That was when I realized I was out of my element, and in several ways.

The most obvious is that I am not an aficionado of graphic novels.  It is not quite that I have not read them since they were called comic books.  I did read one by another friend, C. J. Henderson.  However, I still think of them as comic books.  I did not find C. J.’s graphic novel to be on par with his other books.[1]  I realize even comic books need to be taken seriously within the rules of their own genre, but my limited exposure makes it difficult to identify those rules.

Then there is the additional problem that the story is, at least to my eyes, clearly allegorical, but I know that I am missing bits of the allegory.  Aubuchon’s background includes an extensive understanding of occult practices which I lack.  Even the title, Third Eye Shut, is a reference to an occult concept of opening a third eye to see spiritual things.  The story asserts that to the degree our third eyes are open we are blinded by the illusion created by the enemy, and it is only by closing our third eye against that illusion that we can see reality as it truly is.  The spirits we see when we open our third eye to the spirit world are intent on deceiving us, and so the more we open that eye the less clearly we see reality.

In the end, though, on my first reading I could not find the point.  The story made a significant issue about how important the young heroine Amber is to the plans of “The Leader”.  However, we never see her do anything successfully.  She rejects the Third Eye Open teaching, learns to close her third eye, and sees the world as it really is, and then goes into training to fight with the forces of The Leader against the evil of “The Warlord”.  Next she is part of a failed mission to save her family, and then she attempts to rescue another of The Leader’s warriors from the fortress of The Warlord, and gets captured and is held prisoner for a long time until others rescue her, The Warlord is defeated, and she renews her promise to fight against The Warlord in other cities around the world–presumably in the next issue.  She never actually succeeds at anything that matters.

I was having trouble understanding the point.

I set aside the book, read something else, and after several months picked it up afresh.

To risk a pun, the second reading was a real eye-opener to me.  I realized that this was the point.  Amber is important not because she is going to bring down The Warlord or accomplish great tasks herself, but because when she fails and is captured she becomes the reason for the rest of the forces of The Leader to mobilize and destroy The Warlord’s fortress to set her free.  She is not the heroine in the traditional sense of the one who wins the victory, but in the sense of the one who inspires others to win the victory because she is in need.  In an excellent display of understanding of spiritual battles, Aubuchon has given his heroine the role we all take, the failure who needs salvation, for whom heaven is mobilized to deliver us.

All of which is to fail to speak of the experience of the novel itself, which is certainly worth recognition.  Aubuchon weaves realities seamlessly.  The little old retired missionary widow across the street is also the powerful armored warrior when you can see the reality.  The apartment where Amber lives with her useless boyfriend is simultaneously a cell within The Warlord’s fortress.  The messages in television, advertising, school, and elsewhere are all ultimately about rejecting The Leader once the veneer of appearances is removed.  It is in many ways reminiscent of a master of the blending of realities, Charles Williams,[2] as city streets become battlefields against the invisible enemy using the invisible weapons.  Kudos to Rob Ewing, Atlantis Studios, Noval Hernawan, and Oscar Yanez for illustrations which captured this blending of worlds.  However, with the changing of artists, some of the characters were a bit inconsistent in appearance such that I once or twice had to check who was speaking.  Amber’s hair color and sometimes her facial structure changes according to who is rendering her, and some of the minor characters when they recur in subsequent chapters are only clearly identified by being named in the dialogue.  The lettering is always legibile, and although there were a couple of errors in the spelling these were rare and minor; overall it is an excellent book in that regard, for which again Atlantis Studios and also Khari Sampson, KJ Media, and Terminus Media share credit.

Overall, I wish to commend Jim for his very clever story and insightful execution, creating a fantasy world in the midst of our own, in which warriors combining elements of swords & sorcery, mecha, and video game are hidden from most of us by the illusion we call reality.  It is an excellent book.

_____

1  The Things That Are Not There is an excellent fantasy horror novel from him.

2  Descent Into Hell is probably his best in this area.

I am sorely tempted to call this series, “Harry Potter Meets Cthulu”. The connections seem to scream at me.

The hero of the series, Matthew Freeman who prefers to be called Matt, is in this book fourteen years old; that makes him a bit older than Harry was in his second book (he had just turned twelve). It is not clear to me, however, how old Matt was in the beginning of the first book. Like Harry, Matt is an orphan, although it seems his parents really did die in a car accident and not until he was eight. That tale is told, apparently, in the first book. Like Harry, Matt has powers he does not understand and cannot always control; he was aware of the car accident before it occurred, and he sometimes has similar premonitions here. He also sometimes causes telekinetic events, but through severe emotional upset, not intention. He is even described as thin with unkempt dark hair and blue eyes.

The similarities to Harry don’t end there, though. We are told that there are seven gates, and apparently each book revolves around the effort to keep the next one closed. first grade math says that means there will be seven books in this series, just as there were in the Potter books. Matt is the hero, the focus of the stories; his friends, young and old, help him, but in the critical moments he is the one on the line.

In fairness to Horowitz, at least some of these are the tropes of the genre: fantasy books for adolescents have adolescent heroes. Cry of the Icemark was similar in some ways. Matt does not have a group of adolescent friends; he has the friendship of a young adult reporter, and the support of a secret international organization, but he is completely estranged from his peers. No one is helping him learn to use his powers. He is not exactly unique; there is much in the book about “the five”, of which he is the first to be identified, and he dreams about the other four trying to reach him. Still, in this book one of the others does reach him, recognizing him from his own dreams. He, too, has powers he does not understand, but they are very different powers.

As to Cthulu, he is never mentioned; however, the series revolves around a set of gates through which the “Old Ones” threaten to return to bring darkness to the word, and this book focuses on an ancient newly discovered book which tells how to open one of those gates. A wealthy reclusive businessman is the evil monster attempting to get the book and open the gate.

I did not feel that Matt was as familiar a character as Harry. It was a weakness of the book that I had trouble identifying with its hero. Harry stayed with family members who did not like him, but Matt had an insane former foster mother trying to kill him. Harry was alone at school but for a couple of friends, but Matt was alone on the streets of the Peruvian slums with a boy with whom he shared no common language. Harry meets creatures of fantasy and learns to control his power through the mentoring of those more experienced than he, while Matt meets Incan survivors and struggles to work through his own use of his powers. Where Harry’s powers made us feel that he was special, Matt’s powers make us feel that he is different; we want to be like Harry, but not like Matt. Even the fact that Harry goes to school in what seems a very ordinary way (despite it being a school for wizards) gives us a point of contact; Matt is behind in his education, because his life is constantly interrupted and he has to move to another school. It just never felt like Matt was a sympathetic character.

On the other hand, the author takes us on quite an adventure. Matt is the reluctant hero here; he wants to be a normal boy, but he’s not normal, and fate will not leave him alone. In his new school he is the outcast, and the fact that he pulls the fire alarm before the explosion that would have killed almost everyone only makes him less accepted. The Nexus, the organization that is fighting this battle, wants and perhaps needs his help, but he is trying to avoid getting involved–and yet gets pulled half way around the world and into the midst of the trouble as events unfold. It is not always clear who are the villains and who the allies, and more than once he flees from those who would have helped him. Scores, maybe hundreds, of people are trying to help him, but at the critical moment he stands alone but for the other, younger, boy.

The book is laced with some wonderful images, many of them descriptions of Peru from its ancient wonders to its modern slums. If there is a fault here, it lies in the interlacing of fantasy elements–a hidden Incan city, secret passages in those preserved wonders known only to the surviving Incans–with the hard facts. Even I am not certain where the facts ended and the fantasies began at times. That is only a fault because of the wonderfully clear portrayals of the realities of Peru, the author’s skill at bringing us into that place, and because (being published by Scholastic) it is targeted at a teen or pre-teen audience who will benefit greatly from the look at that society, if they can sort out the reality from the rest.

The copy I have has a number of errors in it which caught my eye as an editor, which may also have caught the eye of Scholastic’s editors before the finished version went to press. Most of these are minor typos, a wrong but similar word here or there. The mistake which most bothered me involved a description of the actions of a minor character, a truck driver on his way to be beaten and robbed. Before the incident we are told that he is thinking about asking a certain waitress at a certain truck stop out on a date; after the incident we are told that his wife was contacted and gave them important information. I prefer to think that the author overlooked part of what he was doing, rather than that he perceives married truck drivers commonly asking women out on dates; I hope, at least, that this was a mistake, and that it was corrected before the final copy.

I am tempted to attempt to obtain a copy of the first book. After all, it is often the case that one book in a series is weaker than the others, and this might be the weaker book. It is not a bad idea for a series; the Lovecraftian horror concepts are present but not terrifyingly so (although I’m probably not the best judge of that–Lovecraft has never frightened me). There is madness, there is betrayal, there are evil people working toward evil ends. Matt does not always emerge victorious, does not always make the best decisions, and is not always eager to do what he must do. However, he proves the hero through his efforts, and moves an epic story forward a significant chapter. I wouldn’t expect this to be the stuff of a best seller, but then, such things are determined by factors other than how they appeal to fifty-something author-reviewers.

176 pages / $22.95

From an academic standpoint, the position of roleplaying games is somewhat vague. The big question is: Are they worth “studying?” Fiction certainly is. Movies too. Poetry, political writings, and even comic books warrant a “yes” on the question. But RPG’s? They’re media. They’re in book form. They have a good deal of fictional elements and can, as some of my prior columns have attempted to point out, be filled with interesting ideological stances. But they’re games. In that respect, they sit on roughly the same level as Super Mario Bros. Add to this the fact that roleplaying games are, in the greater scheme of things, a niche product, and you’ve got something the world at large finds pretty easy to ignore.

As is probably obvious, I don’t agree with the popular assessment of our hobby. But it can be a difficult, uphill battle. For the most part, RPG’s do a good job of furthering their own trivial image. Dungeons & Dragons is silly fantasy. RIFTS is one or two steps below Rob Schneider on the intellectual ladder. White Wolf’s World of Darkness has become a self parody.

But then there’s Unknown Armies.

In much the same way Jared Sorensen’s Schism does it to super heroes, UA takes the modern occult genre and nails it so perfectly and with so much originality, that it effectively kills off the possibility of further work in the field. However, in the case of UA, I would argue that it goes an additional step and almost does the same to roleplaying games as a whole. Greg Stolze and John Tynes wrote the best RPG on the market today. It would be easy to label it the Best RPG Ever. UA displays intelligence, grace, thoughtfulness, and attention to detail far beyond nearly everything else it shares shelf space with.

It does this by getting to that fragile core of roleplaying: the fictional representation of the human in as much realism and awareness as possible. In the end, UA is not about the occult. It isn’t about magic or weird powers or secretive organizations. It is about humanity. It is about obsession and madness and the fine line that separates the two. It is about reality in the same way Grant Morrison’s Invisibles is: it takes the extremes and makes them so omnipresent as to reshape our means of perception. One comes away from UA noticing things.

What is truly amazing, though, is that, as they expand the product line, Atlas Games has kept a level of consistent quality that rarely (if ever) drops below the level set by the core rulebook. Weep is no exception. The front cover bills it as “six scenarios of woe and ruin,” but that’s a little misleading. Three of the six aren’t really adventures; they’re more like mini-sourcebooks, filled with wacky stuff to throw at players. I’m not going to go into too many details, however. To do so would ruin the surprise entirely, and UA is so much about surprise, about the unexpected, that I would be doing a huge disservice to both players and GM’s.

I will hit on one aspect of the book that stands out for me in particular. The first adventure, written by Tynes, brings together the best Unknown Armies has to offer. Without giving too much away, it deals with events that aren’t ever given an explanation. Instead, they are given meaning. I was discussing the scenario, called “A Few of My Favorite Things,” with a friend at a coffee house yesterday. She thought it sounded neat but wanted to know if the players ever figured out what was going on. The answer is no, but we came to the conclusion that that’s not the point. What matters is that, after the adventure is done and the dice are put away, the players are left with something to think about. Tynes has written the RPG equivalent of a fantastic short story. He built a complex metaphor about the state of America and let us play around in it. He has a message, a point to make, and that’s what’s important. I know that a lot of RPG players out there would have serious problems with such a setup. I know that I’d have to get a very specific group of people together to play it or else deal with constant griping about continuity and not having anything to do. This is not an adventure for “adventure gamers.”

But you know what? Screw ‘em.

Unknown Armies is to roleplaying games what Dave Sim’s Cerebus is to comics. (Though it definitely isn’t plagued by the silly misogyny Sim seems to dwell on so much.) UA is brilliant. It is intense and powerful and worthwhile. But it has to compete for space with peers that are everything but. Most RPG’s are embarrassing. Seriously.

Unknown Armies is a game we, the gaming community, can be proud of.

And Weep takes its rightful place in swelling that pride.

Inter-dimensional travel has long been a staple of role-playing games. There are some systems like Planescape and Rifts which focus almost exclusively on the concept, and some, like the World of Darkness or Shadowrun, where the ability to jump in and out of a metaphysical realm is a fairly common ability. From a gamers perspective, this makes a lot of sense. Why limit your adventures to one world when you can jaunt back and forth between universes? Now, we have yet another game, The Nearside Project, about the possibility to travel between alternate realities. Although this isnt the freshest or most creative concept for a game that Ive seen, the designers have done a pretty good job with it.

The protagonists of this game, Nearsiders, are people with an innate talent for moving into other worlds, and 3 major methods for doing so. There is the Broken Road (my particular favorite), a method by which madmen project their minds into other realities, Dream-Walking, a special dimension-spanning state that one can go into during REM sleep, and the use of special portals called Broken Rooms. Although experiencing a violent death is also capable of sending one into another universe, this method is unreliable at best. Any Nearsider who tries to travel to new worlds by playing Russian Roulette is probably in for a very, very short career. All characters also have a CoC-esque Distance rating, which measures how much damage interdimensional travel has done to their sanity. Those who make a point of thumbing their noses at the space-time continuum can wind up in the loony bin real quick.

The system of the Nearside Project is fairly simple. Each character has a series of Stats such as Strength, IQ, Charisma, Education, etc. To do something, you add your appropriate skill rating to your Stat, add in any modifiers, and try to roll below that number on a D10. Although some of the dimension-specific rules were a little more complicated than this, any RPG veteran should be able to pick up on these rules very quickly, and novices wont find themselves out of their depth.

The core rules offer descriptions of 13 worlds, also known as variants, for your gaming pleasure. Earth1 is our own planet, only marginally affected by the presence of reality-spanning Nearsiders. Earth2 is your basic alien invasion world, Earth3 is a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and so on. Some of the variations are rather uninspired. Weve all seen games where aliens are invading or where prominent public figures are being replaced by demons. However, some of them, such as the world where the weakened fabric of reality is maintained only by a series of cosmic-powered clocks or the world where a faulty biological weapon has erased humanitys conscience, were innovative and excellent. In any case, the fact that travel between the 13 worlds is possible certainly adds a whole new dimension (pardon the pun) to the game. For example, if you think that the ruthless corporate hegemony of Earth11 is boring by itself, try bringing in some superheroes from Earth12 or sorcerers from Earth5. This potential for mingling the various worlds is probably the games greatest asset.

One other interesting aspect of the Nearside Project is the time travel aspect. Two of the variances, Earth4 and Earth13, are just like the baseline world, except that they take place a year in the past and a year in the future, respectively. This is a really neat method of handling time travel, because you dont have those pesky old paradoxes like what happens if a time traveler goes back in time and kills himself? If you arent really travelling back in time but just visiting a place that is exactly like the past, that sort of thing shouldnt be a problem, right? Wrong. For some reason, the official game rules severely limit interactions with these two worlds, limiting visits to 13 minutes and preventing players from interfering with history. Personally, Id toss these rules out, or at least significantly alter them. Having a window into the past and the future presents so many gaming possibilities. Why not take advantage of them?

The Nearside Project is available for download in PDF format at http://members.tripod.co.uk/Nearside_Games/index.html. This is something of a mixed blessing. Its nice to be able to give the game a thorough examination before deciding whether or not to purchase it, but having the rules on your screen is not quite as convenient or satisfying as a professionally bound and printed book. Call me a technophobe if you will, but I dont think that computer files will ever manage to replace words printed on good ol sheets of pulped wood, bound together by glue and string. Furthermore, Nearside Games is relying on the honor system to make money from the game, asking people to send them $20 if they intend to play it. Its great to see that the company has so much faith in its fans (Metallica could learn much from these folks), but at the same time Id really hate to see them undergo financial trouble because of unscrupulous free riders. A better solution might be to put the rules onto the internet in a way that would not allow them to be downloaded, E-Mail a free password to anyone who asks for it, and then change the password every 30 days or so.

Overall, the Nearside Project is a pretty interesting game, one which fans of post-modern, reality-warping entertainment such as Mage, The Invisibles, or even The Matrix may get a big kick out of. In any case, since getting a copy of the rules is so simple, its very easy to test it out for yourself

Big Eyes, Small Mouth (hence BESM, since that’s a lot to type) accomplishes what a lot of games want to - it’s a genre game that’s just the right amount of general (as opposed to too general or not general enough).

I’ll clarify that. Bubblegum Crisis from R. Talsorian Games, while an excellent game and a good introductory piece for the Fuzion” line, was an anime role-playing game that expected you to play the Knight Sabers (creation rules for other character groups were in the back of the book). Teenagers From Outer Space, while obviously anime-influenced, managed to sprawl over at least three genres (adolescent gaming, like Cybergeneration; American cartoon gaming, like Toon; and anime gaming). BESM has one goal in mind: to be the ultimate anime role-playing game. It pulls it off, too; it’s genre-specific while being as broad as possible, its rules are broad enough to be encompassing but tight enough to be playable, its attitude is more playful than most gamers, and it sells for $14.95.

I’ll say that again. $14.95. In an age where gaming supplements run $20-30, Guardians of Order has managed to bring us a polished game for just under fifteen dollars. (Oddly, the supplements cash in at a dollar more than the game itself.)

The book is laid out well. It has a logical flow to it, moving from an introduction to the book and a basic introduction to anime to character creation, which takes up much of the rest of the book. (It’s a small book, which makes it all the more impressive.) Creation involves the Tri-Stat system, where characters have Body, Mind, and Soul, and then use Skills and Advantages to beef up those stats. At the end is a lexicon - the authors are anime fans, as befits writers of an anime RPG, and thus use a lot of Japanese and jargon words - and a bibliography, which also recommends some anime to watch, to get into the mood.

The system is also simple; roll 2d6. If you roll lower than your Stat (plus modifiers), you succeed; roll higher, and you fail. A 2 always succeeds, and a 12 always fails. Combat tends to be just as simple; roll initiative (only 1d6), then attack or defend (2d6 vs. the character’s Attack or Defensive Combat Value). Damage is meted out, and a new round begins.

End result? BESM is a lot of fun. For an otaku (fanboy) like me, it’s great to have a chance to play a character in universes I’ve watched and read so many times. It’s a good system, too, and fun to read. Truth be told, the game I was supposed to review was the first (mecha-building) supplement, Big Robots, Cool Starships; it was on the strength of that supplement that I decided to lay out the cash to buy the main book. I haven’t for one moment regretted it.

The game also has two supplements, Big Robots, Cool Starships - mentioned above - and Hot Rods and Gun Bunnies, which I’ll be reviewing later in the month. Keep an eye out.

Free Trader EDG signing off.

“My parents became Cyberpunks and all they left me was this dark future.”

Cybergeneration, R. Talsorian Games’ followup to their highly successful Cyberpunk 2020 line, puts a somewhat unique spin on the Cyberpunk world. The year is 2027, and the Edgerunners have all but vanished; the Corporations have taken America and the world, and arcologies stand where cities once sprawled. Most adults have been assimilated, and spend their days working dull, soulless jobs and their nights dreaming of the days when they had s real future. A deadly plague sweeps the land, killing most people over 20 who encounter it. The adults have only one chance left, one hope of destroying the Megacorps and returning America to a free state.

Their children.

Cybergeneration is a game not for children, but about children. It concentrates heavily on the works and days of the children of the Edgerunners, forming street gangs and rebelling relentlessly against the evils of the Megacorps. The design of the book reflects this, from the almost attention-deficit organization to the scrawled typeface used throughout the book. (Fortunately, it’s used only for headers and page numbers - else, the book would be unreadable.)

Character creation in Cybergeneration is, unfortunately, mixed in with the introductory story. While this might make for an interesting way to introduce new players to the game, it’s frustrating for more experienced players to have to edit out the adventure in order to make a character - and as there are parts of the adventure which should only be read by the GM, it’s difficult to allow a player who’s in the adventure to look through the book in order to create her character. There is a character creation summary, but it almost requires a player to refer constantly to the regular creation rules due to its extreme brevity.

On the other hand, had the adventure been later in the book, and character creation been more cohesive, it would have been a lot of fun. New characters are guided through generation by an Edgerunner named Morgan Blackhand, and creation is treated as though the character were simply giving information about herself. This tends to create more of a connection with the character, more of a sense of /being/ the character.

For the most part, skills and statistics work the same way in Cybergeneration as they do in Cyberpunk, and indeed, rules are provided for converting Edgerunners to the Cybergeneration world. Add Stat to Skill, then roll 1d10 and add that to the total; if your combined total is higher than the target number, you succeed. Thus, there are always a certain set of activities that a character will almost always be able to do. The exception to this is on a total fumble - a 1 on 1d10, which is an automatic failure. On the other hand, the system is also infinitely open-ended - if you roll 10 on your d10, you roll again and add; another 10 means you roll again, and so on, allowing for spectacular successes on a cinematic scale.

The setting and background is what really makes Cybergeneration, though. Regardless of what system you use with the game, the essence remains the same - you are children, rebelling against an oppressive authority. The wonderful thing about this game is that if you’re playing it dark and gritty, with characters who are all guns and sex, you’re missing a lot of the point. Characters in Cybergeneration are no older than 17, and as such are still idealistic, hopeful youths, many of whom have never actually seen someone die and most of whom aren’t yet out of puberty. Cybergeneration allows the player to relive youth, rebelling against anything as long as it’ll look cool.

The Verdict

High Point: background and setting

Low Point: character creation is poorly organized and jumbled in with the first adventure

Looks: 4 (out of 5)

Concept: 5 (out of 5)

Originality: 4 (out of 5)

Playability: 4 (out of 5)

SANCTUM is an online card game in where you play one of the Twelve Houses. Your goal? Invade the opponent’s home base, called a Sanctum. You do this by casting spells, and advancing your armies on the playing field. But there are obstacles along the way: Mountains, desert terrain, enemy armies, and the opponent’s spells. Not to mention summoned monsters…

This game is similar to Magic: The Gathering in that you must have mana to cast spells. The major differences in this game and Magic are Sanctum adds a game board., and you don’t have mana cards. You must capture the towns that lie in your progress to the opponent’s Sanctum, which then can generate any of the mana types for any house, but once you choose, you can’t change the mana it will generate, and the other benefit of owning a town is that it produces recruits suitable to your House.

The Twelve Houses are: Justice, Body, Mind, Making, Unmaking, Hope, Despair, War, Death, Abomination, Nature, and Life. The six mana types are: World, Order, Mystery, Clarity, Strife, and Will.

The five different spell types are: Alteration (alters the recruits or mana generation), Manifestation (a variety of effects, from temporary mana gains to fireballs), Summoning (you guessed it–monsters!), Conjuration (enchantments that can affect recruits, towns, and Sanctums), and Hero (summons Unique characters–each with their own special abilities).

You start out as Unranked–meaning you can play, but you they don’t count in the overall ranks. Once you buy X amount of cards, you then become Ranked, and thus will begin the long climb to the top spot of Number One.

The Verdict:

So is this game fun? You bet! Can it get expensive in the long run? You bet! With the initial run, plus two expansions (Bloodlines and Oppositions) it can put a major dent in your funds. But with the power of trading, you don’t have to spend a lot to get a good deck. The citizens in the online community for Sanctum are in general quite helpful, but some are like sharks–if they smell a newbie, the challenges will strike you from all around. Accept their challenges if you dare, and for your sake, watch out for the following people: Fafnir, KennySP, Whammo, Dracha, Xerxes, Tupacalypse, Starsurfer, and anyone else with more than 20 wins. They are good, they will hurt you, but best of all, they will help you be a better player.

Of course, if your ranked while they’re “helping” you, it could mean that climb to the top spot will take a lot longer than you hoped…

“Graveyard” Greg is the unofficial Whipping Boy for Sanctum. He’s now waiting for his very own Hero card, and is pushing for the Gaming Outpost to be the thirteenth House.

My good friend Graveyard Greg sent me this remake of a classic RPG. If you want to read a review on it, then go someplace else. I am going to give you my P.O.V. of FENG SHUI.

FENG SHUI was originally released in 1996 by Daedalus Entertainment, Inc. But then something bad happened, and FENG SHUI lost. All was dark for this poor RPG, until Atlas Games came and rescued it from the brink of extinction! Hooray! Now, FENG SHUI is back with a brand new cover, layout, and art. In fact, they added the character types like Journalist, Magic Cop, and the Thief from a previous supplement, and your old favorites (like Karate Cop, Ghost, and Old Master) are still here, ready to kick some butt!

The background behind FENG SHUI is this: A secret war is being waged. The bad guys range from eunuch sorcerers from Ancient China to cyber-demonic scientists from the future. They all want the same thing–the power of FENG SHUI. Whoever controls this power can reshape history so that they are in control, and always have been in control.

History, you see, is flexible. It changes on a whim, and unless you have safeguards, you’ll never question the changes. New York could become a dynasty of China, and you wouldn’t blink.

Fortunately, the one thing that stands in the way of these evil powers are the PCs–and they aren’t just anyone! They are secret warriors, ready to save the world or die trying! They’re going to need every trick in the book (and then some) in order to succeed, too. From Gun Schticks to Fu Powers to Spellcasting, they have the skills to perform the butt kicking the world so desperately needs!

The system of FENG SHUI is so simple, you’ll be ready to play in minute. It uses two 6 sided dice. One die is positive, the other negative. Roll them together (and reroll 6s), and the result is either a positive or negative number that you add or subtract to your skill number. The higher, the better, folks! If you meet or exceed the Difficulty–Huzzah! If not, uh oh…

The things that modify the DN depend on how detailed you describe your action, or “stunt”. Just saying “I waste him with my uzi!” is ho hum. If you say “I spray the mook with hot lead, causing him to fall on his comrades” is far better. The GM rewards creativity, so remember that valuable advice!

The rulebook alone can offer you many a fine game session. I had the extreme pleasure of playing FENG SHUI through many adventures. The thought of having more supplements being released warms this gamer’s heart…

So Lock and Load, Secret Warrior. Your destiny awaits on the field of battle, because FENG SHUI is the game for Action Movie Roleplaying. Accept no substitutes!

Puppetland is a roleplaying game in which you are a Puppet in the Maker’s Land–a special place which the Maker created to keep the puppets away from a terrible war in the real world. The puppets lived without fear, without any hands to control them or strings to pull them. The only human in Maker’s Land was the Maker, who would mend and repair broken or torn puppets. All was happy in Maker’s Land.

Then came Punch, who slew the Maker with his great mallet, taking his flesh to make a new, cruel face for himself and made six puppet-servants called his Boys. Punch was now the Maker-Killer, and those who didn’t obey his commands would suffer greatly.

But, in the small village of Respite, which lies across the great lake of Milk and Cookies, there is a puppet named Judy, who once loved Punch but does so no more. She was there when Punch slew the Maker, and caught the Maker’s last tear in a silver thimble. With this tear, the Maker can be brought back to life. Thus, puppets that declare themselves free of Punch’s terrible rule gather to Respite, and plan for the day they overthrow Punch.

Welcome to Puppetland, where you assume the role of a puppet. This puppet can be one of the following: Finger Puppet, Hand Puppet, Shadow Puppet, or Marionette Puppet. Each has certain things they can and cannot do (for example, the Shadow Puppet can dodge things thrown at them, but can not get wet, because getting wet kills them!)

Once you choose a puppet, you take the character sheet and draw your puppet. This puppet will be the actual size of the puppet, so be careful in how you draw it! Then you write down what the puppet is, what the puppet can do, what the puppet cannot do, and add three additional things to each list.

There are Three Rules that makes playing Puppetland special. The first is a game of Puppetland lasts only an hour. During the game, a week can pass by, but “the time passed is the time in which the tale is told”. During the next session, the characters will find themselves safely in bed. The second rule is when your sitting at the table, what you say is what you say in character. If you want to say something out of character, you have to stand up and say it. And if you want to do something, you have to state is as something your puppet would say, like: “I think I shall finish reading this book.” The third rule is: imagine that a game of Puppetland is a tale being read by an invisible reader. Better make that dialogue colorful, folks.

Another thing about Puppetland is the Jigsaw Puzzle found on the character sheet. If you do something the puppet can’t do, or take damage, you fill in a piece of the Puzzle. Once the Puzzle is filled in, the character will be gone forever after the current session.

That’s enough about Puppetland–let’s talk about Power Kill.

Power Kill is a roleplaying metagame–not an actual game, but an additional layer of a game to an RPG you are currently playing. The setting is the Real World, and only comes into play during and after the regular gaming sessions. What it all boils down to is that the Power Kill Character (PKC) is the real character, and the roleplaying character is the schizophrenic character, and the Power Kill sessions are psychiatric sessions. From there, it gets stranger…

The Verdict:

Puppetland is a diceless roleplaying game, and a good one. This game is meant to capture the feel of a children’s storybook, which is why the author insists on in-game dialogue and narration. It’s a good effort, and worth taking a look at.

Power Kill, on the other hand, is absolutely odd, but it’s also worth a look, if only for the questions it brings into focus (which will not be brought up here, as the Power Kill section is only three pages long!). Since you can get both for one price (a low price at that), Puppetland/Power Kill is worth picking up.

Zoon is a non collectible card game from French firm I’ve never heard of.
The general concept of the game is that it simulates two tribes of “Zoons”
(cuddly little animals with humanoid characteristics and only
semi-pronounceable names) battling it out to capture each other’s “Emblem”
or tribal totem. The game is played out on a grid-like space on your
kitchen table (or desk at work& ahem). The tribes maintain their icon on
their sides “backfield” as it were, and deploy troops to protect the emblem
as well as capture the opposing emblem. Astute readers with an elementary
school background might be noticing the game “capture the flag” right now–
and you’d be right, that’s exactly what Zoon is. Where it diverges from
the playground, however, is where Zoon becomes interesting, and worth the
paltry amount being charged for it (and yes, it is worth the money).

HOW IT PLAYS: Each card represents one element of the limited Zoon universe.
A card can be a Chief, a Priest, a Monster, an Elite, a Soldier, an Emblem,
or a Trump. Most cards are Soldiers or Elites (which are better soldiers
that might have some special abilities). Monsters are usually very tough
soldiers with some nifty abilities tacked on, like flight, or a specialized
attack. Priests, Chiefs and Emblems are one-of-a-kind types with very
specialized abilities. Each card has a “touch score”& a number or star
icon on each corner of the card, with a picture in the middle, and a movement
grid demonstrating how the card moves, and an icon showing what classification
of Zoon it is. Trumps are special case, usually one-shot items that can be played
to effect combat or movement.

PLAY SEQUENCE: The play sequence is dirt simple:

1. Choose a side (tribe).
   
2. Decides who goes first.
   
3. Deploy your Zoons face DOWN in the backfield.
   
4. Alternating between players, either:
   
5. Move a Zoon into an empty grid location;
   
6. Move a Zoon into an occupied grid location (and have combat);
   
7. Play a Trump.
   
8. That’s it. Play until one side captures the other’s Emblem.
   

Movement: Movement is handled in an interesting manner. As mentioned above, each Zoon card has a little diagram printed on it that depicts exactly how that Zoon will move on the grid. Some Zoons can only go forward, some can go forward and backward, some can only go sideways. The overall effect is very chess like.

Combat: Combat is very bizarre and very amusing– really worth the price of admission in itself. I get the feeling that the designers built the rest of the game around this idea. Combat is initiated by one card moving into an enemy card’s space, as mentioned above. Keep in mind both sides are still face-down. Before combat, each player can rotate their cards 180 degrees in any direction. The player then touches any corner of the opponent Zoon’s face-down card. Each corner has a touch score, remember? The numbers, which equate to combat strength, are compared. The larger number wins, and eliminates the opposing card. In case of ties, the attacker retreats back a square and the defender stands fast. If the opposing player choose a corner with a star on it, he has to consult the special tribal information card each Zoon tribe gets to find out what happens. Personally, I find this combat system to be design elegance personified. Combat takes advantage of the card format perfectly and establishes a true “fog of war” situation where you never can figure out what’s going to happen until it happens.

Trumps: Trumps add a little spice to the game. Regular trumps represent a wide a variety of actions, some of which effect movement, and some of which effect combat. Missile trumps are played just like combat troops, only with a special X symbol on one corner. If the X symbol is picked during combat, the opposing Zoon is eliminated.

The Verdict

The artwork is silly, almost juvenile. The combat system is something Koko, the sign language-enabled gorilla, could probably pick up& yet.. Zoon has something indefinable. Zoon is funny, fast, and well designed for the card medium. I feel that the game’s artwork might detract from the “crusty old gamer” crowd, but it has potential for being a hit with the extremely young (hey, look at Pokemon). My only beef with the production values was the translation from Zoon’s original French. This leaves something to be desired. Even this was a pretty minor problem– most points are adequately conveyed, though lacking in a detailed explanation. For instance, the notion of retreat from a draw in combat& did they mean go back ONE square, or TWO? What if the Zoon can’t move backwards? Still, for the amount Zoon costs you really can’t go wrong trying it, if you like this sort of thing.