Reaper Kickstarter Delivers Part 2! Giant Cthulhu!

The Gamer Wife and I took some time this weekend to tear open our Bones Kickstarter care package which arrived late last week. Over the next couple of posts, starting with today, I'll be throwing up some huge picture posts to share with you all.

Today I'll be focusing on the gigantic Cthulhu we ordered as an add-on to our backer level for the Kickstarter. If you've been reading my blog for any amount of time, you can probably guess that we're pretty huge Cthulhu fans, specifically the Call of Cthulhu RPG. Granted, it doesn't use minis, but I figured it couldn't hurt to have a giant, imposing dead, but dreaming monster at the table for those games we play.

Enjoy the pictures after the break!

DC Comics Review - Batman & Robin #3

Between Batman and Robin, Batwoman, and simply Batman, it’s a good time to be a fan of amazing art and story-telling in Gotham City. I wasn’t originally sold on B&R, but thanks to Patrick Gleason’s incredibly clean, crisp art and John Kalisz’s sharp (and surprisingly bright) coloring, I decided I had to come back for number two. By the end of this issue, I’m so very happy I did.

Tomasi has taken the peripherals of the world of Batman and really shined a light on them. In particular, I feel like this is the Batman book that really gets Alfred. B&R is generational in nature given that it focuses as much on the “grandfather” generation of Alfred as it does the “father” of Bruce and the “son” of Damian. By this issue, the father and son relationship between the two titular characters is really shining.

Behind it all though, is Alfred’s subtle, quiet guiding hand as Bruce has to learn all over again how to be a father. Bruce never had it so hard before with kids he could hand-pick to be Robin. B&R exemplifies the old saying that you can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family. He’s stuck with Damian, and honestly, the ten year-old has the potential to be the greatest challenge Batman will ever face.

But, back to issue #3. The biggest achievement of this issue is that Tomasi pulls off the impossible and makes you really feel like both Bruce and Damian may be in legitimate danger. He also shines a light on the fact that Damian, arguably the deadliest Robin yet, can still be just as big a liability as Bruce’s adopted sons – if not more so.

While I love Batman by Snyder, B&R offers a simpler, more personal tale focusing on Batman’s two closest relationships, and it’s a nice change of pace from the epic, city-spanning adventure found in Batman.

The New 52 in Review... What Comes Next?

Over the past month I've been picking up a ton of the New 52 #1 issues from DC. You can find all my review posts here: Week One, Week Two, Week Three, Week Four, and Week Five. It's the first time I've fallen into a routine of buying new comics every Wednesday, and I'm happy to say at this point that it's a very fun habit. I've also bought every single book this month digitally through Comixology. Overall I picked up 22 of the 52 #1's which is a huge amount of comics for me to buy in a single month. I'm more used to picking up a couple of trade collections every couple of months, so it was really cool having so many comics to read every week.

So with today I'm going to be giving some feedback on my experience. I want to use this opportunity almost as much for myself to reflect on the past month and how I want to proceed with comic buying as much as I just want to share my opinion with the ether. I'm going to try to rank the top 10 books I bought, identify which books I'm excited for buying #2 next month, and finally which books aren't going to see a second issue in my Comixology collection. Let's get on with it!

DC Relaunch - Final Week! - Teen Titans, Aquaman, Green Lantern New Guardians, Flash, and Justice League Dark

It's the final week of the bold experiment undertaken by DC Comics to relaunch an entire comics universe, and I've got another five #1's to round out the month with. It's been a great ride this month, and I hope to have one more post by the end of this week to discuss all the new #1's I picked up and what I plan on sticking with to see through #2. Reviews can be found over at iFanboy as always.

Teen Titans #1

I wasn't originally going to pick this up. Then came Superboy, and I knew that even though the art really turned me off, I'd have to see where Teen Titans (TT) would lead me. I've wanted to like TT for a long time. I love the concept, and can't really get enough teen books in my life. I passed on Red Hood and the Outlaws last week (also written by Scott Lobdell) since I don't care about any of those characters, but the combination of Superboy's quality combined with really liking Tim Drake - Red Robin as a character meant I was willing to give this a chance.

So that's the long sordid history of my relationship with the book building up to its release. This being the first book I read this week, I'm starting to realize that #1 fatigue is finally setting in for me. I love team books, I love covert/conspiracy books, and I really like teen superheroes, and all of that still didn't save me from starting to realize that I'm actually starting to get sick of reading the very beginning of a story. I don't think I would have noticed this as much if TT wasn't just incredibly mediocre and quick to read, but it just wasn't that great.

I still haven't warmed up to Brett Booth's decidedly 90's Image-influenced style. Everyone's bulging with muscles and the style, rather than doing something interesting with Jim Lee's redesign of the costumes, seems to enhance all the bad parts of the redesigns. I will say this about the art though. There are moments where Booth really nails a character's facial expression that were refreshing. I also enjoyed his rendition of Superboy's costume almost as much as R.B. Silva's from Superboy #1. The black and red capeless design is really badass and menacing. I have no idea why the cover shows pretty much the worst Superboy design ever, because I don't think it's going to show up anywhere in the new version of the DC Universe.

The story felt slight in a way that wasn't still satisfying. What I mean is that with Supergirl #1 last week, it was an incredibly quick read, but it felt like a very tantalizing tease. I wanted to know more about the main character and how she would interact with the world. In TT #1, we get a faceless clandestine group messing with teen heroes named "N.O.W.H.E.R.E." that, in a post-Nextwave world feels like a parody of itself. I don't care about N.O.W.H.E.R.E. even A.L.I.T.T.L.E. The group is so generic, and I feel like Lobdell missed the boat on throwing us a bone or any hook at all that would make me care about this story line. Alas, we got nothing, and that's kind of how I feel about the book overall - just a whole lotta nothing.

Story - 2 out of 5 stars
Art - 2 out of 5 stars

DC Relaunch Week 4 - Birds of Prey, Nightwing, Supergirl, Wonder Woman, and Batman

It's Wednesday! More reviews of DC #1's! This week has probably the most middling excitement for. Last week had Batwoman and the week before had Action Comics and Animal Man, but this week, while I'm exciting for the titles I bought, none really stand out as a truly "event" of a release. Still, let's see how the five titles I picked up ended performing. As always, these reviews are also posted over at iFanboy.

Birds of Prey #1

I wasn't sure what to expect for Birds of Prey (BoP). It hasn't ever been a title I've been interested in and wasn't going to be on my list to buy for the relaunch. Still, the preview pages I saw online really grabbed me, and there's something about the costume redesign of Black Canary that really spoke to me. The new costumes have been very hit or miss, but one of the things that I really liked about BoP were both Black Canary's and Starling's costumes.

Like I said, I don't know a whole lot about the original BoP. I know that Barbara Gordon as Oracle was always the Professor X of the team and that it was made up of female superheroes, but beyond that, I never really knew the mission of the team or even the tone of their stories. The new BoP presents a budding team of female bad asses who work street-level conspiracies and crime. In this first issue, we're only introduced to Black Canary (the blonde on the cover) and Starling (the corset-wearing superheroine in the center). I really adore the little bits of relationship we get between these two characters.

The art (by Jesus Saiz) is clean and the action looks amazing. Both of the female stars look like they could easily kick Batman's ass while laughing about it the whole time. They both look very distinct, and Saiz makes their personalities shine through his art. It's a very exciting book to look at, and even the quieter scenes have a quick pace that makes it feel like an action movie. Unfortunately, it does end up feeling like a quick read, and I could see an argument that you don't really get your money's worth. However, the story is tight and complete (especially for being a #1) while opening up a whole world of story possibilities. On a side note, we do get two pages where Barbara Gordon makes an appearance, and I'm more intrigued and interested by this depiction of the character than I was with the entire issue of Batgirl #1. I'm excited to see how she will continue to interact with the team she originally founded and would be more than happy if this was her only corner of the DC universe and she didn't have to carry her own book from month-to-month.

Story: 4 out of 5 stars
Art: 4 out of 5 stars

DC Relaunch Week 3 Reviews - Batwoman, Batman and Robin, Demon Knights, Grifter, and Superboy

It's Wednesday which means it's time for a fresh batch of comics for DC's New 52 #1's! Don't know what I'm talking about? You can find Week 1 here and Week 2 here to get my takes on those week's releases that grabbed my fancy. As always, I'll be posting these reviews over at iFanboy as well since they have a really nice database of user reviews.

Batwoman #1

For some reason, Batwoman has constantly been running under my radar in all these months leading up to the big relaunch. It's pretty inexplicable for a variety of reasons. The first is that you cannot ignore the sheer brilliance of artist J.H. Williams III. His work in comics never disappoints and never fails to wow me. Secondly, Kate Kane (secret identity of Batwoman) is my favorite bat-family character as well as my favorite female character in any comic. I fell in love with her in reading the collection of the story Batwoman: Elegy by writer Greg Rucka with Williams on the art. The story was inventive, deeply emotional and personal, and also down-right creepy at points.

Maybe I was ignoring Batwoman because I didn't want to get my hopes and expectations up for the book. DC is giving several artists a chance at writing their own books with the relaunch, and with every one of them I've been really hesitant and nervous about the results. With Batwoman, I can happily say that Williams carries on not only the look of the Elegy story but the quality in character interaction and quick, snappy dialogue that made Elegy work so well.

I'm not exactly sure why I like Kate Kane so much. Maybe it's the fact that she's a female version of Bruce Wayne that breathes a fresh kind of life into the character. It could be her strict military background, her Westpoint training (which makes her sound a lot like old man Batman from The Dark Knight Returns), and her relationship with her father (a retired colonel). Whatever it is, the way Rucka - and now Williams combines this realistic interpretation of a modern high tech superhero with super natural and truly horrific villains. The story presented here follows a very creepy track of kidnapped and murdered children all from the same block by a villain who you might recognize if you're a fan of urban legends and modern ghost stories. The villain is the perfect opponent for Batwoman and match for the style of the book due its relatively dreamy, drippy disposition.

Williams and co-artist W. Haden Blackman dazzle with some jaw-dropping double-page spreads that are both bewildering and yet easy to follow the intended flow of dialogue and story. I've had a generally positive reaction to the New 52 #1's that I've purchased, but nothing has impressed me or made me more excited for next month than Batwoman #1. It's even more exciting than Animal Man, so go figure.

Story: 5 out of 5 stars
Art: 6 out of 5 stars (I realize this is impossible, but Williams is the best out there, bar none)

DC Relaunch - Reviews of more #1's! - Batgirl, Justice League International, Action Comics, Animal Man and Stormwatch

It's Wednesday so that means it's time again for some fresh new DC Comics reviews. Last week I reviewed Justice League #1 which, although was fun and light-hearted, did disappoint me a bit. This week I picked up four more #1's from DC's massive relaunch going on all month which resets the entire universe at the first issue with a whole new continuity. These reviews for this week (and likely for the rest of the month) will be shorter than my Justice League review just 'cause there's more to do, and I do my best to avoid being long-winded (and often fail). Just like last week, these reviews are also posted over at iFanboy.com - the best site out there for comics news, reviews, and discussion that I can find.

Cthulhu - Wasted Lands Screenshots!

Red Wasp Design has been doing a very good of keeping everyone updated on their upcoming mobile Call of Cthulhu game, Wasted Lands. The game is set during the Great War, and the pictures you'll find below are summed up in their press release:

"They show characters from the game under attack by the undead, and the Dark Young. As the characters fight these legions of horror they will have their sanity eroded away as the game's designer Tomas Rawlings noted, “Lovecraft and his peers created really iconic monsters that tap into our deepest fears. As huge fans of his stories, we've worked really hard to transfer the essence of these alien horrors into a game form. We're blending the core ideas of the classic role-playing game along with our experience of gameplay design all wrapped in our new 3D engine to craft what we hope is a gaming experience of malignant evil!"


Check below for the pictures below! HD versions of the screenshots are probably coming in soon down the line. It looks like it's going to be a really fun game that will be putting the tech specs of mobile devices to the test to show off some truly horrible character designs (of course they're well-done, but Lovecraft didn't tend to describe creatures that didn't look terrible, unutterable even). You get the idea, stuff looks cool.

DC Relaunch - Review of Justice League #1

I've been a long-time fan of iFanboy for all my comic booking needs. I regularly listen to their podcast and always try to stop by their booth and say hi when I'm at a convention where they also happen to be attending. Anyway, I wrote a review of the new Justice League #1 released just today from DC Comics. This is the first book in their controversial and exciting (at least to me) relaunch of their entire line. I plan on buying more and will likely be posting reviews of the various #1's both here and over there over the course of the next few weeks. Note: I bought this digitally this afternoon, which was awesome, and now my comic collection goes everywhere I go, which is all kinds of awesome.

Lovecraft is like a million years old! Celebrate with PDF Action!

I started to love horror movies when I hit high school. I became a quick convert when first discovering Evil Dead 2. Little did I know that the Necronomicon, a book I swear I had heard of before seeing the movie but just didn't know where, tied my favorite horror comedy of all time into the vast Mythos of Lovecraft. Eventually I got into role-playing games because of horror games and eventually have had some of my greatest gaming experiences ever as a result of horror as a genre.

I'm addicted to the stuff. Much like many other fans of genre fiction, horror just pulls us in, and there's really no better cosmic horror out there than Lovecraft. Some people think it's played out. They say gug, ghouls, and deep ones are too predictable, too obvious, and too exposed to the world to ever actually be scary. To me, they're missing the point of Lovecraft. While horror is the hardest genre to pull off at the gaming table, but when it works, it's not because of a scary description of some big, slavering, hairy monster from the GM. Horror games work because you can't trust those around you to protect and work with you. Horror works because every character has truly unique goals and equally unique means about completing them.

So to that end, I find a lot to love, still, in Lovecraft. I've recently stumbled upon Trail of Cthulhu not so much as a rule system I want to use to run games but rather as a huge source for inspiration for gaming scenarios. I also just like the stuff just for an entertaining, horrific read. To that end, I was thrilled to find rpgnow/drivethrurpg hosting a special sale on their Lovecraft pdf selection. Essentially you've got 15% off the whole list for two and a half more days (as of this posting). I picked up the following pdf's cause they were cheap and looked to be really neat - Cthulhu Apocalypse: The Dead White World, Trail of Cthulhu: Not So Quiet, Trail of Cthulhu: The Dying of St. Margaret's, and Cthulhu 101.

Go ahead and purchase some cheap-o Lovecraft pdf's. I've already read through Cthulhu 101 and am now full of even more stuff I want to read and watch (and listen to - epic lists of Lovecraft-influenced music will drive you crazy) because of it. Now I am off to follow the Trail of Cthulhu, and I'd recommend you follow me down the rabbit hole.

Free RPG Day 2011: The Picks

Wednesday I gave a quick review of what this year's offerings for Free RPG Day might mean if we were trying to read between the lines about what the big companies appear to be doing and pushing for in the next couple of months. There's some interesting things you can read in to when looking at who releases a new product and who puts out a token participation item. Today I want to get in to my top five picks for free swag tomorrow, but before I do, I have one more comment. I've been excited about Cubicle 7's upcoming crack at a Lord of the Rings RPG, but information has been scarce (even with looking at a Gencon release less than two months away). FRPGD would have been a fantastic opportunity to release a Quickstart adventure for The One Ring (TOR), but Cubicle 7 really missed the boat on not providing something. I can say without a doubt that a TOR Quickstart would have easily stolen the show tomorrow. Alas, what could have been...

Anyway, now on with the picks!

A Classy Follow Up (Also: Rift)

This past Wednesday I wrote a short defense of why I like Classes in tabletop RPG's. I didn't get in to it much, but I will say that as much as I like 'em at the table with thick textbooks, I love 'em even more in my videogames. I was a long-time World of Warcrafter ("Warcrafter" feels like I actually made something and have something to show for my time and money spent), and so I became very familiar with classes within the MMO world.

I recently decided that, since I had a long four day weekend ahead of me, I'd try the free 7-day trial for Rift, a recent WoW-clone that has some very cool lore and a good look about it. It's free, and I'd been itching to dip my toe into another MMO for a while (just to shake the itch), and I already said it was free. Get off my back man. Beside the fact that you start the game in the future of the actual setting before being sent back in time to stop the apocalypse (this was an AMAZING hook to start a game, FYI for you GM's out there), they had me when I heard about the Soul Class system.

Preview #2 for Hopeless One-Shots: The Beast of Brisborough - Welcome to Town!

Last week I first discussed in a little more detail the adventure I've written for Dragon Age. It's my first shot at actually writing something, and I'm excited to say that today is going to be my first time running it and testing the actual structure of the thing. My intent is to write Dragon Age adventures that can be run in one sitting for a one-off story or as a con game. Next week I should have some feedback to post about what it was like running the adventure - where it succeeded and what fell flat - but this week I want to introduce you to one of the most important towns in all of Ferelden. Brisborough is actually quite small, but keep reading to explore what makes this town so vital to the country's economy as the king has called banners and the men muster to fight off the fifth Blight!

Note: if you plan on playing in this game at any point (AHEM - EVERYONE IN MY GROUP), you will likely want to skip reading into this post as this selection is pulled straight from the GM's background on the town.

10 Questions with Skullkickers Scribe and RPG Artist Jim Zub

A recent discovery for yours truly at this year's fantastic c2e2, Skullkickers stole my tiny little gamer heart immediately and has me chomping at the bit for more. You can read my review of the first trade, 1,000 Opas and a Dead Body, I snagged at c2e2 here. I got a chance to talk to Jim Zub, the writer of Skullkickers, for a little bit at c2e2 and my eyes lit up with future prospects of getting to interact with him. If you haven't yet read Skullkickers, I urge you to pick up the first trade (a steal at 10 bucks!), and you may recognize Jim's work in a more familiar media: rpg products like Exalted and 4th Edition D&D. He was gracious enough to take some time to answer my questions about what it's like working with Image Comics and White Wolf and how exactly he so masterfully captures the voice of gamers everywhere in comic form.


The Hopeless Gamer: What inspired you to create Skullkickers?

Jim Zub: Skullkickers is the wondrous bastard child of way too many fantasy novels, movies and games as I grew up mixed with sarcastic banter and cartoon-ish violence. It’s a love letter to fantasy, but with a tongue-in-cheek awareness of how ridiculous some of the classic tropes are.

Although it’s not a comic targeted only at gamers, there is a distinctive sense that Skullkickers should feel like a D&D game that’s going off the rails as the main characters break free of their roles as righteous heroes and start bulldozing through plot, breaking everything in their path.

Preview #1 for Hopeless One-Shots: The Beast of Brisborough - an upcoming adventure for Dragon Age

I've alluded to it several times in the past couple of weeks, but I'm finally proud to announce that the first draft of my fan-made (re: free and not at all a product of Green Ronin) adventure for Dragon Age using the A.G.E. game system was finished up this morning. The adventure as it stands right now sits at 13,881 words and covers 30 pages in the plain, unformatted google doc in which it was written. I imagine the number of pages will quickly shrink as we begin fiddling with columns and the size of stat blocks, but overall, the thing became just a bit heftier than my original concept for it.

Chaosium and Red Wasp Design announce Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land

I am very excited to have received something in my mailbox this week that I don't get a whole lot of: a press release about a game for my phone! I'm not going to bury the lead here, Chaosium's gotten into the portable device gaming scene, and it couldn't sound cooler.

All we really have at this point is the nice graphic to the right here that drips with atmosphere and forboding gaming fun. Other than that, we got a nice little blurb about what we may expect for this first foray in the mobile mythos:

"An agreement between Call of Cthulhu impresarios, Chaosium and new development studio Red Wasp Design will see the award winning role-playing game (RPG), Call of Cthulhu, coming to a mobile platform near you.  The first title, 'Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land' is set in the midst of World War One and pits a team of investigators and soldiers against an ancient enemy, older than humanity itself.  This eldritch enemy is using the carnage of the great war to build an undead army amidst the battlefields of Europe. The game will be a 3D turn-based strategy/role playing game and will initially launch on iPhone and Android with more platforms to follow.  As the game is still in development, release dates and price points are to be announced after the summer."

There's really no better setting for Cthulhu than World War One, and if the poster is any indication of the art direction, I don't think I'll have a better opportunity to actually be afraid of my phone than when I'm playing this game. I think the most interesting part of the announcement is the format of the game. "3D" implies that we'll be getting a relatively graphics-intense game, but it's the "turn-based strategy/role playing game" part that really has me excited. To be honest, I'm not even sure how something like that would play, but I'm excited to see what we're going to actually be playing as - a lone hero or a squad of doomed doughboys? We'll be following The Wasted Land's development closely, so make sure to check back to see what other horrific news we have to share!

Setting Riff: Bushido of the High Seas

I picked up the first hardcover collection of the Okko comic at c2e2 directly from Archaia Comics' booth on the cheap and just finally got a chance to read it. I've got mixed feelings on the story overall, but there's no denying that the art and coloring (two separate jobs in the world of comics) are gorgeous and down-right inspiring. Given the name of the first collection (The Cycle of Water), the first collection tells the story of how the group of characters get together and focuses on the adventures they have in pursuit of their quest across various islands and seas.

This got me thinking that, well there are several good samurai settings out there (Okko being one, but of course the granddaddy of them all is Legend of the Five Rings) to game in, I wanted to dream up a setting that focused exclusively on the concept of naval warfare in the world of the Samurai.

A Survey of Monster Blocks Part 1 - Less is More

Most of us who blog or read blogs about role-playing games either GM a lot or would like to GM more. I've had some time off recently from GM'ing Dragon Age while Keegan works on his next project which will be the center piece for the adventure, so it's given me a lot of time to think about GM'ing as a whole. Today I began thinking about some of my favorite games to run and other games in regard to the way they stat out their monster blocks.

Review: Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser from Dark Horse Comics

One of the many trade paperback comic gems I picked up at c2e2 was the collection of a short-run miniseries from 1991 written by Howard Chaykin and drawn by Hellboy's Mike Mignola. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser star in a series of fantasy stories written originally Fritz Leiber and are true classics among the old school fantasy crowd. Much more Conan than Lord of the Rings, the stories involve the adventures of our two heroes gallivanting around the world of Newhon with many of their stories (especially the stories of the trade collection here) taking place in or around the huge metropolitan city of Lankhmar.

I'll be honest and admit up front that my experience and knowledge with the series was pretty much non-existent before picking up the trade. I had heard just murmurs here and there online about the Leiber's heroes and how they are required reading for any real fantasy fans, but considering I tend to lean much more toward Lord of the Rings than Conan in my fantasy adventure interests (basically high fantasy versus chaotic, barbaric fantasy), I'm really not that well-read when it comes to some of this stuff.

A Test of Character - Tom Turner (For Call of Cthulhu)

It's been awhile since I've done a Test of Character article 'round these here parts, but I've finally again created a character that's hooked me. Inspiration has struck, and my character for Chuck's 1920's Call of Cthulhu campaign which we started just last Friday has got me excited to play in his campaign.

We've played 1920's Cthulhu before, but only in one shots, so when Chuck pitched the idea of a campaign of his own design that would take our charaters clear across the world, he had me right away. Of course it didn't hurt that he was going to pump our characters up a little bit to be able to survive even the most rudimentary encounters with a random mi-go or darkspawn.