Category Archives: Reviews

Sailor at the Starless Pond

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03_15_2014_1197Summer started a bit early this year. Granted that we haven’t actually seen a typical winter. But still. I say this because summer is the mandatory time to go to a cabin for a weekend of gaming.

Last weekend we drove to Kuru for the first session of Dungeon Crawl Classics DMed by our guild member and fellow admin Sami Villa. What follows is my game session debriefi as well as a review of the game from a player’s perspective.

As always we started with the creation of characters. In Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC from now on) each player starts with a handful of 0-level characters (we started with three) created at random.

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Thief (2014) Review

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I’m totally the wrong person to review PC games, because I don’t play a lot of them. I have, however, played through the previous Thiefs multiple times and on all difficulties, so I from that angle, I am the right person to review this.

This is based on one playthrough on the lowest difficulty level. I finished all the chapters, played a couple of them twice (because of reasons I’ll get to later) and finished all the sidequests. I have 21 achievements out of 37, but these include finishing the chapters.

Also, I was more than a bit under the weather when doing this, so that might have an impact.

Also, spoilers. Nothing major, and I’m not giving away anything gameplaywise, but still, some minor story spoilers.

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Getting Technical

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What? It is almost three weeks since I wrote about getting back to painting. I have been meaning to write a follow-up post since. It seems that I should get cracking on it right now.

In the last miniature painting post I said that I was excited to try out the new technical paints from Games Workshop. And I was right to be as my first impressions from them have been really positive. Once I managed to get them I have found it hard to not to use them.

The paints I did try out. Note that Ryza Rust is NOT a technical paint.

The paints I did try out. Note that Ryza Rust is NOT a technical paint.

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Zombie Dice

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One of my pet peeves with boards games is too much randomness in games which take a long time. With high variance, its possible that I spend most of a long game doing pretty much nothing. This has happened to me in Arkham Horror many, many times, where I feel like I can’t contribute at all after taking an early hit and then spending most of the game half-dead and without equipment. Also, I very much dislike games where an early mishap means I can’t ever catchup.

However, this applies only to long games. In short games, which will be over shortly anyway, this is actually beneficial. Losing early doesn’t mean I’ll be just an onlooker for the rest of the game, which can last for hours. I might have things to do, but if I know I will never catch up, that’s not going to make the game fun for me.

… and then there’s Zombie Dice.

In Zombie Dice, you are a zombie and you are out for brrRRAAAIIINS!! Gladly, these are not the stupidest zombies. They have the ability to somewhat discern the dangers presented by their prey. On the other hand, that doesn’t really stop them that often.

The game is played with thirteen dice, six of which are common prey (green dice), some are pretty dangerous (yellow dice) and some are vey dangerous (red dice). Each dice has brains on some of its sides. This is what you want. You’re goal on each of your turns is to collect as many brains as possible without taking too many hits from shotguns (another one to three sides of the die, depending on the color). The dice also have footprints on them on some sides. Those you reroll.

Zombie dice

By Lauri Maijala

Your turn goes as follows: Take three dice at random and roll them. Move all the brain dice to one side and all the shotgun shots to another side. Then replenish the dice randomly and roll again. You can stop after any roll and get points equal to the number of brains you have. However, if at any time you get three shotgun wounds, you lose all your brains and its the next player’s turn.

So, all in all, a very basic push-your-luck game. However, since this only takes minutes, its great. Basic strategy is pretty simple, but there definitely is decision making. It isn’t just a pure luck game. You need to know when to roll the dice and when to stay where you are.

I like it. Its quick, its fun, it has nice flavor. Not very in-depth, but no need for that in such a short game. It doesn’t take much room, so you can take it pretty much anywhere, although the container is pretty big and awkward compared to the contents, but its also a great tool for the game.

3:16 Carnage Among Stars Review, Of Sorts

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Caveat: I haven’t actually read the game. This is purely based on one session of gameplay and reading discussions on the net.

Spoiler: This game is garbage. It might have some good hidden intentions, as Ville thinks it does, but despite that, its just awfully designed. It might sound fun, but it has huge fundamental flaws, which are apparently only addressed by the designer by telling people to deal with it. So, I’m dealing with it. I’m telling you how much this sucks.

The basic idea is this: You have a squad of soldiers, who are out there in space killing things. You actually compete about killing things. Its very minimalistic, with basically just two attributes, the Fighting Ability FA, and the Non-Fighting Ability NFA:

Lets start from the beginning. Yesterday we played our first session. We were instructed to make our characters. First, only name, reputation and distributing ten points among the two attributes, with maximum of eight in one of them. So, I gave my character the name Pjotor Azarov, had him have the reputation of a coward, gave him 2 in FA and 8 in NFA. I thought, maybe I can be a medic or something.

Then, I was told I’m the sergeant of the squad, because I have the highest NFA. Ok. I can work with that… I thought at the time.

We were given weapons. I got some basic rifle and a sidearm.

Then, I was told my goal was to keep everyone alive and see to it that our squad follows the orders given by our superiors. Except, I need to compete about the kills as well. This isn’t actually my mission, but since the game only feedback is that I get levels by killing more things than others, this is clearly what I need to do. Ville seems to think there’s some hidden genius behind this, which might be true if the rules in general weren’t such a mess.

The first encounter pretty much revealed all the problems with the game. Since I have a very high NFA, I can generally choose how each encounter begins. Since I have my sidearm, which works close range, while others don’t have any weaponry that does pretty much anything at that range, in order to win in the killing contest, I need to bring those fights to close range. All the time.

Obviously, this isn’t very logical. Why would my character do this, if there wasn’t a poorly conceived rule behind it? Instead of trying to do anything valuable, my character needs to shit on other characters time and time again. However, since the system is – again – so poorly conceived, this isn’t actually helping me. Its just giving me false hope.

Since my FA is so low, I can’t actually hit anything. In the meantime, the other characters will have time to get to better positions and then – since they have higher FAs and more efficient weapons – can beat any of my attempts at getting the high kill score. I just don’t stand a chance.

The other encounters we had were basically the same. I took us to close range, they moved into better position. Killing ensued.

If I had known how the system works beforehand, would I have made my character differently. Definitely. However, this has another problem. This would have lead to much more homogenous characters.

Since NFA is basically useless for more than one character, everyone would max out on FA. Of course, then some poor soul would need to take the bullet, so that the squad doesn’t get ambushed every time. That character would then be forced into uselessness. NFA is good for US, while FA is good for ME. In a game where you are in a situation, where you are supposed to compete, this isn’t good. You can’t spread your wealth if everyone else is keeping theirs.

Now, I do have an out. Each player has a strength. You can use this strength to immediately resolve a situation. Then you get to kill all the threats in the encounter. Sounds nice, but since my weaponry is so poor, I can’t get the kills I need even this way, because the other characters can easily get more in a normal encounter. Also, they have strenghts they can use. You get only one in the beginning, and you only get more by levelling, in other words by killing more than others.

So, basically, I’m screwed. I don’t have incentives to play the game the way it says I should. I don’t have the tools to play the game the way it should be played. Every avenue I have is just poor. I basically have the following options:

1. I keep doing the same thing: I bring battles to close range and hope for the best. However, since the other players can get new weapons and become better at using them at close range, this options is quickly closed, if isn’t already. Since I have the poorest FA, anyone can easily best me at close range.

2. I can go for promotions. The thing is, I can’t really control this. You need to expend a strength to get a promotion, but I can’t get strengths by killing, so I have to rely on purely on luck. I don’t have any control over this.

3. I try to get the other characters killed. This doesn’t really work either. Since my FA is so low, I can’t take them on directly, but since I don’t have any other venues to do this, that’s my only chance.

Basically, I’m screwed. I don’t have any room to maneuver and I don’t have any tools to work with. I did some reading on the subject, and as others had come seen the same problems, they had apparently come to these conclusions:

1. The game is supposed to be played as a team, where people just let everyone level. Well, the system doesn’t support this in any way. It only encourages the competition, so if this is what we are supposed to do, why would we be playing this game?

2. The game is fundamentally PvP. Okay, seems about right. However, again, I don’t have the tools to do this, since I apparently can’t use my higher rank to mess with them and I can’t attack them directly due to my low combat capabilities.

Its a poorly conceived board game in the guise of a RPG. My capabilities are pretty much useless to me and if they somehow became useful, that would put the other characters in a very poor position.

Lintu Mustasiipi

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Lintu Mustasiipi – August von Essenin seikkailut is a 103 page graphic novel by Jukka-Petteri Eronen (the artist) & Viljami Vaskonen (the author) released earlier this month.

Full disclosure: They are members of the Guild. Obviously, I’ll try to be objective, but these are people I know, and you should know that. There isn’t an English version, so I don’t really know why I’m writing this in English, but I already began and being as lazy as I am, I’m not going back and changing the language. And no, despite Ville writing about a graphic novel from someone he knows, this isn’t blog isn’t going to turn into an ad for our friends. I’m writing this partly as a favor for friends (although they didn’t ask), but also as a public service. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think there would be someone out there, who might benefit from knowing about this book.

But onto the subject.

Our hero is a German fighter pilot from WWI, who is fed up with how things are. His attitudes are tolerated, even though he is very open about them, due to his skills and probably just due to the lack of pilots overall. He uses a new, overly enthuastic pilot to fake his own death and escape east where he lives a nomadic life of adventure. There he involved in local matters first forcibly and then voluntarily, as his help is needed.

Sounds more romantic then how its actually depicted, but there is definitely a sense of romanticism, but more about the simple life than the adventure. There’s also a certain amount realism, but not too much.

Now, first, if you are want a lot of dog fights, this is not for you. There’s one in the beginning and after that von Essen’s skills are just a device to get him into certain situations. Mostly he’s on foot.

If you want historical adventure in this era, why not? It features political turmoil in Germany, as well as the short-lived Transcaucasian Republic. It seems to be mostly about defying the powerful and the status quo. Our hero, August von Essen seems to have a morality of his own in a world, where class defines a person. He has left behind his noble roots in favor of roaming the world with other drifters, but doesn’t hold anyones status against them.

Why shouldn’t you get this book?

If you are looking just for airwar fiction, this is not for you. The mystery advertised by the publisher isn’t really a draw either. The sideplot happening back in Germany seems superfluous (although an inside source – Viljami – says they are planning a sequel, so this might be important in the future). Being cheap, I wouldn’t pay the asking price, if it wasn’t by a friend. There are some plot twists which seem unmotivated and abrupt. Minor problems with the lettering: The German double s letter (ß) looks distractingly like a ‘B’. This last one probably shouldn’t influence your decision very much, though.

Why you should get this book?

First, its a good alternative to mainstream comics. It has a very distinguishable art style, which works well with the story. The story moves in a brisk pace and takes you places you don’t normally see in fiction, despite being quite interesting. If you’re a fan of historical fiction, it seems pretty well researched and doesn’t seem to take liberties. The action is interesting and keeps moving. The main character seems real, as well, as he isn’t a superhuman, but has to rely on intellect and friends. The print run is small (not that I know big these usually are), so you should get one before its gone.

Overall, I fall on the plus-side, although – as I said – I’m cheap and I’d wait for it to go down in price, but than again, the print run is quite small, so it might not be available at a lowered price at any point, unless its a hit, but I wouldn’t count on that due to probable lack of publicity. Hobbyists will probably be aware of it, but I doubt too many people outside of those circles will find it.

Lintu Mustasiipi on Arktinen Banaani.

Comic book review: Perkeros

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In May 1967, Jimi Hendrix held a concert in Helsinki. It only lasted for half an hour, but it made a lasting impression on the Finnish music scene – so much so that a lot of folks who weren’t there claim to have been. Hasse Walli, a renowned Finnish guitarist, later said that the budding guitarists who actually attended the concert divided into two camps: those who quit instantly, and those who began training furiously to be as good as Hendrix was.

Now, I’m no comic book artist, but I’d say that JP Ahonen’s art in Perkeros is the graphic equivalent of Jimi Hendrix. It’s only in Finnish for now, but I’m hoping that someone translates it soon to other languages – thus this blog post, so I can do my part.

Perkeros, which saw the light of day just recently, is a comic book by JP Ahonen and KP Alare; Ahonen is the illustrator but they’ve both written it. It’s about a guy called Akseli, who has his own avant-garde heavy metal band, whose other members are a regular-lish girl playing the keyboards, an old hippie guy on the bass and a real, live, honest-to-Black-Sabbath bear pounding the drums like nobody’s business. The comic book mostly follows Akseli in his efforts to make the band a success, to make sense out of his relationship and of his life altogether. There are also some occult elements afoot, although the general tone of the book is very light-hearted.

The story is good. It might even be great: I dug the characters, the dialogue, the music references, the occult elements, the whole shebang. But it’s kind of hard to talk about it because, as I said before, visually the comic book is fucking Jimi Hendrix. You can take a look at the previews here and here, but the samples really don’t convey how beautifully it all flows from page to page. It might even be really superfluous to separate the visuals and the story, because they support and riff off of each other.

The visuals aren’t there (only) to brag, but they’re carefully constructed to follow and emphasise the story. The story is mostly presented in the traditional square-panel form, but Ahonen really knows when to break it. The best examples are the concert scenes where the graphics and colours go six kinds of nuts, and it really feels like someone pulls off an amazing solo that takes you someplace else. Only you’re not hearing it, you’re seeing it on the pages of a comic book. The comic is not only about the story and the characters, but the power of music, and it’s really stupefying how it’s possible to convey the power of music in a silent medium.

Visually Perkeros reminds me of lots of masters of comic books. Bill Watterson for the wild page layouts; Don Rosa and Uderzo for the love of background details; Dave Gibbons for the layouts and the mastery of geometry; and the sucky band at the beginning feels very much like when Stinky got his own band Peter Bagge’s work. But it’s still distinctively Ahonen’s own style, and he is equally at home with rigid geometrical compositions as with zany cartoony slapstick.

It also feels like Ahonen very much knows what Scott McCloud is talking about the art form in Understanding Comics (to be fair, it’s been too long since I read it); but he is far beyond theory and Perkeros feels nothing like a master’s thesis whose purpose is to show what the author is capable of. Ahonen knows his art form, and what it can convey, and how it can support the story and the themes visually. The drawings and the colours aren’t simply illustrations for the story – they’re an integral part of the work of art. They express something the words alone can’t.

I know this isn’t much of a critique, more like a rave review whose purpose is to promote the comic, bring Ahonen & Alare money, and make it available in other languages. I’ll save more critical observations for subsequent readings and more erudite critics. I’m not entirely sure that all of the occult elements towards the end were thematically necessary, but they make for some killer art. I’ll have to see about their place in the whole when I read it again.

(Full disclosure: I know the artist, not very closely, tough, but I’m not trying to get into his pants. I expected good stuff, but the reason I’m writing a rave review is because Perkeros exceeded my expectations in every way.)

Playing a Cybernetic Space Gorilla Scientist

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Last Wednesday a random group of players from our forum gathered to try out the new version of FATE. We knew it was going to be a tryout session and hoped it was going to be fun.

FATE01

As a player I am not that much into rules-heavy games (and as GM even less). So what I had heard from FATE was actually quite promising. A simple system that allowed the players to contribute to the story and events of the game by creating defining terms.

I read through the first half of the rules (for a “rules light game” it has quite a number of pages) and got quite a good grasp of them. The GM had done the same so luckily we had the combined forces of two players who had almost read the entire rules.

Our GM had prepared an adventure and characters for us beforehand. The basis for the adventure was “Forbidden planet” type of space slipstream. I got to play a gorilla scientist enhanced with cybernetic implants. And damn it was fun.

As MustaJumala said in his earlier post I too like oneshot because the offer you a chance to get crazy. My Aspects (the defining phrases that are the core of your character) were easy to play. Krakatou was deeply concerned about his appearance as an intelligent being while on the other hand he still had his animal side. So I made sure we had a proper tea time after going all [scryfall]Gorilla Berserk[/scryfall] against a hideous space monster.

Our group consisted of the crew of Attila’s Court – a spaceship owned by MustaJumala’s character Captain Attila Moon. In addition to our characters there was a fungi that was living inside a dead crew member and the first mate who was actually a killing machine robot. Your basic crew all in all.

We followed the notorious space terrorist Gorgon (“GORGON!”) to a forbidden planet in hopes of rescuing the princess he had taken captive. Naturally we crashed and had to walk through all kinds of perils to reach the ancient temple of the artificial intelligence that was the reason this planet was off-limits. We fought snailmen and a lovecraftian horror and competed for the affections of the fungi infested colleague.

Just at the brink of epic showdown we got derailed into “conversation” about gaming mechanics.

I’m first to admit that it was mainly my fault. The challenges we had faced had been so demanding and the Fate points we had gained so few that we argued for awhile of what should my character do to get some points. It almost ended up destroying the game but luckily we got it under control. GM gave us some fate points just to keep the game going and to see how much difference they did (this was a try-out session after all).

As my gorilla had an aspect telling me that I had “saving the entire crew almost cost me my life” (or something along those lines) I ended up in a mortal combat with the A.I. Entering the matrix of the planet I wrestled it long enough for my friends to escape the perilous planet.

And just as they exited the atmosphere and thought they were safe a door opened behind them. “Captain Attila MOON!” cried out the space terrorist Gorgon.

Even if we do not get back to these characters it was a marvellous adventure topped with an excellent ending.

Though hopefully next time we are more experienced with the rules…