Blacktron II

The next set of LEGO villains were actually just Blacktron again; although they'd been revised and reskinned. Now they looked less sinister, and frankly much less villainous, which of course made them also more boring. To attempt to counter that, they came with a few nifty design cues; the globular cockpit was always a great idea, for example. For whatever reason, the line had a lot of sets in it, but many of them were very, very small. Most likely, a good number of them were originally sold in those little bags.

Anyway, let's get to it. The 1462 Galactic Scout was a great example of a generic tiny ship, while the 6812 Grid Trekker was a tiny land vehicle, most notable for having at least given the little Blacktron astronaut a jetpack to fly around with.

Slightly larger, yet still small, spaceships included 1479 2-Pilot Craft, 1887 Scout Patrol Ship, and 6832 Super Nova II. 6851, the Tri-Wheeled Tyrax was also a tiny little land vehicle.
Blacktron II also revisted some Blacktron I themes, like 6878 Sub Orbital Guardian, which was another walker type vehicle, and 6933, the Spectral Starguider, which was not unlike the Battrax vehicle. The 6887 Allied Avenger and 6981 Aerial Intruder are medium sized spaceships that feature the globe cockpit. Like Blacktron I, there is no really large spaceship.
In fact, the spaceship that came with 6988 Alpha Centauri Outpost was nearly as big as the Aerial Intruder on it's own, and the base was very similar to the Message Intercept Base from Blacktron I.
While not a set per se, there used to be a value pack where you could get three sets together, and they had instructions on how to build a vehicle using parts from all three sets. This 4741 Super Vehicle was a nifty gimmick, but not a very cool design in its own right. The elongated globe cockpit is perhaps its most memorable feature.

As before, here's a handful of home made Blacktron 2 constructions. The really massive spaceship is... well, it's really massive. And really cool. I still have no idea how he got that curved surface. The small flying saucer is a "reskin" it's actually a Spyrius design remade in Blacktron II colors. We'll get to Spyrius next, as they're the next major bad guy syndicate to come on the scene when Blacktron II were finally phased out.

Game fiction

I've reviewed a few D&D novels in the past, including a bunch of mediocre Eberron novels. A few of these books are OK, many are absolutely terrible.

However, I think the Black Library imprint, associated with Games Workshop, does a better job than most at putting out readable fantasy fiction based on their games. Enough so that they're collecting some of their earlier successful book series in Omnibus format. Although I didn't actually buy any of them (yet) I fast-tracked Matthias Thulman, Witch Hunter, Vampire Wars: The Von Carstein Trilogy, and The Vampire Genevieve as ones I probably want to buy.

I also saw some of the Del Rey Robert E. Howard collections that I don't have. Although I haven't yet read all of the ones I do have (the three Conan and the Kull volumes). They didn't have Solomon Kane, which I would really have liked, but they did have Howard's horror stories, which is probably my next choice anyway.

Part of the reason I didn't buy them is because my list of books that I already own but haven't yet read is already quite lengthy---easily 30-40 books long, and several of those are also omnibus collections with three novels in them. But, I have no doubt, I'll be unable to resist for long and will eventually give in and pick up at least one of those four listed above---one of the three Warhammer omnibuses, or the REH horror stories (or Solomon Kane) book. I guess that's five. I can't count this morning.

Any recommendations from amongst them?

Trailblazer and Pathfinder

Just a quick note: within the last week or so I've picked up pdfs of both Pathfinder (the new Paizo alt.D&D3.5) and Trailblazer (a modular "skin" to add on top of D&D3.5 that addresses many of the systemic problems that the game had exhibited over time.) Despite the formating differences (one being a complete game meant to stand alone, and one being a number of patches and fixes that is unusable without your 3.5 PHB) the similar names highlight similar design goals to both systems.

Both are also cheap, at least on pdf: Pathfinder is $10 and Trailblazer is $5. I couldn't tell you (yet) how well they work, and given that they're both significantly large pdf files, I probably won't read them cover to cover. However, I'll report some scattered findings from each other time.

As a guy who has little interest in dropping my 3.5/d20 game for a 4e game, I'm obviously quite interested in fixes to the game, especially ones that are inspired by a similar mindset to my own. For this reason, I anticipate that I'll enjoy the toolkit approach of Trailblazer more than the complete alternate approach of Pathfinder, but at the end of the day, I guess we'll see...

One thing that I'll say is that both books have absolutely great cover art. I included the Pathfinder one as a sample. Can't wait to see a good version of this without markups and titles on it. I wonder if I can find a way to extract it from the pdf?

Blacktron I

You may think that my blog has been converted into a LEGO® blog, but that's not true. I'm just termporarily really excited about them. Again. All of my hobbies tend to come and go in waves. LEGO is one that comes up less frequently than some (gaming being pretty much "always on" in comparison) but when it hits, it hits pretty hard. There's something about constructing your own world in tangible form via these standardized building bricks that just really appeals to the creative side of me. Plus, I like making the standardized models too, as an excercise in (easy) model-making.

Anyway, I'm going to do a small series of posts as a tribute to the various "bad guys" of LEGO Space, posting catalog images of all the sets in their lines, and then a handful of creations I find online that are really nifty. This means, of course, that I have to start with Blacktron. Blacktron are, as near as I can tell, the original bad guys of the entire Legoland universe, and they're still one of the most sinister and appealing in appearance. LEGO hasn't really topped them yet, which is a shame, although they've had some notable other successes too.

The first set I'm showing, 1875, is a bit of an anomaly, as it doesn't really highlight the classic Blacktron color scheme, and is perhaps a transitional set between Blacktron I and Blacktron II.

Anyway, Blacktron was also always noted for its interesting ground vehicles. The Alienator was a walker, no doubt inspired by the walkers that George Lucas had shown us just a few years earlier in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. The Battrax, on the other hand, was an ATV tank-like vehicle, with big, beefy wheels.

There wasn't really an extremely large space ship set; the Invader was nice, but rather smallish, and the larger Renegade was also at best only medium sized. The Renegade was also very notable for it's assymetric design.

The final official set was the Message Intercept Base, again with a title that hints at their nefarious goings-on.

Now, below are a few of the images I've found via Google Image Search of home-made LEGO creations of a Blacktron I theme. All of these are really cool, but I especially want to point out the final one, because it's a remake of another vehicle from another official set, redone in Blacktron I colors. The "prototype" of that set is actually in the new Space Police III line, where it's a criminal or pirate ship being chased by a police vehicle. Also, the third one down is very similar to a Blacktron II set... but you'll see that later when I get to Blacktron II.

LEGO evolution

Because I'm still temporarily jazzed about LEGOs and because the internet encourages this kind of junk, I've spent some time looking over LEGO sets over the years.

Now, I've never been a huge fan of the Town theme; y'know, the various sets that approximate stuff you'd see if you looked out of your window while driving around where you live. Real stuff that you see every day. I always liked the exotic and the futuristic. Made me a natural for the Space theme. But, because of its longevity and because of the consistency of source material which it emulates, it's a great example of what I hope to show.

Below are images scanned from catalogs, including the newer online catalog images, so the more recent are better quality pictures. But ignore the picture quality and pay attention to the detail of the sets themselves. I've included the year in which the set was first published. All of these are police stations; a standby of the LEGO Town theme; there's been a steady stream of police stations in print since at least 1972; long before the minifigure even came out.

Check out the evolution of these police sets! It's apparent to me that the LEGO designers have really improved over the years. Also, the addition of more specialized parts gives them the ability to better model real life. Also a focus on less stylized and more realistic size and form has been apparent over time as well.

However, before I spend too much time talking about the post-minifig sets, here's some interesting historical perspective; the earlier sets that preceded the advent of the minifigure. This first set, from 1972, is (as near as I can tell) the first LEGO police station ever released. I've included the 1973 catalog scan rather than the 1972, because it's slightly more zippy, and it's titled Police Heliport.

As merely an item of personal interest, the very first LEGO set that I believe we ever owned in my family was this little bugger from 1975: again; a police van. It has some early LEGO guys that were almost but not quite minifigures. Actually, they still had a long way to go.

The second actual police station previews the minifigure stations: it has a bunch of pre-minifig LEGO guys, and is the direct ancestor of the first "true" minifigure police station in 1979. The vintage for this set was 1976.
The first minifigure police station was from 1979. It was a decent set for its time. It utilizes a number of regular LEGO basic bricks (as was custom for the time) and few specialized parts, but was still an order of magnitude less crude than the 1976 effort. Heck; few specialized parts had yet been invented; the inventory of specialized pieces would skyrocket over the next few decades. If anything, the late 90s and 2000s seems to have been the era of proliferation of specialized parts.
In 1983, the Police Headquarters was replaced with the Police Station. This isn't really a change in crudity (or lack thereof) compared to 1983, except that the color scheme was slightly more coherent, the car at least had a top (although it still looks little like a real car) and some things changed just to mix things up and add variety. In 1986, the Police Station was replaced with the Police Command Base, which seems to be an improvement. A few Space theme pieces were incorporated into the design (notably the radar dish) and it included for the first time an "open" design with big windows with "glass" pieces. This is a preview of future designs to come. This set, unless I'm missing something in my survey (which is entirely possible) was in production for a long time; it wasn't replaced until 1993. I think this really encapsulates the theme better than prior efforts, in which police stations were little more than houses in black and white that had a car, a motorcycle and a helicopter parked on the roof. This one really felt like a police station.

1993's Central Precinct HQ took a lot of design cues from the older Police Command Base. Featuring again modern architecture, open windows, an actual helipad, and some other notable improvements over the first sets, this was an attractive police station. It also had a major improvement in the vehicle design; the helicopter doesn't look like a tiny little cobbled together design that doesn't even have any room for, say, an engine; it looks like a real helicopter. Kinda. The regular police car (still tiny and roofless) is also joined by not only a motorcycle, but also a 4x4 off road vehicle, so the police can get to those difficult to reach rock-climbing criminals or something. By 1996 the catalog scans lack the titles of the sets, so I can't tell you what this next one is called, but it's an interesting innovation (from now on, I'll just call them all Police Stations.) Similar to 1993's station, this one also has a little pier and a boat attached. The two vehicles are replaced with a single van-like vehicle... so you can now get your SWAT team out there or something, but you're better off not trying to pull over anyone driving very fast. That's what the two motorcycles are for. Interestingly enough, the catalog scan indicates that prisoners can attempt to escape through a hatch at the police boathouse. But they may not want to, since the set also comes with a shark, no doubt hanging around waiting to gobble up any prisoners who make the attempt. By 2003---the next year a police station came out, if I'm correct, catalog images had been vastly improved, no doubt due to the ability of the catalog layout artists to use Photoshop to add backgrounds and other cool things to the set. This police station comes from the World City subtheme; a shortlived attempt to combine European and North American design cues with a slightly futuristic bent. Check out the curved glass on this set, the new and improved prisoner outfit (nobody wears black and white stripes anymore; we're all about orange jumpsuits for prisoners), new colors and shapes and all kinds of specialty pieces, and that futuristic police car. I also like the obvious camera mounted on the station wall. I'm not sure if the City theme replaced the old LEGO Town theme, or if City is in fact a long-lived subtheme within Town (most LEGO websites treat it as such) but when City came out with a police station in 2005, it was happenin'. It's got a dog, a complex lock-up cell, vastly improved vehicle and architectural design, spotlights, and a raised platform to make the station itself much more interesting. This is a busy set, and there's a lot going on. Compare this in particular to the original 1970s sets and look how much the concept has evolved! But this isn't the final word on LEGO police stations; one more recent set came out in 2008 that I'll cover next...

The final police set is, in a way, a harking back to some original design ideas, just modernized. It's not quite as busy, it's not trying to do too much... it feels a little cozier and less ACTION-PACKED! ALL THE TIME! It's even got flowers and shrubs. But... it's a lot improved, too. The cars are pretty slick and realistic (considering), the gate entrances are a nice realistic touch, and the building has a lot going on: the side balcony, the little office, the holding cells, the lookout tower and radar; in fact, this seems almost half a prison instead of just a police station. Anyway, that concludes my tour of the police station history in LEGO, and hopefully makes my broader point more apparent; that the same concept, when it's held forth over time, has been greatly improved upon and is much better done these days then when they started. That's not necessarily surprising, but... it's nice to know that it's true nonetheless.

Blacktron City

Here's some video of a gigantic Blacktron city, taken from a LEGO convention a couple of years ago. Pretty impressive stuff. Adding the Men in Black theme by Danny Elfman was also brilliant.

Blacktron was always my favorite subtheme. Not only was it the first subtheme from the greater Space theme, but it also happened to be one that was a bit more sinister, a bit darker and edgier; these were the first LEGO "bad guys" that I know of. Nobody knew exactly what made them bad, but the fact that the paramilitaristic Space Police line-up had to lock these guys away in those little prison pods, plus their dark, pure black suits, and their nearly black trimmed with yellow like some kind of dark hornet color scheme for their vehicles made them attractive all around. In general, LEGO Space fans tend to be quite fond of the original LEGO space villains.

I'm not sure what all the marching Classic Space minifigs are up to. Are they attacking Blacktron? Are they Blacktron agents getting ready to infiltrate the rest of LEGO Space? Or is Blacktron on friendly terms with them in this scenario, and has invited them to come by via parade? I have no idea.

As an old timey Space fan, I'm also quite jazzed about the Galaxy Commander in variant color schemes at about 1:07 on the video. There's an original Galaxy Commander, but there's also one in Ice Planet colors, one in M:Tron colors, and one in Space Police I colors. All four are excellent.

The only thing that's actually somewhat disappointing it seeing row after row of the same vehicles parked. That's realistic, after a fashion... but somewhat boring.

Space Police III: Gold Heist

I got to check out the set 5971 "Gold Heist" which is the smallish medium sized set of the new Space Police III line-up, retailing for 19.99 U$D. As you can see from the image, it looks great. One thing that I'll say about the newer Space lines (and I suspect this is the influence of having done years and years of Star Wars sets); the design aesthetic has really improved. For comparison, I built my 6897 "Rebel Hunter" and 6984 "Galactic Mediator"; two space ships from the Space Police II line that I own, and they look really clunky and silly in comparison.

The other thing that became apparent shortly upon buying this; it's not a space ship. It looks like one at first glance, but these new Space Policemen don't wear oxygen tanks, or even a fully enclosed helmet, and the engines aren't rockets; they're VTOLs, very similar to the jet engines on some of the City theme airport sets, or other sets that feature jet engines, such as Agents or others. No, rather, this is the proverbial flying car; something equivalent to the speeders in which Anakin and Obiwan chased the bounty hunter in Attack of the Clones. Relative to earlier Space Police themes, this one also has a much more... well, much more "police-ish" look to it; the vehicle is white with black trim, has red and blue sirens, etc. This is kinda in line with the little flash movies that LEGO has put out on their homepage; for one of the sets, the Space Policeman is literally pulling over an alien for running a red light.

Anyway, that's the good. Here's the bad. Stickers. I know, I know; LEGO has fallen in love with stickers. I'm sure that it's cheaper for them than printing on the bricks, which they seem completely unwilling to do anymore. It sure does suck for the consumer though. I will not stop complaining about stickers. They bite. It's a pain to put them on, it's very difficult to get them straight and properly aligned, and they just don't even look nearly as good either. Also; this set lacks "swoopability." It looks like the kind of set that would be tons of fun to pick up and fly around through the air making "swooshing" sounds, but you actually can't do that very well. It's got too many moving parts. The canopy moves all over the place. The jet engines, front and rear, move all over the place. The safe that it's carrying in the arc in the back feels rickety. The little hot rod "space moped" that the alien is flying is tiny and kinda silly. (The alien himself is very cool, with a weird lizard like head and four arms. They did this by creating a very bizarrely cast "head" piece that is actually an additional torso section and head combined, and then has green "battle droid" or "skeleton" arms attached to this head piece. The rest of the body is regular minifig stuff.)

Still; those reservations aside, this is a promising ship, and the line itself is promising as well (for that matter, so was the Mars Mission line that relaunched LEGO Space a couple of years ago.) This bodes well for the future of my beloved Space theme, which I hope to see progress for some time to come.

Interestingly enough, the box refers to a LEGO Space video game for the Nintendo DS, which it says is "Now Available." Even though it's also rated "Rating Pending." Clearly the box art was approved some time ago, and the game has not managed to meet the schedule. Rumors are floating around the internet ever since this Space Police packaging started appearing promising what sounds like a fun video game... which isn't actually available after all. Including that it may be available for the Wii too.

I'm really curious to see this. I wonder if it'll revisit a lot of the other Space subthemes from past years, and even revisit classic favorite sets from the past? Here's hopin'. Since I've got boys who love most of the LEGO games to date (especially the ones done by Traveller's Tales and based on licensed properties; the Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Batman games) if this game is even at all good, I can almost guarantee that we'll get it.

More LEGO space

I wonder if there's any value in trying to make some sense out of the LEGOverse and craft an actual setting based on the ideas therein?

Much of the earlier stuff is fairly generic. Classic Space doesn't imply, really, that these guys are anything other than astronauts exploring the Moon, and possibly other space bodies. When the subthemes started happening, though, they got more interesting.

Blacktron (both varieties) were definately villains. Other villainous subthemes were Spyrius, UFO, and Insectoids (originally planned to be a villainous organization for the Rock Raiders... but see below), while Mars Mission and Space Police 3 have "bad guys" embedded within the theme (making the reboot of the Space subthemes after the Star Wars hiatus seem more like self-contained units.)

The Space Police (1, 2 and 3), Unitron, and Roboforce subthemes are the "heroic" guys; the good guys of the LEGO space universe. All of them are some kind of space law enforcement, with Unitron having an almost (but not quite) militaristic feel to them.

A lot of subthemes also seem like civilians: the original Classic astronauts, Futuron, M:Tron, Ice Planet, and Exploriens. The astronauts of Life on Mars and Mars Mission don't seem to fit the paradigm quite so cozily; they abandon the "space opera" feel of the other Space subthemes, and instead come across as a more "hard SF" tone, or at least the attempt at such. Also they seem to be a more near-future, almost realistic astronaut and vehicle vibe to them. Well, Life on Mars does anyway. Mars Mission is a more localized space opera with human astronauts fighting off Martians. I'm not quite sure that those two subthemes can be reconciled with the rest of the subthemes.

Some other themes, though---not overtly space, fit in fairly nicely with the Space theme. Two town themes, Launch Command and Space Port, have a astronaut feel, but today's astronauts, today's space shuttles and satellites, etc. An interesting counterpoint, even if all you do with them is mix the parts into your parts bin. There are a number of other themes that are overtly science fictionish in nature, although not set in space, that could also concieveably be reimagined into the LEGO Space universe. The various Aquazone themes: Aquanauts, Aquasharks, Aqua Raiders, Hydronauts and Stingrays are futuristic undersea guys, and even include alien humanoids, or something of that nature. I'd like to think that besides airless Moon-like worlds, the LEGO Space guys may also have found a habitable planet completely covered in water, and that's where these guys live. The Exo-Force theme is based on Japanese manga/anime about big giant robots and the guys who pilot them, so it's also a good fit with Space. I'm not sure where they fit; possibly a militaristic subgroup that is at odds with itself (there are two factions within Exo-Force.) The Rock Raiders and the Power Miners are two themes that have people driving futuristic drilling machines under the earth and finding rock monsters already living there. This could be another civilian group, easily enough, and I think that they'd work well anywhere within the LEGO Space universe as such. Given the fact that the Insectoids were originally going to be a Rock Raiders "bad guy" and later became a Space "bad guy" I think the ties already exist.

What would I do with this pretext; this unification of the LEGO Space subthemes and a few other sci-fi feeling themes, into a coherent setting?

I'm not sure yet. But I might toy around with the idea a bit more before I move on to something else.

Also: just for fun, I included a really slick picture of some guy's LEGO creation of a shipyard, with a ship under construction.

LEGO Space

This blog entry is going to be very image intensive.

As an imaginative kid, fascinated with science fiction, and spending my formative childhood years during the late 70s and early 80s, I was fascinated with the new-fangled Space sets. In 1978, LEGO introduced a number of "lines" of sets that were themed. Space was always my favorite (although I grew up with a fair share of Castle and Town themed sets as well, of course.) In fact, it became traditional for us as kids to expect several LEGO sets each Christmas; at least one big one and several medium sized and smaller ones. And after opening presents, we'd go into the "boys' room", open up the LEGO sets, build them according to the instructions, almost immediately take them apart, mix their pieces in with our existing LEGOs, and then just spend the entire rest of the day (and much of the rest of the Christmas vacation) playing LEGOs. I've attached an image of the Galaxy Explorer, the very first "big spaceship" set in existance.

I didn't go on to be one of those adult Legomaniacs, who collects sets and builds all new designs as a hobby (which would, unfortunately, be a pretty expensive hobby, too) but I've never quite lost the mystique for the feel of those early Space sets, and the kinda campy, kinda cute and kinda clever later lines that developed after the fact. And I do pick up sets now and again for myself, that I won't even let the kids play with. I keep my toe in the water of fandom, anyway.

The original space line was fairly straightforward; it featured astronauts in space suits, and things like lunar rovers and space ships that seemed futuristic... yet not too much so. They were futuristic in the sense that the movie 2001 was futuristic in the late 60s when it was made; it all seemed pretty reasonable, all things considered. This wasn't necessarily true of the space sets; I remember even as a kid thinking it odd that flared rocket "exit chute" could be attached directly the back of the seat that an astronaut was supposed to sit in in his little tiny space-going flyer (where the heck is the actual engine?) but it had that same feel anyway.

Later on, Space diverged into multiple subthemes. Futuron was the first one, in the late 80s, followed closely by Blacktron, Space Police, and more. In fact, for a while it seemed that each theme had a three year life cycle, with a new theme appearing every year and an old theme phasing out. This lasted for quite some time, until the entire Space theme essentially disappeared at the very end of the 90s. The gap was filled temporarily by the Star Wars sets.

More recently, for whatever reason, LEGO has revived the space theme, and two subthemes have come out. One of them has apparently just launched within the last few months, and is a "re-do" of a classic theme, the Space Police idea. This is, in fact, the third version of Space Police. I've included an image of the new "big spaceship" of the line, as well as the original "big spaceship" from the old Space Police line. Enjoy.

Another thing I've discovered is that some of these older Legomaniacs have been putting their stuff online for years (actually, I've known that for years too, but the building standards and photography and Photoshop capabilities of them has improved, to the point where a lot of their work looks tons better than official stuff. Here's a few of my favorites, all snagged from the retro-blog http://www.neoclassicspace.com/.

Dark Sun for 2010

Although I'm not a 4e player, I have to admit that I'm kinda excited about the recent announcement, coming out from GenCon, that Dark Sun is going to be the new setting for 2010. I might even buy it, even without having the game itself!

I don't actually know that much about Dark Sun really, but the concept intrigues me greatly. Perhaps not surprisingly; when I start describing my favorite homebrew setting ever, Dark•Heritage, I very often get told by folks that it sounds like Dark Sun. Since I never knew much about Dark Sun, if that's really true, then it's a rather exciting convergence. In the original "Campaign Classics" issue of Dragon magazine, the authors interviewed the original setting developers, and the Dark Sun guys said that Dark Sun used Barsoom as a basis for the setting, rather than Middle-earth. That probably explains the similarity; a fairly dried out, tired world full of alien creatures.

Of course, that also could imply that my setting and Dark Sun only superficially resemble each other at a high level. That's probably true. In any case, I'm excited to see what Dark Sun is really and truly all about. So far, most of what I know about it I learned on Wikipedia.

Also; that appears to be Wayne Reynolds artwork for the cover. I love Wayne Reynolds.

In Search of the Trojan War

I just watched the 6-hour BBC miniseries In Search of the Trojan War (again) which, while nearly 25 years old now, still is mostly accurate and most of the conclusions narrator slash amateur archeologist and historian Michael Wood presents are amongst the accepted mainstream hypotheses nowadays. Personally, my favorite episodes are the last two; the ones that put the putative historical core that formed the basis for The Iliad in historical context of what was going on in the eastern Mediterranean, Aegean and Asia Minor regions between about 1300 B.C. and 1180 or so B.C. (the Trojan War being dated to roughly 1250 B.C.)

Wood presents an intriguing scenario; a patchwork of Empires (the so-called "Great Powers Club") of the historical near east include Egypt, Hatti, Babylon, Assyria, Mitanni and possibly the Achaean Greeks as a member on the northwestern fringe, with a number of other powerful city-states that serve more as clients, vassals and occasionally rebellious kingdoms with pretentions to greatness, including Amurru, Arzawa, the Assuwa Confederation, Israel, etc.

The last decades of the Bronze Age are characterized by inter-Imperial "cold wars" which occasionally flared up into real battles. With the exception of the famous clash at Qadesh, in which Hittite and Egyptian forces fought directly, this was often mostly done by these empires offering up sacrificial clients; Egypt and Babylon (and later Assyria) encouraged and supported rebellions of client states in the Levant, and Greek interference on the west coast of Asia Minor (including, perhaps, the historical core of the Trojan War itself) caused a possible conflict with the Hittites, as reported in the "Tawagalawa Letter" recoved on clay tablet from the Hittite archive at Boğazköy in present day Turkey.

Of course, this appearance of vibrancy was perhaps a bit of a sham, because a few decades later, the infamous Bronze Age collapse occured. The Mycenean palace civilization was thrown into ruins, and Greece entered a 500 year dark age. The Hittite kingdom completely disappeared, to be subsequently nearly completely forgotten for thousands of years, and the Phrygians (probably of Balkan origin) later rule over their territory. Almost every city state from the Dardanelles to the Nile was destroyed. Egypt kept the best records of the time, recounting numerous battles with the displaced "Sea Peoples"; of mysterious extraction, they appear to be entire displaced populations looking for places to settle.

When the dust cleared, the Hittites were gone, the Myceneans were gone, the Mitanni were gone, the Philistines and other foreign populations were settled into new lands, and the so-called Iron Age was in full swing. Greece later emerged from its dark age as Classical Greece, Asia Minor's culture and ethnic make-up was completely changed, the Levant and the Phoenicians/Canaanites had almost completely replaced the Greeks as the Mediterranean naval power, and other vast changes in societies throughout the Near East had taken place.

I bring this up, because going through Deadhouse Gates, which I'm currently reading (only about 20-25% complete so far) has made me think that this same basic plot outline would make an absolutely fascinating story arc for a long, fantasy epic of the type that Erikson writes. Twist the geography a bit so it's not immediately recognizeable, make all of the various entities unrecognizeable culturally and linguistically, and you've got a skeletal outline of an incredible fantasy epic; the story of the fall of empires.

Great stuff. I think history also provides great fodder for "fantasization" in the form of the history of the Tarim basin, but that's a post for another day...

God in the Bowl

I read the second trade paperback from Dark Horse's Conan series. This one features, mostly, "The God in the Bowl" one of the slightly slower, yet more interesting Conan stories told, about a murder investigation. It bears a striking resemblance in some ways to Howard's version of the famous Sherlock Holmes story, "The Adventure of the Speckled Band."

Kurt Busiek and Cary Nord continue to impress with this volume. The rest of the book is taken up with some original stories, including the first encounter of Conan with sorcerous arch-nemesis Thoth-Amon, when Conan thwarts his attempt on the life of a more benign sorcerer, Kalanthes, the High Priest of Ibis. An all new character, Janissa, is introduced, who is kinda Red Sonja like in some ways, although much darker in nature and background. She's a really interesting character, actually, that I'd like to see more of.

One thing that Busiek (and Co.) really get is the Lovecraftian horror vibe that is actually quite integral to the Conan canon. Thoth-Amon (and the Hyperboreans before him) are shown as completely amoral predators who don't fear to let loose any kind of horror whatsoever in pursuit of their goals.

This book, taking place mostly in Nemedia, shows Conan approaching the more "classic" parts of the setting, away from the far north that featured in volume 1, although, like vol 1, it's heavily based around an actual Howard story that's told extremely well. In fact, in some ways, this recreation of Howard's story is better than Howard's original.

d20 Freeport Companion, part 1

Although I haven't read the entire document yet (see my discussion of reading gaming PDFs below) I've read a fair chunk of the d20 Freeport Companion, a book that I almost didn't bother with. I'm kinda glad I did; I expected it would mostly stat up NPCs from the systemless setting, and while it did indeed do that, that took much less space than I thought, leaving room for a number of other things that I found quite useful. Let me review the sections that I've read individually. Ignoring the Introduction and whatnot, which I did read, but which isn't worth reviewing. As a quick aside, note the change in title of the document; I bought (and have) the d20 Freeport Companion. Because of the change in the d20 license, this is now renamed the 3rd Era Freeport Companion and the image I grabbed from Green Ronin reflects that. It does not use the d20 license (and, in fact, can't) but the OGL only. They've also created a nifty badge that kinda looks like the old d20 logo, but which says 3rd Era to identify it. Nice move.

Races in Freeport: The first chapter is relatively short, and mostly describes how the various D&D races make up the population of Freeport. There's little mechanically in here; stats for races already exist in proper D&D products and aren't repeated. There is a sidebar for a gnome variant; a militaristic, hard-nosed gnome variant, and then there's stats for the azhar which are essentially fire genasi without the LA +1. I'd like to see this same treatment applied to the rest of the planetouched races, actually. I really like the concept of tieflings and aasimar, but the LA +1 mechanism is a hassle.

Classes in Freeport: There are a number of alternate classes that the book proposes as well. A lot of people dislike alternate 20-level classes, but I actually quite like them, and I want a lot of them. The more there are, the more likely that I can get the character I want without baggage and assumptions that I don't. The classes presented here are the assassin, the corsair, the monster hunter, the noble, and the survivor. Most of them are interesting and a useful addition to a player's toolkit, but all of them are more focused than the PHB classes, and that works against some of them.

The Assassin is basically a variant rogue. It's got rogue BAB and HD, two good saves, an ability that's similar to sneak attack (but not quite---doesn't work in flanking positions) and an a la carte menu of abilities similar to the rogue's list, but different. Frankly, I'd rather see this as variant abilities for a rogue rather than as a unique class; I really liked the idea of a core assassin class, but I found the application of it feeling superfluous. In almost all cases, I'd rather just have a rogue, with a few of the class abilities here ported over or converted to feats.

The Corsair occupies the same space and niche as Complete Warrior's swashbuckler class, but with a slightly more nautical bent. I like it better, actually, although a canny GM might want to swap out a class ability or two in a non-nautical setting. It's also got a sneak-attack-but-not-quite ability; actually slightly better than sneak attack, because it works in one more situation (attacks for non-lethal damage.) In the case of both this class and the assassin, I think the new ability was superfluous and adds unnecessary complexity. Sneak attack as is is already good enough.

The Monster Hunter is an interesting class; kinda ranger-like, but focused very, very specifically on the favored enemy concept, taking that idea and driving it to be an entire class. Realistically, some of the options will almost never be used (a campaign in which taking favored enemies of oozes or plants, for example, has got to be extremely rare) and a few monster classes actually provide benefits that always work (I'm especially thinking of fey; there's no reason not to max this one out because its general utility is so good) but otherwise, I found the concept intriguing.

The Noble is to the aristocrat NPC class what the fighter is to the warrior NPC class, and oddly enough covers much of the same space as a bard, except without spellcasting. It's a support class that makes everybody in the group better with some abilities, makes enemies less competent, and has a lot of chances to shine in non-combat roleplaying situations, since they're suave, persuasive and imperative by nature. This is a nice take on an old concept; several other d20 games have had noble classes (Star Wars, Wheel of Time) and several other settings have had takes on the noble as well, occasionally under different names (Sovereign Stone, Dragonlance, Rokugan). I like this take on it, though.

Finally, The Survivor is an alt.monk that isn't so supernaturally flavored. As such, it's not likely to ever be a favorite class of mine (I'm not a huge fan of the whole concept of the monk) but I'll probably like it better than the monk itself. I think the defender from Midnight is probably the last word in this space, but I'd like to lay the survivor and the defender side by side and see which one I like best.

Madness in Freeport: Given that Freeport features an awful lot of Lovecraftian influence, it's perhaps not surprising that it also features a Sanity mechanic. Unlike the open content Sanity mechanic released under Unearthed Arcana, this isn't merely a porting of the Cthulhu mechanic, it's actually a native d20 mechanic, and one that's simpler than its predecessor. Basically it works by having character accrue "Madness points" that are, usually, detrimental (although in certain circumstances it's not necessarily bad to be a little crazy.) Typical D&D mechanics can remove them (higher level cleric spells like heal, although lower level spells like calm emotions can make you temporarily immune to the effects of your madness points.)

It's a little complex to introduce, but anyone who's ever played a Cthulhu-themed game will tell you that it's part of the fun to have the risk of growing insanity looming over your character. Plus, it's still less complex than any of the alternatives I've read.

Freeport Bestiary: There's a smallish bestiary of new monsters and stuff to face. In fact, there's quite a few entries, although they aren't described in much detail. I was a bit spoiled by the Creatures of Freeport supplement (a PDF that I have read) and all the detail it lavished on its entries; this was more MM format; just the stats and a quick summary of how it works. Some of the stuff is Freeport specific---Howard-esque serpent people, burnlings, etc. but other stuff is merely nautical of pirate-themed fun stuff, like brass monkeys, blemmyaes and shadow serpents. All in all, this kind of stuff is always useful, but then again, I've also got so much of it that I feel overwhelmed by options when looking for critters against which to pit my PCs.

In another post, at some point, I'd like to review the prestige classes, the skills, feats and magic portions of the book, and the included adventure, which will pretty much get all the content reviewed.

One final note, for those who care about this kind of thing (I don't, usually, but then again, I don't publish)---the book is very generous with its open content. Almost the entire book is open content, with the exception of the adventure itself and the proper names of the NPCs. The Section 15 of the OGL document is also very long, although I question whether or not it really needs to be. I think Green Ronin has habitually put most of their entire catalog in the Section 15 whether they actually took any rules from every given product, or not. That means, they also have to put everyone else that was quoted in the Section 15 of every one of the products listed in their Section 15. This trickle down effect has caused there to be at least 50-60 line items in the section 15. Not important exactly, just curious.