Cluless In Nottingham

Thirty five dollars for an e-book format Codex?

And it isn't even available as a PDF?

Please stop sending me this nonsensical blither, Games Workshop. If you want people to buy your stuff again you must start getting realistic about how much they have to pay. It simply isn't sustainable to ask people to fork over $70 for a rulebook that then requires at least one $50 codex before it can be used in a tournament. Then there are the armies that cost in the hundreds of dollars to acquire, and the hours needed to assemble and paint the bugger.

And now you are "offering" me the chance to invest in overpriced e-books in formats notorious for markup f*ckups, formats that won't travel well and require a proprietary reader to access?

Still not getting real, chaps. Your heyday is o'er and the hobby you built from nothing is now as moribund as the daft gothic universe you made up to house it all in.

And it all started so well, too.

I guess you all lost the thread, a fact obvious to some when you killed off the bits business. The whole point of the hobby to most of us was the customizing of the miniatures to personal standards using stock pieces from other minis. To have to buy the entire mini just to get an arm or the wings, though, is a plan for millionaires and idiots.

And when you did away with the custom casting business you killed my Imperial Guard army expansion plans. "EBay" said a GW rep when I asked how I was to source stuff. This after two decades of being warned away from "recasters" and fakes.

"Time to die", as Rutger Hauer once said.

Reality Obscures

I just tried accessing the Reality Blurs website in order to catch up on what they were doing. Reality Blurs puts out the Realms of Cthulhu setting for Savage Worlds, among others, and I was looking to see what was new in the swamp.

Big mistake. The website is an animated splat of animate incomprehensibility, approaching Peter Gabriel levels of Function Drowned By Art.

Shame really. I might have been interested in buying something, but I'm damned if I'll fight someone's website to give them money, especially when it is drinking my limited mobile bandwidth like an Englishman drinks beer after someone says "free bar". Sorry, Reality Blurs, massive fail.

No link because if you really want to dip your feet in the toxic sludge you need the practice that searching for it will give you.

A Reboot For A Gothic Horror Classic

PEG are calling for backer on the reboot and rewrite of the spiffing Rippers setting for their Savage Worlds engine.

Werewolves, vampires and Jack the Ripper are examples of The Enemy. The Good Guys fight them, and neutralize The Enemy's (un)natural advantages by ... stealing their organs and surgically implanting them in their bodies.

Unfortunately this causes a strain on the body and mind, leading to organic rejection of the new parts and looming madness. Omelets, eggs etc.

You can get the original version in PDF from DrivethruRPG or RPGNow. It is my belief that these are actually the same outfit with different branding, though I only have personal observation of the sites to back that up.

You can support the Kickstarter project for the new version too.

You will also need a copy of the Savage Worlds core rulebook, which can be had in PDF for for about $10.

This sort of cinematic action/adventure horror setting is exactly what the Savage Worlds game engine was written to handle, so the game should play well. Actual game mechanics are simple to pick up and very easy to mediate as a GM.

The system has its weaknesses, mostly in the way damage has a nasty tendency to snowball at the end of a session because for most of the game players have the ability to shrug off damage suffered by their PCs using "bennies". As the game session nears its end, the players run out of bennies. This tends to manifest as a sudden escalation of PC casualties.

Not only that, players only have three "wounds", the fourth putting them down for the count and possibly killing them (though that is not the most usual outcome). This contrasts rather starkly with other systems that use "Hit Points", systems in which combat is a matter of slow attrition rather than sudden overwhelming catastrophe.

That said, I'm fond of the system for a number of settings, and have been toying with the idea of a short "Rippers" campaign for a while. Now I have a new incentive.