2 pages. No map. A tavern. A potion shop. Move along. Nothing to see here. Overpriced.

I’ve played and enjoyed Wild West RPGs and hope to do so again. I own a ridiculous amount of western role-playing games for someone who’s never run one (Ace & Eights, Western Hero, Coyote Trails, Boot Hill, GURPS Old West, Westhedge, etc.) so it took me a long time to finally buy Wild West Cinema.

And boy I’m glad I did. This has to be not only the best Western RPG I’ve ever read but also the best RPG rule set that Spectrum Games has (and I have nearly every one of those as well).

And thank god they didn’t try to find some awkward way to use poker cards because…”It’s a Western!”.

Slightly irked that there aren’t more (than 1) of the Western Archetypes that are female, though of course, there is no reason you couldn’t play a female Drifter, Gunslinger, Indian Outcast, Outlaw and even Preacher Man. Still I think there’s a Soiled Dove or Homestead Protector archetype that could have added to the fun.

Some great writing and the dip into “Alternity” style character definitions is well done and an very appropriate.

Even the skill definitions were interesting to read! Including an insightful treatise on how to deal with ‘charisma’ in relation to role-playing.

So in addition to being a fine rule set (not perfect, it has some too-fiddly bits, but very few), it’s also a blast to read. I couldn’t recommend it more highly.

The NPC example list is staggeringly good and complete and ought to be emulated by every RPG.

In so many other ways it’s an amazingly well written description of how RPGs should be played and GM’d. It’s a template I’ll use for all my games.

Top if off with a clever and fun starting adventure that includes a ‘home base’ location and the game practically plays itself.

Pound for pound this is the best Western Game I own and if they had a hard-copy version I would buy it instantly. This is a game I could run tomorrow with as close to zero preparation as any game — granted westerns are easier than most - but these rules make a breeze.

I’ve got to say this is the best RPG system put out by Spectrum Games - and that’s saying something! (I have most of them!)

Absolutely excellent overview of 10 fantasy villages. Avoids many of the flaws of other products like this - no "Oh, look! Demigorgon is tending bar!", "The outhouse is a portal to the Elemental Plane of Air", etc.

Just nice normal villages with interesting stories, people, placing and personalities that won't disrupt anyone's campaign with gonzo stuff.

The maps are simple, but well done and nicely generic in that they will fit in any type of terrain without requiring weird terrain additions to someones already existing map (another flaw in other products like this).

I'll definitely keep an eye out for more of this quality. Thanks!

Wonderul, fun, cheesy, great art. Storytelling is a little disjointed sometimes and the hero is the hottest, dumbest hero I've seen in a while, but great fun - everything a comic should be.

I can't add any more than the first review. There is stuff here I will use in my games, and that's as high praise as I can give.

Wow. Elemental is yet another attempt at a ‘generic-universal-any genre-any type of character game’. What makes it unusual is that it works.

The “Discovery Guide” (and reviews) impressed me enough to get the softcover print version of this book when it was a ‘deal of the day’ recently. The PDF priced was reduced but the print version didn’t seem to be reduced. I would have bought it earlier if it had been.

The book is beautiful, very well illustrated, with excellent use of coloring in the very clean and readable fonts. It is also remarkably free of spelling and grammar errors. Thank you for that. But most impressive are the rules themselves which are quickly explained in the first 19 pages. No stupid “flavor text”, no time-wasting ‘What is roleplaying?’, just straight forward, but not dry, “this is how you play this game”. Very refreshing, reminiscent of the classic Traveller in its utility and clarity. Logical, specific without being tedious, this game is ready to play immediately and yet will ‘stay in the background’ by being easy to remember and easy to run.

Also appreciated is some specifically helpful ideas on HOW to run the game, who should roll when, what amount and type of modifiers you should use, when to add complications, what to do if you can’t think of any, etc. Even a brief discussion of social interaction rolls. This type of information is almost NEVER in the actual rule book, and yet critically important skills to running a good game.

This is a d6 only, largely 1d6 system with straight forward difficulty numbers, skills, flaws, critical hits/fumbles and point allocation. GURPs done right basically. Or OneDice if it was compiled into one book.

But it also does several things to keep the rules simple, like modifiers and penalties max out at +3/-3 and exploding dice are limited to only 1 additional roll. All the benefits with none of the minutia. If any of the above turns you off, you probably wont like this system. It’s a minimalist system, but not a hand-wavy system.

There are touches I like that I’ve never seen in ANY system, such as successive characters after your first are built on a lower point total, some skills are given descriptions of how they are used by animals/monsters and even vehicles.

It’s not perfect of course. Stat Checks have a rather strange difference in that they roll low instead of rolling high. In keeping with it’s “cut-to-the-chase” style, there are very few examples, making it so that you’d better remember what an attribute roll is compared to a Stat Check if you want to figure out how damage works. Nothing fatal, but may initially require some flipping back and forth. Powers are given two pages here, though really, they are talking about “Arcane Powers”, i.e. spells. It gives a rough outline of casting time, range, duration, concentration, rituals and innate (magical) powers.

Skills are remarkably comprehensive and yet brief (65 skills, 11 pages, but many can be thought of as ‘talents/feats’ such as Aquatic, Battle Rage and Lucky). It also includes nice specifics such as not being able to attempt certain actions without a skill.

There are also some very wise rulings on only allowing a certain number of uses of some skills per ‘game session’ making them much more strategically valuable. The skills also make it very clear when one skill is applicable rather than another, making them argument free rules.

Flaws are a pretty good deal at 1 character point per level of Flaw (maximum 3), but they are balanced by all of them being given specific game effects that means the flaw is unlikely to be avoided. Even the typically problematic ones such as Addiction and Code of Honor. There might be some possible abuse with Flashbacks or Greed, but by and large they all seem pretty severe and there are few enough of them (19 flaws, 2 pages) that they are not necessary unless they are truly part of a player character conception rather than just ‘free points’.

Equipment has got a good selection of weapons (two types of clubs, four types of swords, 5 types of maces, flintlock, musket and blunderbuss).

Armor is treated fine, as light, medium and heavy but there is not even a nod to partial or mixed armor. Nor any kind of reflective, ablative or armor with life support.

Though I definitely deduct points for not giving anything a monetary cost - which makes no sense since under Followers it gives amounts for how much gold or dollars they expect to be paid. You either leave money to the GM or you don’t.

The Gamemaster guide follows. It’s not particularly bad advice, though I notice some of the more “modern” conceits that give bad advise on top of the bad advice the authors were given. For example “For instance, you might come up with an interesting reward (e.g. a magic sword) but rather than defining where it is and how to find it, you can let the party “find” it if you feel they’ll need it for the next encounter - or you simply want to reward them for a fine performance.” Is there anyone out there that doesn’t know that as a “railroad”?

Creatures are given an XP value however, which I also think should be genre specific - unless every game is about killing.

Fantasy starts with “Archetypes” which are usually called ‘templates’ in other games. A set of skills and suggestions for purchasing that aren’t required, but merely suggestions on the kind of things that type of character could have. Races are typical; Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, Human, Dragonfolk, Gnome, Half-Elf, Half-Orc, Fiendling.

Then ‘class’ archetypes; Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock and Wizard. The only really odd thing about it is how many spells are suggested. Could a beginning character really start with that many spells? If there is something I’m not understanding, I’m laying it straight on the text.

The spell list starts next and rather than spell ‘levels’ each spell is rated by its Difficult in casting from 0 to 9. And it’s pretty impressive at 38 pages. And it seems to have just the right mix of style and utility. It seems magical and unique, as spell should. Nothing particularly surprising, but some neat spells I haven’t seen before also. It even includes a spell for making magic items.

Magic Items have one page devoted to them. It seems to imply that most all magic items (except Artifacts) have ‘charges’ and that the magic is gone once those charges are used up. It works, but I’m not sure making most magic items ‘disposable’ is a good ‘generic’ way to deal with them. There are 4 magic item examples. Count ‘em. 4. Strangely enough they are followed by 4 example artifacts. Also, there are no costs in money or XP associated with these items.

The Monster section is much better. Much like the spell section are typical monsters, and non-typical interesting monsters. Unfortunately they are not all illustrated. And the ones that are...well I’d be much more interested in an illustration of a “Behir” than that a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Of course, monsters are mostly of the D&D variety. And the descriptions are very sparse. But also like the spells, they weren’t chintzy about it at 27 pages.

The Horror section starts off with a list of archetypes based on typical ‘horror’ characters (and 5 monsters). The Sanity rules are next. So by ‘typical’ I guess I mean ‘Call of Cthulhu’. But the Sanity rules are pretty simple and workable - players will fear it, but it won’t cripple them. Then they add Corruption, an optional rule that can serve as “the Dark Side” or “the Eye of Sauron”. Clever and simple.

Another cool spell section. Another Monster section follows. A few monsters are given entries like “Spells: Yes; GM’s choice” or “Sometimes, GM’s discretion” which is annoying as hell. It’s ALWAYS GM’s choice. I’m not paying you to tell me that. I’m paying you to MAKE THE CHOICES and if I don’t like them I’ll change them.

The Science Fiction section is next with a 9 archetypes. The Weapon section follows and doesn’t disappoint. Armor, Vehicles, Mecha and Spaceships also comes out well with enough to satisfy most gaming needs. A brief mention is also made of Cybernetics.

Psionic powers gets a full listing as well and even at 6 pages seems very complete and well done. Pulp & Superheroes is the next section. The first decision is that when a character has superpowers they are tied to a particular stat - just like a skill. That’s not surprising. But what IS surprising is that all Superpowers must have their appropriate attribute at 4 or more (Very High). This sort of makes sense. I mean, the power might be pretty weak if you had it for a low attribute. You are told to come up with one “super” weakness and given a few (obvious) examples. It also gives various point ranges for “Pulp”, “Comic Book” or “Cosmic” heroes. Then 12 pages of powers (55 powers).

Well, it does what it says on the tin. It provides a fast-paced rules light, but detailed and sturdy set of RPG rules that could pretty much do most of the common RPG genres. Is it spectacular and able to instantly replace all other games? No. But it’s very, very good, and if you were in the market for a ‘universal’ game it’s a lot better than than most ‘mainstream’ games of this type.

I could name on one hand with fingers left over the number of games I would play immediately and without needing house rules to ‘fix’. This is now one of those games.

Wonderfully well-done and very useful materail. Thanks! Hope to see more!

I'm not at all familiar with the web-comic this may have been based on, so I can't speak for it's fidelity. I was interested in as a non-Ghostbusters take on ghosts. In that it succeeds very well. A good set of rules and ideas about what ghosts do, why they do it, and how to deal with them (spoiler alert - punch them).

It's a little thin, otherwise.

Some neat ghosts powers, some basic ideas for the types of people and organizations that would punch them and a few ghost write-ups.

Nothing bad, but I rather wish I'd only gotten the PDF rather than the print version (which is completely un-illustrated).

The best book on cultures for rpgs I've ever seen. A detailed look at over 20 different and distinctive cultures that will work well in a multitude of fantasy games - high magic, swords & sorcery, etc.

No stats, all flavor and mostly human.

My only complaint is there is a little/way too much detailed food information. Not very useful.

But otherwise a definite must have for world-builders.

I hope there is a sequel!

I’m pretty sure that I have every prehistoric miniature game every printed since 1970. REALLY.

So far this is the best one I’ve ever seen. Simple, common sense, and fun.

It works with any scale dinosaurs you have and in a reasonable amount of table space. Only uses six-sided dice as well.

If they add cavemen to the game my search will be over.

Terrific set of rules but the inability to search greatly limits the usefulness of the PDF.

“The Hex Scouts Guide to Cryptozoology” is a supplement for the Witch Girls Adventures role-playing game that deals with a girl-scout like organization for the magical girl.

Anyone who liked the “Secret Saturdays” cartoon shouldn’t hesitate to pick this up immediately!

A great idea with a terrific backstory and organization. It makes it very easy to get into the structure of a game with “earning badges” consisting of very interesting and varied adventures.

It is a 98 page PDF, with most of the book (around 67 pages) consisting of a ‘monster manual’. The rest is detailing the nature and organization of the “Hex Scouts”.

The PDF has readable fonts but it is on the dark brown ‘parchment’ like background that is extremely unpleasant to read. Searching the PDF is especially difficulty because it’s almost impossible to tell the highlighted word from the background.

There is color art scattered throughout some of it appropriate to the text, some of it not. It mostly depicts Hex-scouts ‘day-in-the-life’ scenes. The style is ...unusual. Almost like stained glass with rich colors. A step up from the “Super Crusader” art if you’re familiar with that style.

I’m not sure why thematically a blood splat marks the page numbers, but it does the job.

Personally I don’t think it even comes close to the art in the “Witch Girls Adventures” core rulebook. It’s not out of place and better than nothing but I wouldn’t call it “playful” or “inspiring” either.

The art for the badges and chapter separators (mostly just badges) is very good and very inspiring for the material.

All in all it does what it says on the tin and gives enough material to easy creating an episodic game of the adventures of a troop of young witches.

What is there is excellent and will be perfect for setting up an easy to run game with a varied cast of characters who can come and go as the players schedules allow (something very much needed in today’s busy world). So if you’re looking to run a “open” game, I can’t think of a better way to organize it.

A great history and background, an explanation of the organization and specifics on meetings and events make it very gameable.

Earning “Badges” is done by accomplishing a certain number of missions, with the older girls getting the more complex missions. The missions are open-ended enough that getting them will be fun and not subject to the “leveling-up” mentality prevalent in a lot of RPGs. There are 12 badges described and all of them seem interesting to play.

For example, earning the “Mermaid” badge requires visiting a total of 12 oceans - including earth and other realms. The adventures practically write themselves.

The scouting activities are well described and inspire great ideas for wholesome adventure where combat isn’t necessary or expected (mostly).

Four new Cliques are added: A horse rider, an archer, a monster whisperer and totem spirit watcher.

Skills gives some new skills are added: Animal Training, including a list of the tricks the animals can be taught.

Crafts including example difficulties and time to craft. It mentions “Wealth” with no explanation as to what that is.

Fighting: Range Weapon is also given, along with a list of nine maneuvers its possible to do with this skill.

Herbalism skill and Languages along with a list of “exotic” languages.

Medicine is also given along with eight example difficulties and modifiers for the type of patient.

Riding skill and Survival skill along with seven example difficulties.

Track along with 5 different example difficulties and terrain modifiers.

Cryptozoology is considered a Magical skill and is a knowledge skill.

An absolutely excellent skill section that doesn’t skimp on the details.

New scout/nature oriented talents are also given: Capricious, Environmentalist, Flower-child, Naturalist, Relentless and Survivalist.

Heritages are also given: Moon Maiden, Monster (with monster examples), Summoner and Shape-shifter all with a good amount of details.

The Magic section gives examples of Summoning and Summoning spells and Totem Bonds with two pages of examples.

Another excellent and well-detailed section. It might be too many rules for some, but they are all well written, detailed and distinctly different from anything else, and well-suited to magical scouts.

The Equipment section is not and has not only a fine selection of camping equipment but “Add ons” which for a cost can add abilities to the weapons as well.

Finally there is the rest of the book - the Cryptids.

It first describes several pocket dimensions where cryptids are kept in a form of magical nature preserves.

Cryptids are given a sort of “Challenge Rating” that compares their difficulty to defeat with the equivalent “Stars” and “Groups of Stars”.

The Cryptid descriptions are pretty standard “monster manual” descriptions and all take up one or two pages.

They give some extra information in terms of the locations where they are likely to be found and their motivations and some “common traits” that can be chosen that mean that not every cryptid of the same type will behave the same way.

They also give some ‘hooks’ that are good for inspiring an adventure and ‘facts’ that can be used to for researching.

Also, every cryptid is illustrated and truthfully, while I’m not very fond of the ‘human’ depictions in this book I think the cryptid illustrations are excellent and evocative. Forget everything I said before! Go figure.

There are some ‘classic’ monsters and some entirely original ones (at least new to me). These descriptions are overflowing with plot ideas and this is something I WILL be using and WOULD be willing to get a printed copy of! Though please get a white background!

The variety is amazing and if you play games like “Monster of the Week”, “Meddling Kids” or “Cupcake Scouts” there is a lot to like here.

There’s even stats for normal animals as well.

Unfortunately it is marred by the worst editing I have seen in quite a long time - and I buy a LOT of PDFs.

Extra spaces in sentences are the smallest of the errors. Extra lines between paragraphs. Misspelled words (that won’t get caught by a spellchecker). Weirdly worded phrases and dropped words are most common. Hex-Scouts sometimes has a hyphen and sometimes doesn’t. Missing commas that make the sentence confusing. Words after semi-colons sometimes capitalized sometimes not. For example:

“Most Covens have three or more, meet twice a month...”. In the next paragraph it states that Covens have monthly meetings. So do they meet once a month or twice a month?

“If the creature isn’t to dangerous...”;

“Hex Scouts depending on their skill explore those places and even help map and them.”

“Hex Scouts competed on broom carpet and flying steed amongst a coven and other covens in various races...”

“...as members as long as the are of age and....”

“.This magical uniform provides +_1 bonuses to resist intense heat and cold, Changes to Standard uniform, Casual uniform and dress uniform for 1 Zap point and is resistant to dirt wear and tear” So if you spend at Zap point they are also resistant to dirt and wear and tear, but if you DON’T spend a Zap point they resist intense heat and cold? And what the heck IS a Standard, Casual and Dress uniform? They are never mentioned again.

“To show this Directors..”

“Basic Perks” What are the basic perks? I think they are the uniform(s) and skill bonuses, but it’s never made clear.

“...don’t have I easy...”

I could go on, but I think you get the drift. It’s mostly understandable but a frustrating and jarring read.

Especially considering the high production values of the other Witch Girls Adventure book, this is especially glaring.

As a supplement to mine for ideas and a campaign, I highly recommend it.

The information is so dense and useful I’d even buy a print copy.

(Like most Witch Girls Adventure products) This Is Good Stuff.

I’ll admit that “Cupcake Scouts” was an instant-buy for me. So it already started with the advantage of being unique and something I haven’t seen before.

But I was pleasantly surprised to find it was a simple single six-sided dice system married to a very clever background.

In a quaint town, the monsters and have agreed to a sort of truce created by the bribes of baked goods. This mission is carried out by the Cupcake Scouts gathered by an elder spirit called the Scoutmaster. In addition to delivering a wide variety of baked goods, are also trained to do battle against cursed creatures of darkness.

So in essence, it’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” where every player gets to be a ‘chosen one’!

The system as a simple 1d6 difficulty system with the scout’s “level” added to the roll.

Levels in the Cupcake Scouts is granted by earning Badges.

It’s important to note that this game has NO attributes (Strength, Mind, Personality, etc.) and this may be a deal-breaker for some.

You have your Troop (class), Level and Health and your special abilities.

The difficulty checks are broken down into well-thought out categories that make it easy to adjudicate without adding any rules overhead. The checks are Attack, Knowledge, Resist, Skill and Social checks.

Like “Swords & Six-Siders” a roll of 6 is an automatic success and a roll of 1 is an automatic failure.

Advantages and Disadvantages are also given in the same manner as in the “Barbarians of Lemuria” game (and now I think even in “Dungeons & Dragons”) with easy to remember ‘cancelling out’ rules.

Combat is handled as an Attack roll against a monster’s “Challenge Rating” which serves an armor class/defense. Scouts have Health points and are merely ‘defeated’ when they reach 0 Health. Challenge Ratings are derived from a monster’s level.

Cupcake scouts are always supposed to exemplify good behavior - brave, capable, friendly, helpful and smart - but they are categorized by “troops” which exemplify certain behaviors and acts a ‘Classes’ for the game.

Each troop gives special bonuses and a spell-like abilities. The troops are well-done, being unique and following standard RPG tropes (cleric, wizard, ranger, bard and fighter). I like the way these are done, but ‘disguised’ but definitely given unique roles and abilities, though the smart/wizard-like troop seems especially powerful.

The brilliance of the troop idea is that every character must embody the scout trait - pretty much restricting bad behavior (or encouraging good behavior as you will).

Scouts are already geared up with weapons, magic gems, a backpack, cupcakes and their handbook.

The Handbook serves as a clue-finder/portable google that allows scout-specific knowledge (including magic and lore) to be gained on the trail.

The Backpack is a fully stocked bag of tricks for monster hunters.

Even the cupcakes (or other treats) have a chance of having magical powers.

Levels are gained by earning badges and provide all sorts of bonuses, including one optional ability per level.

Optional abilities work like talents or feats and it’s great that even in a simple game like this you have mechanical and choice-based ways of distinguishing your scout from the others.

Earning Badges including Baking, Hunter, Slayer and Troop badges. You do the straight forward thing a certain number of times to earn them. Baking, killing, more killing and being exemplary at your troop’s trait.

Its like experience points, but the adventure itself is what gains the advancement.

The Scoutmaster is given the common Gamemaster advice, but also noted that they are a character in the game as well. Rather a ‘Mary Poppins’ type of character. It gives an outline of a typical adventure that gives them an episodic structure. This might not work for everyone, but I like it a-lot.

It also gives simple rules for random events and guides on setting ‘challenge ratings’ (the difficulty levels that need to be rolled over), and suggestions on assigning Advantages and Disadvantages. Very thorough and well done for such a light rule system.

Now because the game has no ‘skills’ of any kind, it talks about common situations - climbing, holding breath, leaping, swimming. It also talks about the effects of darkness. It even has a sort of ‘challenge rating’ for determining the difficulty of the opposition. It’s things like this that indicate that the game has actually been played rather than just written and very much appreciated. Even in “rules-light” games, these kinds of things are very helpful and for me, determine whether something is truly playable or not.

There is a fairly typical “Treasure” section, though it admonishes that cash is not really a viable option. Against the code and doesn’t travel to the mortal world. I’m not sure I wouldn’t like to see a little more creativity in this area. Maybe something that had to do with earning badges.

The Creature chapter is suitably brief, giving monsters a single Challenge Rating Number and ‘Tags’ which seem to correspond to something like ‘creature type’. Corruptions, Cursed, Elementals, Lycanthrope, Spirits, Undead, Vermin, etc.

Special abilities are buried in the monster description. The monsters would not be out of place in a “Dungeon Scouts” game. So much so that it’s almost a disconnect. The rules are written to work with the game, but for example the bite of a Hellhound can only be healed over time. While there is plenty of healing in the game, doing it over time is never described.

The Adventures are suitably short, but thankfully each of them has a map which is always appreciated. The artwork in generally is excellent in its own quirky style and suits the game well.

There are four of them which makes for a very nice start. They are rather dungeony, though, and the rewards for them are mostly of the ‘monster’ hunter badge type. I’m sure it’s fine for a game played with your daughter but I could certainly see more variety in the types of adventures for cupcake scouts.

The adventures tend to suggest that the town of Raven’s Hallow may in fact be in a medieval fantasy world rather than the modern world. There is a gnome apothecary, a family of (apparently) halflings and faun’s running the town library. I guess it was never explicitly said that the scouts were in the modern world, but it would be nice to have this explicitly stated. Maybe it’s just not the kind of thing the audience for this book would be too concerned with, but I’d like to know!

Believe it or not there is a Campaign section. THIS is the place where it talks about the ‘world’ of Cupcake Scouts. I wish this chapter was a LOT earlier.

So it states that there is a “land of humans” but it doesn’t actually say if that is a modern land.

Well, at the end of the day its a charming, playable rules-light system with an imaginative background and a great premise that seems fun as hell to play.

I’d play it in an instance and buy a printed version.

I truly hope there’s more coming!

PS: The only reason it's a 4 instead of a 5 is that the background world isn't explained very well.

BULLETPROOF BLUES REVIEW

I think Thomas B.'s review said it better than I could. It's well, though sparsely illustrated, well edited and well written. It's just...boring. There's nothing new here. I think that "a poor-mans' mutants & masterminds" is giving it a little too much credit, but that's about the closest it comes to. With 8 attributes and the mutants & mastermind 'power rank' structure, it's not rules "light" by any means. It's not super-crunchy either however. So "rules-medium". There's no sample adventure, nothing in the way of example NPCs, no weapons, no vehicles, no animals. The world background is trite and derivative (though intentional it would seem). It's much less complete that other superhero offerings, being basically character creation, combat and world background. It basically doesn't have anything that hasn't been done before and there's nothing particularly interesting about the way it's done. I'd say why bother, but it is affordable to check out easily if you haven't found anything else you like. But really, this seems more a set of house rules for Mutants & Masterminds than a full game.

I liked this product. It filled the niche of what 'exotics' trade cargo is for Traveller. So it was a useful interesting product that helps my game. Thank you!