It was worth the wait
I haven't posted in a bit - no real surprise given the status of this blog - but I was diving head first into the two new role-playing games, I just got: Spirit of the Century and Don't Rest Your Head both by the boys and girls at Evil Hat Productions. (I'll call them EH from here on out.)
WOW! I decided to pick up Spirit of the Century (SOTC) for two reasons. I am impatiently waiting for EH to finish up their adaptation of The Dresden Files, so I decided to get SOTC and test-drive the rules for FATE 3.0. I can NOT say that I am disappointed. Secondly, I love the pulp genre and here were rules designed to let Victor Vigilante fight against the forces of the mad doctor Xavier Ellison and his plot to use unobtanium to take over the world.
What? You've never indulged in a little daydream of saving the world?
I have more than enough for two entries so I will focus on the shorter or the two for now.
The shorter in this case is the much shorter and nearly rules only book, Don't Rest Your Head. DRYH is definitely horror but also madness thrown in for good measure. If you were to take Through the Looking Glass (aka Alice in Wonderland), Dark City, a scoop of Steven King's dreams and your own nightmares, put them all in a blender and hit frappe, you would have something that looks like DRYH. The game has some unusual mechanics, but they work for the setting. You get what you pay for and then some. The nightmares aren't all bad, so are worse. My favorite in the basic book is the Tacks Man, a literal pin-headed bureaucrat who can pin parts of you to the scenery. Sure, your arm is fair game but he would rather pin things like your shadow, or your heartbeat, or the memories of your family.
Hope is a very limited quantity in the game and long term play looks to be impossible. The most likely outcome is exhaustion, leading to death or madness leading you to become a new type of nightmare in the Mad City. If you even think that you would like this game, go pick it up. The PDF is typically between 8 and 10 USD while the dead-tree copy will run you about 20 USD. I got them both in a combo deal from Indie Press Revolution for 20 USD plus shipping.
WOW! I decided to pick up Spirit of the Century (SOTC) for two reasons. I am impatiently waiting for EH to finish up their adaptation of The Dresden Files, so I decided to get SOTC and test-drive the rules for FATE 3.0. I can NOT say that I am disappointed. Secondly, I love the pulp genre and here were rules designed to let Victor Vigilante fight against the forces of the mad doctor Xavier Ellison and his plot to use unobtanium to take over the world.
What? You've never indulged in a little daydream of saving the world?
I have more than enough for two entries so I will focus on the shorter or the two for now.
The shorter in this case is the much shorter and nearly rules only book, Don't Rest Your Head. DRYH is definitely horror but also madness thrown in for good measure. If you were to take Through the Looking Glass (aka Alice in Wonderland), Dark City, a scoop of Steven King's dreams and your own nightmares, put them all in a blender and hit frappe, you would have something that looks like DRYH. The game has some unusual mechanics, but they work for the setting. You get what you pay for and then some. The nightmares aren't all bad, so are worse. My favorite in the basic book is the Tacks Man, a literal pin-headed bureaucrat who can pin parts of you to the scenery. Sure, your arm is fair game but he would rather pin things like your shadow, or your heartbeat, or the memories of your family.
Hope is a very limited quantity in the game and long term play looks to be impossible. The most likely outcome is exhaustion, leading to death or madness leading you to become a new type of nightmare in the Mad City. If you even think that you would like this game, go pick it up. The PDF is typically between 8 and 10 USD while the dead-tree copy will run you about 20 USD. I got them both in a combo deal from Indie Press Revolution for 20 USD plus shipping.
posted by ludomastro | 21:20
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