But Black Rock has a secret, and not one that it wants to share, the stranger’s arrival is notable enough but when he starts asking around the towns people get nervous or hostile.  I will not tell any more of the plot as it is a delight to watch unfold in this short (about 80 minutes) movie.

Spenser Tracy is the stranger who disrupts the tense fabric of Black Rock and the -very young- (The very young) Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine play the heavies of the villain of the piece.

Highly recommended.

More information, which may contain some spoilers, after the cut.

Things it does well:

• The insular nature of small communities, where everyone knows everyone and everything that is going on in Black Rock
• How people of a small community will bend to a dominant personality, even when they do not agree with that person.
• The power of knowing a dark secret and the influence it can have on your actions.
• You can get further avoiding confrontation and violence.
• That people can be inspired to do what is right by example.

The motives of all the characters are believable and the story has a relentless internal logic.

If you want to do a game set in a small community, especially if the characters are outsiders, this movie should give you no end of inspiration.

Go watch it and tell me your thoughts.

True Halflings has mostly a traditional two columns layout and is easily readable, though one of the tables is in an odd font.  The art is full color cover and a several color interior pieces.

True Halflings is about the other halflings, the original halflings, yes, the hobbits (though that terms is never used).  Those stay at home, sturdy farmers who do not really like to adventure but when they do, they are brave and loyal companions.

The True Halflings are detailed as a full Pathfinder race with a brief sketch of their society, full rules including racial traits (and how they map to standard Pathfinder halfling traits), alternate racial traits and new talents.  These play to the idea of True Halflings as homebodies trust into adventuring where they bear up with good grace and some are quite clever.  The Untapped Potential ability is an excellent way to represent an adaptable hero.

To finish off fleshing out the True Halflings are three example settlements dominated by them (with settlement rules that tie into another Otherverse game product).

Disclosure: As a featured reviewer for RPGNow/DriveThroughRPG, I received my copy of this product for free from the publisher for the purpose of this review.

Scorpion

The combat is furious, with a greased Dr. Martin wiggling free of the claw, Malik the monk grappling one of the scorpion’s tail and then ripping it off!  Zendrink the sorcerer getting caught by a scorpion and electrocuting it (and himself) with shocking grasp.  But soon enough the scorpions are slain, and the characters badly bloodied, just as the Solar troops and Bradley arrive to see what all the noise is.  The scorpions swirled back down into the black stones, now damaged, except for the scorpion tail (held by Malik) and some poison harvested by Dr Martin.

They are escorted back to the Sun Temple camp where their wounds are treated, somewhat, and they can rest.  They decide that the next thing to do is to try and solve the bandit problem that is bedeviling both sides as a step toward getting them to the negotiating table.  So, they decide to borrow a wagon, make it look like it is transporting gold (via props and simple illusions) and then surprise the bandits when they attacked the wagon.  A good plan, so naturally it did not work . . .

Wagon

Nikko and Malik were scouting ahead of the wagon when Niko spotted a deadfall prepared to block the road, he circled back to warn the wagon but failed to warn Malik who blithly continued on and had the deadfall dropped upon him.  Malik managed to avoid being crushed and hide among the detritus of the deadfall.  Six bandits scrambled down to take up position behind the rubble.  As the wagon came into view, the tallist of the bandits called out for the wagon to halt, “Leave the wagon and you will come to no harm.”

Our heroes started to fall back, positioning themselves to leap out and trap the bandits when Malik leap up out of the deadfall and tackled the tallist bandit.  The other five bandits starting beating Malik with the butts of their crossbows.  After some confusion, the rest of turn back or reveal themselves and leap out of the wagon to engage the bandits.  As they rushed forward to engage the now confused bandits” Niko shot a poison dart into the grappled leader, Bradley tossed a poisoned knife into another bandit, Thea summoned a sphere of fire (dropping it on a bandit) and Zendrik using said sphere to generate a cloud of choking black smoke.  The smoke, opaque to vision, shut the combat down, those in the cloud could not see and two-thirds of the bandits were rendered helpless by it.  As the smoke cleared, Dr. Martin -now transformed into his bestial form- rushed in and bit the head off of one of the mostly helpless bandits, inducing the others (apart from two who had fled) to surrender.  So, three bandits captured -one deeply unconscious having been grappled, poisoned and smoked- and one killed for no casualties beyond one badly bruised monk.

Returning in triumph, the slightly blood splattered Dr Martin found himself avoided by the Solars, especially once the stories from the bandits starting circulating, and the bandits were questioned throughout the night.  Where they revealed the following information:

• They are members of the Bandits of the Black Band.
• They move camp often and the camp will have moved as soon as word of what happened get back.
• Their leader, Evran the Crow,  was informed of the situation and -possible- financially encouraged to get involved but a person unknown to the bandits.

Next stop, the bandit camp, next time.

Notes: C did not make it, so no dwarven cleric, by B was along so we had wacky monk action as the above shows (we decided that he had been there all along).  And while the bandit combat is described quite shortly, it actually took a lot of time as we were laughing through most of it as the plan totally collapsed.

Scorpion photo by Mike Baird used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, wagon photo by Jeremy Burgin and used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic.

Deep Miner                                                  CR 5 (1,600 XP)
NE medium undead (incorporeal)
Init +6; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +9
DEFENSE
AC 16, touch 16, flat-footed 13; (+3 Deflection, +2 Dex, +1 Dodge)
hp 30 (4d8+12)
Fort +4, Ref +3, Will +6; +2 vs. spells and spell-like abilities
Defensive Abilities channel resistance +1, incorporeal, resistance to cold 15; Immune undead traits
OFFENSE
Spd fly 30 ft (good)
Melee spectral pick touch +5 (1d4 cold + Life and Mineral Drain)
Special Attacks create enslaved dead, driven by gold
STATISTICS
Str —, Dex 15, Con —, Int 7, Wis 14, Cha 16
Base Atk +3; CMB +3; CMD 16
Feats Dodge, Improved Initiative
Skills Appraise +3, Perception +9, Stealth +6
SQ dwarf even in death, gold fascination, smell gold
Languages as before death
Environment underground
Organization Solitary
Treasure Value handful of gold dust
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Create Enslaved Dead (Su) A humanoid creature killed by a deep miner’s spectral pick becomes a zombie under the control of its killer in 1d4 rounds.

Driven by Gold (Ex) When attacking a target who obviously has more than 100 gp worth of gold on them, the deep miner gains a +2 moral bonus to attacks.

Dwarf even in Death (Ex) The deep miner retains all of the dwarven racial traits that it can still use as an incorporeal being.

Gold Fascination (Ex) If given five or more gold piece value of gold, the deep miner will be dazed as it gazes in wonder at it for one round unless it makes a DC 15 will save.  It gains a +5 circumstance bonus to this if it is attacked at the same time or to future saves against the same group if it was attacked while dazed from this effect.  The DC for the save is increased by 1 for each 200 gp worth of gold up to a maximum DC of 25.

Life and Mineral Drain (Su) A deep miner’s pick sucks out both the life force of the victim as well as minerals from their blood and bone.  The spectral pick deals 2 points of Constitution damage to a living creature, a Fortitude save (DC 15) reduces this to one point. For every 2 points of Constitution damage taken, the victim also takes 1 point of Strength damage.  The deep miner heals 5 hit points for every point of Constitution damage inflicted.

This is a negative energy effect and the save is Charisma based.

Smell Gold (Su) Deep miners are treated as having the scent ability only for locating gold.

Some dwarves become obsessed with the hunting and acquisition of gold, while other dwarves will try to turn them from this dark path, sometime they do not succeed.  These tortured spirits quest deep and along every more risky paths until they perish.  Often, even death will not extinguish their lust for gold and their spirit continues to seek that which they are doomed never to possess.

When killed, they dissolve into a handful (1d10 gold coins worth) of gold dust.

What you may know about the deep miner:
Knowledge (Dungeoneering or Religion) DC 20.  These benighted spirits died in their quest for gold and now their spirits still seek it.

Knowledge (Dungeoneering or Religion) DC 25.  The spirit of the deep miner can be briefly distracted by giving it gold.

Dwarves gain a +2 bonus to these skill checks.

TACTICS
Before Combat: Deep miners wander aimlessly looking for gold, they do not prepare for combat, but launch themselves after any source of gold they encounter.

During Combat: The deep miner focuses its attack on the greater source of gold it can perceive, single-mindedly trying to kill the possessor of the gold so that the deep miner can possess it.

Morale: A deep miner’s obsession with gold overrides all else and it will seek to grasp gold even when it will only cause its destruction.

Variants: Rarely a dwarf becomes obsessed with a gem or other mineral type rather than gold, in that case, replace all references to gold with whatever material the dwarf was obsessed with.

Etiquette is Key

Since then, the use of the these items have quickly spread throughout the venturing community.  They often change hands at the last moment before court for inflated prices for it is better to loose some coins than your head from accidentally insulting the prince royal.

Venturer’s Friend at Court

These innocuous pieces of jewellery, often earrings, headband or a necklace, are almost always made of silver and if set with gems, they are always just semiprecious stones (such as amethyst or jet) in subtle and tasteful amounts.  They are by their nature understated and well made.

These items are enchanted with a variety of minor magics to help a novice manage in a courtly situation. They are:

• +3 competence bonus to Diplomacy checks in all matters of courtly etiquette and formal decorum.
• +1 competence bonus to any Perform skill used in courtly way in a courtly setting, allowing them to participate in courtly dances, poetry readings and such like without appearing utterly hopeless at such tasks.
• +3 competence bonus to Sense Motive checks to notice poor advice on how to act or behave.
• +1 competence bonus to Knowledge (Local) and Knowledge (Nobility) to recognize people or situations and the ability to make this knowledge check if unskilled, three times a day.

Aura faint divination; CL 4th
Slot head, headband or neck (by style); Price 1,200; Weight –
Construction Requirements
Craft Wondrous Item, detect thoughts or zone of truth, eagle’s splendor, fox’s cunning, creator must have Bardic Knowledge or 5 ranks in each Knowledge (local) and Knowledge (nobility), 5 rank in Diplomacy, and 5 ranks in three different Perform skills; Cost 600 (+48 xp for D&D)

Adventure Seeds: The character have been called before the Queen, who is a known stickler for etiquette and proper behavior in court, perhaps acquiring a few of these items might be a good backup for the less couth members of the party.

Notes: Social situation are often more dangerous than dungeons to adventurers, this item is to help those poor souls function better on that unusual place filled with social interactions.

Photo by Etsy Ketsy and used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

Justice City Superpowered: A Superhero Setting Book and Campaign Installment is a 32-page PDF (27-pages if you remove the cover, OGL pages and ad) for the Mutants & Masterminds (3rd Edition) RPG written by Ethan Parker and published by Gamer’s Haven Publishing.  This is part of the Gamer’s Haven Superpowered Superhero Roleplaying line.

Justice City has mostly a traditional two columns layout and is easily readable, except for some occasions where the two columns almost overlap.  The art is full color photos and maps of Vancouver/Justice City.  A collection of short stats blocks for the characters mentioned is included at the end.

Justice City is Vancouver, BC, after superheroes emerged into the world (very recently) and the city was renamed in their honor, as was briefly popular to do so in this setting.  It is essentially a guide to the city and its areas with a pair of interesting non-player characters for each one (all of whom are given short stat blocks at the end).  While a few companies and criminal groups are mentioned in character descriptions, neither are elaborated in the main text.

While it is a useful reference to Justice City/Vancouver, it could have been made much more useful by having some corporation, criminal syndicates and adventure seeds.  A much more minor problem is that a few of the stat blocks are unfinished, with statuses unfilled and specialties unnoted.

Disclosure: As a featured reviewer for RPGNow/DriveThroughRPG, I received my copy of this product for free from the publisher for the purpose of this review.

Threat Report: Doctor Shock is a 4-page PDF (2-pages if you remove the cover letter and OGL page) for the Mutants & Masterminds (3rd Edition) RPG written by Aaron Sullivan and published by Green Ronin Publishing.  This is issue 3 of Green Ronin’s Threat Report line for M&M (3rd).

After a prop cover letter from AEGIS, which may serve as a useful introduction to the villain, the layout is primary traditional two columns and the easily readable.  The only art is a full color illustration of the Doctor Shock himself.  Additional a HeroLab file for Doctor Shock is also included.

Doctor Shock is a well developed PL 11 character with a complete agenda: having temporally (he believes) cured the paranormal abilities that were killing him, he has snapped and become a hunter of superhumans.  Those he captures . . . tend not to survive the experience as the “good” Doctor studies, experiments on and, often, vivisects them.  It is a rather dark character and could leave a considerable body count before he is stopped, so he should be used with caution.  Three scenario seeds are provided for Doctor Shock, one of which holds out hope for his redemption

Disclosure: As a featured reviewer for RPGNow/DriveThroughRPG, I received my copy of this product for free from the publisher for the purpose of this review.

Gold Ore

Thus our heroes are dispatched on a mission of diplomacy, which they may be particularly ill-suited towards, and soon find themselves on a winding road through the mountains.  Defender, as usual, takes the lead and after turning a corner, narrowly avoids being impaled by a ballista bolt.  Defender charges the dwarven post, taking a hit from a crossbow bolt, while Bradley shouts for peace.  After a few tense moments, the situation stabilizes.

The dwarves take a letter of introduction from Bradley and escorts the group to the dwarven camp where they meet Emissary Sagaroth White and Warleader Arcantus Rockbiter.  The dwarves explain that there have been attacks by bandits which is why the guard post was so jumpy.  They then lay out the dwarven claim to the mine: it was established by the Diamond dwarves but abandoned and sealed during a time of contraction and then the location was lost.  Bradley and the others agree to present the dwarven case to the Sun Temple in the homes of finding common ground between the two groups.

Leaving the dwarven forces behind, they make their way to the Sun Temple camp, which is larger if less militant.  They are shown to the presence of High Priestess Arave Brightdaughter who reads their letter of introduction and presents the Sun Temple case: which is that they have uncovered and restored the mine entrance in preparation for the expansion of the mine.  Then the Diamond dwarves appeared and work stopped until things were sorted out.

Bradley stayed behind while the rest of the characters went into the mine to explore.   Overcoming, they hope, a set of protective wards (which warned in dwarvish about progressing further) they slowly made their way into the mind, attracting the attention of a pack of iron bats, small dog sized bats with metallic fur, who swarmed the the explorers but only did minor damage before being slain or chased off.  Dr. Martin skinned one while Defender trussed up an unconscious one for possible training as a pet.

Niko noticed a sickly green glow glow from behind and slowly turned to find a spectral dwarven miner there who whispered, “Gold.”  Niko scrambled back and the ghost miner raised his hands and an equally ghostly pick appeared in them, which he plunged into the Visse’s chest sucking minerals and life force from the small fellow.  Niko ran and Defender and Pho engaged the spirit.  It focused on Defender, as his metal form is decorated with gold, and it was a tough fight as the insubstantial nature of the spirit, and its ability to fed on the life of others, made it difficult to put down.   Morgrymson finally distracts it with a handful of gold coins and while it was staring at the gold, the others hammered it with magic and might causing the spirit to disperse.

Badly injured by the spirit’s attacks, they withdrew from the mine.  And thus ended the session.  On to Part 2.

Notes: All of the usual players were here making for a sizable group which occasional led to some confusion during the combats.

Photo by alantankenghoe and used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Better off dead?

Things started out rough as we were pummeled by an ice storm and then had to climb out from the snow and ice to close with our enemies.  The barbarian went down paralyzed by the ghoul, the alchemist was entangled by the frost riders horned helm and was being brutally stabbed whenever he used a fire bomb.  Both of them were only not brutally killed because the GM choose not to inflict the damage the villains should have.   The cleric and the sorcerer mopped up the mephits while the alchemist was allowed to burn the Frost Rider to death.  Not sure what happened to the ghoul.  Somehow, were were victorious, but for the life of me, I am not sure how in game we could have survived.

Ultimately, we were just given the win, unearned as it was.  Frankly, the villains were very tough and we had some bad luck (and we utterly failed to prepare for a big combat, foresight not being our strength) so I think we should have been allowed to die.  While I really like my character, our survival here just seemed far too forced.  If there is not a risk of failure, how are the characters heroic?  It just made me depressed.  I have let the GM know that I think we should have been allowed to join the choir invisible.  But I am not sure what to do now.

What are other people’s thoughts here?  Do you think we should have been slaughtered?  Was the GM right to save us from our own bad fortune?

Notes: Photo by Steve Parker and used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Addendum (from discussion here and on G+): Honestly, our characters deserved this defeat.  We did not bother to prepare and we used no real tactics.  It is exactly the sort of situation that would kill a group of overconfident adventurers.

Threat Report: Cerebrus Rex is a 5-page PDF (3-pages if you remove the cover letter and OGL page) for the Mutants & Masterminds (3rd Edition) RPG written by Stephen Kenson and published by Green Ronin Publishing.  This is issue 15 of Green Ronin’s Threat Report line for M&M (3rd).

After a prop cover letter from AEGIS, possibly useful for setting a scene, the layout is primary traditional two columns and the easily readable.  The only art is a full color illustration of the Cerebrus Rex himself.  Additional a HeroLab file for Cerebrus Rex, and two of his minions, is also included.

Cerebrus Rex is a fully developed PL 12 character with a complete agenda for conquest, one of the few survivors of a world ruled by saurians, he seeks to claim Earth as a new home.  Three plot hooks are included ranging from basic thefts to end of the (human) world.

Disclosure: As a featured reviewer for RPGNow/DriveThroughRPG, I received my copy of this product for free from the publisher for the purpose of this review.