue the Shadowmoor story, it is instead a bunch of short stories. The one word I’d use to describe this book is depressing. Very few of the stories end well for the main character. The best story is probably “Ode to Mistmeadow Jack” which at least has the returning characters of Maralen, Brigid, Rosheen, and Sygg in it. “Five Brothers” is essentially a fable, told to scare little kithkin children into never traveling alone. “Paths” and “Sootstoke” both tell the story of a Sootstoke cinder trying to relight the flame of the flamekin. “Mark of the Raven” and “The Cloudbreaker” are tales about the elves trying to protect the remaining beauty of the darkened world, and how the world of Shadowmoor even taints these protectors. “Meme’s Tale” gives us an insight into the new boggarts and how their culture has been changed to experiencing new things to experiencing new things to eat. “Pawn of the Banshee” gives us a tale about one of the new dark forces in the world of Shadowmoor, the Banshee. Finally, “Expedition” shows the paranoia of the kithkin in full light.

The book is kind of like the movie 28 Weeks Later in that you hop from protagonist to protagonist wondering if this character is going to make it. They usually do not in Shadowmoor.

I suppose I'll pick up the Eventide Fat Pack too when it comes out...damn you 8 boosters!

Spectrum is an Invasion Preconstructed Deck that uses green to gain access to the other four colors to abuse the Invasion “Domain” spells and by having mostly green permanents, keeps the Djinn from losing power with their drawback. I picked it up for $4.00 USD on e-bay, well worth it at that cost.

Lands (22)
14 Forest, 2 Plains, 2 Islands, 2 Mountains, 2 Swamps. This deck needs 2 more lands. The Djinn are 6 mana apiece, Wandering Wayfarer and Sabertooth Nishoba are 6 mana, Serpentine Kavu is 6 mana with the kicker, Probe costs 5 if you use the kicker, and Global Ruin, Ordered Migration, and Kavu Climber also costs 5 mana. That is 11 spells that really need the 24 land count. In addition, although Harrow gets 2 basic land, you have to sacrifice a land in order to use it. Harrow is really effective at thinning your deck as a result of the low land count.

Creatures (22)
3 x Thornscape Apprentice. (see Barrage review for stats: http://slayride27.livejournal.com/?skip=20#entry_80285) This guy exists in your deck to either lock down opponent’s creatures for W or chump block. In a deck with little early defense, this creature is about all there is.
1 x Nomadic Elf. (see Barrage review for stats: http://slayride27.livejournal.com/?skip=20#entry_80285) Chaff. 1G = 1 colored mana of your choice is still awful, especially when a common land that taps for 1 colorless now does this. Another chump blocker.
2 x Yavimaya Barbarian. Cost: GR. Creature—Barbarian Elf. P/T: 2/2. Abilities: Protection from blue. An Invasion ‘bear’ with the allied colors hating on their mutual enemy color. This card, Nomadic Elf, and Thornscape Apprentice are the only 6 cards for less than 4 mana that summon creatures, a major curve problem. Thornscape Apprentice can actually make this card relevant in combat by giving it First Strike.
2 x Quirion Trailblazer. Cost: 3G. Creature—Elf. P/T: 1/2. Abilities: Card Name CIP, search your library for a basic land card and put it into play tapped, shuffle your library. This card is outdated now, but it is still very good. The Shadowmoor equivalent is Farhaven Elder, a 1/1 for 2G, same ability. The Trailblazer is great at getting one of the two basic lands of the other four colors, and getting a chump blocker.
1 x Serpentine Kavu. (see Barrage review for stats: http://slayride27.livejournal.com/?skip=20#entry_80285) . In the right deck, this is an awesome kavu and beater, but Spectrum is so slow that 6 mana for a 4/4 with Haste is just not a bargain.
2 x Kavu Climber. Cost: 3GG. Creature—Kavu. P/T: 3/3. Abilities: Card Name CIP, Draw a card. It is a 3/3 that replaces itself by drawing a card. Not much to complain about, especially when Coiling Oracle and Sakura-Tribe Elder are considered great cards that do the same things for 2 mana and draw a card for 1/1s.
1 x Sabertooth Nishoba. Cost: 4GW. Creature—Beast. P/T: 5/5. Abilities: Trample, Protection from red and blue. Rare. This guy was printed? Sure he is no Oversoul of Dusk with the additional and more useful Protection from Black, but Trample is nothing to sneeze at. For this deck, a big beater with a relevant reach ability (Trample gets damage to players) is a great card. As a collector of beasts, I was really glad to get this card.
2 x Voracious Cobra. Cost: 2GR. Creature—Snake. P/T: 2/2. Abilities: First Strike, Combat Damage Deathtouch. Uncommon. This card is the first one that is a chump blocker that can probably eliminate the threat. Stops 2/2s cold, a huge portion of which are in Invasions, especially kavu and the “bears”. As a snake collector, awesome card.

The last 4 creatures are the interesting “domain” creatures.
1 x Wayfaring Giant. Cost: 5W. Creature—Giant. P/T: 1/3. Abilities: Card Name gets +1/+1 for each basic land type among lands you control. Uncommon. The card seems awful at first glance, 6 mana for a 1/3? Rip off! But if you have all five basic lands in play, this creature is a 6/8, which seems like a bargain for 6 mana. Still, on average, you are probably going to end up with a 4/6, which assumes you have 3 of the 5 basic lands, which probably is not all that great for 6 mana, since the card is vanilla otherwise. The Zanam Djinn and Halam Djinn are very weird domain creatures. Play a lot of green permanents and keep these colors from dominating the table to strengthen these creatures.
Zanam Djinn. Cost 5U. Creature—Djinn. P/T: 5/6. Abilities: Flying. Card Name gets –2/-2 if blue has the most or is tied for the most permanents in play. Uncommon. A poor man’s Mahamoti Djinn. Still the Evasion is very relevant here.
Halam Djinn. Cost 5R. Creature—Djinn. P/T: 6/5. Abilities: Haste. Card Name gets –2/-2 if red has the most or is tied for the most permanents in play. Uncommon. Haste is still not great in this deck.

Spells (20)
3 x Fertile Ground (see Barrage for stats http://slayride27.livejournal.com/?skip=20#entry_80285).
This spell is very necessary to keep the number of green permanents up, and helps you cast other color spells without getting the lands you need, but it does not synergize with Harrow well.

3 x Harrow. Cost 2G. Instant. Sacrifice a land, search your library for 2 basic land cards and put them into play, shuffle your library. What is really good about this card is that it activates your domain abilities, thins your deck out, and sickly allows you to keep mana back to counter creature spells with Exclude. Cost 2U. Instant. Counter target creature spell, draw a card.

2 x Tribal Flames. 1R. Sorcery. Card Name deals X damage to target creature or player, where X is the number for basic land types among lands you control. If you have all 5 basic lands, this deals 5 damage for 2 mana. This is pretty bad if you only have 1 or 2 basic land types in play, but on average you probably will have 3, for 3 damage, about right for a 2 mana cost burn spell.

1 x Global Ruin. 4W. Sorcery. Each player chooses from the lands he or she controls of each basic land type, then sacrifices the rest. Rare. Armageddon that just kills the other decks.

1 x Ordered Migration 3WU. Sorcery. Put a 1/1 blue Bird creature token into play for each basic and type among lands you control. On average you’ll get 3 1/1s, but 5 1/1s is awesome for 5 mana. Uncommon. The Evasion makes this a good finishing card.

2 x Wax//Wane Mana Cost: G//W. Instant. Wax gives target creature +2/+2. Wane destroys target enchantment. Uncommon. Wax is good for your weak creatures, Wane gives the card a versatility against enchantments (enemy Fires) that Giant Growth lacks.

2 x Assault//Battery (see Barrage for stats http://slayride27.livejournal.com/?skip=20#entry_80285). Terrible Shock + Elephant Token. The 3/3 blocker is usually the best option, unless Assault can combine with Tribal Flames to kill a creature or player.

1 x Fires of Yavimaya (see Barrage for stats http://slayride27.livejournal.com/?skip=20#entry_80285). Haste is still not getting it done, but the +2/+2 for sacrificing Card Name can really help your weak creatures.

2 x Probe (see Dismissal for stats http://slayride27.livejournal.com/?skip=20#entry_78541). I still don’t like this card, but in this deck, it is really good for sifting through your deck to get the cards you need, especially lands to improve your domain spells.

1 x Spite//Malice ( see Dismissal for stats
http://slayride27.livejournal.com/?skip=20#entry_78541). This card still has a huge black creature hole.

All in all, Spectrum is a fun Preconstructed Deck, since it is essentially try to get one land that produces each color and then try to put some huge finishers out there to win. It also shows you how to make a cheap common multi-color land base. The card quality of the deck is very good. I like the two rares, an Armageddon and a huge Beast. I think the uncommon quality is exceptional, one Fires, two Assault//Battery, two Wax/Wanes, and two Voracious Cobras are some good cards, and the common quality is good too, as Harrow and Fertile Ground are great mana thinning and acceleration respectively, and Tribal Flames is insane in the right deck.

Arcane Tech is a Fading Suns sourcebook that contains a decent mix of flavor text and game information. The flavor text mostly describes the view of the church of the technology that the current chapter is revealing. There are various levels of proscribed (basically banned with exceptions) technology, with the possession and use of the highest levels of technology banned for use by anyone except the church. The basic equivalent of this book is Arsenal in Shatterzone, another gear book. The gear here ranges from new communication gear, a slew of golems for use, cybernetics, technology for communicating with the dead and attempting to prolong life, new weapons and shields, medical technicals, artifacts, alien technology, technology for psychics, etc. There are also some other chapters detailing a couple of space stations that can be useful for campaign hubs, a chapter on church law and definitions, and a chapter about the Preceptors, or teaching priests.

The most useful chapter IMO is probably the Corrupting Tech chapter. This chapter describes the serf level of technology, and features a lot of descriptions about serf life. This chapter is just generally useful to use for descriptions of villages in Fading Suns, and even in a game like Earthdawn. The three paragraphs under Shelter on pg 16-17 give you a description of a typical serfs home, just a good reference for any gamemaster.

Church Fiefs is essentially a book filled with flavor text written from the perspective of a questing knight reviewing the five major church held worlds in the Fading Suns universe. What is neat about this Fading Suns product is that beyond Holy Terra, a.k.a. Urth a.k.a. the Sol System, there are three new world maps of inhabited worlds and solar system maps that could easily be dropped into just about any space game. Artemis is a world with a full night at one pole and full day at the other, with one continent on the light side with mostly daylight and the other continent on the dark side with mostly nighttime. Pyre is a desert world featuring both hot and cold deserts and a small fresh water sea where most of the life remains. De Moley is a mountainous planet with a history of war. Running Shatterzone? Buy this product, drop Artemis, Pyre, or De Moley into your campaign, and remove some guesswork and busywork from your campaign.

The product has its uses, but for Fading Suns gamemasters, it probably is a little less satisfying due to the lack of Game Information. Even the major NPCs are given as personalities with no stats, and there are no creature stats for unique creatures on the world. Still, the world map and solar system maps are very helpful, so this product might be worth it no matter what space game you run.

Hopefully, I will review Arcane Tech tomorrow , but it really comes down to how much time I have before work tomorrow. The worst case scenario is the review coming next Saturday.

Fading Suns is a lot like another game of mine, Shatterzone, in that it employs an awesome game setting, but the game mechanics leave a lot to be desired. Then again, this is my problem with just about every sci-fi game, the closest I've seen to a workable future system is Shadowrun Fourth Edition (And they haven't even left the planet yet...) and sadly D20 Modern.

The quick setting of Fading Suns is that Urth was unified under one world government under the First Republic and colonized the Sol system due to population pressure on Urth. When an artifact of the Annunaki (Where have I heard that name before..), the jumpgate is found near Pluto, once the scientists figured out how it worked enough to use it (But not reengineer it, unfortunately), a Diaspora occurred and humanity began colonizing other solar systems in droves with zaibatsu or corporation backing. The Sathra effect became known as pilots first began jumping, causing psychic abilities to first show in humanity, although this was stopped by an integral buffer on ships by the First Republic. The fall of the First Republic on Urth occurred as the home system of humanity lost importance as just another solar system among many during the Diaspora. The Universal Church was established during the Diaspora, as mankind needed a new monotheistic religion that was adapted to encountering alien life and exploring the stars. Much alien life that was encountered met the same fate as the American Indians, their world terraformed and the aliens forced to live on reservations after conflict with the humans such as the fate of the aliens on Shantor. Until the humans found the G’nesh on New Monaco (Apshai) and attempted to do the same and the Vau made its presence felt by wiping out all human colonists on the world it protected. The non-expansionist Vau’s technology put the Diaspora’s to shame and the Vau were mostly left alone. When the expansionist Ukari were encountered they attacked the capital at Criticorum and used their psychic powers to incite the Shantor to revolt, causing the further deaths of 25% of that race. When the cause was revealed to be psychic powers used by the Ukari, the Universal Church sent its Fleet to defeat the Ukari menace. After a time, the Second Republic was formed of the collective solar systems, causing many leaps in technology. The Second Republic crumbled during The Fall. The Fall was caused by social upheavals caused by unemployment caused by technology, nobles centralizing their power on many of the worlds through the Divesture, and the Fading Suns effect. Many stars dimmed, and the Universal Church preached that it was caused by Second Republic technosophy or love of technology over all else. This led angry mobs to destroy technology, causing the loss of much of humanity’s technical know-how. The deathblow was when Rogue Worlds and aliens attacked the Second Republic capital at Byzantium Secondus and took the capital. The ten major Noble Houses sent their fleets to take the capital back. After The Fall, a New Dark Age comes into being with the ten Noble Houses, the Merchant League, and the Universal Church as the only forces keeping wealth, power, and technology. When the barbarian invasions occurred, humanity needed a united front, and Vladimir Alecto united the ten Houses and sent the barbarians back. With the barbarians defeated, Vladimir turned the struggle internal, causing a civil war, which saw the elimination of half of the ten before Vladimir was assassinated on the day of his coronation as Emperor. The five remaining houses created a regent position to rule in the stead of the emperor. The Symbionts, a race of alien parasites that had infected humans, were the next to attack, when they used a combination of living technology, psi, and theurgy powers to fight humanity at Daishan. The war at Daishan only ended after the Fleets orbitally bombarded the world to rock and ash. Standard military attacks were useless against the guerilla war using Symbionts. Only when humanity brought its own occult powers to bear were they able to force a stalemate at Stigmata. The Emperor Wars occurred and the office of regent finally displaced by Emperor Alexius of House Hawkwood. The five remaining Major Noble Houses are House Hawkwood, House Li Halan, House Decados, House Hazat, and House Al-Malik as well as several minor Noble Houses. The six major sects of the Universal Church are the Urth Orthodox, Brother Battle (militant monks), Eskatonic Order (psychics), Temple Avesti (Avestites, inquisitors), the Sanctuary Aeon (Amaltheans, healers), and the Mendicant Monks. The five major Merchant League guilds are the Reeves (lawyers), the Scravers (scavengers), the Musters (slavers), the Charioteers (pilots), and the Supreme Order of the Engineers. The internal strife in each house or sect, the strife between the five houses or sects, and the strife between the Church, the League, and the Nobles create much of the internal conflict and tension for humanity in Fading Suns and the external conflict is mostly caused by the Fading Suns effect, the Vau, the barbarians, Rogue or Closed Worlds, and the Symbionts. The New Dark Ages are set up much like the old Dark Ages for the general populace, most people are serfs or slaves serving the nobles and praying to the Universal Church for salvation from the Fading Suns. The setting gives brief detail of the planetary systems, provides a system starmap (really cool on p. 278 for anybody running a sci-fi game), and goes in depth with the Pandemonium world including a couple of sample starter adventures. Yes, that was the quick setting, why do you ask?

The setting of Fading Suns has a lot of parallels with other sci-fi series. For example, the First Republic and Second Republic brought to mind the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov almost immediately. In Foundation, the fall of the First Republic is predicted by psychohistorian, Hari Seldon, who developed a way of using and analyzing history through mathematics to predict the result of the flow of time, and his teachings guide a group of the best and brightest of the First Republic to form the Foundation and shorten the time of barbarism from 30,000 to 1,000 years. As the First Republic spun into anarchy, the Foundation came into its own and became the Second Republic. Unfortunately for the humans in Fading Suns, there is no Hari Seldon, so who knows if the New Dark Age for humanity will end in 1000 years, 30,000 years, or ever. A campaign based upon Foundation is certainly a possibility, as the Foundation could be a planet in a Closed System with a jumpgate that is offline as the best and brightest of the Second Republic attempt to consolidate their solar system of Rogue elements, return the jumpgate to functionality, and have its first encounters with the barbarians of the New Dark Age (To them, everybody else).

The Sathra effect and the Charioteer guild’s jumpkeys remind me of Super Wing Commander with their pilgrims, who all have mysterious, almost psychic-like abilities to plan and control jumps and all carry a pilgrim pendant.

The jumpgates themselves are hardly a new concept; everything from Babylon 5 to Stargate uses them after all. Of course, Stargate is the one closest to the concept here, as they were artifacts left by an ancient race on many worlds by a mysterious alien race that disappeared similar to the Annunaki here.

The noble Houses remind me somewhat of Frank Herbert’s Dune, especially the Hawkwoods who remind me of House Atreides and the Decados who remind me of House Harkonnen. The Hawkwoods treat their serf subjects with respect, and the Decados treat them with disdain. The Hawkwoods are loyal; the Decados are backstabbing. The Hawkwoods are honorable; the Decados are cheaters. If you wanted to recreate some of the Dune politics, all of the pieces are here, especially once you include the Emperor and the Merchant’s Guild. One campaign which could be awesome is a new jumpgate found that leads to a world like Arrakis, where the mélange or spice is discovered that leads most humans to further develop psychic powers if they have psi or theurgy near the Hawkwood and Decados border and both move in to establish control. The dangerous substance is eventually found to be able to induce the Sathra effect in Charioteers; however, and the Emperor is left with a quandary. The war with the Symbionts has started to shift humanity’s way due to more powerful psi and theurgy powers, but Rogue Sathraists are becoming a problem...And Campaign!

The game mechanics uses the Victory Point System, where you accumulate Victory Points to determine your success or failure. It uses a D20 as the main dice to determine this, where low rolls under the Victory Number are good and getting it exactly is a critical success and doubles victory points and high rolls are bad (19 is a failure, 20 is a critical failure). And you consult the Victory Chart to determine how many Victory Points achieved, mirroring Shatterzone/TORG’s strange 2D10 system in some ways such as Victory Points earned directly translating into more Damage dice. In Fading Suns, Damage is rolled versus Armor in reverse Shadowrun style where 1-4 is a success and 5-6 is a failure. I have never been a fan of low-medium roll models, ever since the debacle that was AD&D Second Edition medium roll Attribute and Saving Throw mechanics which seems to be this game’s style. The game also uses a ton of Attributes, including 6 different spirit attributes, each in pairs of 2 that are keyed to each other to determine the character’s emotions. I have never seen a system where the character’s emotions were quantified, but this system does it. Still this leads to 12 Attributes to keep track of, and many rolls are Attribute + Attribute = roll. Well at least they aren’t derived Attributes. Another Attribute is Wyrd, which is kind of like Earthdawn Karma and allows you to do things like Accent rolls and activate occult powers. The martial arts system and fencing system go into great detail, a positive since most sci-fi games devolve into shoot-em ups, and allows classic archetypes to have more fun (unlike D20 Modern :( ). Players will find everything they need to make their characters here.

Gamemasters need some more love though, as the Gamemastering chapter and the two sample adventures on Pandemonium are the few places to find pregenerated NPCs and a few alien creatures, zombies, demons, cybers, changed Symbionts, and golems. There are a couple of ships in the Technology chapter too, a Ship Design system, and some quick and dirty ships on a table, if you want to have space combat.

All in all the system is at least playable. I just would not want to gamemaster it since I’m not a fan of every roll = look up a table, much the same reason I don’t gamemaster Shatterzone or TORG even though they have awesome settings too. Still my brother seems to want to run a space game. He keeps talking about Trinity, but I have Fading Suns now...

Tomorrow, I’ll review Church Fiefs.

Earthdawn is a roleplaying game set in a world of high adventure, high magic, and terrible danger. Shards are a series of unrelated adventures and encounters for the Earthdawn game, intended as an inexpensive resource for Earthdawn gamemasters.

This volume contains the adventure Betrayal’s Sting, designed for Journeymen characters of any Discipline. In this adventure, the characters will get a good impression of how the vile work of the Horrors affects Barsaive’s common man even today, a century after the kaers re-opened... Requires use of the Player’s and Gamemaster’s Compendiums.

Available now! Click here for more information!

Domino is by far the best movie I have seen this year. As you all know by now, I am a huge Keira Knightley fan, and she plays Domino Harvey, a real life bounty hunter and mercenary whose life has been adapted [sort of as the titles scroll states] to the silver screen. This movie is amazing for its style, acting, and plot. Much like Sin City, the movie has a visual style that is unique, often having unseemly acid-washed colors show up in scenes. Which is cool since this story is all being told by Domino as an extended flashback sequence, so her memory is bound to be a bit spotty at certain points. What really makes the movie awesome is the characterizations, as each of the characters have their own motives, acting on them throughout the movie, and the combination of all these actions makes for a plot-filled movie with a lot of twists and turns. After the original scenes which tell the tale of how Domino grew up, became a bounty hunter, and got teamed up with her three partners, the story centers on a bounty hunt gone terribly wrong, with the team after ten million dollars and a bounty of $300,000 dollars to collect for both the retrieval of the money and the four criminals who stole the ten million. The team has signed on to do a reality TV show called Bounty Squad, so the TV camera crews follow them whereever they go. And they all get caught up in the trouble that naturally happens when ten million dollars is at stake. Great movie.