Rise of Magic, Rifts Chaos Earth

 I recently picked up Rise of Magic, a Rifts Chaos Earth;RPG Sourcebook.  It was a great price and the cover was so cool I couldn't resist.

     While I'm not currently running a Chaos Earth game, or Rifts, or even a Palladium System game, I have a soft spot for Palladium's content, especially Rifts.  I ran a wild and crazy Rifts campaign back in the 90's.  We had a blast with it, Mega-Damage, hatchling dragons, Bursters! power armor!  Was loads of fun.  I still think the Rifts setting is one of my favorites, you can do anything with it and customize the game to meet you and your players needs.  Now the system, well it is dated, but at the time we enjoyed it.  

     So where does that leave me now?  All of the Palladium stuff is a gold mine of material to use in your games. I am running a D&D game right now, and believe it or not, I have some ideas/abilities that I will be pulling from this book for some NPC's and encounters.  I have a player that has gamed as long as I have, and has a vast knowledge of the D&D "verse" monsters, spells, magic, so I love pulling in content from other non-D&D sources to put in my campaign to keep the players guessing and on their toes.

Survive This!! Vigilante City

I'm way behind on blogging, due to real life stuff. Awhile back I failed to mention, that I recently received the books from a kickstarter I backed. Survive This!! Vigilante City

Survive This!! Vigilante City is a fun OSR product, that is a mixture of old school D&D mechanics, and some new innovations from more modern games (a little 5E, some Black Hack etc.). The thing that excites me the most is how it reminds me of Palladium's Heroes Unlimited RPG. I mean that in a good way, one of the best (most enjoyable) campaigns (of any system/genre) that I have ever GM'd was a Heroes Unlimited Campaign. While Palladium's system no longer meets my needs, the spirit of that game can easily be found in Vigilante City. Allowing for a more approachable system while still capturing the cool elements of enabling players to create a diverse range of vigilantes (heroes). 

I'm hoping to work this one into the play rotation, but we are still playing SWN, and have a Genefunk 2090 Playtest to do...so many games so little time. 

Take me down to Vigilante City!

Needless to say I am quite excited about the Survive This!! Vigilante City Kickstarter. I do believe this is the Supers RPG game I have been looking for, for quite some time.  I played/GM'd a ton of Heroes Unlimited/TMNT/Beyond the Supernatural back in the 90's, some of my old gaming buddies still reminisce about one particular epic campaign (The heroes even battled a powerful demon at the Smithsonian, with a cameo by D.C. Comics Dr. Fate!) but the Palladium System while fun, no longer meets my gaming needs.  Vigilante City looks to have the modular aspect I enjoyed about the plethora of Palladium products, while still keeping the mechanics simple and very OSR based. Right up my alley!  The Kickstarter has already exceeding it's goal and reached three stretch goals! 

Hope everyone has a great day and try to stay cool, things are hot our there in Vigilante City!

Days of Mutant Futures...

My wife and I saw the latest X-Men movie today. X-Men: Days of Future Past

   Oh, wait that's not it...

Ok, that's the comic from back in the day...

         Ok that's better, anyways..

We both enjoyed it, I won't do any spoilers here, I hate it when people do that. It is a pretty good X-men movie, much better than X-3, course I realize that isn't saying much.  It has got me in a Supers Gaming mood, at least a Post-Apocalyptic Mutant Supers Mood.  I thought about seeing what I could do with the Mutant Future rules, but instead I dug out my copy of...

Yep, Palladium Books Heroes Unlimited.  I know folks out on the inter-webs have railed against the Palladium System, heck even I have at times.  But I've had a ton of fun with Heroes Unlimited over the years, the RPG Campaign that I've gotten the most praise from players over was not D&D or even Gamma World, but a Heroes Unlimited mish-mash I did back in the 90's, Hell I'm getting old. Anyways with the three Powers Unlimited books and the core rules for HU you can really do all kinds of super hero characters.   May see if I can rustle up some folks to make up some characters and see what kind of mischief they can get into! 
Good Gaming -B.B.

Rifts: Lemuria

Shocker of shocker Rifts : Lemuria is out! I think I recall this being first advertised...what? Ten years ago?!
Anyways if your interested you can download the Sneak Preview of it here.  I have to admit for some reason I'm tempted to pick it up... I'm not sure what it is, but I still get drawn back to Rifts.  We played the hell out of it in the 90's. I ran several Campaigns of Rifts, Heroes Unlimited, TMNT, Ninjas & Superspies! Sometimes all in the same Campaign. The mechanics were and are nuts, but back then we didn't seem to notice, maybe that was because it was the 90's? I dunno.  Now I pick up the books, talk to the guys about playing, we get excited, start to make up characters, then a few hours into character generation our eyes glaze over and we do something else... but I still get drawn to the books!  It's crazy I know. I've sat down to convert Rifts to other systems quite a few times over the years, but that quickly turns into a chore and eventually my Gamer ADD kicks in and I move on to something else.  But sooner or later I'll pick up one of those books and can't help but smile at the wild fun we used to have with it. I doubt I'll ever run Rifts again (unless the revamp the mechanics), the rules system just doesn't work for me anymore.  But man I've got some great memories! 

Thundercloud Galaxy

I recently posted about Palladium offering a sneak peak of a new Heroes Unlimited supplement Armageddon Unlimited.   Well they've got another preview out for a soon to be released book; Thundercloud Galaxy. It is for their Rifts setting, but if it's like some of their other space setting books (Phase World, Anvil Galaxy etc.) it should be useful for non-Rifts gaming purposes.  I'm hoping to pull stuff from it for my eventual Stars Without Number Campaign. Who knows I may even eventually talk the guys into playing a Space based Heroes Unlimited Campaign.  : )

 

Gamma World Book Mini-Review : Sooner Dead

  On a recent bookstore trip, I spotted a Gamma World novel on the shelf: Sooner Dead.

     I picked it up, knowing I had some airplane reading time coming up soon.  Let me clarify my stance on Gamma World and the latest edition before I proceed with my brief review.  I've been a big fan of the Gamma World RPG since I picked up the first edition of it back in 1979. However, the latest edition of Gamma World just doesn't interest me. It doesn't seem like "my" version/vision of Gamma World. Even on the back of this book it says this "isn't your father's Gamma World!"...Indeed its not!
Up until recently I've been running a Mutant Future Campaign, so I was hoping this might give me some campaign fodder for my games. I like a good story, so I was curious about this book and so I bought it.
     Sooner Dead is a decent read, the pacing is fast. The writing is clear and I found it to be a fast read. I do have one peeve in that the author regularly ended each chapter by trying to create a cliffhanger effect, which would then be immediately resolved on the next page.  It got quite annoying after the first few chapters.  The characters were for the most part interesting and the story was pretty good.  I would have preferred more mutants, beasties etc.. The two main characters were interesting.  A few of the "NPC's" had powers/abilities, there is a "fire-guy" and a "gravity-guy", there was a Gorilla Man, and a bug man, but not alot of mutants and mutations other-wise.  Also the setting didn't seem very PA to me.  There was normal natural flora and fauna in abundance, with odd beasties feeling out of place when they were encountered instead of it seeming like a world gone mad with rampant mutants and monsters. But in the end it was an ok read, nothing earth shattering, but ok.  Particularly as a distraction from the fact that I was stuck at the airport waiting for a delayed flight.  Boy does flying SUCK now or what? sorry.. ahem...
     Anyways did it make me want to run out and play the new Gamma World?  No. In fact it seemed more like a Rifts story (minus the mega-damage) to me.  It actually made me wish I hadn't sold off some of my Rifts collection.  Heck the Bisonoid character "Stampede" could be fairly easily created with the Palladium After The Bomb rules and a few powers from Heroes Unlimited.
Just my 2 cents. YMMV.
Later,
 Bill

Red Skull

1st official look at Hugo Weaving as Captain America's Red Skull

 One of my favorite villains from the Marvel Universe.  I had him stat'd up for Heroes Unlimited at one time, may have to try and dig up my notes on him.  Wicked Cool!

X-Men 2099

 Dropped by the Friendly Neighborhood Comic Shop today, I haven't been there in ages due to my new job's demands, so I was curious to see what new goodies they had gotten in.  The shop also has a gaming section, so I was hoping maybe they had gotten in the recently released Armageddon Unlimited for Heroes Unlimited but sadly it wasn't in yet.  While digging in the bargain bin, I found the Trade Paperback of Volume 1 of X-Men 2099! I've picked up some issues here and there over the years, but I only have a few, so I was excited to find this, especially for 50% off! 

Here's the blurb about the series," Xi'an Chi Xan wants Meanstreak, Krystalin, Skullfire, and the rest to help rebuild Professor X's dream, but lies, betrayal, and assassination may tear them down before they've started. With the gods of the Aesir and demons from the Theatre of Pain... "

 Good stuff!  I can loot some ideas from this for my Mutant Future Campaign or Heroes Unlimited or both!

Armageddon Unlimited

Confession Time...
I know I've complained about the Palladium System and in particular Rifts in the past, but I've always had a soft spot for Heroes Unlimited. While I got rid of most of my Rifts/Palladium Books, I held on to all of my Heroes Unlimited books and my After the Bomb/TMNT books.
One of my favorite campaigns of all time was back in the early 90's, my players at the time dubbed it "Modern Unlimited" ; I had everything in there, Heroes Unlimited, TMNT, Beyond the Supernatural, Ninjas & Superspies, even a few Rifts references, it was a blast. The party wound up unknowingly working for "Old Nick" (a powerful devil from the Palladium Fantasy RPG) to recover an artifact from the Smithsonian, we had alot of fun with that campaign.  Wound up with a near TPK before the campaign ended, I think only two players survived when the dust settled.  Ahhh good times!  : )
Anyways, don't tell my current players but I've actually "looted" powers and super abilities from some of the Heroes Unlimited Sourcebooks I own for our current Mutant Future Campaign.  Great way to make a particular NPC or Mutant beast particularly unique and nasty. Don't go overboard though, the powers in HU are NOT scaled to work with MF, you can quickly wind up with something that can utterly trash your party if your not careful, but with some tweaks they are workable.  In particular the mutant appearance random table section in the core HU rulebook can help you come up with some unusual appearing mutants. Something I prefer in my games.
This brings me to an upcoming release for Heroes Unlimited, I don't think we've seen a true release for HU in awhile.  Palladium has been kind enough to provide a free teaser preview for this one (pretty cool for them to do that I think, I wish more companies would do this). You can check out Armageddon Unlimited here.

More Mutant Dinosaur Madness...

 Whew what a day....survived the Mall..shudder...still not finished shopping though...shudder..
Anyways thought I'd do a follow up to my earlier post.  There are a couple of additional resources out there for those of  you looking for Mutant Dinosaurs a la TMNT style.

Rifter #23

This one has an article featuring several dinosaurs worked up with the whole TMNT Bio-E format. Some duplication of dinosaurs from Transdimensional exists but these are done for After the Bomb 2nd. ed. I have seen where some folks have complained that the dinos weren't tough enough in this article, but that can always be tweaked by the GM anyways.

Rifter #24

This is the follow up to the previous Rifter dinosaur article; describing Mesozoic Land. This is a pretty cool setting, imagine Jurassic Park but the dinosaurs are done up TMNT style.

Let's get Transdimensional....(Resources for Mutant Future)

I need to be out finishing my Christmas shopping, but I'm ailing with a lousy cold. So here I sit thinking of all the things I need to be doing.  Christmas sorta snuck up on us this year, we've been putting in some major time at work the past month and I just realized..."Oops Christmas is upon us!".  Wish I could somehow zip back and get a day or two to finish some things.  Which got me thinking, dangerous I know, of a cool game book in my RPG library.  I've already mentioned After the Bomb and it's adventures elsewhere in my blog.
Another nice book in the TMNT RPG line-up is Transdimensional TMNT. 

This book is also by one of my favorite game designers/writers Erick Wujcik.  The book has some interesting rules for time travel and even gives a few brief write ups of some other times/settings.  Might give you some ideas for that player who loves to Plane Shift on ya.  Have him appear on a skull covered plain facing off against a battle mech or a T-Rex and he might not be so eager to plane hop away from your Mutant Future monsters.  This book also contains additional mutant animal types, but these aren't just any animals. No they are prehistoric beasties!  Dinosaurs, Smilodons, Mammoths and other cool beasties. Want to work up a sentient gun-toting Raptor Commando! It's in there!  I could see maybe having a secret lab of the ancients somewhere in your Mutant Future Campaign that's been experiementing with Dino DNA to create super-soldiers.  Maybe the base is discovered by your players or someone else, or perhaps a earthquake has allowed the base to be uncovered and now some really interesting new prehistoric players are in town!

Well in reviewing the time travel rules, I see if your not careful you could get pretty jacked up! Potentially devolving or evolving (into some kinda alien grey lookin thing), so I guess I'll put my time travel machine back up in the attic, load up on vitamin C, bundle up for the cold and go fight the holiday crowds.

Good Gaming!

                                                                         

More After the Bomb resources for Mutant Future

 Some of you have talked about and commented about some of the other supplements for After the Bomb/TMNT.  You might find some of these useful for your Mutant Future Campaigns.  Keep in mind they are worked up for the Palladium System, but Mutant Future is so easy to adapt/convert stuff too you should be able to find something of use in these books.  I've seen them go for pretty cheap on Ebay and I believe Palladium is now offering them in PDF format as well.

Road Hogs

This supplement is set on the west coast, has rules for mutant prairie dogs, Octopi and other beasties

Mutants Down Under

A sourcebook for Australian Mutant Animals

Mutants in Avalon

A mutant animal version of a Post Apocalyptic Arthurian Britain

Mutants of the Yucatan

Title says it all!

After The Bomb RPG (Resources for Mutant Future)

 In discussing resources for a Mutant Future Campaign I'd be remiss if I didn't mention one of my favorite products After the Bomb (Second Edition) by the late Erick Wujcik.  Please note!! It is designed for use with the Palladium System, so it won't work as is with your Mutant Future Campaigns, but it is an awesome resource for all things related to Mutant Animals.  It has all kinds of animals listed and lets you use a point buy system to work them up as characters.  So if you want to add more to your Mutant Animal characters and critters, then you need to get this book!!  Please note the First Edition is really just a supplement for the original TMNT rules, you'll need to have the TMNT rules to make much use of AtB first ed. My favorite edition, and the one I'm really talking about, is the After the Bomb second edition, which was originally supposed to be a new edition of the TMNT RPG, but the whole license thing didn't work out, so they just took the Turtle stuff out of it and added in Post Apocalyptic Coolness.  I've got to admit I'm a big fan of this book, I lugged mine all the way to Gen Con one year and got Erick to autograph my copy.  Given his unexpected passing, it is even more treasured to me.

First Edition

Second Edition

TMNT RPG