The long version, as pulled from my first Phylactery of the Unvincible Stevillord ( http://www.nerdtitan.com/2013/05/27/phylactery-of-the-unvincible-stevillord-1st-edition/ ):

The copy for this product starts off “This enchiridion of entities should only be used by DMs inclined towards malfeasance, sadism, and base wrongdoing” and it is precisely spot-on. Only $2.62 as of this writing, this may be the best few bucks you have ever spent on an RPG product.

Geared for the d20/OSR crowd, Teratic Tome can be used for just about anything– even as an inspirational guide for what to throw into fantasy fiction. This book is old school in tone and presentation, and with only a single page of explanatory text, this manual of monsters kicks off right away and does not fuck around. Things get real right off the dire bat with the Acronical and don’t let up until Zombie, Verminated. In between all of that are some of the most interesting and downright evil creatures my eyeballs have ever barely not popped out of my head, screamed, and ran away from, well, screaming.

Author Rafael Chandler weaves an astonishing web of pain amercements for gleeful Gamemasters to throw at their players. Aberrations, undead, fully whatthefuckisthat class creatures… Like the multi-stage Farrago, which is the gaming equivalent of chucking your player’s characters into a woodchipper. The Farrago is “universally hated by all life forms, it is killed on sight by nearly every intelligent being that encounters it; still, no one knows where the entity comes from, or why its worms are found in every part of the world” and if it’s left long enough, it turns into an HD 30 “nightmarish melange of arms, legs, limbs, heads, mouths, and randomly placed eyes and spines” reeking of eggs and vinegar.

The art of Teratic Tome is an excellent assortment from a variety of talented sources. It really does read like the vicious Monster Manual you always wanted. Well, if you wanted a vicious Monster Manual and listen to a LOT of Slayer. This book is laid out in stunningly simple-but-effective fashion and is easy to look at and read.

If I have to pick a gripe, it’s that this book needs bookmarking in PDF. The one I bought didn’t have it, anyway. Really,that’s my only complaint. It’s all in alphabetical order, and scrolling through the two-column format, 120-page book is a breeze. [[UPDATE NOTE: This was corrected, so this gripe is thankfully worthless now-- huzzah!]]

The short version: This monster manual will kick your ass. Not for kids, and not for wimpy players or GMs. Get your badass on and get this book.

The long version, from my latest Phylactery of the Unvincible Stevillord ( http://www.nerdtitan.com/2013/05/27/phylactery-of-the-unvincible-stevillord-1st-edition/ ):

Since I loved the Teratic Tome, buying Rafael Chandler’s SlaughterGrid for $6.66 was an absolute no-brainer.

Also aimed at the d20/OSRIC/OSR crowd, the copy for this dread folio on this starts off with “Created by genocidal halflings aeons ago, SlaughterGrid is a strange and gruesome dungeon, avoided by all save the bravest or most foolhardy of adventurers.” And after reading through it, I would say this copy is quite correct. Upon opening the book (or PDF, in this case) I was treated to bookmarks– 1 point to Victory. Within the opening pages, Mr. Chandler has a list of all the songs he listened to whilst creating this product. It’s full of deliciously dark metal, black metal, death metal, and industrial metal music. By no means do you have to listen to that sort of music to enjoy this offering, but it certainly helps into understanding the tone.

Speaking of tone, Chandler’s tone throughout the book is rather casual. It’s akin to the tone James Raggi IV takes in his Lamentations of the Flame Princess products. By this I mean it’s irreverent, witty, and pretty damned funny. Oh, and dark, too. There really should be an official “grimdark” genre nowadays, as it would make advertising/cataloging this newer breed of RPGstuff easier to deal with.

Self-described as “pleasurably vile”, SlaughterGrid takes no prisoners and takes absolutely no shit when it comes to PC-murder. There’s really too much to go into in a spotlight feature like this, but the ad-copy high points are:

-An 18-area mini-hexcrawl to start you off -A three-level dungeon with 55 encounter areas -32 new monsters, including stygiacs, gold-whores, progenitors, and necro-otyughs -Weird treasure, dangerous magic items, and unpleasant surprises -Rules for thieving abilities, schemes, and weaponized monsters

Now that you’re processing the above, I will add that SlaughterGrid, of course, has some incredibly fucked up denizens (surprise!). Not only that, but everyone who dies while tromping through the SlaughterGrid ends up being resurrected through the Ovum, and they can garner “malformities” through this process. Eventually, such malformed resurrected adventurers will end up as something horrible. The table for resurrection results are deliciously awful.

Then there’s the gold-whores. They take your gold. It sucks. The more gold you have, the more gold-whores that appear. This makes having gold a bit of a problem. Actually, a lot of seemingly normal things in an adventurer’s life is a problem in the SlaughterGrid.

Art-wise, it’s a bit sparse, but what art there is fits very nicely. I would have liked more images for the monsters but illustration isn’t cheap, and Chandler’s elegantly non-complex layout and charmingly no-frills presentation doesn’t suffer for it. Also, the maps provided more than makes up for it. Furthermore, as a student of How to Font Properly, SlaughterGrid gets points for having very effective font usage.

Overall, this 48-page PDF is worth every goddamned penny.

It does have a few small editing gaffes, but otherwise it flows like diabolical honey and is one of the few adventures I’ve picked up in recent years I want to try out on an <strike>unsuspecting</strike> eager group.

I will grant this 4.5 incredibly well-deserved Baconlich Kings out of 5.

--

The short version: I absolutely love this product. Should be hilarious mayhem to unleash on your players. Especially if you tell them nothing in advance. Please not that SlaughterGrid is NOT for children. It's an 18+ product. Enjoy!

For a freebie, this is most excellent. Normally, I'd rate it a 4/5 if I had paid around a couple of bucks for it. But make it free? Nice.

Tombs and Tumuli is a product after my very own dark heart. Not only does this 8-page gem cover the portal tomb, the long barrow, a many chambered tumulus, and a large stone tomb, but it also provides a brief explanation. The tomb-plans are stark, black & white line drawings, giving a GM just enough to use in order to quickly plop it into their games-- whether it's for an evening's play, or a full campaign world.

I enjoy these sorts of illustrations, and I'm sure OSR and Old World WFRP types will, too, but your mileage may vary. I mean, come on, it's free, so you have nothing to lose.

I'll be sure to keep my eye on more products from DreamWorlds.

Below is most of the review (albeit still rather edited) I did for my blog (found here: http://grognerd.blogspot.com ). I received "Traveller OGL: Alienist" from Postmortem Studios, and it occurred to me that I should probably also post the review here, as well.

--The Copy-- "A full career path for the Traveller OGL Many people are fascinated by alien cultures but for some it becomes an obsession and for a few, exceptional people they become a part of the culture that fascinates them. Accepted in a way that most never could be. Caught between their own people and their obsession, the Alienist is a bridge between disparate cultures separated by light years, psychology and even biology."

--What You Get-- The Alienist PDF is a rather short affair, and is pretty no-frills. There isn't even a credits page. It clocks in at nine pages, six of which are what I call "Meat Pages"; as in, ones with rules and aren't OGL licence stuff or the cover. The Meat Pages are breviloquent concerning the description of the Alienist class, and it still manages to be well-written. Then you get a few pages of charts which are laid out in a way that almost made me go cross-eyed at first... However, when I look at the specific part of the chart I need to read, it's not so bad. Charts and tables are available for Skills & Training, Career Progress, Ranks and Benefits, Mustering Out Benefits, Mishaps, and Events. You probably won't be surprised when I say the Mishaps and Events ones are my favourites. And, indeed, reading through them was interesting, but not as entertaining as I had hoped. Then again, Postmortem most likely made the right decision in that case. There are some new rules and new equipment, too, with the new skill "Integration" making perfect sense when an Alienist is immersing themselves in an alien culture (I hear this becomes problematic for those Alienists visiting LV-426). The major standout in the equipment section is "Bodyswap" (TL 14, by the way), in which someone who feels they are born to the wrong species-- called "xenodismorphia"-- can, well, you know, fully integrate themselves. Pretty neat, really. There are a few more items and then that's it... roll License Agreement. To me, everything looks fairly balanced and it's excessively unlikely it will break anything. (Yes, this is a word. I find it friendlier sounding than "laconic".)

--Art und Layout-- Overall, the art and layout remain cost-effective without looking too cheap. The cover art is decent enough, and doesn't make me want to kill myself. Always a good thing, I suppose. It's really not bad, man. In fact, I dig it. Have you seen some of the art in indie games out there? Yee-ikes. There is not much more art to be had aside from the cool cyberspacepunky border bits; which I love, honestly. The layout is simple, single column style, which you should be able to read with ease. There is the aforementioned problem with the tables and the like, which look a bit crammed to me. But once you need to find a particular listing, you should have no problem. As for the editing? It's good. Being the nitpicking editor bastard (and obvious hypocrite) I am, I like the cut of this product's editing jib.

--Bang For Your Buck-- There is no other way to say it: This mofo be fiddy cents, dawg. That's right: 50 cents. Bang/Buck-wise, this is rockin' and rockin' hard.

--The Bottom Line-- The bottom line is that if you play Mongoose's Traveller, you should totally check this out. It's cheap, it's informative and to the point, and I really don't know when the last time I saw something so cool and nifty that's dropped right into any Traveller game for the price of making a crazy homeless dude leave you alone. Personally, I'd put it in my Traveller game if I were running one. And that reminds me: I need to run one. I am dying to do a Judge Dredd or Strontium Dog game. The Alienist class would work well with them, too.

If you play Traveller you would be doing yourself a disfavour not buying this.

Looking at the cover of this issue immediately took me back to when I used to play the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness” RPG. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that “Indego Blue” takes me right back to the best TMNT comics mood-wise of today and yore within the first few pages! All great things, folks. I guess I’m a sucker for mutant animal comics.

The opening exposition is told in a fast, semi-detailed first person style, and it explains that, basically, genetic “splicing” between human and animals has led to these “genetic mutts” being kicked to the curb socially and hunted down “like vermin”.

Our story stars and is narrated by the titular character, Indego Blue. He’s a dog-man with no memory of his past, or who he really is, and completely dedicated to saving those “transplants” like himself. This comic has all the tropes we’ve come to love: action, adventure, mystery, a tech-geek sidekick (named Baxter), heroics and a determined villain who works for an evil corporation. While not wholly original by any stretch, “Indego Blue” proves to quite the kick in the pants, and is a great comic to pick up for those who are growing tired with standard mainstream super-tights titles.

And, as mentioned before, this comic nicely captures the spirit of TMNT, which itself was a parody of comics like Daredevil and the like. The art is non-complex black & white; with strong line work, great inking, good layout and terrific pacing. The dialog flows smoothly with only a couple hiccups here and there. The writing, while uncomplicated, is strong and sets up in superb fashion the universe in which this story takes place. The lettering is excellent, my only (tiny) gripe with it being some bubbles and text-boxes having a little too much space around the letters—but hey, this will NOT detract from the story one bit. Overall, this book is a well-built, above-average offering showcasing sequential storytelling skill and talent.

In other words: Totally worth reading. Oh, and this book is fun. I like fun. If you like fun, too, you should give “Indego Blue” a gander. Come on, it’s a steal at $1 for 28 pages!

There can be no doubt that, love him or hate him, Alan Moore is one of the greatest creative minds to ever grace the comics medium. His story-telling is so earnest, weird, kooky, slick and downright awesome all at once that it’s no wonder he’s one of the Greats. Now, I’m a Moore admirer myself, and I’m especially influenced by his earlier works; specifically Swamp Thing, Captain Britain and his many 2000 AD accomplishments. Sure, I suppose little things V for Vendetta, Watchmen and From Hell are what people mostly know him for, but I like to think his best work was with Mighty Tharg and his humble weekly newsagent-bomb 2000 AD. And with the galaxy’s greatest comic Marvelous Moore laid upon us mind-blowing wonderment-inducing things in the form of titles such as The Ballad of Halo Jones, D.R. and Quinch, his Time Twister tales, Abelard Snazz, and, of course, Future Shocks.

Future Shocks is a long-going series (since issue #25) of non-related one-off strips written in the vein of classic shows like Twilight Zone, Night Gallery and The outer Limits. Each Future Shock is a little strange, eerie or creepy and has a twist ending… or twisted ending… usually both! And anyone who’s even remotely aware of Alan Moore’s work will fully know that many of the best Future Shocks were written by him.

This 200+ page black & white volume not only contains all of Moore’s Future Shocks, but it also has his Time Twisters (which are a bit longer than the Future Shocks) and all the Abelard Snazz strips he did. To be quite honest, it was quite difficult to contain myself reading this book the first time through. I readily admit that it’s probably one of the best comic tomes one can ever acquire. I honestly cannot see anyone with a love for cracking short stories and sequential art hating this. In fact, I am finding it really hard to review this collection as I just want to say “It's one of the top ten things in comicdom you should own. So buy it, if you haven’t already!”

Enough gushing. You already know who wrote this, so here’s a list of some of the paint-peeling, eye-stealing artists you will encounter: Alan Davis, Ian Gibson, Steve Dillon, Dave Gibbons, Paul Neary, Bryan Talbot and Brendan McCarthy. That’s just for starters. I suppose I should tell you a bit about what you can find inside this near-religious experience, but please bear in mind that since the stories are very short, usually around 3 pages, there’s too much to cover in a review such as this. I’ll go over some of my favorites…

Grawks Bearing Gifts (Future Shocks): The kick-off to the collection, and a worthy starter. I’d say it’s a classic, but let’s face it: they all are.

The English/Phlondrutian Phrasebook (Future Shocks): This is one of the funniest comics I have had the pleasure of reading. I’ve read it probably a hundred times and it still makes me cackle with glee. “Yes, we are a pain sensitive species. Why do you ask?”

The Last Rumble of the Platinum Horde (Future Shocks): A classic of classics, the story is perfect and it even kinda conveys a message. Salad Days (Future Shocks): “Well, of course we’re humanitarians! Strict humanitarians! After all… we only eat humans, don’t we?” I’m a sucker for people eating.

An American Werewolf in Space (Future Shocks): Another hilariously twisted bit of silly genius. Plus a great plan in case we ever have a problem with lycanthropes.

The Disturbed Digestions of Doctor Dibworthy (Future Shocks): This timeless, charming time-travel tale is one of my all time faves.

Bad Timing (Future Shocks): I will always love this sharp parody of the Kypton Escape of baby Superman.

Dad (Future Shocks): The horror of this short resonated with me ever since I first read it, which was a long, long time ago. Now that I have kids it hits even harder. Simple yet incredibly effective.

Ring Road (Time Twisters): Suitably creepy and a beautiful lesson in “what goes around comes around”.

The Time Machine (Time Twisters): Oh, so, so sad.

And much, much more!

Then there’s the Abelard Snazz strips, which star one Abelard Snazz, a man with a “multi-storey mind” and four eyes. He shows up in some Ro’ Jaws Robo Tales, Future Shocks and self-titled thrills. As a whole, Snazz is some good reading and should throw must people for a loop form time to time—a fun loop, mind.

With all of these Future Shocks, Time Twisters, Abelard Snazz strips and more, I can think of a better value for your dollar at this moment. This collection is a must for any fan of comics. But I’m sure I’ve already said that… right? Hmmm, I better wrap this up soon before the very review becomes a Future Shock itself!!

The only downside I can find is that a couple pages here and there are two page spreads and some words are cut off, which can be a pain with a PDF… Overall, this book is nearly all upsides, ranging from the astonishing, the spine-chilling, the harrowing, the side-splitting, the depressing and the occasional cautionary tale; not to mention the magnificent illustrative work from some of the industry’s greatest talents throughout. Shell out your hard earned ducats and enjoy, Earthlings.

Since 2000 AD is a weekly anthology, I will keep my review brief as possible and break it down into short sections based on the respective thrills (stories) and other content. Speaking of thrills, prog 1650 kicks off three brand new ones!

Cover: Chris Weston treats us to a most zarjaz and kick-ass cover featuring 2000 AD editor-in-chief, the Mighty Tharg. This may be the best Tharg cover yet! Top marks for droid Weston.

Judge Dredd, “Tour of Duty” (part one): And so Dredd and Judge Beeny start their exile working the new mutant re-location cities built in less crappy parts of the Cursed Earth. An excellent beginning, if a bit inauspicious for Beeny and Dredd! I have a feeling it’s only going to get crazy from here. Scribe-droid Wagner delivers the good, as per usual fare and Colin MacNeil’s art is drokking awesome. Major points also awarded for naming the mutie city designer “Mason Dixon”. It looks like another Dredd classic may be in order.

Shakara, “Destroyer” (part one): It’s good to see Death Incarnate return to 2000 AD. It should come as no surprise to say Robbie Morrison delivers a gripping tale of impressive carnage and vengeance that should have you wailing for more once this first chapter ends. Henry Flint shows us yet again why he’s a master of gorgeous, epic star-borne violence. Seriously, folks, his art had me drooling! It keeps getting better and better and better. Warlord Skulka, an incredible and hideous looking alien khan of the worst kind, certainly gets his. Oh, my, does he ever! But anyone who’s read Shakara before knows this… And if you’ve never read Shakara before, you’re in for a treat. As with the Dredd thrill before this one, my only disappointment is having to wait for the next issue. Well done, Morrison, Flint and de Ville (letters).

Kingdom, “Call of the Wild” (part one): Finally, we are given some of what I call “The Abnetting”. Be warned: I am a mammoth Dan Abnett fan (457 ft. tall!) and pretty much worship his writing prowess. So, needless to say, this thrill of Kingdom is a most excellent offering. Gene the Hackman, my favorite mutant man-dog, travels to dangerous Auxtralia in the Them (evolved insects) devastated Earth of the near future where he fights Them, who attack him and his human companion Leezee. They are being watched by someone… And then a public phone rings. This thrill is already as a Kingdom comic should be: hard action, weird-but-fun quips (e.g. “Get whet!”), frenetic pacing and Elson’s terrific, vibrant art. Like with the two thrills previous: can’t wait for more.

All in all, yet another fine issue of the galaxy’s greatest comic. This one is lighter on variety, having only three extra-length thrills—but what heavy, pulse-pounding thrills they are! With Kingdom, Dredd and especially Shakara in ace form, it would be a crime to rate this prog as anything less than “perfect”.

Considering I’m a huge fan of Fear Agent (Dark Horse), it stands to reason I’d be on the look-out for other pulpy sci-fi adventure “with stones”. Now I should mention right away that Mr. Phelps Space Detective is not as awesome as Fear Agent. I’m not saying it’s bad, though; oh, no, far from it. In fact, if you are looking for an action SF ka-boom fix, this should do rather nicely.

Mr. Phelps is, as the title suggests, a space detective. He also has a ship called the DeForrest (great name) and a side-kick / love-interest named Kat… who’s a cat. Well, a cat-person. Yes, a bipedal cat… person. Anyway, it all seems to make sense in the comic, which is full of space-faring adventure, explosions and people screaming in vacuum, greedy dudes named Jorge, an attack by clones, an odd device called a “hitchhiker” and lots of made up words like “skunc”, “frik’n scumlick” and “quarb”. In other words: Very, very fun.

And it’s this fun which carries the book along with solid, above-average writing. The dialogue is swift and smooth, and the scenes are paced well. This whole first issue runs at a good clip, really, and yet I never felt it was going TOO fast. In the end I was left with questions (the good kind) and a need to read the other two issues in this series.

The only major downside I can see is the art. Not that it’s terrible or anything, but it does have a “sketchy” and uneven quality to it. It looks better in black and white than it does in color, really. The first and last pages are colored, and while the coloring job is competent—very good, even—, it just doesn’t service the art as it should. But this is most likely due to the odd style of the line work. There are some places where the illustration is just bad, like Marcela’s face on page 19. Her face looks more like a clown’s than a comely woman’s with those bizarre looking… lips? Yeah, I’ll go with lips. I can see where artist Jason May has some serious talent, especially with spacecraft, aliens and technology (nice spacesuits!); but he seems to have a hard time with faces and even anatomy at certain points.

What I’m happy to report is that even with the above complaints, Mr. Phelps Space Detective is a freaking hoot to read! It’s not perfect, but if you’re looking for a rip-roaring space yarn to get into and, like me, are howling at the moon with your other two wolf pals for more scifi-pulp with extra grit and grime, you can’t go wrong with Mr. Phelps.

Upon seeing the cover for this book, in which a mime runs from zombies as his mime pal is set upon by them, I knew the bar was set pretty high. I mean, that’s genius right there. With eager, ravenous, mime-loathing eyes I read on…

The first thing that struck me about Hump day—well, other than the cover—is the competency of the creative team. The art, while in rather simple black/white, has strong lines, great shadowing and fantastic inking. The layout itself is nothing special, but it suits the purpose of facilitating a good story and never gets in the way. I also noticed the lettering is top-notch—a big deal to me, you see. Too many indie comics are horribly ruined by terrible lettering and word-balloon placement. HumpDay totally succeeds in the technical department. A refreshing thing, if you ask me.

But what about the story? At first it seems pretty to be standard zombie-plague fare, opening with a plane en route to Scotland from Mumbai and the crew discovering they are to be killed instead of having a cuppa. Then, of course, there’s a nice exposition page with a main character (and reader) learning about the “infection” via a news program. We also learn that it has spread to all seven continents. Yes, even Antarctica.

We are then treated to the main character showing up for work, and it seems he’s apart of some kind of zombie killing taskforce, called “Tendart”. It’s not explained what Tendart is in the first issue (or if the infected are really zombies—that’s just an assumption on my part), but we are treated to characters Jake and Ed’s workplace, and they are assigned a mission in Paris. Once there they enter some creepy catacombs and are attacked by some kind of new creature, ones they don’t recognize. In the end, the new creatures prove to be quite bold and attack Jake, Ed and those with them openly.

The writing is fresh, funny and never too cliché… but just cliché enough when it needs to be. HumpDay paints itself to be pretty tongue-in-cheek and downright hilarious in place. Think Shaun of the Dead here, folks.

Now, overall this comic is a very solid offering. Still, some folks may be a bit confused as to who Ed and Jake are and what they do (as I was slightly). This is all solved by reading issue #0, which sets up everything quite nicely. To quote the copy for the #0:

“Ed and Jake are "dog-catchers" that have been specifically trained to go into tourist areas (like Paris, France) and destroy the hordes of undead tourists and vacationers who died while overseas. One thing, in accordance with certain laws and guidelines, dog-catchers are only permitted to destroy their particular homeland's undead (ie: American soldiers can only kill American Zombie tourists). With extreme emphasis on being politically correct, tempers easily flair between governments. For Ed and Jake this could mean the end!”

It’s only… let’s see… 72 cents currently, or you can read the preview which also let’s you know what’s up setting-wise. I say buy it, as it’s worth every penny. Then go buy this issue (#1).

In a market full-on glutted by hordes zombie comics, it’s always pleasant to see fast-paced witty action paired with undead killin’. If I have to read yet another zed-word offering, then it better be either 1) damned good or 2) make me laugh. HumpDay manages to do a whole lot of both, and I’m eager to see what happens next!

I didn't know what to expect with this at first, really... Man, do I enjoy being pleasantly surprised! The NPCs are well written and created in such a way that they can be dropped into any campaign albeit with some slight modification maybe (as in my case...I'm always tweeking with things, heheh). I wouldn't say that this product is absolutely essential for a DM, but for me it makes some nice extra material and saves me a great deal of time. I believe that the Non Players Compendium will appeal especially to new DMs and overworked Dms... and for 3 bucks, its a steal. I look forward to Volume Two :) <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>