One sentence reviews - 2015/3

So, some time has passed since I last posted... there should be no month without a post. So before July ends, I'll have some more one sentence reviews for you.

Gaming/Books

• Adventurers - The Dungeon and The Dawn of Tomorrow by GRAmel - not quite as good as expected but for the low price you get some nice add-ons for this lite game.
• Blood of Pangea +Olde House Rules - whoa - so simple and probably a bit flawed (I have yet to playtest it) but a hell of a read and with a small but growing community at G+ - go buy this game.
• Infernal Realms by +Olde House Rules - I love this game the more I read - future releases are a no-brainer.
• Mead & Mayhem by +Thaumiel Nerub - basically a random table for your average bar brawl - one I'll def. use at my next classic-fantasy game, though!
• Dragon Union by +Thaumiel Nerub - really nice collection of house rules for your average OSR-game; superb cover-art!
• Vacant Ritual Assembly Issue #3 by +Clint Krause - one of the best available of gaming fanzines right now!
• Zogonia - Slice of Death, provided by the ever friendly +Thaumiel Nerub - oh, how I love Zogonia - sadly I did already know many of the comics from my long-time Dragon Magazine-consume.

Movies

• Among the Living - interesting and entertaining mix of Stand by My and your average weirdo-slasher Flick - the most "meh" of the french "Terrorkino" so far.
• Deadgirl and Savaged were reviewed already - one good and one, ehm, bad.
• I stopped viewing Hidden in the Woods when I noticed I was looking the badly censored german version - which took around 9 minutes.
• Insidious and Insidious: Chapter 2 - nice "edge-of-your-seat" re-interpretation of the Poltergeist-genre, the second one was a bit underwhelming, though.
• Let Sleeping Corpses Lie - very 70s zombie movie with your standard eco-explanation of the zombie-plague; nice gore.
• Masks - surprisingly effective low-budget (?) italian/german horror-flic in the tradition of Dario Argento/italian Giallo.
• Suspiria - my first Argento - wowzers - colors, music, acting - everything over the top... I was quite entertained.
• Tenebre - my second Argento - more of a standard Thriller, an entertaining one, nonetheless.
• The Abandoned - sometimes things are not enhanced by repitition - this film is uninspired and lame.
• The Conjuring - I should have watched this before watching Insidious 1&2 - this is actually the same thing, only better.
• The Serpent and the Rainbow - A vodoo-classic with a total unecessary over-the-top ending and a very inconveniently positioned nail - well, two actually.

Music

• Brain Drill: Quantum Catastrophe - now we're talking - a bit too fiddly and the drums are more fast then overly complicated but hey - this is solid technical extreme music.
• Job for a Cowboy: Demonocracy - if I only were 15 again - I would have loved this band and album - right now I'm a bit bored.
• Whitechapel: Our Endless War - same thing as with JfaC - I like it but I don't love it.

Week of Gore - Deadgirl

I've been busy lately, so I had no time to work up my week of horror movies.

After a really disappointing start things got better fast...

Deadgirl
Wow, this sounds disgusting! One part Nekromantik, one part The Stink of Flesh, one part "teenage drama/comedy" - let me tell you, the sum is better than the parts of it.

Two friends skip school, get drunk, go on a demolition spree in a near-by abandoned asylum, find a beautiful dead girl in the basement... which turns out to be not so dead at all. One of them is quite fascinated but more of a voyeur, the other one is quite "active" in his fascination and uses the zombie-girl for his own carnal desires. It doesn't take long and things go south...

Let me get this clear: This movie is not a new instant horror-classic. It is not the best in gory effects or splatter. It is not the socially critical movie it could be. It is just a deviant idea presented cineastically appealing. The main cast is solid/good, the make-up is good, the story is simple but interesting enough. The characters are mostly believable (aside from Eric Podner/Wheeler, which is just a bit too whiny and dumb) - they are your average over-sexed, stoned, lewd and scrupulous (male) teenagers; of course, Deadgirl takes this cliché ad absurdum  - it is a horror movie, after all. The end is a bit meh and there are moments you really, really now what's going to happen, but that didn't lessen my fun.

I'll give this movie a 6/10. If you like horror movies or zombie movies in particular and are not totally disgusted by the gist of the film go watch it!

F

I DMed DCC on saturday!

Well, my wife and son are on vacation, so it's time for action! Not only I declare the next days as "Week of Gore" (as I bought a bunch of uncut horror flicks which I'm going to watch the next five days), I had loads of fun DMing a one-shot for my good old friends!

I chose The One Who Watches from Below after reading a good review from +Bryce Lynch. It IS indeed a good adventure. A bit too long for a one-shot, so we cut it off at the end. There were problems (mostly caused by my very analytic players, who would've liked more logical explanations for various gonzo-elements - which there are a lot of in this adventure) but there were minor.

The thing is - it didn't matter how the adventure was. DCC is one of those systems where one only needs to sit and wait for coolness to happen. It started when characters were rolled (we started with a modified funnel - two 0 and two 1st level characters). We used Alternate Occupations. My good old rpg-friend +Christian Lonsing rolled a dwarfen outcast (with a bottle of elven wine), an elven herbalist, an elven vintner, and a dwarfen brewer... Team Alcohol! The others' teams were less distinctive but cool nonetheless. Only non-combat spells were rolled for the elves and wizards (like Detect Magic or Comprehend Language) which all proved useful during various stages of the adventure. Not a single character died (perhaps I did something wrong) - there would've probably some deaths at the end but we cut off at 3/4th of the adventure.

Despite the tons of tables (fumble, crit, spells, spell failure, deity disapproval to name a few) combat and rules-heavy situations went fast - and we only had one rule book (+ some spells copied by a fried).

DCC stays one of the best incarnations of the OSR and I hope I'll be able to play it again soon.

F

Week of Gore - Savaged

So. Wife and kid on vacation. I'm alone at home and tons of movies are waiting to be looked...

Savaged
This sounded interesting... it is advertised as "The Crow" meets "I Spit on Your Grave". No, I'm not into rape and revenge movies, actually I think they are most often dumb; but if there are twists, I'll have a look and decide again.

What do we have? A deaf girl gets kidnapped by sadist-racist morons which brutalize her for days. Then they kill her and dispose her body. So far so disgusting.
But then she is - surprise - found by a native american shaman. He tries to get her back to life with some yadda-yadda around a campfire but things go south - not only her soul but also the soul of a long dead native-american warrior uses the oppurtunity and uses her body as co-driver. So far... so dumb. Then starts the killing-spree. More or less uninspired gut-ripping, throat-slitthing, arrow-shooting. Nothing spectacular, if you're not totally squeamish. Ah, yes, while she finishes the bastards off, she slowly rots (why did the shaman want to bring her back to life when she returns as a zombie? No one knows.)

This could still be good... script, actors, screenplay, effects. But it isn't. The dialogues are more or less stupid, the actors (safe for some scenes) act clunky, the screenplay is mediocre, at best. The effects are bad. The whole movie has some kind of "300" or "Sin City"-filter which seems displaced. The gore-scenes are sometimes unbelievable, sometimes OK, nothing mind-shattering.

Conclusion: Watch it if you have a lot of spare time, spare money, like Amanda Adrienne and are a big fan of occult r&r-movies. Otherwise: Hands-off, I'll give this film a 2/10.

F

One sentence reviews - 2015/2

So, time for more one-sentence-stuff...

Gaming Products

• Black Box Books Tome 1-5 (by +Kirt Dankmyer) - I love, love, love the pocket-mod-format; the content is of various usefulness, the price of <1€ (wedding sale) made it a no-brainer.
• Empire of Dust (by +Clint Krause and Amy Garcia) - a sandbox-y science fiction rpg which I can't really grasp but tickles my fancy nonetheless.
• WhiteBox Omnibus (by +James Spahn) - really good vanilla fantasy add-ons for my favorite retroclone.
• Wonder & Wickedness (by +Brendan S) - wowzers, so simple, so cool - this is a must-buy for any fan of magic systems and variants for your favorite old-school rpg.

Books

• Pages of Pain by Troy Denning - for me one of the best planescape-stories out there, lots of cool characters, a bit on the slow-side, though.
• Verheißung by Jussi-Adler Olsen - solid detective-story, not his best, for fans a must, though.

Movies/Series

• Across the River - advertised as the italian Evil Dead; this should've made me suspicious; better look some other ghost/horror-flick.
• Camp Evil - meh, takes itself way to serious... stick with your favorite slasher movies.
• Deliver Us from Evil - meh, the beginning was so cooool, ends totally lame; skip the last 20-30 minutes.
• Game of Thrones Season Four - what can I say - it's the tv-fantasy gold-standard.
• Halt and Catch Fire - great series, very calm, geeky, and: No zombies.
• Ironman 3 - perhaps I'm the only one, but think #1 is the best; nice effects, though.
• Outlander Season One 2/10 - crap.
• The Punisher and Punisher: Warzone - Punisher One was a waste of time, Warzone was actually really entertaining!
• The Purge and Purge: Anarchy - I had fun, popcorn-wise.
• Walking Dead Season Five 12-16/16 - they should reduce to 10 episodes/season... seemed a bit stretched in the end.

Other

• Platinum Pen Carbon - cheap and really handy ink pen, very similar to the rOtring ArtPen; the ink doesn't smear, though, which is a big plus.

Phew, many movies/series this time... too much radiology-books, so I needed distraction.

The year of getting shit done... turned up to eleven!

Elder Ones, Gods & Co as Detachment

When I first converted Cthulhu from DnDs Carcosa to Into the Odd some days ago, I got many comments from Into the Odd-enthusiasts, including Chris McDowell himself. The basic reception was quite kind. One thing stood out, though - the idea to represent big (as in BIG) monsters by using mass battle rules (which are in development). Chris has released his recent draft on mass battles on his blog.

So, let's take up the idea. Here's where we left last time:

Odd CTHULHU v2
STR 20, DEX 10, WIL 18. 30hp, Armour 3, Tentacles and Maws (1d20).
Sleeps and sits and waits and sleeps, waiting for the right constellation of stars...
CTHULHU uses the Old One template.*
The sight of CTHULHU kills characters on a failed WIL save.
CTHULHU regenerates 2 hp/round until reduced to 0 STR.
CTHULHU can summon 1d100 Deep Ones.

The "Old One" template reads:

• Attacks of Old Ones are never impaired
• Critical hits from Old Ones kill instantly
• Mundane physical attacks against Old Ones are always impaired
• Old Ones may use every psionic power at will.

Ok. Now let's have a look at detachments (copy pasted from the link above):

• Individual attacks cannot harm detachments unless they're something big like a cannon, bomb, or giant creature.
• Detachment attacks are Enhanced against individuals, causing d12 damage regardless of weapon. 
• When they would take Critical Damage, a Detachment is Broken and useless until rallied. 

And, with individuals among the detachment:

• The character is also protected from enemy attacks, other than individual challenges, while the detachment is protecting them. 

or

• The detachment and leader both make an attack roll as normal, but only the highest roll is taken. The attack is treated as coming from the detachment, even if it was the leader's roll. If the attack is against an Individual, only the Detachment's roll is Enhanced. 
• Until their next turn, the leader is subject to all attacks that target the detachment, with both leader and detachment taking damage. Remember here that Detachment attacks against individuals are Enhanced.

Pfff... ok. Some things could work (paraphrased):

• CTHULHU cannot be harmed by normal attacks

Well... that's about it. What will work, though: CTHULHU can summon a detachement of Deep Ones. Yup. And, even better: CTHULHU could be the individual leader of the Deep One detachement!

Ok, let's have a look at Deep Ones...

• STR 18 (yay, a stat mentioned in Carcosa!)
• 1+1 HD
• AC 16
• Move (blahblah)
• Chaotic alignement (surprise again)

In Into the Odd, this would be (for example):

• STR 18, DEX 10, WIL 10
• 1 or 2hp, depending how you read the conversion rules (though I think this would be a tad too low, 5hp sounds better)
• armour 1
• Damage by weapon (say d6)

As a detachment the damage would be amped to a whooping d12, damage would be ignored (except for "special attacks"). The "broken on critical damage" rule could be ignored, as long as CTHULHU leads them. This version would definitively be hassle-free to dm - at least compared to handle 1d100 Deep Ones individually.

Thoughts? Comments?

F