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This tongue-in-cheek, beer-and-pretzels roleplaying game is filled with outrageous cliches, over the top action, ridiculous pastiches and just down-right good old fashion fun. The Floating Vagabond, after which the game is named, is a strange bar at an inter-dimensional, galactic crossroads, that sees all kinds of people, aliens and things pass through. Think the Cantina from Star Wars, but with more hot rods and Elvis. It is essentially an adventure generator ("You all meet in a bar...") that will send your characters (whatever they might be!) on outlandish adventures.
Your enjoyment of the game will depend on your ability to poke fun of everything and your tolerance for a game where one of your vital stats is "Oops! Points". I have a high tolerance for such things, so enjoyed it a great deal! My favourite part? The "Schticks", which are things like "the Schwarzenegger Effect", or the "Errol Flynn Effect", which are essentially cliches your character can access for comedic effect.
The art is very cartooning, but totally appropriate for the game, and some of the images are very funny!
Check it out!
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This is the adventure series that sparked my love for the Iron Kingdoms. It was one of the first adventures I ever picked up for D&D 3E, and I was really excited to be able to get it again in PDF format. This is an engaging, exciting and well written adventure that will have your characters thinking, fighting and begging their way out of danger and adventure. It is also really (really) big, being the original three adventures collected together in one big (electronic) tome.
You don't need to be familiar with the Iron Kingdoms or Warmachine to use and enjoy this adventure, it is pretty portable to other campaign settings (the first time I ran it nobody knew what the Iron Kingdoms were). It is just a solid fantasy adventure. If you do want to set it in the Iron Kingdom, this collection has an overview of the setting and a good description of Corvis, the city around which the adventure revolves.
My only gripe is that the page backgrounds are grey, not white, which ate a fair bit of my printer ink when I was printing specific pages out.
All in all, though, this is an excellent adventure (or campaign, actually) that will keep your characters busy for many, many sessions.
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Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies (S7S) is a game of action, adventure and (wait for it...) swashbuckling in a fantastic world of floating islands, sky pirates, dashing princes, nefarious courtesans and much danger. It is a wonderful setting, evocatively painted through the text, illustrations, and rules design. Think Errol Flynn, the Three Musketeers, and all those thrilling adventure tales of yore, mixed with a healthy dash of the fantastic.
The game itself is based on a streamlined version of the PDQ system, which uses short statements to describe your character and a very simple die mechanic to resolve action.The PDQ system is certainly on the "light" end of the rules spectrum, but covers everything you expect it to. My favourite part of the system is how damage (physical, mental or otherwise) can affect your other "descriptors". This means getting beat up in a duel can later influence your ability to influence someone in a social situation, or even the other way around!
If you have ever fancied yourself the captain of a magnificent flying galleon (accompanied by your crew of cutthroats, courtesans, explorers, noblemen, or savages), traversing the seven skies in search of adventure, glory or treasure, then you should check out this game!
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Dragon Warriors was one of the first RPG's I ever played, and I remember it fondly. This introductory book concisely covers character generation, combat and the setting, and is filled with all the stuff I remember and love. Mind you, it is a much neater, slicker and updated version and looks really good, too! Dragon Warriors is a very straightforward system that lets you get straight into the action, and well worth a look. Check it out.
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Vornheim is a work of genius! It concisely creates a wonderful sense of place, while at the same time sharing a wealth of advice on how to create your own unique and interesting city adventures. The philosophy that a "campaign book" does NOT need to catalogue every denizen or locale really fits with my own style of play. Vornheim is easy and entertaining to read, and the images are fantastic (I love the maps!).
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You love slasher movies? And you love the FU game system? Then why haven't you downloaded this already? Clear, concise rules to play slasher movie style stories, and a couple of classic "monsters". And c'mon, it's free.
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Fast playing, logically set out, and entertaining, the Judge Dredd Miniatures Game does exactly what it says on the tin. I had a bunch of pre-painted Dredd figures from WizKids to use and had a great deal of fun dealing with the Crims of Mega-City One. Good game, great price!
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It's TWERPS! In all it's 1995 glory! Sure, the pages are a bit grainy, and a part of me would have liked a new, souped-up and shiny version, but I just don't think it would be TWERPS then! The game consists of an introductory adventure that teaches you the basics, then a solid three pages of rules. The TWERPS system is incredibly simple, one you are going to either love or hate, depending on whether you want a game that gives you a new rule for every situation, or one that lets you tell any kind of story. Personally, I love it.
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7ombieTV is a simple, fast moving and entertaining miniature wargame that lets you recreate the action (and bloodshed!) of the zombie movie genre. These rules contain everything you need, laid out in a logical manner, making them very easy to understand and get into. All the game play rules are wrapped up in about 10 pages, and cover everything you would expect - moving, shooting, fighting, falling, morale, ammo, special weapons (Chainsaw! Molotov cocktail!) and zombie infection. While the rules make some reference to "extra" things you can find in the 7TV game, this IS a stand alone game - I don't own the 7TV game and was able to play without any issue at all. The 4 scenarios ("episodes") really capture the feel of classic horror / zombie films, and the cast of special characters is full of almost-familiar heroes from the genre. My favourite part of the game are the scattered "quotes" and movie posters from the fictional Barren Pictures company - they are both hilarious and totally "in character"! If you are looking for a quick, straightforward game that really captures the flavour of zombie horror films of the 70's and 80's, this game is worth checking out.
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This is a supplement for the GASLIGHT miniature wargame, and is a great deal of fun. The GASLIGHT rules are a straightforward, flexible ruleset for playing "Victorian Science Fiction" and steampunk type battles, but with this supplement your characters are thrust into the wild pulp adventures of the 1920's and 30's serials. Note, you need the basic GASLIGHT rules, or the Expeditions By Gaslight rules to use this supplement.
To Be Continued... lets you recreate the pulp serial adventures that were a mainstay of picture theatres a few (dozen) decades ago, and are intended to help you create your own 12-part serial on the tabletop. The game is quite comprehensive in what it covers - everything from outrageous props, swooning sidekicks, monsters from mars and space travel. It guides you in creating your serial, and offers plenty of advice along the way ("Does anybody die in this game?"). It is liberally illustrated with stills from classic pulp serials, and lots of authentic-sounding quotes from serial movie directors. It is a lot of fun to read.
It is not all fantastic, though. The layout is not particularly inspiring, being single column with headings that often spill all over the place, and looks pretty much like a word document. Perhaps more frustrating is there are no hyperlinks or even bookmarks, making it tedious to search through.
If you like the GASLIGHT rules, and enjoy your pulp adventure with tongue firmly planted in cheek, this is certainly worth checking out.
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This is essentially a toolbox for game masters (and probably players) to draw upon when creating, running and playing their zombie apocalypse games. That seems entirely appropriate for a Savage Worlds supplement, which is essentially one giant toolbox! Zombacalypse covers all the expected areas, including the origins of zombies, fighting zombies, and generally surviving the end of the world. It is well written, laid out logically, and easy to read.
What is very cool, is that a lot of this info is not system specific – it is just detailed discussion on the given topics, making it a versatile resource whether you play Savage Worlds or not. There is also a large “bestiary” of different zombie adversaries. The last twenty or so pages is an example setting and adventure set during the American Civil War – which I enjoyed a great deal.
This is a great addition for Savage Worlds players, or anyone that wants good, solid ideas for their zombie apocalypse campaigns.
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Free art? By Storn Cook? Awesome. I am a big fan of Storn Cook's art and this short portfolio provides three interesting character pieces; a woman in typical fantasy garb (leather armour, sword and... is that a riding crop?); a beefy goblinoid that reminds me of a Shadowrun Troll; and my favourite image, the super hero type figure that graces the cover. I prefer the clean lines of the super hero, rather than the "sketchier" style of the other two images, but they are all good representations of Cook's work, which should only inspire you to check out his other work and the other Image Portfolios. I am giving it 5 stars because it is free Storn Cook art.
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Outbreak: Undead is a zombie horror survival rpg - a big one, clocking in at over 430 pages. And it is chock full of rules, lots and lots of beautiful rules for killing zombies, surviving zombie attacks, and fortifying your base to stop those damn zombies from getting in! That being said, the rules aren't overly difficult to get your head around, and everything runs off a straightforward percentage system, with margins of success for every ten points you pass or fail a roll by. I would say the game is thorough, more than it is complex, and I like that. How thorough? The equipment chapter is almost 100 pages and covers everything from chainsaws (obviously) to guns, to body armour and drugs. The 20 pages before that are just about vehicles - how to drive them, how to run them into stuff, and how to get away from a zombie horde in them. The GM chapter is close to 100 pages too, and covers all the ground you would expect it to - how to create and run encounters, and advice on turning the player characters into zombies!
This is a realistic kind of game, where combat is bloody and the horror visceral. Making it even more realistic is the recommendation for the players to play themselves, in locations they are familiar with. There is plenty of advice to help you out with this, and I really like the idea. The basic premise of the game is to put the characters in a specific situation after a zombie outbreak, and give them a specific objective, such as last a particular amount of time, escape to somewhere safer, or kill all the zombies. This "mission" structure, combined with the possibility of player yourself in your hometown means you could play out all those conversations you've had with friends (you know you've had them), about what you would do in a zombie outbreak. Cool.
But the rules aren't even the best part. For me, the LOOK of the book is where it is at. It is kind of like a survivor's scrapbook, filled with bad sketches, crummy polaroid photos, hand scrawled messages and sticky-notes. It is a really eclectic mix of documents, fonts and art, all presented as if stuck into a notebook it I think it captures the theme of the game beautifully. I am not normally a fan of such wildly different art styles in one book, and some of the art is pretty average, but here it all works together to present as an artefact from the world it is creating.
The book is not without its faults, though I will admit they are pretty small ones. The table of contents is not hyperlinked, and neither are the chapter numbers that are on the edge of every page. I wish they were. Furthermore the bookmarks are only for the start of each chapter, which means there is a fair bit of virtual page flipping in those 100-page chapters. I also had difficulty reading large portions of the text that were presented as handwriting. Now, it was clear and neat, and very effective in terms of creating an "artefact", but it was not as easy as reading more typical "typed" text.
Overall, I am really impressed by Outbreak: Undead.
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This book provides unit background and stats for Dream Pod 9's "Gear Krieg" figures, to use with the Battlefield Evolution / World At War rules. The rules for walkers ("Gears") and other specialty troops are handled in such a manner that they remain true to the original source material / game, but neatly work with this set of rules. In fact it is a testament to both the skill of the author, and the flexibility of the Battlefield Evolution rules.
The book is beautifully illustrated with photos of painted figures, and the layout is easy to read.
As this is designed as a supplement to the World At War rulebook, there are no army lists or stats for "basic" units. There are, however, unit cards for all the models detailed in this book, which is a great resource and something that other publishers might have sold separately.
Good writing, solid rules and a great way to play alternate WWII.
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A simple, staight forward set of rules that makes for an entertaining game. This is certainly in the "beer and pretzels" arena, and a great deal of fun. It is also nice to have a set of "wargame" rules that do not pit players head-to-head in battle. While designed primarily for 15mm figures, I can't see any reason why you could not use larger figures if you wanted to. I also really like that rules are included for dinosaurs as well as mammoths, as toy dinosaurs are much easier to get hold of! Overall, a very pleasant evening's distraction.
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