Month: May 2014

Book Bout-Short Story Review of Sail Away, Sweet Sister

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Story- Sail Away, Sweet Sister

Author- Patrick Goodman

TL;DR- Great Shadowrun story, but not a great introduction to Shadowrun story. 83%

 

Basics– Thomas McCallister is back!  This is a direct sequel to “Another Rainy Night”. In this story, a picture of Lenore, Thomas’ vampiric sister, is found as she is running across the fractured America of Shadowrun.  Can Thomas save his sister before she falls to the monster that lives insider her?  Who else is manipulating things behind the scenes….

 

Story-The story is pretty good.  It’s an ensemble cast with the story being told from the sister, Thomas, his friends, and several other’s points of view.  Each character has a different, well defined view of things, and, that variety makes the story come off the page.  Some of the story elements are kind of brushed over, but in a short fiction, that is a necessary evil. 4/5

 

Characters– The characters are also well defined.  Each one has their own goals and motivations, and that comes through in the story.  I felt the characters were real, not one dimensional caricatures.  You won’t get all the pieces as this is part of a trilogy, but where there were gaps, I felt that was mysteries for later, not poor writing. 4.5/5

 

Setting-Here things are interesting.  If you know Shadowrun, the story is an good story in the Shadowrun World.  Lots of locations and idea live and breathe as you know they should.  However, if you don’t know Shadowrun, you will be completely lost.  Terms are thrown around that your average read off the street won’t know.  A little bit of introduction to the more Shadowrun-esque element of the story would make things a bit better for all the readers out there. 4/5

 

Summary-This is a good short story.  It’s pretty long for the price you pay as it’s over 30 pages.  AND, you get some Shadowrun 5e/4a stats for your games.  That right there is worth the price alone for how starved for Shadowrun content I and most of the community are.  I haven’t read “Another Rainy Night”, but if the same writer wrote that one as well, I feel that I would be in good hands for that one.  Also, as soon as the sequel to this story comes out, I plan to buy it.  I like how this story turned out and I can’t wait for more! 83%

Daily Punch 4-30-14 Supercharging Light Feat for Pathfinder

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How about one more Pathfinder feat, this time to deal with undead only….

 

 

Supercharing Light

The candle that burns the brightest burns the quickest.

Prerequisite: Ability to cast spells with the light descriptor or the ability to use spell like abilities with the light descriptor that have an effective level such as an alchemist

Benefit:  As a standard action you cay lose a prepared spell you have and select a light source within 60 feet of you.  That light source instantly emits a burst of blinding light that is only harmful to undead creatures as per the Sunburst spell but it only effects undead creatures and uses the spell level that was lost as your level.  As an example, if a wizard lost a 3-rd level spell, this feat would cause 3d6 damage to undead in the area.  The light source is is extinguished after the spell takes place and does not extinguish any area of magical darkness in its radius but will effect undead in that darkness if the darkness if of an equal or lower spell level.  Any additional effects from being exposed to sunlight still effect undead in the radius.  If the light source is held by a creature that does not want the light lost, the creature makes a will save equal to 10+spell casting attribute+level of the spell lost

 

Thoughts?

Daily Punch- 4-29-14 Converting Light feat for Pathfinder

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Time for a Pathfinder feat based on what I’ve been reading lately

 

 

Converting Light

Light is your to command and wield as a weapon

Prerequisite: Ability to cast divine spells, Light Sub-domain

Benefit: As a standard action, you may convert a prepared spell of any the divine spell casting class with the Light sub-domain to a light spell of the same level.  This spell functions as per daylight but at the level of the spell that is converted.

 

 

Thoughts?

Ring Side Report- Board Game Review of Catan: Cities and Knights

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Game– Catan: Cities and Knights

Price– $40

Producer-Mayfair Games

Set-Up/Play/Clean-Up-1.5 Hours

Players-2 to 4, up to 6 with an expansion

TL;DR-New life in a classic game 80%

 

Basics-Return to the island of Catan, this time to defend it from barbarians and build metropolises.  In this big box expansion to the base game, players continue with the standard Catan mechanics of building roads and settlements to harvest resources and amass points.  What are new are players now roll an extra die, can build automatic soldier called knights, and collect different resources called commodities from cities.  Some tiles give you commodities like the forest tiles.  Cities on forest now produce paper and wood instead of just two wood.  You can spend paper on your turn to upgrade your cities.  Each player has a flip book showing how upgraded each city type is in science, politics, or military.  There are three city types to correspond to the new die.  The extra die has green, yellow, or blue cities on it or three barbarian sides.  When you role a city color on the city die and have upgraded your city of that color enough, you get automatic development cards.  You no longer get to buy development cards, you have to earn them through upgrading your city and random chance.  When you role a barbarian, you move the barbarian ship closer.  When the ship reaches Catan, all players send knights to defend the isle.  If you don’t sent enough knights, then the player with the fewest knights has a city downgraded to a settlement.  If you do have enough knights, then the player who sent the most get a victory point for being the defender of Catan.  The barbarians reset, and play continues as normal.  Play keeps going until someone has 13 points instead of the original 10.

 

Mechanics-Settlers of Catan is how you fix Monopoly.  It’s a quick game that is easy to play without a lot of complicated rules.  I love it.  This big box expansion adds some complications, but the new stuff doesn’t break what already works, but adds some new options to the mix.  It’s an excellent way to add new life to the game.  However, the new mechanics are very chance heavy.  If you loved Catan before, but thought it was a little too American styled because of the random element to the game, you will hate this expansion as it add more randomness to your game. 4.5/5

 

Theme-Catan isn’t a theme heavy game.  It’s got terrain control for being the governor, but there isn’t much story besides 2 to 6 people settle an island and hate to share it.  This game gives a bit more depth as you get more characters, buildings, and more themed cards, but there isn’t a lot here. 3/5

 

Instructions-The instructions are well done.  The rules are crisp while getting the point across.  They also have a few examples that will help get the point across.  Again, the rules don’t really build the theme, but they do teach you how to play the game well.  And these rules get my personal blessing because I didn’t have to run to Board Game Geek to figure out a sticky point mid game!  4.5/5

 

Execution-What you get is good, but you might not get all you need.  Catan has a lot of editions, even for the very first base game.  Some editions don’t work well with different editions of the expansions.  My game didn’t come with two different colors of dice, so to find if I got development cards, I had to mark one of my two basic dice with a sharpie to know when I got development cards with the ship/barbarian die!  Adding a second colored die numbered one to six would have been a real nice small touch.  Also, you have to put stickers on wood.  Not a big thing, but that is always a pain!  But, what you get is nice.  Not perfect, but well done and good quality.  The flip books are cool.  The new boards are great.  I liked what I got.  It wasn’t love at first sight, but it was nice. 4/5

 

Summary-I like this game more than I like the original.  The original is a well done classic, but just like any other classic; you need to spice it up.  This expansion gave new life to a well loved game.  It’s a bit pricy as you are paying over $40 bucks for the base expansion and at least $20 more for the 5/6 player expansion to the expansion.  But, you do get a relatively lot of stuff.  Don’t look for a complete American style game with lots of story from the board or a complete Euro style game with no randomness in this one do.  It’s a fun mix of the two concepts heading a bit more toward Euro styling. 80%