40k Friday - Old School 40K Part 2

The other half of the guide is all about the marine chapters. Part 1 is here.

These markings were all over the metal marines of this era.

Those wolf badges are a pain to paint but I've seen it done.

I still remember nothing about the Salamanders from this era.

And the guide wraps up with some handy banners which I am sure I have seen in use before, though it's been a very long time. I do remember a time when every marine army had some on the table. Sure it's kind of archaic, but it looks really nice. Ah well.

The Final Countdown for City of Heroes

As of today City of Heroes has 30 days of life remaining.

As an adult male I rarely use the word "sad", but this impending doom leaves me with one word that best sums it up and that is "sad".


So many characters ... our family has 224 characters in the game, spread across 14 servers and 6 accounts (because there are 6 of us!). Every one of them has a story. Heck, they've provided a lot of the inspiration for this blog, especially the ICONS posts. For the last few years I kept a spreadsheet of them all - name, level, type, powers, server, player, account - so that we could put together a group in a speedy fashion when we wanted to play. "Do I have a Blaster on Virtue?" - "Yes, Arctic Spark, he's at 15" - "OK who are you bringing?"  - "Aluminum Man, duh, and your brother's got Polar Champion joining in too" - "Cool let's go". Now unless something gives, all of them will be gone in a month.

I know in the back of my mind that any computer/electronic thing can disappear forever with no notice, whether it's a hard drive crash, eventual obsolescence, or because a company decides to turn off the servers. As an old school adult I know that spending money on virtual stuff is a bad idea because of these facts. That's why I don't spend much money on them. But I did pay subscription fees and as an old-school gamer I know that is a stupid decision too because with multiple accounts I spent enough in a month, every month, to go buy a whole new game. I can hear my dad now, "you spent how much on WHAT?" if I was to tell him how this worked. He wouldn't get it, but it was worth it. Even when I was out of work for a while - more "while" than I care to think about - I still kept this one thing going, even at a somewhat reduced level, because it was something that everyone in the family enjoyed - it was worth it. Plus it was cheaper than most things a family of six typically does for entertainment.

So what can we do?

• There's an online petition here. It has 21,000 signatures - apparently that's not enough as NCSoft has stated that their efforts to sell the game were not successful so they are continuing with the shutdown plans.
• Countering this, this blog entry notes that sources report two separate game companies have inquired about it and been rebuffed.
• Given the current state of things there is an effort underway to create a server emulation. Youtube video is here. This may be the ultimate refuge for the die-hard CoH fan.

Aside from all that if you're interested this is probably the best place to stay informed of developments:

There is also a Facebook page here. If it ultimately fails then, well, there's an alumni group on Facebook here.

Even if you don't play the game, if you;re a fan of superheroes in general, or gaming in general, or superhero gaming in particular, this is something you might want to get behind. Help us out and see where it goes, and at the very least you can say you were there when it went down.

As of now the game is set to spend the last week of its life under a full time alien invasion. Maybe it won't come to that - regardless, the Amazing Aluminum Man and no doubt quite a few others will be there when the world ends.

The Silver Pyramid: a 4th edition adventure for 6th level characters

To help celebrate the holiday I thought I would share the closest thing to a horror adventure that I have written for D&D. I've found that atmospheric horror is a tricky thing compared to the simple joys of "a blue dragon?! But we're only 4th level!" so I don't do much of this kind of thing but on the chance that someone else can use it, here it is.

Technical details - this was set up to take my pc's from 6th to 7th level and there is enough XP here to do just that for a 5-man party. You could also use it with a 7th level party going from 7th to 8th (the encounters should be enough of a challenge) but you may need to add a 1000 XP bonus for figuring out what's going on and a 1000 XP bonus for ending the threat. Also, it's pretty linear, largely due to the way the interior is laid out. Hopefully this won't be too much of a problem for another group - my guys had a pretty good time and never complained about this aspect of it. Ideally the exploratory nature of the adventure, and the unusual scenery, will keep everyone interested. Plus there was some thought given to having the weirdness build to a crescendo of sorts, and the linear approach helps with that.

Map Notes - these are my original hand-drawn maps and are effectively notes - they tend to get embellished some when drawn on the battlemet, particularly the big outdoor maps. At the very least it's easier to tell where the water is. Keep this in mind and if someone is going to try and run this with my maps, drop me a line and I'll put up some bigger copies if you need them and try to make them a little more user friendly to others.

Setup - the hook here is that some nasty substance is polluting the river near a city in your campaign, killing fish and giving it an unpleasant taste. Your party is sent to investigate, forewarned with the knowledge that there is  a legendary silver pyramid rumored to be a home to mighty magics located somewhere upriver.

DM Notes - this little trek is intended to be deliberately weird. I see the pyramid as an interdimenstional incursion that does not follow the rules of linear time or space. Legends speak of the pyramid from a century ago yet your party will come across signs that unpleasant things have happened in just the last few minutes. In my campaign vision, sometimes the pyramid is not even there, and other times it's not this pyramid but a completely different pyramid, with a completely different interior. It's meant to be a wild card, a little piece of the countryside that is different every time someone decides to go look at it.

You can see how my group handled it beginning here. There is some additional descriptive and background material in those posts that might help explain what's going on too. At the very least it might be interesting to look at the DM notes here and compare to the session notes as to how it played out.

Final note: The room names are there for the DM only, to help with visualization and description - don't say them out loud! Let the players figure out what's going on.

The Silver Pyramid

The pyramid is located roughly 30 miles up river, about a day’s travel time for most parties. The party will most likely follow the river. Most of this travel will pass uneventfully but about halfway there  the group is attacked by big bugs:

Ankhegs! Level 5 Encounter (1050) - DC15 Nature Check to avoid surprise for the party

• 3 Ankhegs (900) MM2 111
• 6 Broodlings (150) MM2 111

Use any convenient outdoor map for this encounter. Remember that these beasties burrow and so may not even be seen until they emerge from a charge and attack. I'd tell everyone that the ground is vibrating and then give the PCs a perception check to figure out where they are coming up. Tunnels in the area lead to a nest where bones and a split bag of 200gp can be found (Parcel #10 for Level 6)

The river gets progressively nastier as the party proceeds north. It is especially noticeable at this point (no skill check) and looks like a black slick in the center of the river.

Finally they see the sun glinting off of something in the distance.

Approaching, the party sees a shining silver pyramid with a flickering purple crystal forming the peak. The pyramid sits in a lake and is surrounded by water on all sides. A viscous purple-black substance contaminates the lake. Everyone is going to want to make checks for this so let them:

• DC 15 Perception: The pyramid seems to be slightly tilted to the east side
• DC 15 Perception: the pyramid is smooth and seamless above the water
• DC20 Perception: There is occasional movement in the water and it is not the wind
• DC15 Nature: The substance is not natural
• DC 20 History: The pyramid has been here since before the spellplague and there was talk about it being a source of pollution once before

The water is calm but it’s a DC15 Swim check because of the substance to swim the 100’ or so out to the pyramid, DC12 if attempted from the west side as it’s less nasty over there.

Commotion on the shore or in the water attracts 3 Chuuls:

Pond Beasties! Level 7 Encounter (1500)

• 3 Chuuls (1500) MM1 43 (note these guys can swim just fine, though they are melee combatants and so may emerge from the water to fight.)

• The shoreline (the edge directly above this text) is normal ground
• The first two squares are Challenging (knee to waist deep) and require a DC15 Atheletics check to move normally, otherwise it’s 2 per square
• The next two squares are Difficult
• Beyond that it’s an Atheltics check and a swim. Underwater everything is heavily obscured due to the foulness in the lake. The scribbles on the one side of the pyramid represent the oozing side.

A few minutes after the Chuuls are defeated (enough time for a short rest) the inhabitants get the teleporter working and a Beholder Gauth Solo appears at the apex of the pyramid , looks around for a few seconds, then attacks.

Eye Fight! Level 5 Encounter (1000)

• 1 Beholder Gauth Solo (note he doesn't have to make this easy - he can stay over the deeper water and fight at range) - original beholder gauth is MM2 p24

After defeating the beholder the party can determine that there is an opening in the side of the pyramid underwater. 

Hangar Bay! Level 7 Encounter (1400)

• 2 Black Puddings (1400) MM2 172 or MV 223

The lined out areas are the slippery (DC 15 Athletics check if running) water and ooze-covered areas, the two lines pointing out to the right represent the open bay doors by which the party would enter. I made them challenging terrain but feel free to throw in other environmental effects.I made the shuttle roughly 10' (2 squares) high to let the acrobatic types get some height if they wanted to do so. I described it as a wagon-sized metal box that had clearly been damaged, twisted, and cracked. None of them went inside it, so I leave that description up to you. Remember that the puddings spawn off smaller puddings when hit by any weapon (triggered action, no action!), so this fight could actually get nastier in the first few rounds, not easier.

A lot of the black goo appears to be leaking from one of the shuttle engine pods, but that's mainly because one of the puddings is living in the damaged pod. Despite appearances, this is not the true source of the contamination - but it sure looks like it!

Turboshaft up! - Rope use is a good idea here for the less athletically-inclined party members as though there are rungs the climb is at a steep angle and the air is bad. I called it a DC 15 for rungs-only (that's a lvl 6 moderate for those of you tracking such things) and a DC 11 (lvl 6 easy) with a rope. Those two squares at the top of the map are the turboshafts - think elevator shaft and you're close enough for this one.

Quarters are full of beds & vanity/desk/console items

Sounds in the main corridor will draw the attention of the “crew”

What’s Left of the Crew Level 7 Encounter (1750)

• 2 Foulspawn Mockeries (500) MM3 89
• 10 Foulspawn Wretches (750) MM3 88

M = Mockery, W = Wretch
That area to the left is the sick bay, and the oblong shapes are meant to be the hospital beds. Feel free to add gruesome details - think zombie movie, alien/aliens, etc. Refer to the monster entries for descriptions of these nasty things and play up the twisted awful wrongness of them. A massed rush in a confined space can be somewhat scary for the players, at least.

Turboshaft up!

Transporters - The room is dusty with no marks on the floor and appears to be disused, other than the crystals being placed on the pad by three floating brain-creatures. Each of the 6 pads has a 1’ dimly glowing purple crystal on it in a silver stand or socket of some kind. Fine silver wires run from each of these crystals back and forth across the pad area. Several of them run up the wall to another silver socket that is empty. If the control crystal is recovered from the ready room and placed in the socket, all of the crystals will glow much brighter and a hum will be heard in the room. After 1 round anyone still in the room will be teleported to the Pool area.

Transporter Crew Level 7 Encounter (1800)

• 3 Grells (1800) MM 144

Just look at a picture of a Star Trek transporter room and you have this one down. It's the top right room.

Ready Room (this one is the top left room on the map above):

The door is closed and locked and shows signs of claw marks and bloody smears on the outside. Behind the desk is a headless body slumped back in a chair. On the desk before him is a glowing purple crystal similar to the ones outside. A small boxlike object lays on the floor near the chair, If molested, the black box will show 1 red light and make a chirping sound. 

The Bridge (bottom half of the map above)

There are 5 chairs around the room placed in front of tables. Sitting in those chairs are what look to be uniformed humans. The top of their heads is open (their heads appear to have exploded), blood streams down their bodies and is splattered over nearby consoles and floor, and what appears to be their brains are crawling away from their bodies. Think "star  trek bridge" - upper deck, railing, lower deck, chairs, dashboards - and you have the picture.

Level 7 Encounter

• 5 Ustiligators (1500) MM3 118

(These things have a leap attack that is a lot of fun - nothing like having animate brains leaping onto you from across the room. Make it fun!)

The Pool of Twilight

Note: the only defined way of getting here is via the transporter room, but it does not have to be the only way. Most parties will work this out. If yours do not then try to give them another option to help them get to this encounter if you like it, or just leave it alone and let them walk away without ever getting here, but until they close this portal, the black goo will continue to pollute the river.

I just dropped the party in at the upper right corner and had the Mind Flayer and the Mouther start in the lower section near the control panel. 

Four large purple crystals are set up here surrounding an inky black pool. Nearby stand a mind flayer and a mass of flesh that appears to have many faces on and within its flowing substance. Arms and legs emerge at times as do brightly colored bits of cloth. This is what remains of the crew that was not warped individually – some of them were pulled together into a single entity that babbles maddeningly and constantly. Over the pool is a smoky black mass that drives an observer to the edge of madness. Vaporous forms swarm from the pool to this cloud. When the party acts it begins to move.

Level 10 Encounter

• Mind Flayer Leader (1000) Level 10 Elite Lurker (custom)
• Gibbering Mouther (1000) Level 10 Controller (MM 126)
• The Thing from Beyond (1000) Level 10 Brute (custom)

I believe I modified someone else's creation for this one but I can't find the reference - if this looks familiar point me to the originator and I will give credit 

• Anyone entering the pool finds it is physically about knee deep. The pool is a link to the Far Realm and will cling to the legs of anyone entering, making a +10 attack vs Will and inflicting ongoing 10 Psychic damage

• The energy barriers linking the crystals make a nearly subsonic throbbing vibration and anyone touching the barrier takes 4d6+5 lightning damage (lv 10 limited medium). The crystals can be attacked – Defense = 24, HP = 100. If a crystal is destroyed then the barrier drops – all of it

• The various consoles are about 5’ high

The pool can be closed after at least one crystal is destroyed by doing 100 points of radiant damage or by touching it with the Black Spear of Thar*, which was forged specifically to do this. If the spear is used then the silver runes winding up and down the shaft will disappear in a blast of silvery light as the pool screams and the psychic winds of limbo roar around the party. After a massive explosion the party will awaken on the shore of the lake where they can see that the pyramid is gone and the waters now glow purple. There is no other sign or feeling of magic.

*this was a special magic item in our campaign and yours is unlikely to have the same item, but feel free to link it to something unusual in your game.

Anyway that's the end of the adventure. If enough people are interested maybe I'll go through and revise my notes into something more presentable (see above for their current state) and put the whole campaign online for use. If not they can keep on living in my folder until the next time I decide to visit Phlan.

Old School Champions- Adventurers Club #6

We're up to #6 - Winter of 1984!

The big news is that the Champions 3rd Edition boxed set is selling well and, notably, there is a comment that Steve (presumably Petersen) has promised to never change the rules again, so "...this final revision of Champions is the best ever and as promised last issue the rules changes are in this issue along with the Champions III errata." It was very cool of them to include the updates in the magazine, and as far as edition changes go I'm not sure that Champions 1st-2nd-3rd would even be considered a real edition change today, but I think we know how this turned out. It would be 5 more years before we went to 4th Edition, so they did pretty well in the not changing it again department.

Sigh ... remember how awesome that final edition of Champions was?

• PRIMUS and DEMON, Danger International, Super Agents, and Lands of Mystery all get pushed back to 1985, and they are working on The Blood and Dr. McQuark and the gadgets book.
• There are mentions of V&V, Marvel, and the upcoming DC game, so it was a handy place to keep up on all things super back then.
• The letters are still a lot of in-character trash-talking between various super groups, the still-dead Foxbat, and his replacement Lenore. It's a little odd that it went on this long in this form as it doesn't really add much to the magazine other than being a little funny.

First big article: "Flawed Mirrors", an article on parallel earths by Scott Jamison. The author describes 5 different alternate earths where things have gone in a negative direction - Nazi's, communists, Big Brother, and just plain evil. I particularly liked the one based on a Red Dawn style partial conquest of the U.S. Wolverines! The author does use a handy format for these kinds of things: He gives the name, a short history of how things went differently from ours, the present situation, endangered heroes (star-spangled heroes are usually in this list), and help, such as an undergound or rebel movement. It's a solid article and does have some useful ideas even today.

The Crusader for this month is Captain USA:

When I hear that name, this is what I usually think of:

Either way, his stats are:

Mechanically I like him - to steal a football bit of wisdom Defense (and Luck) wins Championships. This guy has excellent, broad defenses, life support, luck, and flight. Plus he has enough offense to get by. 

I also like the idea of the annoying glory-hog good-guy because it does force the players to deal with something that they can't just blast - it's a different kind of challenge than even the plot-device type of unbreakable object - you could beat him, it's just not a real option if you're a hero. This also makes for a pretty good test: Are you hero enough to work alongside Captain USA? Of course I suspect that post-Avengers any annoyingly monologging super, hero or villain, will get Hulk-punched right out of the scene, but hopefully that will die down in a year or so.

Champions Plus this month is the rules updates included in Champions 3E - it's basically Growth and Shrinking, that's it! There is also the errata for Champions III and there is quite a bit of it, including a complete replacement of the Variable Power Pool section. If someone was to go back and run an old school Champions game that included Champs III then this would be good information to have.

The big adventure this month is "Grasp, Inc." and it's not a one-shot - it's more of an arc to be worked in to an existing campaign. I like the idea but it's an oddly indirect conflict. The heroes stumble into an ongoing takeover/corporate war by being present when some mercenaries attack a company. This gives the PC's a chance to uncover the first layer of the organization. 

Part two begins when a talking chimp knocks on their door, shares some information, and dies, which leads the team to a corporate base in Antarctica - I kid you not, and this is a comic-book game after all. I'd go total silver age on this one and make half the staff talking monkeys too, but that's just me. The base has a nice map and there is a chance that the PC's are completely fooled, but more likely bad behavior is uncovered (animal experimentation), a fight breaks out, and another layer of the organization is revealed. 

Part 3 involves a sustained campaign against the heroes - DNPC's are victimized, known enemies are directed towards the heroes, and special weapons are developed and used against them to target known weaknesses. I can see this driving players crazy, so eventually it's time to move on.

Look, it's Bulldozer! I bet that heros is really scared now!

Part 4 is a single big combat encounter against the leadership of Grasp itself which is somewhat anti-climactic - more of the mercs, two low-powered supers, and then a twist at the end that makes the heroes look bad. I would like the last fight of an arc to be memorable or notable in some way and this does not really do that. Considering the prominence of the frozen base I would write up some mutant animal supers and have them show up as the final opponents instead of the mercs. The adventure gives us one mutant tiger for this encounter but I think there should be more. Maybe cyber them up with some of those specialized anti-hero weapons from Part 3. I liked the rest of the adventure, this is the only part that I thought really called for "more".

• Covert Action is the espionage column and covers what the good guys can do when the justice system fails to deliver justice. It's interesting. There is also some discussion of psych limitations and the Unluck disad. One interesting thought on Unluck: You (the DM) don't use Unluck when the hero is already losing - it only comes into play when things are going well, which is an interesting approach. There are several good ideas here and it's worth a read. Admittedly, I've never had a player character with Unluck - my players over the years have shown zero interest in a general mechanical disadvantage like that. It's just too broad and too easily triggered for them to be comfortable with it.
• The Empire Club is the new column for Justice Inc. and is probably pretty interesting if you play that game. I don't so it has limited value here.
• Reviews: Cardboard Heroes set 3 apparently had some printing problems and they liked Chill.

That's it for Issue 6! 

Motivational Monday

Baby shower here yesterday so ...

40K Friday - Old School 40K

I came across this while organizing my 40K stuff. It's pretty old, I believe it's from the original Space Marine Paint Set from the late 80's. Anyway, let's explore:

Introduction - where they mention a much more complete guide that you can purchase at your FLGS - and a Blood Angel. Look, white undercoating! Still a better choice than black when you plan to paint red or yellow  marines!

Space Wolves and ... Salamanders? You know when they showed up in the 3rd Edition Armageddon codex I really did not remember them from earlier versions but hey - here they are! This is a time where the Dark Angels were still black, so the sammies filled the slot of "green marines" I suppose. Still white undercoating here though I would use black for gray marines and maybe even for the green.

Look, an early example of weathering! We're still in the Rogue Trader days here and you saw a lot more of this kind of thing than you would when we hit 2nd edition, though it has come back around since. We see our first black undercoat here and it makes some sense for blue.

That's about half of this little book and probably enough to pore over for one post  - I will post the rest up later.

Old School Champions - Adventurers Club #5

Well we have our first non-Champions cover, though it certainly could be a Champions cover. There's some good stuff in this one:

• Editorial: this is Aaron Allston's first full issue as editor
• News: Enemies III is out, the 3rd edition boxed set is coming out (it is not called 3rd edition at this point though, just "the new boxed set"), Super-Agents and Lands of Mystery are coming soon, and PRIMUS and DEMON and a ref screen are in layout
• The Name Fantasy Hero Something Else contest, held in advance of the release of Fantasy Hero, has ended and the winner was "Adventure Eternal" - hmmm. Glad they didn't use that. Runners up were "Gateway to Adventure (sounds more like a campaign set than the game itself) and Epic Adventure (generic!). 
• Letter-writers are still talking smack to Foxbat and it's still a little funny to read them 3 decades later.

The first big article this time is "Refereeing Champions Disadvantages" and it's a very solid article, even today. One thing I've noticed in games that have been around awhile (from Champions to 40K) is that a lot of "how to" articles assume the reader knows The Basics and a whole lot of Generally Accepted Truths that guide one on how the game should be played. The problem is that outside of D&D and Pathfinder, not a lot of games spend time explaining this in an easily understood way (i.e. not a wall of text and not in a separate rulebook) so these things may not be as easy to pick up as they ought to be. This article covers the main disadvantages in Hero System in a great way from a DM's perspective. It spends a lot of time on killing attacks and codes and how to handle the interaction of those things in the game. It's a solid article and I think it's worth reading today.

Next up is a short article on the military in Hero terms. This includes stats for soldiers, weapons, and vehicles like the Abrams and Bradley - and the Sgt. York air defense gun, which in the Champions universe might have been wildly successful but in the real world was not. It also covers the "Modern Jeep" which you may know as the Humvee. It's always fun to run across little things like this. 

There's a short article on Impossible Crimes which is really aimed more at modern or espionage type games. This is not really my thing so I'll just mention it and move on.

Then we get to The Hawkes Phantom, the cover-mentioned adventure for Justice Inc. by Aaron Allston. For those of you wondering about that name (I know I was) Hawkes is a city and the Phantom is a masked criminal. As you might expect form Mr. Allston, it's a very complete adventure - a decently sized list of characters with notes on each, some good maps, a newspaper operation written up in some detail, and a villain's plot spelled out so that your players can discover and attempt to thwart it. There's even the potential for a train chase, which is not something you see in many adventures. I am not really a 20's-30's gangbusters type guy, but with some upscaling this could be turned into a Champions adventure pretty easily I think. Another plus: there are no aliens, or known supervillains, or mutated animals involved - just a good old cape-wearing human.

As you can see, the picture above is "Fire Goat"

The flaming goat actually has an interesting backstory, sort of a cross between TMNT and Hellboy, before either of those two things were around. He's a genetics experiment that is the object of a devil-worshipping cult's magical ritual. The no talking thing could make for an interesting player challenge outside of the normal mechanics of the game. I have mixed feelings on it - in the right mood I can see trying to mimic a grunting goat superhero as being a lot of fun for the DM, in another mood it could be annoying and frustrating and get in the way of the rest of the game. His multipower is basically "magic spells" so he's pretty flexible. I see this character as the core of a nice little arc where the heroes encounter/find/rescue him, try to figure out what he is, and then help fend off the attacks of his hunteds and maybe help him find some peace. Mechanically he's not all that tough or powerful but he could be fun to run story-wise. Also, Incapable of Speech means you don't have to listen to his Obsession with Environmentalism.

Wrapping up we have reviews of The Armory (it did exist!) and Marvel Super Heroes (kinda funny to read now) some notes on infiltration in Espionage, then we get the somewhat-famous conversion guide for converting MSH characters to Champions.

Now this is very much a loose guide, though it does involve numbers, but there are few games as different in approach mechanically as MSH and Hero, so a lot of the Champions stuff is interpolated from MSH numbers. There are multiple disclaimers, and the author (George Mac Donald himself) notes that you're getting a picture of a character filtered thru Marvel Universe, MSH, and Champions -to me it makes a lot more sense to just sit down and work it out yourself but in the 80's a lot of us were very concerned with getting those numbers "correct", so if you could point to a system that you used to quantify the unquantifiable you were far more legit than someone who was just winging it. If you are contemplating doing this sort of thing it might be worth a look to see how this one worked, but I don't know if it's any less work than doing it yourself. Plus if you want a baseline there are many many writeups of Marvel characters in pretty much every Supers RPG system online now and these have the double virtues of a) having been reviewed by other obsessive fans and b) giving you someone else to blame if the character sucks or the mechanics are bad. I'd call that a win.

So there's issue 5, a solid, solid issue for Champions fans - then and now. 

D&D 4: Heroes of Shadow Review

It's a shame that some of the best work in 4th edition came in its last year of life. The three books titled Players Option: Heroes of something something are good examples of taking the framework established in the Player's Handbook series and bending them to accommodate more diverse concepts and options. I didn't deal with them much in the previous campaign but some of their material has begun to show up in my current game and I thought I would take a look at each one.

The Shadow book came out in April of 2011 and focuses on the darker side of the character spectrum:

• Class-wise we get the Executioner Assassin which looks a lot like an AD&D assassin - death attack, lots of poison usage and general sneakiness. This one is classed as a Martial and Shadow Striker, demonstrating some diversity in powers.
• Blackguard Paladin is present to cover all of those players who just can't play the good guy but want all the nifty powers - call it a fallen paladin, an anti-paladin, whichever - it's the "evil" paladin option. This one is a Divine Striker, though most of its powers include the Shadow keyword. It follows the Essentials paladin format of choosing (in this case) between two "vices" to guide power selection.
• Then we get the interesting (and somewhat controversial in 4E circles) class of Vampire, a Shadow Striker. This one is somewhat controversial because each level of the class has typically a single power choice at each level. There are some options when it comes to utility powers. This is pretty restrictive when compared to things like a wizard or a fighter but it does mean that the class stays very true to the concept. The only real downside is if your party had two players wanting to play the class - there will be a lot of overlap. That said, this is really just a more severe case of an existing problem as it could happen with any class. There are two "Bloodline" options at paragon and you can pick pretty much any Epic destiny so as the game advances this should be less of an issue.
• We also get the Binder Warlock, which is an Arcane Controller as opposed to the Striker role of the original Warlock, and it has a lot of movement (push/pull/slow) and zone effects in its powers.  With two Pact options, the fluff & the mechanic that makes a Warlock a Warlock, there is some power diversity here but not a ton as there is really only one power choice per pact per level, so two Star Pact Binder Warlocks in the same party are going to have a ton of overlap.  There are also some new powers for standard Warlocks and a new pact for Essentials Hexblades.
• There is a new domain for the Essentials Cleric, the Death Domain, and some new powers for standard clerics, all shadow/evil/darkside focused
• There are new wizard powers and two new schools for the Essentials Mage - Necromancy and Nethermancy.

The main complaint with some of these class options is the lack of choices at each level when it comes to powers. As I mentioned with the the vampire I think this kind of thing is overstated as I have only rarely seen two characters of the same class in one campaign, let alone the same build/pact/school/style, and even in that odd case you have race, theme, background, paragon path, and epic destiny to diversify. Compare this with AD&D fighters where they were pretty much the same other than weapon usage, which was largely determined by what magic items they had found in their adventuring careers - it's an order of magnitude of difference.

New races include:

• Revenant - basically it's the Crow: dead character comes back to life for some purpose, typically revenge. It's not my cup of tea but if you look at it like the Harrowed in Deadlands then it becomes more interesting. It's something that could happen to a character during a campaign, which also makes it more interesting than dwarf-sub-type-sixteen.
• Shade - this is fine for the Realms where Shades are a big player but I'm not sure it's super-useful anywhere else. You're a humanoid creature of shadow and have some abilities related to that. Again, not my thing but it could appeal to the die-hard sneaky type player.
• Vryloka - not a great name IMO but this is Vampire-as-race, as opposed to the Vampire-as-class option above. The fluff is basically humans descended from vampire-like ancestors but the mechanics fit a flat-out vampirish character too. They're flavorful and could fit in to any campaign if the DM is allowing that kind of thing. 

Beyond this there are 10 Paragon Paths and 4 Epic Destinies plus some shadow-themed feats. There is also a lot of background material on how different races and classes might be drawn to the power of shadow and lots of ways to give PC's a hook into the themes of the book - darkness, death, undeath, and walking the line between good and evil.

This is also a book where the attempts to bring back some of the old school D&D flavor , which  showed up in the Essentials players' books, flares right up too - Anti-Paladins and Assassins chief among them. However this does not constrain the book by any means, with Vampires and  Revenants broadening the definition of what a character can be.

Some perspective: When this book was released there was a fair amount of controversy, so I went back and read some reviews from that time. Some stuff was too powerful! Some stuff was too weak! Sometimes it was the same stuff! It was an Essentials book in disguise (4.5!) - remember when that mattered? What a difference a year can make.

Specific experience - Lady Blacksteel has been playing a Vampire in my current campaign and she has thoroughly enjoyed it. She likes the image and the concept and she likes the powers. She's not into the mechanics of the game as much as some so it's not like she's going to go research optimized builds online - this means the lack of power options doesn't bother her. She played a wizard in the previous campaign and at times the number of options available was a little overwhelming to the less fanatical player so this is actually a feature and not a bug to her. Don't get me wrong, she likes to play and likes to do well in the game, but she's not all that interested in all the out-of-game overhead like leveling up and tracking food and that kind of thing. To her the game is all about what's happening right now and not really about what paragon path she could take in six months, and the Vampire is interesting enough in play to work well for her. The original design notes can be viewed here - reading them after writing this just confirms what I had been thinking.

M&M Anniversary Edition

Looks like they're doing a special 10th anniversary edition of Mutants and Masterminds:

Kickstarter (of course) is here

Now I like M&M, I like Supers gaming, and there are some interesting stretch goals (though I am not impressed by the copy of 1st edition as one pledge bonus) and I thought I would share. Aside from this there a ton of RPG kickstarter projects out there - the news section of ENWorld on any given day seems to be filled with them - and I wanted anyone who cares to know that I'm not going to mention all of the ones I see or am even halfway interested in. I will only be mentioning the ones that are really relevant to the things I talk about on the blog - stuff like Stark City for Icons and this super-golden edition of M&M. I think the only downside to the 2012 kickstarter invasion of the RPG world is that everyone thinks they have a funding-worthy project, making it hard to keep up with the things that interest me amidst the avalanche of announcements.

Also - yes, the Power Profiles series (above) continues and is still quite handy, especially for newer players and some tricky concepts.

Motivational Monday