The characters in Scion are the long-lost, illegitimate, half-human children of the gods of old, the pantheons, the Norse, Greek, Egyptian, Japanese, Aztec and Voodoo pantheons respectively (though I’m not sure Voodoo deserves to be in such company really). There’s the possibility to play scions of other gods and pantheons as well, but these aren’t detailed in this book.

The Scions are contacted, equipped and gifted by their errant parents and put to work to defend humanity from the machinations and monsters impinging on this world at the behest of the Titans. To help them with this they get magical powers, magical items or companions and other gifts from their parents. Superpowered individuals rampaging about the modern world as demigods, fighting monsters and ancient gods (of the wrong sort).

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

Brainwashed is a d20 Modern, horror adventure by 12 to Midnight, written by the impressively named Preston P. DuBose and illustrated by Nicole Cardiff (cover) and Steve Bentley (interior). It follows the misadventures of a group of investigators as they probe the mysterious and sudden popularity of the Harmony Farm commune/cult and get to the bottom of a strange and otherworldly secret. The blurb professes an ambition for a Lovecraftian feel to the game, good to aim high, and it references 12 to Midnight’s horror supplemental rules effort Fear Effects, which – unfortunately – I haven’t read, so I can’t comment on the adventure in that respect. I also now, ahead of time and with full understanding of my own hypocrisy here, having written published adventures before, admit that I just generally don’t like pre-written adventures as they don’t suit my free-wheeling style of GMing.

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

We’ve been waiting a really, really, really long time for a Warhammer 40,000 RPG. I remember buying Rogue Trader – and still have it somewhere in a folder, it having fallen apart with use – and the promise in that was of a full-on Warhammer 40,000 RPG arriving at some point in the near future. That was 1987, it is now 2008 and, finally we get our Warhammer 40,000 RPG. It has a lot to live up Dark Heresy, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay was pretty much a masterpiece and gave D&D a run for its money in UK popularity, the wargames have ensnared generations of kids in their clutches and the 2nd Edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, despite being a supplement treadmill and despite getting zero support from Games Workshop, was a success as well. Then, just as Dark Heresy does come out, and sells out pretty much immediately, we learn that GW/Black Industries are dropping ALL their roleplay etc lines, triumph and tragedy in one fell swoop.

Review by James ‘Grim’ Desborough

Dread is a violent horror game from Neoplastic Press about hunting demons and it is presented in a chaotic punk wave throughout the book. This review is of the revised and updated edition of the game. The revised edition cleans up some of the rules, expands the magic and adds a few new demons for the characters to deal with.

Changeling: the Lost is a very different game than Changeling: the Dreaming. Some of the terminology may be similar but each book explores fairy tales in a different way and offer up very different types of games. Some fans will want to compare the two games, others will look at Lost as something new and original. I’m a fan of both games. Changeling: the Lost is an amazing book, full of great writing and tons of story elements.

Borrowing snippets from the back cover of the book, Blood Games II is an occult-horror role-playing game about courage, self-sacrifice and desperate heroism with no hope of reward. I think of it along the lines of “John Constantine meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. There are a lot of great ideas in the book and there is an underlying sinister tone that helps separate this game of occult horror from lighter traditional urban fantasy.

A Modern Fantasy game written by Stewart Wilson.

The simple version of the game’s premise is this: there is a magical world existing alongside our own. The Unaware cannot fully comprehend everything and so the magical realities of life are concealed from them.

While its another dicepool system the roll-and-keep and the exploding dice seem to focus people’s attention on the game pretty well and make rolling the dice unpredictable enough to be exciting. Combine this with ‘raises’ (extra risk for extra effect) and the mechanics fairly naturally lend themselves to skilled characters using a bit of flair and expertise rather than simply hacking away.

Basically, what the game world is, is part of a lower, demonic plane of existence, beneath the other spiritual and other worlds, a place of demons and death and devilry and Tim Burtonesque twisted landscapes where the various demonic races and beasts vie with each other for power and control. A theme which has been explored more than just a little in many other products for many other game lines.

I should probably note before I commence that I am not much of a fan of the original Ravenloft, or of the world as a whole. Of the alternative game settings offered in the last gasps of TSR Ravenloft is much weaker – in my opinion – than Dark Sun or Planescape. To me it just all seemed a little too cheesy, a little too Bela Lugosi and we all know how unscary the old 40s and 50s horror films seem these days. Some of that ‘cheese’ always seemed to taint my encounters with Ravenloft from fortune telling gypsies to vampire lords and, so, I’ve never been that enamoured of it. I know people love it though, so I’ll try to rate this d20 remake gazetteer based on its individual content rather than the world it describes.

Aletheia is an extremely difficult book to write a review for because, while it is an RPG, it is one with an extremely defined, extremely tight, extremely focussed setting which amounts to a campaign idea with its own rules, rather than as an RPG as such. Given that so much of the book is devoted to the reality behind the secrets of the setting it is nigh impossible to give a full review and assessment of the game since that would give away too much and spoil it for those that do buy it.

Review by James Desborough

Orbit is an older game, 2003, but we picked up a copy on the bring-and-buy table at Gencon UK so I thought I might as well review it. Some shops seem to still have copies for sale and you can, apparently, still get copies from the creator.

What the game is, or at least what it tries to be, is a sort of ‘Heavy Metal’ (the film) in game form, intermingled with some psychobilly retro-fifties styling. The book is soft back, reasonably well printed and weighs in at 258 pages all told. I had high expectations for this game as I sensed a kindred spirit to ’45: Psychobilly Retropocalypse but these expectations weren’t particularly fulfilled.

Colonial Gothic is a game of occult mystery and darkness set during the American Revolution, I shall try to contain myself from dispelling too many myths about that time or the nature of the revolt, or what the British actually did/were doing and why but even without that making my forehead vein throb this seems, to me, to be a peculiar time period to place such a game in, when there are more pressing matters for both the British forces and the rebels.

Cadwallon sells itself as a ‘tactical role playing game’ and it sits, uncomfortably and mystifyingly, somewhere between D&D and one of Games Workshop’s skirmish games like Mordheim or Necromunda. It never quite explains what tactical roleplaying is exactly and it comes across in the reading as either a dumbed down D&D where the board becomes necessary or a brightened up skirmish game where you actually roleplay. It is stuck between dimensions, neither one thing nor the other but given the D&D miniatures and the popularity of Clix this new middle ground seems to have become a fighting area for many of the companies so there must be something in it.

Qin is to China’s mythological history what Legend of the Five Rings is to Japan’s. While there are superficial and stylistic similarities between the two games and they share the same broad appeal the similarities in no way mean they’re the same any more than the broad similarities between Japan and China themselves mean they’re in any way the same country.

Qin takes a more historical approach – though don’t worry, there are monsters and magic – and has a much more egalitarian and open society structure (considering the source material) than Legend of the Five Rings. Being a peasant or bandit is a much more viable option in Qin and while the social order is divinely mandated and enforced – particularly for women – the period of the setting is chaotic enough and in enough upheaval that this is no longer an issue.

From first edition Vampire through to about a year or so before the end of the Old World of Darkness line I was a bit of a White Wolf fanboy. Not a drooling fanboy, they still did things that annoyed me, but by and large I agreed with their design philosophy and found that their games appealed to my style of play and the sort of games I wanted to run. With their cackhanded interference in their LARP society (not that it could have made things much worse than they already were) and their wrap up of the oWOD I fell out of love with them for the most part and aside from the occasional bit of curiosity I haven’t really followed their games.

Except for Exalted.

Colonial Gothic Primer is a free PDF download that acts as an introduction to Rogue Games’ Colonial Gothic role playing game (RPG). It combines eighteenth century North America with a dark, secret history full of ghosts and ghouls and vile cultists. Players take on the role of colonial era individuals who are introduced to the secret history via becoming confronted with the supernatural. I imagine that the most common approach would be that of a Call of Cthulhu game with one difference, which is that the rules describe a cinematic style of play, with characters leaping from table top to table top exchanging wild blows, swinging from the chandeliers and probably employing fancy Mongolian style horse riding techniques. There is, in other words, a danger that game sessions may degenerate into knockabout comedy and the supernatural elements will turn into Scooby Doo type monsters. Players and GM will need to establish what kind of style they wish to use and how strictly they will stick to that.

I write for Victoriana, though I didn’t work on the corebook, just so you know. Though I think I’ve established myself as a fair reviewer of products by now. In fact I’m writing this review when I really should be trying to get back on with some writing for Victoriana. Bad monkey, no biscuit. Anyway… Victoriana is a steampunkish, fantasyish, politically aware RPG of an alternative Victorian setting, the height of the British Empire, seemingly limitless technology, mediums, necromancers, strict class boundaries and – most importantly of all – top hats.

Review by James “Grim” Desborough

Having been a fan of the Cthulhu Mythos and Live Action games for years, I was thrilled when I came across a book that merged the two. I first discovered Cthulhu Live years ago in its 2nd Edition format and had a blast running the game, creating characters and designing plot hooks for players. I had a lot of fun with the game and was really excited when I heard there was a 3rd Edition in the works.

I was one of the lucky few, thanks to the sharp attention of the wife and her amazing persuasive abilities, to pick up an early release volume of The Savage World of Solomon Kane by Pinnacle Entertainment. Like a great many other game designers I am afflicted with a great love of the pulps and related ‘trash’ forms of fiction such as B-movies, exploitation cinema and so forth. Alas for us game designers the appeal that these genres have for us don’t often translate into good sales or successful games, with the notable exceptions of Mongoose’s Conan and, perhaps, Spirit of the Century (which has plenty of industry kudos but I’m not so certain on their sales).