Book Review: Sally Slick and the Miniature Menace

Sally Slick and the Miniature Menace returns us to the world of Young Centurions and to the adventures of Sally Slick and Jet Black, first seen in Sally Slick and the Steel Syndicate. This time around we get right into the action as Sally fumes over being shut out of the local tractor races. With the circus in town, Sally decides to race “unofficially”; of course, Sally leaves everyone else in the dust. After showing up the local bullies and drawing the attention of the circus owner, Sally’s prized tractor goes missing! read more

RPG Review: Young Centurions

Visit a world of pulp action-adventure in the 1910s with the Young Centurions RPG from Evil Hat Productions. If you’re new to Fate or to the Spirit of the Century setting, this book belongs on your shelf. If you’re already familiar with either of those, take a minute to see if this book is going to add value to your collection before you jump on it. In Young Centurions, you take on the role of a unique individual, born in the first minute of the first hour of the first day of the new century. You embody a Spirit of the age, an aspect of the new century that shapes your character with the positive energy of things to come. Shadows oppose you, those people born on the last minute of the last hour of the last day of the previous century, empowered by the energetic detritus of what has gone before. It’s not always easy to separate Spirit from Shadow in the confusion of the new century, even when it seems you’re all working toward the same goals. And oh yes, you’re all teenagers. Young Centurions is the prelude to Evil Hat’s Spirit of the Century and Strange Tales of the Century, books that focus on adult characters of the 30s and 40s. Those books use the original Fate or Fate Core rules while Young Centurions uses the Fate Accelerated rules. Characters in Young Centurions tend to be less powerful, less capable, and more vulnerable than adult Centurions, both because the rules of the game provide fewer powers and because, well, you’re all teenagers. That emphasis on the characters as teenagers dealing with unique teenage problems is one of the strongest aspects of the game. (Fate pun…) We’re not talking teen angst here; the responsibilities of teenagers involve personal and family matters far more often than issues of society. Adult heroes make decisions that impact the world at large in ways that shape the events of society as a whole. Teen heroes make decisions that change their family dynamic and potentially jeopardize and hurt the people that matter most in their life. The book does a lot of things right. It provides a set of character archetypes to use as a foundation, with aspect questions and stunt packages that quickly get players into the meat of the game. It explains the use of approaches with clarity and through the use of examples. It teases the flavor of the world with story snippets and plot hooks as a springboard for your game. The GM chapter contains solid advice on gaming with teens as both players and characters, as well as tips on how to use the unique elements of the Young Centurions setting. The setting chapter gives us an intriguing glimpse of the world and just what role we’re going to play. Most important, the book makes me want to be a part of this universe. Still, there are things that I wish Evil Hat would have done differently. I see no need to reprint the Fate Accelerated rules, not when they make the FAE book so readily and inexpensively available. Young Centurions does nothing to significantly change the rules; simply adding the setting-specific material would have been sufficient. For all the intrigue generated by the setting teasers, the book leaves us completely cold when it comes to running the foundational elements of the background. The setting has no central conflict around which to build a campaign, though opposing agendas are implied between the Century Club and the Shadows. The book leaves the GM with a great deal of work to do in order to construct a group template, including deciding the specifics of the supporting structure and writing up stats for the opposition. I wanted more details on the Century Club, Doctor Methuselah, and the Steel Don. I want to draw inspiration from that material for my stories; I don’t want to have to create everything from scratch. I find only one critical fault with the book. Young Centurions games follow a story structure rather than a tactical structure, but the book provides no instruction on how to set up a game. This means you can’t simply stock a building with mooks and repeatedly kick down doors. You need to construct your game for narrative flow and problem solving. The Fate Core book includes a whole chapter on how to construct conflict scenes and tie them together. That instruction is absolutely essential to Young Centurions and its absence creates problems for GMs without a strong narrative background. So I’m conflicted. I want to like this book. The premise appeals to me a great deal. It’s a fairly solid introduction to the world of Spirit of the Century. It’s self-contained, since it reprints Fate Acceleratedand does a pretty good job with the rules. It captures the flavor of teen adventure and preserves a spirit of optimism. This is a setting for stories that I really want to read, but it’s also a game that I really don’t want to try to run. Story structure games put up a truckload of work for the GM and require a whole table of players that know how to effectively resolve conflict within a story structure. Spirit of the Century at least gives you the option to focus on the action scenes and talk through the rest without detracting from the game play. At the end of the book, I find myself wanting more. I really think there should have been more background material and a chapter on game construction. At only 160 pages, there’s ample room to push the page count up to 198 and create a truly complete product. The price point is good, only $20 for a full-color hardcover – half that for the PDF. It’s a great introduction to Fate and the to Spirit of the Century setting. By the same token, if you’ve already got Spirit of the Century or Strange Tales of the Century this book adds very little to either rules or setting. Even if you’ve already got the Fate rules in one form or another, this book adds some nice new mechanics and just barely enough flavor to make Young Centurions worth the purchase. My copy came from the original Fate Core Kickstarter, though when Evil Hat’s Magic 8-Ball selected me as a Young Centurions reviewer they also provided a digital copy. They have also requested reviews of the two Young Centurions novels: Sally Slick and the Steel Syndicate, and Sally Slick and the Miniature Menace. I read Steel Syndicate back when it was first released and loved it; I’m looking forward to reading it again on my way to the Miniature Menace ARC. See you then! *** Winston Crutchfield reads far more than is healthy, but is attempting to compensate by foisting his favorite books onto his rebellious teenagers. He’s always open to discussion about books and looking for reading suggestions. He can be found on the Christian Geek Central forums as “MindSpike” or on Goodreads under his own name.

The Justice Formula

AUGMENT: HUMAN SERVICESI’m joined in the reaction chamber by author Phil Elmore, action novelist and editor for The League Entertainment Group. Phil is a long time action novelist, and we spend some time discussing his work on The Executioner, the longest running men’s action novel series to date. Phil has a good grasp of the formula that makes a successful action hero, and he shares his insights with us. In addition to his work for Gold Eagle, Phil discusses his cyberpunk work. Currently available is Augment part one: Human Services, and the serial novel working title “4104”. The former can be found on Amazon while the latter is being released only through Phil’s website. Of course, no visit would be complete without a mention of Duke Manfist, the World’s Manliest Action Hero. (It says so on his card…..) Last but not least, my Kickstarter project for Fate Core is currently funding, so get over there and check it out! read more

1-4 Courage and Sacrifice

rock the dragonIn this episode of Rock the Dragon, we touch on themes of courage and sacrifice as each of the Z fighters lays down his life in an effort to prevent the Saiyans from destroying the Earth. There’s some heavy stuff going on and in the finest tradition of Shakespeare, everybody dies.

Rocco’s Retreads

hell-and-goneHenry “Hank” Brown came to my attention because we both participate in the action-adventure forums over at mackbolan.com. I bought his book simply because he came on the forums, mentioned the novel and asked people to buy it. Marketing at its most basic. When I eventually got around to reading it, I shot him an email half-way through the book and he was kind enough to do a podcast interview with me. Hank is a former soldier who’s put that experience to good use in his stories.

“Hell and Gone” tells the story of Rocco Cavarra and a group of retired special operators assembled by the CIA for a dirty op. Islamic terrorists have possession of an atomic weapon, and it’s up to Rocco’s Retreads to get it back at all costs and without implicating the U.S. Mission creep sets in fairly early, and before they can even fire a shot, these old soldiers are in it up to their necks. As a military thriller catering to the same crowd that reads Tom Clancy and Mack Bolan, “Hell and Gone” delivers hard core action grounded in the kind of realism that comes from experience. read more

Only War

Click here to get it from Amazon!

“In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.”

Warhammer 40K brought the mythology of the wildly successful Warhammer Fantasy world into space, extending the mythos to embrace sci-fi tropes and aliens. The property started as a tabletop miniatures game, and has gone through many iterations through the years. When Fantasy Flight successfully licensed Warhammer 40K for a role playing game line in 2008, they sold out of their first print run in a matter of months. Along the way, the property has forayed into computer games, music, and fiction. Several attempts to animate a film have finally resulted in the video release of “Ultramarines”, the first official feature-length video project from Games Workshop. read more

Action Hero Apocalypse

Author Phil Elmore joins me in the Reaction Chamber to talk about current projects from The League Entertainment. Duke Manfist now has a novella for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. All of them available for free at the moment. The season one collection, Bullets Babes and Bacon is coming soon, and more information is on the way. Of course, with Duke Manfist making an appearance during our season of Doomsday Prepping, I have to get Phil’s insights on how to prep for the action hero apocalypse: what to do if you suddenly find yourself playing sidekick to a bona fide action hero! We also talk a bit about Phil Elmore’s works of self-defense education, including Flashlight Fighting and Street Sword. Find works by Phil Elmore and the other League Entertainment authors at the following locations: read more

The Most Dangerous Game

Delta-vee presents classic Old-Time Radio productions and modern audio dramas, today’s episode: “The Most Dangerous Game”. Richard Connell’s famous short story, also published as “The Hounds of Zaroff”, describes the experiences of a big game hunter who is shipwrecked on an island. The master of the island is another big game hunter who has decided to hunt the most dangerous game of all – man. First published in the January 19, 1924 issue of Collier’s Weekly, this story has served as an inspiration and spiritual predecessor for countless other media interpretations, including modern bestsellers such as “The Hunger Games” and even been referenced in the popular Disney-Pixar film “Up”. Big game hunting and travelogues of safari adventures were popular during the 1920s and 30s, leading to a spate of fiction on the subject alongside many “real life” adventures. Connell’s story makes no attempts to justify or rationalize the activities of the antagonist General Zaroff, nor does the protagonist Rainsford waste any time attempting to debate the morality of Zaroff’s actions or mitigate the steps he takes in his own defense. In this way, the story parallels the jungle adventures that it emulates, where the only law is survival of the fittest and morality is a function of tooth and claw rather than reason or spirit. The story was adapted three times for radio under the incomparable baritone of Orson Welles; the first film adaptation by RKO pictures has been the only one to share the title of the story. This episode of Escape first aired on October 1, 1947 and is the only one to feature Welles in the role of Rainsford instead of Zaroff. And now our featured presentation…. read more

The Simon Vector Enigma

Author Phil Elmore joins me in the reaction chamber to discuss the new novel from The League Entertainment, “Simon Vector”. We talk a bit about building the universe of Simon Vector and delve into a sneak peek at the background of this sci-fi space prison action novel. Elmore gives us a glance behind the curtain at what it’s like to develop a transmedia property and what it means to The League. We also discuss other project that Elmore has going on both with The League Entertainment and on his own. A mention is made of the megatrain anthology The Spirit of St. Louis, Elmore’s latest Mack Bolan adventures “Radical Edge” and “Final Judgement”. Since the interview, I’ve read through “Radical Edge”, and this is one of my favorite Phil Elmore adventures to date. Of course, no interview with Phil Elmore would be complete without a mention of the world’s manliest action hero, Duke Manfist. Since this is the season of the doomsday apocalypse, we close with some practical prepping advice from Elmore on personal survival and a pointer at some prepping resources readily available. read more