Happy Trails Maverick, Good bye Rockford

A sad day, James Garner, one of the greats passed away at the age of 86.  One of my favorite actors for a variety of his roles which should be of interest to gamers:

• The skilled gambler Maverick, who preferred cunning and trickery to gun play and, while in it for the money, always stood up for the little guy.
• The down on his luck PI Rockford who relied on the false IDs, short cons, and stunt driving to (mostly) outmaneuver the bad guys.
• The hero of Support Your Local Sheriff!who relied on psychology, trickery and an occasional thrown rock to protect the town, even though he was basically on his way to Australia.

An excellent actor whose roles showed that heroes were not above making money and that avoiding violence was sometime more admirable (and often more effective) than the alternative.

You will be missed.

The NY Times has and excellent obituary of Mr Garner here.

Reviews – Fae Friends and Foes

More resources for the fae in a campaign:

Dark Fey by Kobold Press is a collection of fae creatures and beings for use as antagonists and (possibly though unlikely) allies.  After a short introduction to the Fae Courts of Midgard, this product introduces eighteen fae, ranging from CR 1 to 12, and a template for Fey Animals, most of the fae comes with a paragraph of designer’s notes which often discuses the origin of the fae in question.  There is a good mix of challenges here, sneaky, magical and cunning foes all make their appearance and from a variety of environments, it should be possible to weave a variety of encounters from them.  A feat and a new magic item, both linked to the fae included, are presented.  As one expects from Kobold Press, a solid and useful resource for a campaign that has use of the fae as potential threats.

In the Company of Fey by Rite Publishing provides more options for the Fae, allowing them to be played as characters or created as more fulled formed NPCs.  Following a lengthy discussion of the way the fae view and interact with the mortal world, the First Folk, a playable fae race, are detailed complete with alternate racial traits, two class archetypes and a twenty level racial paragon class.  The paragon class gains various fae powers center on their choice of an aspect, the paragon has a variety of abilities that interact with the core abilities of other classes making it useful for multiclassing options, though it is very much a class based on its own special ability chains.  Because of its ability to build very specialized character from the paragon class, it is well suited to building characters to challenge player characters in narrowly focused ways.  Eight new feats for the First Folk round out the resources presented.  This is another useful resource for the fae and while the racial paragon class is not for everyone it is full of useful ideas and inspiration for the fae in a champaign.

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.