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Modular: The Capharnaum RPG: A Kickstarter Combining the Campbellian Hero Path, Arabian Nights Multiculturalism, and Compelling Worldbuilding

Modular: The Capharnaum RPG: A Kickstarter Combining the Campbellian Hero Path, Arabian Nights Multiculturalism, and Compelling Worldbuilding

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Capharnaum RPG

Two years after running our very successful Kickstarter for the transhumanist SF RPG Mindjammer, Mindjammer Press is back with a new project — the English-language version of a fascinating French-language RPG “Capharnaum – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked.” As a soundbite it’s billed as “a fantastic Arabian Nights RPG of deserts, dragons, and crusaders” — but it’s so much more than that. I first came across Capharnaum and its gorgeous artwork in the Paris Games Fair in 2009, and even then I couldn’t believe it hadn’t been brought to the English-speaking gamer. Now, with Capharnaum‘s second edition, the case is even more compelling.

The brains behind Capharnaum — The Tales of the Dragon-Marked are two experienced French game designers, Raphaël Bardas and François Cedelle. They’re joined by a large and extremely active gaming community based in Montpellier, the ancient town on the Mediterranean coast, but active throughout France, bringing together enthusiasts of ancient world Mediterranean and Arabian Nights-style gaming. In the aftermath of 9/11, Raphaël and François wanted to create a setting which refracted the cultural conflicts of our time in a historical-fantasy context, but which equally provided a gameplay which transcended those conflicts and offered a route to coexistence and appreciation of our diversity.

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Looting is Better With Friends: Dungeon Dwellers

Looting is Better With Friends: Dungeon Dwellers

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I’m still unpacking the boxes I brought home from the Fall 2017 Games Plus auction. There’s so many SF and fantasy board games being published these days that it’s impossible to keep up. But you know, I do my best.

A week after the auction, I dropped by Games Plus in Mount Prospect to grab a handful of new releases I had my eye on. There in the sale bin was Dungeon Dwellers, a “cooperative card game for 2 or more players” released in 2014. Now, I still have a stack of unopened auction games in my living room, slowly collecting dust and making my wife cranky. But I love dungeon games, and I especially love cooperative dungeon games. And the thing that especially makes me weak in the knees is a deep discount. Ten minutes later I left the store with Dungeon Dwellers, wrapped in a paper bag so I could stealthily sneak it into the house.

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Unify England During the Hundred Years War in Lancaster from Queen Games

Unify England During the Hundred Years War in Lancaster from Queen Games

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If you’re like me, maybe you’ve been watching Games of Thrones and it’s spurred an interest in its historical analog, the 15th Century English civil war between the houses Lancaster and York. Or maybe you’ve found yourself yearning to conquer a kingdom of your own. Or maybe you’re just curious about all these deep discount Queen Games at Amazon for the past month.

Any (or all) of these things could have brought you to discover Lancaster, the acclaimed board game of kingmaking in 15th Century England. Here’s a snippet of the review at The Opinionated Gamers.

Lancaster proves that [designer Matthias] Cramer is anything but a one-hit wonder… Lancaster is a quasi-Worker Placement game set in 15th Century England. Despite the title, it doesn’t deal with the War of the Roses, but at the beginning of the reign of Henry V, of the House of Lancaster, 40 years earlier. That places the action smack in the middle of the Hundred Years’ War and, in fact, the players can take an active role in Henry’s successful campaigns against the French…

It only takes a little exposure to Lancaster to realize that this is a very professional, polished design. There seems to be a lot of moving parts, but it all hangs together very nicely. The game plays smoothly, with plenty of interaction, but not so much as to make it overly nasty… Lancaster is a gamer’s game, but I think it could also work well for the more casual gamer who is looking for a greater challenge than gateway fare. I think the SdJ jury pegged it correctly when they nominated the game for the Kennerspiel award.

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MASHED: A Korean War MASH RPG

MASHED: A Korean War MASH RPG

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Mashed Mark Plemmons-small

“Keep in mind that you can’t take that many well-educated, highly intelligent people and restrict them to live in an area the size of a football field and not expect some very odd and unusual things to happen.”

So said former Korean War helicopter pilot Ed Ziegler, in a quote that starts off MASHED’s early Gameplay section and gives a hint of what the following pages hold in store.

‘MASH’ is a historical acronym that stands for ‘Mobile Army Surgical Hospital,’ though it was popularized by the M*A*S*H film and television series, which may very well be where you first learned of it. The game acknowledges M*A*S*H as a good source of inspiration for your table, but is not based directly on it, thus avoiding any messy trademark or copyright issues. Instead, MASHED content comes from dozens of historical works and military manuals. Fortunately, since they are the same sources as those used by the M*A*S*H producers, the ‘feel’ of the game can be very much like that of the show itself, mixing light comedy, gallows humor, and mature situations.

The core rules are based on Vincent and Meguey Baker’s Apocalypse World (Meguey is also credited as a developmental editor on this book), and inspired by other Powered by the Apocalypse games such as Jason Morningstar’s Night Witches. If you’re familiar at all with the PbtA engine, you’ll have a good idea of how the rules work.

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Dark Osprey: The Shadowy Worlds of Cthulhu, Alien Bug Hunts, and a Nazi Moonbase

Dark Osprey: The Shadowy Worlds of Cthulhu, Alien Bug Hunts, and a Nazi Moonbase

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The Cthulhu Campaigns Ancient Rome-small Nanzi Moonbase Dark Osprey-small Bug Hunts Dark Osprey-small

Over the last forty years Osprey Publishing has built up a sterling reputation for its long running series of illustrated military history books. Role-players, wargamers, and even casual readers like me have enjoyed them, and used them as reference guides.

Black Gate author Joseph McCullough joined Osprey a decade ago, and since then Osprey has produced a growing volume of books of interest to gamers and genre fans alike, including Steampunk miniatures rules (In Her Majesty’s Name), the Frostgrave tabletop skirmish game, and the Osprey Adventures line. But most interesting to me is Dark Osprey, a series of marvelously imaginative and well-illustrated tomes that serve as excellent setting books for the RPG of your choice.

While Joe was written several, they’ve also recruited a handful of other top-notch authors, including Warhammer author Graeme Davis, Trail of Cthulhu scribe Kenneth Hite, novelist Mark A. Latham (The Lazarus Gate), and others. So far they’ve published over a dozen, including The Cthulhu Campaigns Ancient Rome by Mark Latham, Nazi Moonbase by Graeme Davis, and Bug Hunts: Surviving and Combating the Alien Menace by Mark Latham.

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Future Treasures: The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty

Future Treasures: The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty

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Dungeon Masters Guide-small The City of Brass-small

The City of Brass! One of the most storied locations in fantasy! Or it would be, except that no one dares write about it. Ever since it was featured on the cover of Gary Gygax’s Dungeon Masters Guide in 1979 (above left), the opulent city of efreet floating on the Elemental Plane of Fire has loomed large in the imaginations of Dungeons and Dragons players around the world. But beyond a single tale from the Arabian Nights, there’s been precious little to feed those eager minds.

So I was intrigued to read the details of The City of Brass, the upcoming debut fantasy from S. A. Chakraborty, which has been described as a blend of The Golem and the Jinni, The Grace of Kings, and Uprooted. It’s a tale of a magical Middle Eastern kingdom, and a clever and young con artist with strange gifts. It arrives in hardcover from HarperVoyager next week.

Nahri has never believed in magic. Certainly, she has power; on the streets of eighteenth-century Cairo, she’s a con woman of unsurpassed talent. But she knows better than anyone that the trades she uses to get by — palm readings, zars, and a mysterious gift for healing — are all tricks, both the means to the delightful end of swindling Ottoman nobles and a reliable way to survive.

But when Nahri accidentally summons Dara, an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior, to her side during one of her cons, she’s forced to reconsider her beliefs. For Dara tells Nahri an extraordinary tale: across hot, windswept sands teeming with creatures of fire and rivers where the mythical marid sleep, past ruins of once-magnificent human metropolises and mountains where the circling birds of prey are more than what they seem, lies Daevabad, the legendary city of brass — a city to which Nahri is irrevocably bound.

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Modular: Fox Trot Plays Dungeons & Dragons

Modular: Fox Trot Plays Dungeons & Dragons

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FoxTrot_OrlandoBill Amend’s Fox Trot is a comic strip that ran daily from 1988 into 2006, then switched to a Sunday-only format. Still around today, it tells the story of the Fox family. Dad Roger is a loveable goober who wishes he was better at golf and chess. Mom Andy is the common sense core of the family unit. Sixteen year old Peter is a wannabe athlete, with fourteen year old Paige a typical teenage girl. And ten year old Jason lives to torment Paige and is a school geek. He’s got a pet iguana named Quincy who acts like, well, an iguana, but can really be the center of a strip.

The dynamics and shifting alliances of the three kids are instantly relatable to anyone who grew up with at least one sibling. as Calvin and Hobbes’ creator Bill Watterson wrote in the introduction to the first collection:

Fox Trot particularly captures the Machiavellian nature of adolescents. The balance of power between Peter, 16, Page, 14 and Jason 10, is a constantly bartered commodity, and alliances are fragile and short-lived. No collusion will survive an opportunity to get a sibling in trouble, and hesitant parents are goaded with the cry of, ‘Punish him! Punish him! Ground him! Ground him!’

Meanwhile, the challenges of parenting and marriage are amply represented by Roger and Andy. It’s one of my all-time favorite strips and with my nine year old son going through all my collections, I’m enjoying the Fox family all over again.

Jason is a Black Gate kid. His interests are all over pop culture: Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, horror (he loves Halloween, to his family’s pain), Christmas lists, Indiana Jones (even Young Indiana Jones) and cultural tropes such as westerns and Sherlock Holmes. Naturally, being a brainy geek, he’s into Dungeons and Dragons, usually playing with his best friend, Marcus. One rainy spring break, Paige found herself lured into playing D&D with Jason.

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New Treasures: Deadlands: Boneyard by Seanan McGuire

New Treasures: Deadlands: Boneyard by Seanan McGuire

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Deadlands Boneyard-small Deadlands Boneyard-back-small

I must admit that my first thought on laying eyes on Deadlands: Boneyard was, “What the heck is Seanan McGuire doing writing a gaming tie-in?”

After all (as the cover of Boneyard proudly boasts) McGuire is a New York Times bestselling author all on her own, for her zombie Newflesh series (published under the name Mira Grant). It’s not often you see bestselling writers dabbling with game books. But who knows? Maybe she’s always wanted to write a Weird Western. Maybe she loves the Deadlands setting. Or maybe she promised Jay Lake she’d do it. (The dedicated to Boneyard reads, “For Jay Lake. Didn’t I always promise you a midway?”, whatever that means.)

But whatever the reason, I’m glad to have it. It went right to the top of my Halloween reading pile this year.

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Dead Ahead: Diablo 3: Rise Of The Necromancer

Dead Ahead: Diablo 3: Rise Of The Necromancer

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Diablo 3 Necro

The Priests of Rathma — or necromancers, as outsiders call them — have long remained shrouded in mystery. Deep within the jungles of Kehjistan, they train to preserve the delicate balance between the forces of life and death. Now Sanctuary has need of their unique power, and the Priests of Rathma will answer. (src)

Diablo is one of the most beloved and revered game series. The hack and slash Role Playing Game has defined the roguelike genre of video games for over 20 years. Rise of the Necromancer is the second expansion for Diablo 3, resurrecting a popular hero last seen in Diablo 2.

Traveling from the eastern jungles of Sanctuary, the Necromancer, as a member of the Cult of Rathma,  has sworn to preserve the cycle of life and death. Since the arrival of the falling star, the dead have risen in great numbers and threaten to destroy all life. The Necromancer, with powers thought to be horrific by most mortals, understands the true threat to life, the overwhelming numbers of the dead. Due to this imbalance, the Necromancer is sent by his master to join the fight against the Lords of Hell.

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Avalon Hill Tries a D&D Boardgame: Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate

Avalon Hill Tries a D&D Boardgame: Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate

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I’ve been fascinated by the D&D Adventure System cooperative play games, which include Temple of Elemental Evil, Castle Ravenloft, Legend of Drizzt, and Wrath of Ashardalon, because apparently they can all be used together in one giant uber map of fun. (I don’t know for sure, of course, because my copies are all still in shrinkwrap and buried in the basement, but I think that’s the general idea.)

There’s been a pretty consistent drumbeat of releases in the series, including two others just this year, Assault of the Giants (February 15, 2017) and Tomb of Annihilation (October 18, 2017) — so much so that it sometimes seems that Wizards of the Coast has wholeheartedly embraced the industry’s shift away from tabletop RPGs towards board games by gradually turning D&D into a top line board game brand. I don’t think their board game releases outnumber their RPG supplements for 2017, but it’s probably getting close.

I heard plenty about Assault of the Giants, and ordered a copy over the summer, and I’ve seen a lot of recent chatter about Tomb of Annihilation. But October’s other D&D board game release, Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate (October 6, 2017), took me completely by surprise. In fact, I’d probably still be blissfully ignorant if I hadn’t seen an Oct. 3 Facebook post from Games Plus  (hat tip to Arin Komins for the link).

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