The Discovery of Dragons

I stumbled upon this book when I was looking around in the Children's Section (yes, I do that), for the role-playing books. Terribly annoying that they put role-playing in that same category, but oh well, I'm not so proud that I won't go there. And I found, much to my surprise, a similar outcast - Base's books are written with amusement and sophistication, and while they could be entertaining if read to a child, they are not children's books. This one is gorgeous, with the dragons fully rendered, amusing (and fictional) notes in reference to them from various explorers, tiny cartoons in the framing illustrating the stories involving the dragons, and maps of the world which show where the dragon comes from. Also, the dragons have a size comparison, from a man (who happens to be running away in the silhouette comparison), to an elephant. The only flaw? A jungle dragon described as a "massive beast" in the text and shown to be much larger than a man in the cartoon frame, is shown as the size of a cat on the size-comparison silhouettes. An impressive side note: Base did the artwork too!

What Ifs? Of American History

As a gamer, I have a special fondness for the What If series. Many gaming scenarios have been built around the different realities occuring from alternate history - heck, anyone can speculate on a different outcome of the Civil War, World War II, or the possibility of World War III. What If brings a level of expertise to the table, "preeminent historians" according to the back cover.

An important staple of an alternative history series is education, demonstrating how things could be different if a particular event or choice wasn't made. I learned a lot more about World War II from this book by what didn't happen, which helped reinforce why events unfolded as they did. In that regard, alternate history scenarios are a great teaching tool.

Unfortunately, the editor (and I blame the editor, Robert Cowley) doesn't seem to be able to rein in his writers. With this many essays, there's bound to be some differences in quality. But the writers never agree on the RULES of the essays themselves.

Not all the essays actually lay out alternate history. Some of the essays are essentially summed up as "WHEW! Boy are we lucky things turned out the way they did!" Which isn't nearly as educational as showing what could have happened. There are plenty of other experts that can simply tell us about the near misses of history.

Not all of the essays are grounded in actual history. It's fine to lay out alternate history, but for a neophyte who isn't familiar with the timeline of events, speculation without a comparison to the actual events just muddles the waters. When the writers use active voice, you have no idea if our guide to history is in fact speculating or retelling actual events as they happened. Opinion? Fact? Hypothesis? It's never clear.

Finally, some of the essays are outright fiction, Joe McCarthy's Secret Life being the most egregious example. So what, exactly, is this essay trying to prove? How easy it would be for McCarthy to actually be a member of the communists he was rooting out? What's the lesson here?

Some of these essays have been reprinted from the What If series before, which is odd - I imagine the group interested in this series already read the first volume and their inclusion "as a bonus" seems a little disingenuous. If the plan was to have this volume be a reference, it falls short of its goals.

That said, What Ifs? of American History is an interesting if uneven collection of opinions, predictions, and history lessons about America. Worth reading, but you might want to keep a history textbook nearby.

My Tank is Fight

I bought My Tank is Fight at World Fantasy Con when I was looking for something to buy in the dealer's room. It appealed to my peculiar tastes: weird history, alternate history fiction, technical details of weapons and armor, and a good dose of humor. In other words, the same stuff you find in most role-playing game books these days (if you can find them). So in a rare move, I bought myself a brand-new book.

As weird history, My Tank is Fight does an admirable job of spotlighting the various weapons conceived for World War II that were impractical from the start. Divided into land, sea, and air, these devices are mostly from the Germans (with one Canadian/American exception), spawned from sheer desperation as the war waned. They can be categorized as two different types:

Bigger is Better: The same old boring weapon, only GINORMOUS. Beyond the cost of creating these monstrosities, they were too heavy to actually use (giant tanks can't cross bridges) or too obvious a target for the Allied bombers.

Combine This With That: Combining a tank with a plane, or a submarine with a tank. Yes, technically these devices could conquer two types of terrain, but they ended up being pretty terrible at traversing both.

As if all these historical details are too boring to keep an adult's attention span focused, the book has frequent jokes - some funny, some just plain sophomoric - wherein the author slips into first person. It's a little jarring, when the rest of the book is relatively somber.

Additionally, there are fiction vignettes highlighting Nazis, Russians, and an American reporter's experiences with these superweapons in an alternate history where they're actually created and used. The Russian sniper's story is interesting but too brief, with no satisfying resolution. The Nazi tank commander's story isn't really wrapped up, while the Nazi pilot's story is wrapped up but out of sequence, which muddles the narrative. Finally there's the American reporter, who is by far the most fun.

Spoiler alert as I dive into the conclusion of the book here...

Nazi Germany explodes a nuclear bomb over New York City. This seems to be taken very lightly in the fictional narrative, with the author indicating that "although the Americans wanted to immediately bomb Germany, cooler heads prevailed and they bombed Japan instead."

Sorry, I don't buy it. After America's experience with 9/11 and Iraq, a Nazi atom bomb detonating over New York seems like it would garner a much more ferocious reaction. Unfortunately, there's really not room for My Tank is Fight to explore the implications of this hugely history-altering event. The bigger news seems to be the cover-up of Nazi space exploration. In comparison to the massacre of thousands of Americans, giving a fig about a single Nazi still stuck on a German space station seems a bit trite.

Ultimately, My Tank is Fight is a breezy, entertaining read. I kept thinking, "this would be fantastic for a game!" - be it a role-playing game or a first-person shooter set in World War II, wherein the boss battles feature these preposterous super weapons. If you have an interest in alternate history or World War II history, but are too lazy to do any actual research, this is the book for you.

Yokai Attack!: The Japanese Monster Survival Guide

Pokemon. Collectible toy monsters. Godzilla and his ilk. The bizarre popularity of the monstrous in Japanese culture finally has an explanation in Yokai Attack.

The act of classifying monsters harkens back to the late 1800s, when several authors attempted to catalogue the wildly colorful and imaginative yokai. Amidst the usual menagerie of demons and ghosts are eyeballs sticking out of screen doors (Mokumoku Ren), monsters that lick bathtubs clean (Akaname), and inanimate objects that, having been around for over 99 years, eventually take on a life of their own.

The usefulness of these kinds of guides is best reflected in whether or not you can find the same information online. Fortunately, Yokai Attack brings a refreshing level of detail and charming artwork to a subject that could easily be a retread of obakemono.com, a great resource in its own right.

Each creature is sorted into one of five self-explanatory categories: Ferocious Fiends, Gruesome Gourmets, Annoying Neighbors, The Sexy and Slimy, and the Wimps. The creatures are then described, in true Japanese style, by their Pronunciation, English name, Gender, Height, Weight, Locomotion, Distinctive Features, Offensive Weapons, Abundance, Habitat, Claim to Fame, a description of how it attacks, how to survive an encounter, and comments by scholars. Peppered throughout are pictures and material that represent the yokai along with occasionally amusing commentary.

There are modern monsters too: the Kuchisake Onna looks like a normal woman wearing a surgical mask (common in Japan) but removing the mask reveals a huge mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth. The Nopperabo appears to be a friend or relative, only to reveal a completely faceless head at a terrifying moment. It was sighted as recently as 1959.

The yokai themselves are a combination of folklore, myth, fairy tales, ghost stories, and puns. Mixed in with the serious hauntings are creatures that are simply too ludicrous to be believed. To Yokai Attack's credit, the utter preposterousness of some monsters is never questioned; they are all treated as authentic creatures to be respected.

The artwork is bright and colorful, if a little cartoonish, but that too is keeping in the Japanese style of popular fiction. The descriptions aren't always uniform. Sometimes the authors tweak how they describe the creature, especially those that are less likely to attack (the Wimps section is rife with monsters that basically just scare people). And yet, other Yokai are listed as being relatively harmless (the Mokumoku Ren) and then the entry describes a tale where a victim lost his eyes. Not so harmless after all!

Ever since the Worst-Case Survival Guide came out, there has been a series of "pocket guides" of every sort, from detailing how to hunt vampires to surviving a zombie attack to how to be a superhero. There are very few worthy of more than a single read. In Yokai Attack's case, it's an excellent combination of graphic presentation and gentle humor that makes the book a worthy reference. For monster-philes tired of the same old ghosts and ghouls, Yokai Attack is a refreshingly accessible look at Japanese monsters.

Priest's Spell Compendium, Volume 1

The Priest's Spell Compendium (PSC) is the fifth installment in a welcome trend: TSR/WOTC cleaning out their vaults, collating their material, and placing them in sourcebooks. The Wizard's Spell Compendium, now complete, was a valuable addition to any player or Dungeon Master's repertoire of spells. On the other hand, it was just gravy, and it suffered (like other collections) from typos, poor editing, and the general impression that someone cut and pasted the information together haphazardly.

In the case of specialty Priests, the division of spells that occurred as a result of the Second Edition rules caused some serious unbalances in the game. Some specialty Priests have spheres with few spells in them, like the Astral sphere. Because many spells can be "reversed," evil Priests have access to the Healing sphere and good Priests have access to the Necromantic sphere.

Then there's "powers" which are unique abilities bestowed upon Priests by their gods. The distinction between spells and powers is murky, as powers are not subject to the sphere categorizations. It was a convenient loophole for giving Priests spells that didn't fit with their deities profile.

With this confusing situation making a specialty Priest's life difficult, and the powers and spells largely up to the Dungeon Master's discretion, a sourcebook with more Priest spells is a welcome addition.

Having a compilation of spells is useful for Druids and other specialty Priests who suffered from the sparse spheres they had to choose from. The PSC claims on page 3:
"Some description have been updated or combined with similar effects to eliminate duplication; some have been modified for better play, and a very few have been dropped entirely." It's a no-brainer: take all the out-of-print supplements, put them into a database, and hit the print button. Then, just edit the combined content. How hard could that be?

Very hard, unfortunately. The PSC, while better edited than its predecessors (and that's not saying much), is still plagued by what seems an unwillingness on the part of the editors to comb through the book line by line. Nowhere is this more obvious than on page 9:

"In the sword-and-sandal Dark Sun setting, priests are preservers or defilers, depending on whether or not their magic drains the living energy of that world." Priests are not preservers or defilers. That's a title applied to wizards in the Dark Sun setting. However, the above sentence is in the Wizard's Spell Compendium . Somebody replaced the word "Wizard" with "Priest" and pasted the introduction into the book. This did not bode well for the rest of the volume.

Some of the problems with PSC deal with the manner in which old spells were categorized into the new spheres created for Priests in the Second Edition rules. For example, why is age plant (p. 9) in the Time sphere, but not the Plant sphere? Several other spells are included in multiple spheres. The A section was a bit of a let down: the disturbingly slim Astral sphere only has a handful of spells in it, even with all the spells from other sources.

Icons accompany each spell to indicate, at a glance, what setting the spell fits best. This system is used inconsistently. Bad medicine (p. 52), a Shaman spell, is missing the savage setting icon.

There are several spells that create or summon monsters. The monster statistics are usually reproduced in the volume -- a necessity if the spells are to be of any use. Only some of the monsters' statistics appear, however: Create crypt thing (p. 154) has the created monster's statistics, but create death tyrant (p. 155) does not. If these statistics were removed intentionally to save space, it doesn't explain the large patches of blank space on pages 51 and 175.

Anyone remember the Dragon magazine article with six other Paladin classes, each based on a unique alignment? The Paramander's spells ended up in the Wizard's Spell Compendium, but the priest spells for the other Paladin classes are strangely excluded from this volume.

And then there's the inclusion of the coalstone's statistics without the actual spell to create it (p. 126). Why bother?

The artwork consists of serviceable black and white pictures, mostly portraits. One evident change of WOTC's takeover of TSR is their unwillingness to recycle old artwork. This may seem like a minor quibble, but it's a sore point with a lot of TSR products. Yes, I can recognize reused artwork from the Pick A Path/Which Way Adventure books! Thankfully, the artwork always applies to a spell on the same page.

With the Third Edition of Dungeons and Dragons on its way, it's possible that editing this volume wasn't the top priority. Indeed, it may be that instead of providing a quality product, TSR's goal is to recycle all out-of-print material and then release them in electronic format at a much lower price.

The Priest's Spell Compendium selling point is obvious: you can't get many of these spells anywhere else. For players of specialty priests, it's a valuable addition to their library. Unfortunately, TSR just doesn't put enough effort into editing and organizing the spells to justify its high price tag for anyone else.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Core Rules 2.0

For those of you us who owned version 1.0 of the AD&D Core Rules CD-Rom, a revision is a long time in coming. Version 1.0 was a mess, with inconsistencies, broken programs, and a general feeling that TSR rushed it out as soon as possible without a whole lot of quality control (not an uncommon theme with TSR pre-WOTC takeover).

I'm happy to say they fixed a few problems. They also created a few more.

There are some staple elements that make you wonder why you ever bought any rule books. There's no less than nine of them, even more than version 1.0. Of course, that led me to wonder where the other ones were. Where's the Complete Book of ? The Wizard's Spellbooks? It doesn't matter. That's for Version 3.0.

Something seems to have happened to the Monster Manual, however. The pictures are no longer neatly displayed next to the descriptions. Instead, they're crammed into the RTF documents like the rest. Who wants to look at a monsterful of naked text?

What you will find is a hand-dandy number crunching program that allows you to make sense of all those Player's Option rules. I actually enjoyed this system, even if it was a bit awkward, because the Player's Option rules can make creating a character a much more complicated process.

Then there's the database. This database allows you to customize various objects, from magic items to monsters to encounters to kits. Which is neat. But only kits, and kits in the Players Option sense. Which means the kits are very weak. Also, there's a bit of confusion between giving a kit a bonus to a proficiency, a free proficiency, a preferred proficiency, and a required proficiency. Forget customizing classes -- THOU SHALT NOT TOUCH THE CORE RULES! Okay, so it's not THAT customizable.

I forgive all that. Having the cash equivalent of over $100 on a CD makes it worth the investment, especially if you're fond of hacking up the rules and want to insert your own house rules. To me, one of the biggest benefits of having AD&D rules in electronic text is what you can do with them.

What I can't forgive, however, is the mapping programs.

They tried. They tried very hard by including the Campaign Cartographer, which proved to be exceptionally dense and not particularly effective in mapping anything at all. I suspect it can be used by someone capable who wants to sit down and read the instruction manual, only there is none that accompany the CD. But that's not all! There's also another mapping program, the original mapping program that came with Version 1.0, Map Maker II.

That collective groan you're hearing in the background is from anyone who ever bought the first version. The reason they're groaning is because that sorry excuse for a mapping program didn't work. The good news is, it works now.

That's about it though. Worse, it's not exportable to any useful graphics format. No .pds, .bmps, .gifs. or jpgs. What good is this map? It works, but it's not even compatible with the Campaign Cartographer on the same CD!

Ultimately, the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Core Rules CD-ROM 2.0 does what it's supposed to do: it's a solid reference that would make a valuable addition to any Dungeon Master's collection. But it could be better.

The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in the Middle Ages

Another of the "Great for writers but even better for gamers" series, this book is exactly what I wanted from a reference, unlike the somewhat meandering Body Trauma in the Howdunit series. The book hits on so many topics, it's impossible to list them all: food, clothing, medicine, economy, measures, titles, saint, weapons...the list goes on and on. All are referenced in an easy to read, no commentary style that provides keywords in bold text with their definitions in each section. Even better, there's a Further Reading section at the end of each chapter.

As a springboard for further research, What Life Was Like is a prime resource. Of most immediate use to gamers with a historical bent are the date of clothing styles (to avoid anachronistic styles of dress) and a description of the day to day activities of a castle. While it's probably a bit extreme to apply all of these principles to role-playing fantasy, which is, after all, FANTASY, this book goes a long way in providing a sense of feel to an environment that's so different from the modern world, it seems fantastic.

Thus this scene: "The warrior takes a slurp from his soup bowl, then sticks another forkful of meat in his mouth as he mumbles, 'Yeah, I know him. What's it to ya?'"

Becomes this: "The warrior takes a slurp from his trencher, then sticks his knife into a hunk of meat and stuffs it in his mouth. He mumbles, 'Yeah, I know him. What's it to ya?'"

No forks til the late fourteenth century! Forget wooden bowls, people used hollowed out bread as bowls.

Also prevalent throughout this Writer's Guide are the pictures and lists. Although my own personal preference is for line drawings in a work such as this, the pictures (of period actors) do the job. Also, the lists, when they appear, are relevant and to the point, including a list of popes and kings.

There are other books in the series that would probably find an application in role-playing: Guides to Victorian England, Renaissance England, and even the Wild West. If they're anything like Everyday Life in the Middle Ages, they're worth checking out.

Weapons: An International Encyclopedia From 5000 B.C. to 2000 A.D.

I stumbled upon this book in the library, immediately found myself coveting it, and then desperately considered photocopying the entire thing front to back. Fortunately, I didn't have to resort to such extreme measures - as a softcover the book is surprisingly affordable. There are few books of this type that are thorough and so lavishly illustrated; those that are have an equally lavish price tag. This book is a gem for those interested in weapons and armor of ancient and medieval times. There are indexes by geographical location as well as time period - an invaluable source for anyone interested in ancient weapons!

Star Trek Chronology: The History of the Future

This book is a must have for any serious Star Trek fan. It details the time-line of the often confusing Star Trek universe in careful academic detail, yet the narrative is entertaining enough to make it readable from cover to cover. The pictures are rife throughout the book and intelligently placed (a big gripe of mine is when people show you pictures of things you don't care to see, or put pictures far away from the text referring to them), and there are plenty of discussions about character designs, star ships, and other subtle nuances and contradictions that a book of this depth inevitably stumbles across. Buy it...it will make the Star Trek universe a bit more comprehensible...and a lot more enjoyable.