Hobby Games The 100 Best

Hobby Games The 100 Best is Green Ronin Publishing’s anthology of short essays that brings together many top names in the gaming hobby/industry to talk about games. They include designers and publishers of card games, CCGs, computer games, board games, miniatures rules, RPGs, and war games, as well fantasy authors and a cartoonist. Each writes about what he (there is only 1 female contributor) thinks is one of the best hobby games from the last 50 fifty years, from the types listed above, each entry being just 2 or 3 pages long. Although computer game designers contribute, no computer game is included. More board games are discussed than anything else, the earliest title being Avalon Hill’s Gettysburg from 1958, the latest being (excluding later editions) GMT’s Here I Stand and Rio Grande’s Thurn and Taxis (a Spiel des Jahres award winner), both from 2006. Later editions excluded, the earliest RPG discussed is of course, Dungeons & Dragons from 1974, the most recent being the self-published My Life With Master from 2003. It is also the only “indie” RPG to make the list.

The choice is fascinating. Discovering that Alan R. Moon likes the dungeon game Descent, that Jordan Weisman chooses Magic: The Gathering, and Squad Leader was Ray Winnegar’s choice is surprising. That Steve Kenson chooses Marvel Superheroes, and Larry Harris chooses Diplomacy is less so. Easily dipped into, Hobby Games The 100 Best provides a wonderful introduction to, history and overview of our hobby. Perfect on any gamer’s shelf.

Sundered Skies

Sundered Skies is a complete setting and Plot Point campaign from Triple Ace Games for Savage Worlds. Like other Savage World settings, it presents an enclosed environment, here a series of islands that float in a constantly brilliant sky without night. Too much exposure to this constant light causes Glowmadness and will eventually send people into bestial rages. The highest isles have ice mines, and provide water for the very hot lowest ones. Other islands consist of seams of ore, deep forests, shattered islands, and tethered skyships. Travel between the very different islands is done by oar, steam, or wind driven skyships, navigation requiring a handful of soil from the destination island. Peace between the islands is kept by the Trade Council which ensures each island receives the necessary imports.

Besides the traditional fantasy RPG races of Dwarves, Humans, Orcs, and the part plant Elves (who are insular and hard edged), players can be the Dragon-worshipping Drakin (who can become dragon-like), the animal-like Wildings (escaped slaves to the Elves), and the Glowborn, humanoids with Goblinoid memories. Possible character roles include Couriers, Musketeers, Pirates, Scavengers, and Priests dedicated to peace, song, war, and wind. Sundered Skies’ Plot Point campaign consists of 30 Savage Tales (scenarios) which begin by giving the characters a skyship and then lets them explore the islands of the Sundered Skies and its secrets. Like other Savage Worlds’ settings, Sundered Skies is pulpy and swashbuckling in feel, but its British author has given it a grim edge too.

Terrors From Beyond

Terrors From Beyond is a new scenario anthology for Call of Cthulhu from Chaosium, Inc. It brings together 6 adventures set in the 1920s and 1930s (only technically, because one scenario is set in 1930) each designed as one-shots rather than for use with a Keeper’s own campaign. The scenarios need either 4 or 6 players with a strong stomach, some scenarios dealing with strong adult and in one case, distasteful themes. It opens without introduction to the very short Ghostlight, set on Scottish lighthouse with vanished staff and a single solution which will leave the investigators dead if not found. A Method to Madness is barely longer, and inventively has the investigators as asylum inmates beset by weirdness. The U.K. located Death by Misadeventure involves the traditional death of a relative and is the easiest to use in an existing campaign. Brian Courtemanche’s Grave Secrets is set in New England, does not involve the Mythos, but has the most tasteless theme.

Brian Sammons’ The Dig is about a Miskatonic University archaeological trip subverted by an insane cultist, with the players as students. It feels long and calls for the Keeper to be heavy-handed for the investigators to follow the plot. David Conyers’ The Burning Stars is the book’s best, set in Haiti 1930 and starts with the investigators waking up with amnesia. What happened in the last seven days? Terrors From Beyond is nicely illustrated, but poorly edited, and suffers without a theme. It feels rushed despite the long wait.

The Freeport Trilogy

The Freeport Trilogy is a Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 campaign from Green Ronin Publishing designed to take a party of four plus player characters from 1st to 5th level. It originally appeared in three parts, Death in Freeport (which won the 2001 Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Adventure), Terror in Freeport, and Madness in Freeport. Its setting is confined to Freeport, a pirate city on the Serpent’s Teeth isles. Ruled by a pirate captain called the Sea Lord, it is home to many races, and keeps an uneasy peace with the mainland nations. So self-contained, it slots easily into most RPG fantasy settings.

The player characters come to Freeport for adventure, which they find after being asked by a cleric of the Brotherhood of Knowledge to find a missing priest, who had also gone missing years before after a personality change. Their investigations uncover ancient serpent men below the city, a cult that worships the Unspeakable One, a Great Old One, and something strange about Freeport’s towering new lighthouse, called Milton’s Folly after the current Sea Lord. Low on magic, but high on intrigue and conspiracy, The Freeport Trilogy is like a Call of Cthulhu fantasy campaign. It is a good campaign, but is let down by its slightly weak ending. Getting there though is great and The Freeport Trilogy setting is well supported with setting material and different rules such as Savage Worlds and True20, each having their own Cthulhu supplements, making it the best choice for Lovecraft-inspired fantasy.

50 Fathoms

50 Fathoms is a Plot Point campaign for Pinnacle Entertainment Group’s Shane Lacy Hensley’s Savage Worlds which mixes pirates, magic, fantasy, and a mystery. It is set on Caribdus, a world cursed to drown under a constant rain that has submerged nations and forced refugees to flee to other islands or to take to the sea. It is prophesized that a stranger from Earth will save Caribdus and its Thousand Isles, many humans having been transported to Caribdus from Earth’s Age of Sail (approximately 1500 to 1815) via great storms. Player character options include the crew, passengers and even live cargo from Earth, plus Caribdus’ own races: including the winged Atani, the Walrus-like Grael, Dolphin-like Doreen, and the Squid-like sorcerers, the Kraken. Caribdus’ magic is based on the four elements. A mage can only master one element at a time, but master all four and he becomes an ArchMage. Unfortunately, elementalists are hunted by Tomas De Torquemada’s magic-hating Inquisition.

The core of 50 Fathoms is its Plot Point campaign, consisting of Savage Tales (scenarios) triggered when the characters go up levels, visit somewhere, or discover something. It reveals the source of the threat to Caribdus, three vengeful Sea Hags. The players can follow the campaign, but are also free to roam the world, letting the GM run the 40 other Savage Tales set across the Thousand Isles and explore the book’s material. 50 Fathoms is fantastically complete, enough character information, a good gazetteer, and an easy, pulpy, swashbuckling, piratical campaign.

Unhallowed Metropolis

Unhallowed Metropolis from New Dark Age through Eos Press combines a neo-Victorian future with an Undead Plague and Tesla-powered technology. Everyone lives in fortress cities, on rations and under ash laden skies, fearful of ghouls, zombies, and vampires, and even their recently deceased relatives rising again. Outside, the undead roams the countryside, sent out from the mysterious Sepulchres, possible headquarters for undead lords. This is a horror RPG inspired by Dracula, Frankenstein, and Jekyll & Hyde, with an emphasis on the Victorian way of death and the anatomy of the undead. Character options include Aristocrats, Dhampir (romantic half-vampires), Mourners (female undead killers), Criminals, Doctors, and Undertaker (professional monster hunters), all looking their best in the game’s “Gasmask Chic.” The latter also being the name for the book’s excellent artwork.

Unfortunately, Unhallowed Metropolis suffers from too few character options; an imbalance between social and combat skills (too many of the latter), and between high and low class characters (how do you bring them together?); and lethally clunky mechanics, which make doing anything even moderately difficult, actually very hard. Re-rolls are allowed, but only so many before a character suffers from Corruption, which with a hard resolution system demanding re-rolls, comes too soon. Also, outside of the undead, the setting is underwritten. More information should have been included about the mundane facts of this setting. Although it demands more options, better rules, an expanded background, and an index, Unhallowed Metropolis should demand the attention of both devotees of Victoriana and the undead.

Apocalypse Prevention, Inc.

In the recently self-published Apocalypse Prevention, Inc. from Third Eye Games, the characters are employees for the same named corporation, which has protected mankind for centuries from demonic and supernatural activity. They work as a squad from one of ten offices worldwide and investigate prophecies, miracles, and other weirdness. In particular, policing demonic immigration from other dimensions, most demons being illegal on Earth under the terms of the API Registration Act. Other demons, like Burners (Fire Demons), Changelings, Lochs (Fish People), Spectrals (Ghosts), Taylari (Vampires), and Wolf People are legal and can be employees. The detailed point-based character generation system lets characters have cybernetics, magic, and psionics. Mechanically, magic and psionics are treated the same, and each spell/psionic ability is easily customized with small upgrades during character generation or with experience points. The rules are straightforward, but combat is crunchy, its emphasis being on a fairly detailed martial arts system.

Apocalypse Prevention, Inc.’s setting is our world, but with demons and tight gun control in the USA! Which seems too fantastic. Otherwise, the setting is underwritten, focusing on the corporation over the real world. It also lacks a scenario, and has too few scenario ideas. A scenario is needed to show how the game works, but is currently only availabe in the supplements. The lack of a detailed setting means that the game’s intended humor is lost, while the horror element is poorly supported by an inadequate fear/insanity mechanic. Apocalypse Prevention, Inc. does not lack potential, but it needs support.