Years later, there’s very little that I recall from its pages, but one bit of it still sticks with me today: customers are more likely to spread the word about an absolutely terrible experience than an absolutely amazing one. Sadly, this is the case today. I’ve recently posted my very first review on Amazon, and it’s pretty negative. It’s about a subject that I love: Dead Space. Particularly, it’s about the atrocious work of animation that is Dead Space: Aftermath.

I’ll spare the details here, and instead just link you to the actual review.

And yes, some spoilers of the first episode follow, so read at your own risk.

The allegory to Dark Angel is pretty heavily established by the end of the first episode. The hero template is almost identical, although gender-swapped. Lyons plays the action hero guy with the bad ass toys, paired with Glau’s role as the sexy super-hacker blogger who exposes fraud and wrong-doing, and guides him through his missions. This is a pretty common trope, in fact, in many shows and stories.¹

As heroes tend to go, The Cape’s origins also aren’t anything new. Betrayed by his best friend, Vince Faraday (the good cop archetype) is framed for a terrible something that he didn’t do, and must now clear his name by getting revenge against the man who wronged him. All the while, he must keep his identity secret, in order to protect his wife and son. To do this, he adopts the persona of his son’s favorite costumed comic book hero, which has the added bonus of impressing the shit out of the kid. It’s one of the most classic origin stories of the vigilante superhero genre, and there’s a reason for this: each and every one of us can identify with this guy. He’s the good-natured everyman that we all consider ourselves to be. His world gets wrongfully obliterated, and like all of us like to believe we would also do, he takes matters into his own hands and fights back. Instead of giving up and crawling into a booze-hole, he goes for the throat of the evil nemesis, damn the obstacles.

He’s not a millionaire playboy with daddy issues. He’s not a super-powered demi-god. He’s not an invincible badass (and even gets costumed his ass thoroughly kicked several times). He’s just a guy who wants his life back. He’s got some help both likely (an anarchist blogger) and less-than likely (a band of circus-themed bank robbers), and one hell of a Big Bad: the most powerful security corporation in the world. And he’s got a damn cool cape that reminds me of The Iron Monkey.

Peter Fleming, played by James Frain (“Franklin the crazy vampire” from season 2 of True Blood), is one of those stereotypical smarmy, wealthy, creepy-faced British villains that everyone loves to lunch in the face (preferably that satisfying nose-crunchy bone-twisting kind of punch). Every line he delivers drips with slime, and I couldn’t get enough. Although there seems to be very little personality difference between the characters of Franklin and Fleming, who cares? He fits wonderfully in this kind of tongue-in-cheek color-noir action story. Every hero needs a villain, and Fleming delivers.

And who doesn’t love Keith David? Almost everything that man touches turns into clever deep-voiced gold. As the hero’s semi-shady mentor “Max Malini,” he fit the bill quite nicely, and his character’s subversion of the “Obi-Wan Moment” was well-played. Malini’s sidekick “ass-kicking little-person” rocks the house, and thankfully never got turned into a midget gag.

Summer Glau plays… well, she plays Summer Glau. Love it, hate it, or remain ambivalent. Truth be told, her character Orwell is the weakest link in this show. My hope is that the show will either give her some interesting character development, or leave her largely in the background. In Dark Angel, we knew about 80% of who Logan was right in the first episode, including witnessing a permanent physical crippling, and the remaining 20% developed in some surprising ways over the rest of the series. In The Cape, we can sum the entirety of our knowledge of Orwell into the following: Nice house, cool car, doesn’t like regular keyboards for some reason, Damn the Man, probably reads books, and Summer Glau.

I do have one specific complaint: wear a mask, dude! Your cape is cool and all, but if you want to fight your enemy hand-to-hand and not get ID’d (a subject mentioned at least a half-dozen times in the first episode), wear a goddamned mask! Even the eponymous comic book character you’re copying clearly wore one, so why the hell don’t you?

Aside from that gripe, I’m impressed. Now let’s hope the rest of the series keeps up this level of pulpy excellence.

Footnotes

¹ Don’t click that link, unless you want to suddenly find yourself having lost hours of your life from following it ever deeper.

Around the 1:15 time mark of the movie Sunshine, I experienced a feeling eerily similar to that post-dream sadness, and it still sits with me well into the day after. This feeling was born in my realization that the director had destroyed a beautiful work of art that was in its final stages of achieving perfection.

I was primarily recommended to this movie through friends and Netflix, due to my love of the movies Moon and Pandorum. Watching its first hour, I can definitely get the connection to the former, as that sense of isolated claustrophobia really drives down deep in each moment of the film. Moon did a near-perfect job of connecting me on a personal and emotional level with its cast of one (of which there were two). I felt like i was right there, with him the entire time, and when he cried, I cried. In the early part of Sunshine, the effect was the same; when the guy kept repeating “I fucked up! I fucked up!” I wanted so badly to reach over and grab his shoulder in a firm but understanding grip, letting him know that he needs to calm down, but also that I know exactly how much it sucks to make such a human error. And later, when that same guy sees the consequences of his fuck-up, I’m still right there with him. As a member of the audience, that effect, that expression on his face just tore me apart.

But the connection to Pandorum is one with which I can’t agree. Pandorum was a horrific sci-fi thriller, and I knew that going into it. It’s gruesome scenes fit perfectly within the context of its established subject frame. The “something here is killing us and I don’t know what it is” theme was introduced early in the movie’s story development, and everything that branched off of that resulting narrative was exactly as it should have been. In Pandorum, murders and chases and distrust and “run for your life they’re coming!” was all part of the premise, and exactly what I was looking for.

With Sunshine, the introduction of that new theme was so unexpected and heavy-handed as to be anathema to the intense-yet-enjoyable tension that the movie had fostered up until that very moment. Mere seconds after perhaps the most powerful scene of the entire movie, once the computer utters that one line involving the number five, everything the movie had built up was obliterated. The turn towards the slasher chase was unnecessary and unwanted, and I struggled to pay anymore focus to the screen as the movie finished its course – not because I was disturbed by the new delve into gore and terror, but because I was absolutely bored with it. Because my feelings were hurt. By a movie.

Were this any other movie, I would likely dismiss it, and tell my friends to stay away from it. But the buildup and execution of the first full hour of this movie is so wondrous, so compelling that I won’t be doing my heart any justice by telling everyone to avoid the film. So, instead, you should watch it up until the “hall scuffle” scene around 1:10 or so, and then turn it off. Just walk away, think about it, buy the soundtrack (which is simply stunning), press play and then sit down and write out your own ending. Take this story and make it your own.

Then send me the scripts you write, so we can enjoy them together.

1. Forbidden Forest: Impressions of George Winston by Taliesin Orchestra. There’s something about this album which deeply inspires me in the way no other music does. I’ve listened to all the original piano pieces upon which these tracks are based, but the originals just don’t compare to the orchestrated renditions. Starting with the very first track on the album, “Tamarack Pines,” I am swept away into a different realm of my creativity. Thanks immensely, Chris, for introducing me to this one.
2. Silent Hill Shattered Memories – original soundtrack by Akira Yamaoka. This is so far my favorite of the consistently amazing Silent Hill soundtracks, narrowly edging above the previous favorite, Silent Hill 4: The Room. Mary Elizabeth McGlynn’s vocal performances are stellar, as always, and in my opinion this album showcases the best work she’s done so far on the series. Something about the haunting ethereal underscores mixed with stellar (and sometimes totally rocking) vocal tracks keeps this one consistently repeating in the background while I work. I actually attempted to make a mix of nothing but McGlynn’s vocal tracks, but the project was only partially successful: the playlist was pretty damn awesome, but I found I couldn’t stop rocking along with the music long enough to get any actual work done.

There are a few others in rotation, including Danse Macabre by The Faint, Vegas by The Crystal Method, Nothing Lasts… But Nothing Is Lost by Shpongle, and the musical score to the movie Master and Commander. These play pretty frequently on my background mixes, but it is the two albums detailed above which always start it off, and which I always kick back into play when I hit a lull in the process.

What are yours?

I’ve had this for a couple of weeks now, and have been itching to give it a test run. I wasn’t expecting to break it out in full game mode so soon, having only read the player book and most of the GM book (and not even touching the magic books yet). But when the call came in, it was the first thing that popped into mind, and in hindsight, I think it was a great idea. Despite none of us having any real experience with it, the end result was a very positive one.

Setting it All Up

Although this was an impromptu game, my hope was that if everyone involved enjoyed it, we could actually continue it a couple of times and play out a complete adventure. The boxed set came with such an adventure, but alas, no ready-made characters with which to play it. But these guys were all fairly experienced roleplayers, so I figured we could go ahead with a round of character creation and still have time for an hour or so of play.

Breaking out the game and getting the characters hammered down (pun intended) took a couple of hours due to smoke breaks, beer runs, and general “how ya been, bro?” chit-chat. There were a few small snags (see Criticisms, below), but all things considered the flow was simple and straight-forward, and most important it was easily digested by first-time WFRP3 players when presented by a GM who had never run it before (me). That’s always a big plus in my book.

I want to make a special note here to fans of the “old ways” of Warhammer: Random Creation is still an option in WFRP3′s character creation system. The default method is to pick your own careers, but it also includes an option to have the Careers and Races determined completely randomly, which I opted to enforce for this game. I used a method of my own devising to accomplish this. First I laid out the cardboard stand-ups for all of the careers and had each player pick three which looked interesting to them, going around the table picking them one at a time. Then they got the career cards for their chosen three, and each decided upon a single career. Once chosen, they rolled dice per the printed rules to pick which of that career’s available races they could play. The resulting four characters: a Reiklander Dilettante, a Reiklander Barber-Surgeon, a Dwarven Mercenary, and a Dwarven Trollslayer. Two warriors, a healer, and a socializer. Wicked.

With four characters ready to go, another round of beers¹ on hand, and our bellies filled with delicious freshly-grilled hamburgers, the game was ready.

The Game in Play

In basic implementation of the hobby’s usual concepts, Warhammer FRP 3rd Edition played a lot like any other mainstream RPG. There are two basic modes of play: Story Mode (wherein all of the free-form roleplaying occurs) and Encounter Mode (where you fight things). Sure, the latter mode can be used for debates, but its primary purpose is to provide a fair flow to combat. Plus, Social Encounters seem more easily handled by the sole application of the Progress Tracker (see below). Focus flits back and forth between the two, with Story mode being a lot more open and abstract. All of this should be familiar ground for anyone who’s played a mainstream RPG in the last decade.

The game uses dice for resolution of all in-game conflicts and tasks, and its dice are entirely custom-made for this game alone. These numberless dice run the D6, D8, and D10 ranges, are colored according to their purposes, and each have unique symbols that must be scryed to determine in-game effect. Upon an initial look some might find that this could make things confusing, but once you roll two or three times, it all makes complete sense. It’s also a nice touch that the symbols are all tied closely into the setting’s own history, symbology, and lexicon. For example, a roll of a Chaos Star implies that terrible things might happen to you, while a roll of the twin-tailed Sigmar’s Comet could bring great and unexpected fortune upon you.

The types, numbers, and results of the dice you roll for any given situation are determined primarily by what particular Action Card you are applying. Pretty much everything your character will ever do, mechanics-wise, is represented by an array of custom Action Cards. Some of these will be generic and thus available to all characters equally. Others are more specific, matching with your career, abilities, gear, or other chosen enhancements. Some cards can be used quite frequently, while other (frequently more powerful and/or dangerous) cards require a cool-off time between uses for them to recharge their usefulness, which is represented by ticking off one or more counters placed upon them. Your character’s array of other effects, such as Talents, Racial Abilities, Fatigue and Stress levels, and so on can also affect the dice pool and its interpreted results.

In addition to the characters, another team-oriented game element factors in heavily to many aspects of the characters’ mechanics: the Party Card. I absolutely love-love-love the Party Card. This mechanic essentially turns the entire group of heroes into a character-like unit of its own. Players can take their characters’ own Talent Cards and actually “slot” them onto the Party Card, allowing them to apply the effects of that Talent to the entire party due to their character’s own assumed guidance and initiative. Imagine if D&D characters could just as easily apply any one of their feats to everyone in the party? That would totally rock. Additionally, the Party Card applies special circumstantial bonuses to its members, and also keeps track of any escalating levels of inter-party Tension. That last part is really nice to me, because it actually turns character squabbles, social mishaps, and massive failures into another tangible mechanic. The core set comes with a good handful of these cards, with names such as “Brash Young Fools” and “Swords for Hire” and so on – the core set does a good job of covering most of the classic party formats, in my opinion.

But I want to go back to the action cards. When I first saw people using special Power Cards in D&D 4th Edition, I immediately fell in love with the concept. Whereas D&D’s cards were merely an optional game enhancement, WFRP3 makes them an integral part of playing the game. The use of these cards reminded me a lot of my time playing Tyler Tinsley’s then-named Upright Criminals game at this past Gamestorm². The Action Cards in WFRP3 cover pretty much all basic actions you will ever want to try with your character. Each player gets a set of eight basic actions, and can then select one or more extra cards from the stack supplied by the set. There are quite a few in there, covering a wide range of enhanced abilities, most of which actually have different in-game effects if your character is in a “Reckless” or “Defensive” stance focus.

Let’s talk about my single most favorite element of this game: the Progress Tracker. This concept isn’t really a new one, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it implemented so well, and so pervasively. Basically, there are many times in the game in which you set up a Progress Tracker, which usually consists of eight or ten or so sequentially-connected puzzle-pieces (supplied by the box). Most often one or two of those pieces will be special “event markers” – usually the midpoint and far end. This tracker is then used to gauge the progress of the characters as they seek to attain a goal of some kind. It can also be used to track two or more opposing parties seeking conflicting and potentially exclusive goals. Each party or other such force of interest involved in the tracked situation is represented by a token placed upon it, and as the tokens move along the track we get to see who is closest to achieving their goals. The event markers usually signify that important things happen, depending upon who reaches them first. One interesting take on this, provided in the rules materials’ own text, is the use of the Tracker to resolve social combat, using it to show how close each side is to achieving their intentions.

The implications here should be obvious: the possibilities for implementing the Progress Tracker are nigh unlimited. I love the concept of the Progress Tracker so much that I have decided to incorporate it into pretty much every single RPG I ever run. Just this past Monday night I used twice it in a Savage Worlds game, first making a planned skyship dogfight much more exciting and dramatic than the methods promoted by that system’s own rules, and then later using it to play out the party sneaking across a war zone in a city with survivors in tow. Both turned out to be quite exciting.

Our own play time was limited due to a late start, but we got to do some roleplaying, try some simple tests out, and enjoy a viciously dramatic combat with some gnarly beastmen, in a scene that seemed a good fit for a Vin Diesel action flick. Everyone had a good time, and we all agreed to meet up again and continue the adventure. Personally, I’m glad we didn’t get any further, because the stopping point was right about as much of the included adventure as I had read. Phew!

Criticisms

I have a few problems with the game’s layout. First off, the process of picking Action Cards and Talents during character creation is not very conducive to the quick establishment of game play. There’s really no easy way that I can see to present to brand new WFRP3 players their available choices, other than passing them the entire stack of cards (minus spells in most cases) and telling them to go to town. The creation process could benefit immensely from a few lists, examples, and career-tailored recommendations of useful action cards and talents to take at that crucial “first level” of the game.

Second, like all Fantasy Flight productions, the reference material designers chose to focus too heavily on production image, sacrificing mid-game readability and citability in the process. Quite simply, finding the rules that you most need on the fly is a complete pain in the privates, an issue it shares with Tannhauser, Twilight Imperium, Call of Cthulu, and every other Fantasy Flight game that I own. As with all of their products, there is no index, and I was only able to find certain extremely important rules mid-game because my prior experience with their other products gave me the foresight to tackle my first reading of the rules with a highlighter in hand. While I praise them for having a game product which, I dare say, looks damn sexy in every aspect of its style and tangibility, I lament the growing trend with Big Game Companies (TM) to attain these lofty presentation milestones by casting aside the actual mid-game usability of their rules materials. The cards definitely help to keep some rules handy and in-your face, but the meta-rules that guide those more situation-specific cards are sometimes lost in the void of poorly-referenced source material.

Third and final: this game takes up about as much space as Twilight Imperium, or maybe a tad less. While the lack of a central gaming board or combat grid helps to condense this, the hundreds of pieces and cards that need to be separated into easy-to-access bowls and tubs at the table present a logistics challenge I’m not used to with my tabletop RPGs. I’ve seen a few others echo this complaint on FFG’s official forums as well, and while most of the responses to those complaints have been friendly, few have really helped to resolve the issue. There are a few ways that this can be mitigated, mainly by planning ahead and preparing a game site most conducive to the spread of components. Had this particular session been played at my own home, I would have had a Dave³ and a good number of foldable TV Dinner Trays to help each player keep their stuff separate from the main gaming table, and I doubt the clutter would have been noticeable. As it was, though, the table was nigh overwhelmed with the character sheets, cards, tokens, and tracks alone, and we barely had room for the central play area for combats, locations, handouts, and extra pieces.

The Final Word

While I warn you to keep in mind that this is only a first-play review, with no insights into the Magic and Advancement systems, I must still recommend that you…

Buy This Game. Fantasy Flight has taken the Warhammer setting and made one kick-ass RPG for it. From my perspective as someone who found the previous editions cumbersome and whiff-tastic, this edition improves the game by leaps and bounds. Despite a few issues with presentation and the first game start-up flow, the pieces and mechanics fit together to let your group play a finely-turned game of dark (and sometimes darkly comedic) Old World adventure. If you like unique mechanics, lots of fiddly bits, card-based actions, and high production values, this is the game for you – especially if you’re a long-time fan of the setting who is open to new ideas.

One final idea came to me as I packed everything back up. This game could also be easily interchanged with the Dragon Age RPG from Green Ronin – another recently-published boxed set game that I’ve been itching to try out for the first time. There are a lot of similarities in the settings and their focus upon dark fantasy adventure. I’d be interesting to see one system used to play the other’s setting, and vice-versa.

Footnotes

¹ I recommend Ninkasi Believer Double Red
² Dammit, I keep forgetting to write up my GS2010 post. Adding that to the blogging agenda now.
³ Every gamer lair should have one of these, especially if you have a laptop. It has revolutionized my home gaming experience.

“Cannibal Contagion is an enjoyable game that stays true to the design goals. It’s fun, easy to pick up, and has some very nice features for player interaction and character conflict. The scope, of course, is quite narrow both in terms of what characters can and can’t do and the environment they interact with. Others elements are inevitably dealt with a lot of hand-wavin’ and impromptu rules; the game is about “comedic survival horror” and not really much else. It is firmly located in the beer-and-pretzels one-off genre of games and should be seen in that perspective, which it achieves admirably.”

Thanks, Lev!

That’s right. I said it. Shut up.

I first started playing the Shadowrun role-playing game in 1994, when the second edition rules were still in their prime. I remember my first clue that the game even existed was when I rented the Sega Genesis game cartridge of the same name because I recalled seeing the awesome logo on a few books in the sci-fi aisle at Books-a-Million. I ate that video game up like it was momma’s special garlic mashed potatoes with the skins in, oh so deliciously slightly lumpy. While devouring the awesome that was (and still is!) that video game, I learned that it was directly based upon a tabletop role-playing game of the same name. Being a gamer-in-the-making at that time, I rushed out and grabbed a sweet shiny copy of the core second edition rules, and was hooked ever since.

(Author’s Note: avoid the SNES version of the Shadowrun game if you are at all a fan of the setting. It really butchers it, and quite mercilessly so. And keep the Xbox 360 version away with a sharp object.)

The art on pages 9, 77, and 237 of the Second Edition rules book have forever been stuck in my mind as images of exactly what Shadowrun should be: hard, gritty, dirty and penultimately bad ass street-level cyberpunk grime. From the moment I started devouring that book (and all the supplements!), the art and writing style all cemented within my mind this vision of a dirty dystopian future, a vision of four days after tomorrow where an outright apocalypse never happened, but by all rights should have. To me, Shadowrun was about edge, cool, racism, bullets, blood, grime, and those three bad ass pictures drawn by the legendary Tim Bradstreet.

Somewhere along the line, that edge got dulled down, and instead of keeping it sharp, the designers replaced it with a purple inflatable hammer. Now don’t misunderstand me, here: I am actually one of those long-time devoted players who has truly felt that with each new edition of the game, the rules of play have done nothing but improve. Right from the release of each new edition, I embraced the changes and improvements, and eagerly pranced forth and bought all the new core supplements. No, the rules have only gotten better over time, and I will rarely say otherwise.

The dulling I speak of is entirely a matter of style. Shadowrun started as a game world rooted very firmly and obviously in the 1980 Gibsonian cyberpunk mythos, with a whole lot of weird fantasy thrown into the mix for flavor. But despite the presence of the mystical and the ready availability of traditional fantasy gaming tropes, the earlier supplements and novels all held true to that gritty cyberpunk edge. But over time, the style changed. The developers realized that the popularity of that 1980s dystopian vision of the future was fading, and they did what they felt they needed to do to keep making money off of Shadowrun: they turned it into a fucking anime.

I almost gave up on Shadowrun entirely when the Year of the Comet book was published. Published in the final years of the Third Edition lifespan, this book took the last vestiges of whatever waning elements of gritty style were left, chewed them up, and shat them out into the pages of a weeaboo-dripping book of pure and utter feces. The short version: Halley’s Comet comes back around, and in its wake a giant spirit dragon flies out of a rift and takes over Denver, the world is beset by zombies (ahem, “shedim”), and now every player has the option of playing furries (oh, excuse me, they call it “SURGE”). I paid cash money for that book, and felt violated after reading it. How did FASA go from publishing my favorite gaming supplement ever (Bug City – hell, I still have nightmares about that mosquito picture) to this drivel? After giving that book to Goodwill in disgust, I turned my back on buying any new Shadowrun products, clinging lovingly to those I already had and holing up like the crotchety old grognard I felt I had become.

When Fanpro published the Fourth Edition rules, I risked ending my Shadowrun hermitage for a chance at potential change. Alas, while I loved the amazingly improved rules system, I saw that the developers had even further strayed from the original core themes of the game. Hell, the art in the Fourth Edition core rules is some of the worst art I’ve seen in a long time for a book of that supposedly-high production quality. I fully believe that when you buy a gaming book, you’re buying not only the rules of the game, but also the complete imaginative experience that those rules are supposed to facilitate at your gaming table. When you pay forty or more dollars for a book, that book had better rock your rocks. The art in this book just didn’t evoke the Shadowrun I had grown to love – the Shadowrun of 4th edition was tight and smooth, but utterly devoid of soul. It was like really terrible fan fiction. My solution: port the newer, more playable rules to the old established style, and root all my games firmly in 2055.

This new 20th Anniversary edition of the 4th Edition rules has fixed all of that for me. From the moment you open the book and see the original First Edition cover staring back at you on the first page, you know that actual love was poured into the creation of this book. Each piece of artwork in the book is either brand new and perfectly styled for the feel of the setting, or pulled from the pages and covers of products as far back as the very beginning. Seeing visual shoutouts to the covers of both Shadowtech and Downtown Militarized Zone almost brought tears to my eyes. This book took the new rules, which I love, and combined them with a visual feel that once again (finally) returned to the grittier, less-ridiculous cyber-grunge feel that I loved from my very first encounter with the game, way back when.

So I repeat: Thanks, Catalyst. Someone finally got it right again, and I’m glad it was you. I look forward to more awesome products like this.

With hyper action and frantic role-playing, Cannibal Contagion is the perfect game for the player that just wants to have some balls out undead fun.

Wow! Thanks, Aaron!