Tagline: The concept of the Trinity Field Reports is excellent, and this work is filled with healthy tidbits and intriguing hints of things to come. Two thumbs up, ten out of ten, five stars, and kudos are all in order.

When the original, limited edition of Aeon (The Game Which Would Become Known as Trinity) came out I snatched up a copy – I loved that hard black plastic cover and the slick interior design at first glance; and I’d been hearing good things about it for months.

Perusing it I was definitely not disappointed (as anyone reading my review of the game elsewhere on RPGNet can attest). About the only serious problem I had with it was that, although it had a fascinating setting which was obviously going to develop in a fantastic manner, not enough information was given about certain elements of the game to make me feel comfortable about running it immediately.

One of the specific problem areas I sited were the “lost colonies”: Several years before the start of the game Earth had lost contact with five colonies located out in deep space, and we were informed that only “just now” was contact being re-established. The game was even hyped in some places as “taking back the stars”. The problem was that although we were told that contact was being renewed even as the game begun – and that a primary plot suggestion was for the PCs to go out to those planets – absolutely no useful information was given about what they were going to find there. Did the mining colony under attack by a hostile alien species get destroyed? How did the rebellion on another turn out?

After posting my review here at RPGNet I became vocal about this problem on the various Internet forums, newsgroups, and mailing lists. By various people I was told that I could “do whatever I wanted” since things hadn’t been defined. As I pointed out at the time, this missed the whole point. Obviously Andrew Bates, Trinity‘s designer, had a plan of how these events would unfold – and I wanted to be lead down that path and tie his meta-story into the specifics of my campaign. Unfortunately there was no way for me to proceed at the moment because if I – for example – sent the PCs to the mining colony and had them discover that it had been completely destroyed, only for it to turn out later that it had not been destroyed and would play a major role in the future development of the Trinity universe, I would be royally screwed and I, and my group, would be unfairly excluded from using the unfolding developments.

There is a narrow line between “not giving everything away” and “giving enough clues so that we don’t misstep” that the basic Trinity game had overstepped. All of that being said, Trinity Field Report: Extrasolar Colonies not only vindicates my conviction, but also solves most of my problems.

First, it vindicates me because these twenty-five pages are exactly what I thought was lacking in the main rulebook – and the quality of material found here is fantastic. Extrasolar Colonies takes the format of selections from the actual reports of the jumpships that traveled to the distant colony worlds, and it is used to drop hints and tantalize us very effectively. A direct measurement of how successful this product was lies in the fact that when I reached certain places where “data decay in transit” had caused the message to become unreadable I would occasionally yelp in frustration (so I’m a dork, but it’s an indication of the success of the product – that nobody will deny).

“Wait”, you might be saying, “if they’re still omitting data which is so important that you’re yelping because you don’t know it – isn’t that still a problem?” Not at all, because this time they only excluded information which will end up advancing the meta-story. However, they gave me enough of the broad, general details that I can still take my PCs out there and explore the colony worlds. The trick is to give me enough information so that I don’t end up stepping on the toes of future products, but not so much as to ruin the surprises. It’s a balance which the core rulebook failed to maintain at places, but which this product nails perfectly.

Second, it solves most of my problems because of the price of this product. At $4.95 for 25 glossy, full-color pages these Field Reports are excellent impulse buys and a great format. I can even hand this stuff directly to my players because it’s not only presented as in-world source material, but it’s source material which doesn’t reveal any “deep, dark secrets” (although it may hint at them). Any product which is cheap, has high production values, has great source material, and is useful for both the GM and the players gets automatic high ratings in my account of things for obvious reasons.

I do have a remaining problem: I’ve never liked the tendency of game lines to become “supplement oriented” – where the game, instead of focusing on one or two core products from which you can optionally branch off as you need, instead has no central core and, instead, expects you to pick up at least 95% of the supplements produced for the game. Although the Field Reports are cheap and seem to be targeting the specific areas I noted as lacking in the core sourcebook (besides the colonies I also mentioned aliens, which is the subject of the other Field Report released to date) I am not particularly happy that it was necessary for me to buy them in the first place (although I probably would have anyway).

However, that particular problem is with a minor concern I have regarding the game line as a whole – a concern which, so far, has been outweighed by the general high-level of quality material being released for it. This product, in itself, is excellent not only on the merits of its concept, but on the merits of its implementation. Hey, at $4.95 how can you go wrong?

Style: 5
Substance: 5

Author: John Snead
Company/Publisher: White Wolf
Cost: $4.95
Page count: 25
ISBN: 1-56504-771-0
Originally Posted: 1999/01/24

These books really were the perfect impulse buy. Back in 1999, my go-to gaming shop was Phoenix Games on Lake Street in Minneapolis, MN. I remember the Field Reports fondly because at $4.95 a pop they were like full-color candy to an RPG addict like myself.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Tagline: Compared to the first installment, Passage Through Shadow works even better as a basic story and premise and has solved many of the problems which flawed the first. However, there are still some significant flaws – particularly in the first of the two scenarios.

Note: This product is a module. In the following review there will quite likely be spoilers of various sorts. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Those of you reading my review of the first installment of this adventure trilogy (Darkness Revealed 1: Descent into Shadow) know that I had two main problems with it: First, although the basic conceptual idea and story were excellent they were adapted into module form in a sub-standard fashion. Second, the design principles behind the color insert sections were extremely flawed and had the potential to ruin the gaming experience if used in the manner intended. The overall product was salvageable simply because the basic conceptual idea and story were excellent – although requiring slightly more work than should be needed, you can transform what is a fairly railroaded set of adventures into an excellent set of first-condition adventures.

Darkness Revealed 2: Passage Through Shadow, happily, is an improvement. The basic conceptual idea and story remain excellent, drawing the PCs into an even higher echelon of the Trinity universe. The color sections, while still possessing some doozies, are much more reliable. And, although the first adventure still possesses some flaws, the second is really excellent.

Like the first, the value for $15.95 compared to the $20 and $30 products emerging from other publishers is fantastic. Highly recommended.

THE COLORED SECTIONS, REDUX

Okay, the weakest part of this product remains the colored sections. Designed to be handouts to the players they still possess the physical flaw of being located in the middle of vast tracts of GM-only information – meaning that only by tearing your book into pieces or by expensively color copying will you really find value here.

Fortunately, however, you’re never going to want to give these handouts to your players, so that basically solves your problem. The first color section is definitely the worse of the two, among its faults:

1. Presented as a mission briefing for the character’s new assignment it contains memos of people discussing the character’s arrival at their new assignment.

2. The entire course of the investigation is telegraphed and revealed: Basically the players know exactly where they’re supposed to be looking and, generally, what they’re supposed to be looking for. Why? Because the colored section gives briefings on all the important areas… and only the important areas. More general information, like floor plans, would be more appropriate than secret communications which should, rightfully, be discovered during gameplay.

3. A central question of the PC’s investigation should be, “Is Basel, the location of our assignment, involved in this conspiracy plot?” This is rendered into a no-brainer, however, because on pg. 13 of the handouts we read a “Huang-Marr Project Briefing” recovered from “Aesculapian databank [Basel]”.

4. Another central question is whether or not high-ranking officials are involved or not. Again, pg. 13 not only gives that away – it gives a list of names!

5. I have serious suspension-of-disbelief problems where a funeral for one of the NPCs in the first adventure is interrupted as dissidents stomp all over his grave… AND NO ACTION IS TAKEN TO STOP THEM.

The second color section errs far less (largely because the GM is instructed in the text of the adventure to reveal certain sections only at certain times during the game). The only serious problems are:

1. At the beginning of the adventure the PCs have no idea they will eventually end up on the orbital station Eyrie. For some reason, however, their briefing file contains an extensive report on the station.

WHAT HAVE THEY FIXED?

The most noticeable problem they fixed is that the adventures no longer seem too brief to consume an evening of gaming. One reason which may be trotted out for this is that this book only contains two adventures, instead of three. More essential in my mind, however, is the fact that they’ve fixed a more pressing problem: The plots are no longer railroaded. Railroaded plots take longer to explain (because you not only need to express initial conditions, but also exactly how the adventure will progress at each step), and tend to have gaping holes in their design (because they require leaps of PC intuition that, in my experience, rarely happen at the scripted moment).

The first adventure still suffers from this slightly (the most telling example being that the adventure assumes that the PCs will make no concerted effort to get in touch with their major lead at the clinic they’re visiting until he comes into work the night after they arrive), but the second avoids it completely.

So they’ve fixed my major beef with the first product, which is that the mysteries don’t operate as mysteries.

CONCLUSION

In addition to solving the problems of Descent into Darkness, Passage through Shadow has all of its strengths: A strong story, great artwork, high production values, an attention to detail, and focus on PC involvement. Not only that, but if you’re the kind of GM who likes to have your PCs operating at the highest levels of the campaign world, then the Darkness Revealed trilogy is definitely an elegant way of going there – the first volume lets the PCs into this rarefied world by a lucky break, and the second expertly develops that break into major sociopolitical importance (a key sign of how effective this volume was, is that when the PCs meet and work with the Orgotek Proxy it seems like a natural result of the events which have transpired – unlike many such cases where PC-involvement with important setting figures seems forced and artificial).

So that’s my conclusion: Although it still needs some minor work and modification, I definitely recommend it, particularly since it only costs $15.95. Excellent product.

Style: 4
Substance: 4

Author: Bruce Baugh and Richard E. Dansky
Company/Publisher: White Wolf
Cost: $15.95
Page count: 120
ISBN: 1-56504-752-4
Originally Posted: 1999/01/24

Read the review of Darkness Revealed 3: Ascent Into Light

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Tagline: Possibly the funniest gamer-related cartoon of all time, Knights of the Dinner Table has well-deserved its position as a cult classic. All true gamers should be reading this. Hoody hoo!

I would now give the title of “funniest gamer-related cartoon of all time” to the early strips of Order of the Stick. I have long since let my subscription to Knights of the Dinner Table lapse, but these early strips are still hilarious good fun.

Although this review purports to focus primarily on the reprint volume Bundle of Trouble it’s really going to be a general assessment of the Knights of the Dinner Table (KODT) strip as a whole.

KODT debuted in the pages of Shadis several years ago when its creator, Jolly Blackburn, was still serving as the editor of the magazine he had created. Jolly would eventually leave Shadis and KODT would make the transition to the back of Dragon Magazine. More recently KODT has become its own stand-alone comic/magazine and is now well over the twenty issue mark. The first few issues have become scarce and impossible to track down, which brings us to Bundle of Trouble — a reprint volume of the first three issues.

Although gamer-oriented comics have had a place in the hobby for years, KODT was the first strip to truly take the humor of those strips out of the game settings and place it on the gamers themselves. It focuses on the escapades of B.A. Felton, the GM, and his players: Bob Herzog, Dave Bozwell, Brian Van Hoose, and (more recently) Sara Felton (B.A.’s cousin). In addition, a large supporting cast has been established, including Gary Jackson (the creator of the HackMaster(TM) game); Nitro Ferguson (infamous for his LARP involving steam tunnels and college students); and Weird Pete (everyone’s favorite game store owner and Keeper of the Lore).

It has become clear over the years of KODT’s growing popularity and success that Jolly Blackburn has successfully tapped into the gamer’s consciousness. His strips repeatedly strike far too close to home not to elicit peals of laughter while raising the question, “Where has he hidden the camera he’s filming my gaming group with?” Again and again Jolly succeeds at pinioning the classic stereotypes and realities of gamers in a hilarious fashion. His quirky, amateur style – which he constantly pokes fun at himself – only serves to heighten the effect. It has well-deserved its reputation as a cult classic and is quite possibly the funniest gaming-related comic every produced. All true gamers should be reading this strip, and Bundle of Trouble would be an excellent place to start.

Hoody hoo!

Style: 5
Substance: 5

Author: Jolly Blackburn
Company/Publisher: Kenzer & Company
Cost: $9.95
Page count: 96
ISBN: n/a
Originally Posted: 1998/12/14

No offense to my former self, but this is a terrible review: It summarizes content without explaining why the summary is significant, and it spends far too much time saying “it’s really funny!” without explaining why I think it’s funny. It starts to pull itself together in the last paragraph, but then abruptly stops instead.

Ah, well. Can’t win ’em all.

On the other hand, I am going to go pull my collections down off the shelf.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Part of my general dissatisfaction with Geoffrey McKinney’s Carcosa is certainly due to a difference of opinion when it comes to methodology.

First, whether we’re talking hex keys or dungeon keys, I’m extremely skeptical of key entries that consist of nothing more than a list of monsters. This is particularly true of published products, and yet a depressingly huge number of Carcosa’s key entries consist entirely of things like “17 Diseased Guardians”, “13 giant lizards”, and “5 Mummies”.

It’s bland and it’s boring. It’s also virtually useless.

Unfortunately, this generally remains true of Carcosa‘s key even when more details are proffered. For example, massive chunks of the book consist of, “[Settlement type] of # [type of human] ruled by [insert title], a [alignment] [level] [class].” (For example: “Village of 400 Green Men ruled by ‘the Peerless Will,’ a neutral 8th-level Fighter.”) And even more are dedicated to describing the particular physical characteristics of various Spawn of Shub-Niggurath, all of which were generated using the charts found at the back of the book with no additional creative thought applied whatsoever.

And that, ultimately, is probably the biggest indictment against Carcosa’s hex key: Virtually all of it could have been more usefully rendered as a half dozen random tables.

Second, even when the hex key shows greater creativity, it usually takes the form of material which is non-actionable during an actual game session. For example, hex 2004 is keyed:

A Brown Man, dressed in immaculate white robes fringed with golden embroidery, rests quietly by the side of the path. He acknowledges with a barely perceptible nod. It would be wise to return this show of respect with a dignified bow or curtsy.

… or what? He’ll attack? He’ll shed his skin and reveal himself to be a Spawn of Shub-Niggurath? He’ll curse them? He’ll turn out to be a demi-god? He’ll betray them to their worst enemies?

The argument can, of course, be made that the purpose of the key is merely to serve as a creative seed for the GM. But, if so, why is McKinney so delightfully enamored with the words “cannot” and “never”? Let’s proffer hex 2105 as an example:

Drums, the clash of war cymbals, and the deep clangor of a mighty gong can be heard coming from the desert. The sounds taper and crescendo with the bluster of the wind, but their source can never be found.

Even if this wasn’t the umpteenth time I’d read some variation of “there are mysterious sounds and you can never figure out what they are“, you can’t try to defend half the hex entries by saying “just ideas to develop” while the other half of your hexes are trying to stifle the development of those ideas.

I recognize that many of these elements are historic qualities of classic hex-based supplements like the Wilderlands. But Carcosa is a particularly bland and repetitive instantiation of the form, and I also think 1976 was a long time ago. Similarly, while I may find Palace of the Vampire Queen a fascinating historical oddity and revolutionary for its time, anybody trying to sell me a dungeon designed like that today is not going to win my applause.

TO THE GOOD

One point of particular interest in Carcosa are the sorcerous rituals. These have received a good deal of attention because many of them require specific vile acts in order to perform them (murder, rape, and so forth), but that’s largely a tempest in a teapot. (Although the critics would lead you to believe that they’re graphic snuff pornography, the reality is that the vile acts — while specific — are not detailed or described in any sort of lurid detail. If rape or violence against children are trigger words for you, you should probably avoid this book. Otherwise, you’ll find more graphic stuff in a Clive Barker, Jacqueline Carey, or Stephen King novel.) What I actually find interesting about the sorcerous rituals is that they provide an innovative method for motivating and directing the exploration of the hex map.

For example, the Approach of the Farthest Rim, “can be performed only in the lost fane in hex 2401”. Whether the PCs are trying to stop a sorcerer performing this ritual or playing villains attempting to complete the ritual for themselves, this kind of specificity will drive them out into the wilderness of Carcosa: They have to find that fane. In fact, even if the ritual is not being performed (by the bad guys or the PCs), learning the details of the ritual inherently provides a hook: What else might be inside the fane?

That’s a clever structure for delivering scenario hooks and I’ll almost certainly be lifting it in the future.

In a similar vein of derived utility, the random charts for Spawn of Shub-Niggurath, Space Alien Armament, Random Robots, and Mutations are all fairly well done.

All of this, unfortunately, is fairly brief in character and scarcely justifies the purchase price for Carcosa. Which regrettably brings us…

TO THE FURTHER BAD

Overwhelmingly, my disappointment with Carcosa stems from the lack of anything truly weird or creative in the setting. The book bills itself as a “Weird Science-Fantasy Horror Setting” and I was expecting a creative burst of the unique, the bizarre, and the alien. What I got instead was “9 Tyrannosaurus Rexes”. (And, no, occasionally adding the words “mutant”, “radioactive”, or “fungoid growth” to the tyrannosaur doesn’t actually make it notably more interesting.)

Adding to the supplement’s weakness is the extremely questionable quality of McKinney’s house rules. Basically, the book starts by detailing a lengthy system in which you use a d20 roll to randomly determine what type of dice you roll before rolling them (d4, d6, d8, d10, or d12). If you squint hard enough, you can almost have this make sense for Hit Dice (which McKinney has you re-roll at the beginning of every combat), but when he goes on to do the same thing with weapon damage (so that every time you make an attack you roll one of every die type and then use the d20 to determine which of the other dice count) all you can do is start backing away slowly.

Unfortunately, you won’t be quick enough to avoid the next page where he lays out the statistical analysis which demonstrates that, on average, all of this extra complexity and dice rolling has virtually no effect whatsoever.

And then there’s a whole related mechanic where you have to keep track of multiple hit point totals for each character… But I digress.

Finally, although other options are proffered, the supplement largely bills itself as a place to run full campaigns. (The book even includes an introductory adventure.) But there’s no place on Carcosa that’s accessible to new characters. Virtually every keyed encounter in the book is aimed at mid-to-high level play. (And most of those seem to be heavily inspired by the Tomb of Horrors “save or die… actually, screw it, just skip the save: you’re dead” school of design.)

For example, the starter adventure is set in hex 2005. Despite being specifically and explicitly aimed at 1st level characters, this module includes random encounters with 10 HD monsters. (And the hexes immediately surrounding hex 2005 are no better: Hex 2004, for example, contains five aggressive 10 HD monsters. If you follow the standard hexcrawling practice of automatically triggering the keyed encounter when the group enters a hex, anybody who strays too far north during the intro adventure is going to get TPK’ed.)

IN SUMMARY

There’s really no question that Carcosa is a truly gorgeous volume. Lamentations of the Flame Princess have lavished the volume with fantastic illustrations by Rich Longmore; the paper is thick and luxurious; the binding is superb; the layout and cross-referencing are excellent. (The PDF is somewhat flawed by the decision to de-synch the page numbers and make it unreadable on e-readers and tablets, but this is somewhat compensated by the encyclopedic cross-linking.) It even comes with a cloth map, which — as an old fanatic of the Ultima computer games — is a decision I absolutely adore.

But, ultimately, all of this glitzy extravagance surrounds a hollow core. Most of the book is nothing more than rote mediocrity, large chunks of the rest are unusable in any form, and, when all is said and done, you will come away with nothing more than a dozen or so decent ideas that might be useful if you polish them up a bit. That’s a good showing for a blog post, but for a $40+ supplement? It’s a disappointment.

Style: 5
Substance: 2

Tagline:In the spirit of Capture the Flag and Paintball, but with twists all its own, Killer definitely deserves the title of Best LARP of All Time.

Running Just as I’ve never had a chance to run the Darkness Revealed trilogy, I’ve also never managed to get a proper game of Killer set-up. Yet another some day…

The history of Killer: The Game of Assassination dates all the way back to 1981. This new edition, released in 1998, continues the nearly 20 year tradition admirably.

Killer’s basic concept can be summed up very simply (in the words of SJG): “Wipe out your friends.” Basically Killer gives you a set of guidelines for setting up a competitive structure in which, yes, you go around killing your friends. This shouldn’t be confused with something like Paintball – where you go out into the wilderness and spend a few hours blowing each other away in a fairly harmless manner. No, as the full title (“The Game of Assassination”) suggests this is more subtle than that – a typical game can stretch over weeks, months, or even (although I pale to think of it) years. You don’t walk up to somebody and shoot them, instead you have to plot ingenious and crafty ways of knocking them off. You’re not a soldier, you’re an Assassin.

With such a simple concept, you might think, you don’t have to even buy the book. And why is it 80 pages long – there must be a lot of fluff, huh?

Wrong.

This is a great manual giving you giving a set of guidelines and a handbook to playing the game. It starts by giving you a general set of rules which you can use to vary the specific nature of your game (examples vary between allowing access to living places or times of day when killing is allowed). From there it gives an exhaustive list of fake weapons which can be constructed and used (and cautionary notes against many which should not be used) – from guns to bombs to poisons to sci-fi contraptions.

From these basics the book provides several optional versions of the game, some general words of advice and caution, some pre-built scenarios which can be used, a scoring system, and a set of photocopiable faux documents for the use of the playing group. And let’s not forget the hilarious illustrations which accompany the text.

All in all by the time I finished reading this manual I was itching to set up a game. Definitely give this book a try, at only fifteen bucks you won’t be disappointed.

Style: 4
Substance: 5

Author: Steve Jackson
Company/Publisher: Steve Jackson Games
Cost: $14.95
Page count: 80
ISBN: 1-55634-351-5
Originally Posted: 1998/12/14

I actually had no memory of reading this book or writing this review until I started converting it for the website; then a flood of memories came rushing back. It was after a few experiences like this that I started keeping a log of books as I read them. Human memory is a really fickle thing.

I do remember now that my interest in this book grew as a direct result of my first experiences with paintball (which I was properly introduced to by members of my D&D group at the time). I was never able to get that group interested in Killer, though.

Has anybody reading this participated in a round of assassination? How was it? Worth the time for me to try to get one set-up?

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.