Combat Pad (Paizo Publishing)
Suggested by Evil Machinations

Critical Hit and Critical Fumble decks (Paizo Publishing)
Suggested by Dungeon Brew

Endeavor (Z-Man Games)
Suggested by Game Cryer

Mad Scientist University (Atlas Games)
Suggested by Jim – Yes, THAT Jim

Mutant City Blues (Pelgrane Press)
Suggested by All Games Considered

Paranoia Mandatory Bonus Fun Card Game (Mongoose Publishing)
Suggested by Dungeon Brew

Perudo
Suggested by The Adventuring Party

Savage Worlds Freeport Companion (Green Ronin Publishing)
Suggested by Creatively Anomalous

Shock: Social Science Fiction (Glyph Press)
Suggested by Gnome Stew

Witch of Salem (Mayfair Games)
Suggested by Flames Rising

Wizard101.com
Suggested by KORE rpg

Zombie Murder Mystery (Expy Games)
Suggested by allgeektout

The book begins with an introduction and overview of the BattleTech universe and the subject matter of the game – the Battlemech. The BattleTech universe spans a futuristic 1050 year “history” where Mankind has populated the stars, living through the height of a star-faring civilization and the low points of constant, ceaseless war. The Introduction highlights the main warring factions, gives a brief overview of the history and the Battlemech itself, 30 to 100 ton war machines that can bring death and destruction on a scale almost unimaginable by today’s military standards. The book then gives a timeline drawn from the official BattleTech universe canon, which the BattleTech games and novels have contributed to. Following this timeline can be difficult as it’s given in a very terse format. Most of the dates are not covered by the books/games, but the effort made to put a “flow” to the future is entertaining.

The next 200 pages of the book mix new fiction by BattleTech authors with artwork from the various publications throughout the BattleTech history. The stories range from the first era covered by BattleTech, the years from 3025 to 3050 with the Fourth Succession War, to the Invasion of the Clans and then to the Dark Ages and beyond. The artwork is fascinating to look at, as the “old school” style is mixed in with more modern artwork. I found myself flipping back and forth, almost ignoring the fiction to simply “read the book” through the artwork.

In speaking of the artwork, this book has not been without some controversy, as Catalyst Game Labs has struggled with a long-running issue in the BattleTech Universe. In the 1990s, FASA ceased using the visual representations of several Battlemechs due to legal issues, including the popular Rifleman, Warhammer, Phoenix Hawk and Marauder ‘mechs. Initially, Catalyst Games believed they had ironed out the issue for publication of this book, but a blog post on Catalyst Game Labs’ website told a different story:

“But at the end of that court case, as part of a confidential settlement, it was agreed that the sole and exclusive world-wide right to these images (outside of Japan) would rest with another US company. It is for this reason that we have chosen to revise our plans to publish these specific images in current product. Though we spoke with a number of individuals before making our initial decision, no one involved in Catalyst was aware of this agreement. Still, the owner to these images has been very cool with us about the whole situation. They are a good group of people, and we will continue our attempts to work with them as we look toward the future.”

The book then briefly covers the “Dark Ages” period of the BattleTech universe, which used the WizKids Clix game system in the form of the MechWarrior CMG. This period of history takes BattleTech in a new direction, as most technology has now been lost and the means of interstellar communication has been sabotaged. The final sections of the book cover the range of video games produced for BattleTech, from the “Crescent Hawks Inception” RPG to the popular Mechwarrior series and the Battletech Virtual Reality Pods that travel to conventions and can still be found in some locations around the world. The book finishes with a complete bibliography of the BattleTech Universe game sets, books and all of the novels published. It’s quite an impressive list and you’re left with a grand view of how big a single game has become.

Overall, this book is gorgeous. The artwork is amazing in its scope and completeness – I saw artwork that I remembered seeing back in 1985. The sheer scale of the BattleTech Universe is hard to capture but I think this book does a good job of doing it. I have mixed feelings about the fiction, however. As an overview of the BattleTech history and timeline, it does an adequate job of capturing the various feels and flavors of BattleTech, but it felt disjointed to some extent. There was a good representation of all the ages, but I think a more logical approach would have been to put them in chronological order to fit the timeline and give someone a perspective over time and story subject. Some of the stories were quite good, others were not, but I’m sure that’s partially a taste in authors and delivery. There is sure to be something for everyone in the fiction.

As a product to buy, this is definitely for the BattleTech enthusiast – if you are one, you should not be without it. It makes a nice reference and it would be a fascinating tool for someone who wants to learn more about the Battletech Universe as well as gain inspiration for their own BattleTech scenarios or Mechwarrior RPG adventures. The artwork alone is amazing and represents the real reason to buy this book. Someone unfamiliar with BattleTech may not appreciate it enough to purchase it, but I think this book will definitely make anyone browsing its pages interested and excited about the BattleTech Universe.

Make no mistake – this game is Candy Land with its guts pulled out and reassembled in reverse order. While this makes for a highly amusing parody, it still builds upon the gameplay of one of the worst games ever – Candy Land is a purely luck-based, and potentially unending, game designed for kids too young to play anything else. But while Run For Your Life, Candyman! is broken in the same ways as its source of inspiration, it still gets the nod for two reasons: player interaction (read: violence) and add-on effect cards (read: amusing attacks and equipment). For these reasons, Smirk & Dagger Games should be commended for taking an awful game design and making it fun to play without regressing the participants to diaper-wearing age.

To explain Run For Your Life, Candyman! we have to look at Candy Land first, as the two are nearly identical at their core. Bear with me, here – this will only hurt a little.

Most gamers, or even casual game players that rarely touch a game board, know what the Candy Land board looks like: a track of colored spaces in a repeating pattern, that winds its way around and through a country filled with candy-themed locations. A deck of cards determines movement, each showing the colored space (or spaces, in the case of doubles) to move to. A couple of short cuts allow kids with just the right lucky card to jump ahead, but being in the lead in Candy Land is such a transient state it’s hardly worth celebrating. Here’s where the problems start.

The card deck contains a card corresponding to each special board location, and merely drawing one of these will send the active player forward or back on the path to that spot, magnifying the game’s random nature. Worse yet, these location cards are recycled when the deck gets reshuffled, allowing the magnified random movement of the game to be repeated endlessly. Thus the momentary thrill of “I’m about to win!” becomes “Please, please, please let someone win and end this torture!” More often than not, adults, who extol the virtues of playing fair, will distract their impressionable children for long enough to rearrange the cards and make someone win ASAP, just to be done with it.

Being a near duplicate of Candy Land, Run For Your Life, Candyman! is still a flawed game design – the special location spaces still exist, and the cards that lead to them still don’t go away after the first time they’re drawn. However, the movement, which is still dictated by the cards, is slightly less random – players can choose to go forward or backward with each card draw. Why would moving away from the finish line be an attractive idea? To beat the gumdrop buttons off of an opponent, of course.

One look at the Run For Your Life, Candyman! game board will reveal the twisted, deliciously vicious nature of this parody. The “candy castle” that represents the final space in Candy Land is merely a film prop here, hiding the king’s candy factory behind it. The special board locations are marked by the foul candy-eating foes that lurk there, including the dominatrix-like Lady I. Scream, the Grisly Gummies, and Molly and Pop, a too-quiet-looking father and daughter holding rather large weapons. The game certainly looks enjoyable, and not at all aimed at preschoolers – the game box cover shows a grand melee of cookie carnage, complete with bazooka and dismembered baked goods. This carnage is the game’s best feature.

Combat is at the center of this parody, and players who ignore it are missing both the point and the fun. Anytime one player moves onto or through a space occupied by another player, he can make an attack, even if he won’t be stopping there – in fact, players can attack multiple opponents in a turn. To make an attack, the active player draws an extra movement card, which will show one of the six candies that mark the game path. Each player has a status sheet that shows his gingerbread man with six checkboxes on each of six body parts – the head, torso, both arms, and both legs. Each body part has also been assigned one of the six candy types from the movement cards – a mint candy is a headshot; a gumdrop signifies a body blow. If a special location or other card is drawn during an attack, it counts as two hits to whatever body part the attacker chooses. After being attacked, the defending player marks damage in the appropriate spot by checking off a box. Once all six boxes are filled in, that body part is destroyed (the game encourages players to tear that portion off entirely). The cookies can keep moving and fighting no matter how little of their body is left, so total eradication is the order of the day.

To aid in the destruction, each player can gather Special Treat cards. At the game’s start, a random card is drawn to pick a candy type. Throughout the game, when players land on that type of space, they draw a Special Treat card. These cards provide all sorts of exceptions to the regular rules, from ranged weapons like the Licorice Whip, to brutal attacks like the Jaw Breaker or Ju-Ju-Jitsu, or defensive maneuvers like Lifesaviors, which cancels any attack. A few cards can be used at any time, but most are limited to use in regular combat. Much of the candy-coated flavor that makes the game so tasty is within these cards, so if players aren’t seeing enough Special Treat action, I’d recommend adding a second Special Treat inducing space.

A couple spaces on the board are Candy Cage Match spaces, where the real beatings take place. A player that lands on one of these spaces, or is directed to one by a card, can summon any other player to come join him there and begin exchanging attacks, blow for blow, until a candy matching that space is drawn. If another Candy Cage Match card is drawn during the Cage Match, a third player can be pulled into the brawl. Special Treat cards can’t be used during these epic candy ass-kickings, but players will hardly miss them in the frantic exchange of damage.

The last nine spaces on the board are marked as the table of the Twins – two ravenous sugar fiends in the guise of school children. Any gingerbread man in this zone will be attacked four times at the start of each turn as the Twins try to devour him. If a player can survive these attacks and get past the Twins’ table, he wins the game. So, if being the last cookie standing doesn’t look feasible, making a run for it could work – or you could end up as dessert.

The rules aren’t completely clear in all situations. For example, if a gingerbread victim’s head is already destroyed, does another hit to the location do nothing, go to the next nearest spot, or require a redraw? However, any group of players willing to sit down and pummel some crumb-covered combatants could easily decide to houserule the situation and keep the chaos going.

In the end, Run For Your Life, Candyman! isn’t about strictly following the recipe and reaching the conclusion of the game. The finish line at the end is merely there to give players a reason to move, and not merely group up into a mass of frosting-covered fists. The ability to move either forward or backward is a huge improvement on Candy Land, making hit-and-run attacks and revenge for same an easy matter. Yes, the same flawed rules exist in this parody, which could potentially keep the finish line out of reach. But you won’t care – you’ll be too busy trying to smash the last bit of life out of the other gingerbread men, and laughing about it all the while.

Overall, Lovecraftian Tales from the Table is an incredibly complete package, only made possible by the advances in, and the shrinking of, recording and data storage technology. Listening to campaigns of this length – the play through of Masks of Nyarlathotep lasts about seventy five hours, for example – would have proved impossible on tape and vinyl, and incredibly difficult even on CD. Recordings have been used in the past on these formats, for example, to introduce and explain role-playing in the Dragonroar and Dungeons & Dragons games, and as an aural handout in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Planescape supplement, A Player’s Primer to the Outlands. Certainly, Lovecraftian Tales from the Table does the former, serving as an introduction to the hobby in a way that the written word can never quite manage and in a very raw state – that is, as the game is role-played. The DVD also does something more. First, it turns the focus of our hobby, role-playing, into a spectacle that can be enjoyed by an audience. (Mostly an audience of one at any one time, but that is still an audience.) Second, for the Keeper of Arcane Lore wanting to run either campaign, it shows how it can be done, a veritable source of tips and ideas, as well as pratfalls to avoid. Third, it gives the role-player access to a game even when he has none of his own. Fourth and last, Lovecraftian Tales from the Table serves up a slice of gaming life that we will all recognize, warts and all, that really does show our hobby as being fun, intelligent, and skilful, all to be enjoyed in vicarious fashion.

Originally available as a series of podcasts from Yog-Sothoth.com, the DVD collects the many, many MP3 files that comprise the campaign recordings – some of them recorded in “binaural audio” to give the effect of listening as if you were at the table – and presents them in the best audio quality possible. They average between two and three hours in length, and each can easily be pulled from the DVD onto an MP3 player or a CD to allow listening on the move or away from the computer. In addition, each campaign is accompanied by interviews with its respective authors, photographs, handouts, and the various character sheets for the investigators. The bonus material is just as abundant, and includes sample episodes from Yog-Sothoth.com’s regular podcast, Yog-Radio, audio recordings of several H.P. Lovecraft tales, scenarios for Call of Cthulhu, audio and video interviews with such Lovecraftian luminaries as author Ramsay Campbell and Call of Cthulhu creator Sandy Petersen, and lastly interviews with the majority of the Bradford Players involved with each campaign.

Physically, the DVD comes neatly packaged. Besides the disc itself, the case includes an eight-page full color booklet put together by the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society that does a nice job of introducing Lovecraftian Tales from the Table. The DVD’s interface is kept clean and simple, making everything easy to access and play.

The DVD’s heart and purpose are the two campaigns in question, both rightfully regarded as classics. The Complete Masks of Nyarlathotep opens with the investigators discovering their “good friend” Jackson Elias dead in his New York hotel room, leaving behind notes and clues as to the fate of the lost Carlyle Expedition. Interpreting and following those clues leads the investigators across the world, from New York to London, and then onto Cairo, Kenya, Shanghai, and possibly Australia. Eventually they will not only discover the true fate of the investigation, but also a plot to launch a world ending rocket, along the way facing savage natives, despicable members of the establishment, ancient horrors, alien intelligences from the past, and inscrutable gods. Providing months’ of lethal, Sanity sapping investigative play, The Complete Masks of Nyarlathotep is rightly regarded as one the hobby’s best. Nevertheless, the campaign leaves so much to the Keeper to explain, and so The Complete Masks of Nyarlathotep Companion is being developed by its fans to not only explain and expand the campaign, but also mark the 25th year of the original version’s release.

The second campaign, Horror on the Orient Express, is not world spanning, but continent spanning. At the request of another dead friend, the investigators must track down the various pieces of an occult artifact, the Sedefkar Simulacrum. Each piece lies within traveling distance of the route taken by the Simplon-Orient Express, which provides the campaign with a very strong, albeit linear structure and enables the investigators to travel in superb style. It brings them into conflict with cultists of The Brotherhood of the Skin and a final confrontation with the cult in Istanbul.

It is clear from listening through Lovecraftian Tales from the Table that the Bradford Players are experienced gamers. Their approach to solving the problems presented to them throughout both campaigns might not be what the listener would do in their stead, and that applies to the Keepers and players involved alike, but listening is never less than enjoyable. And anyway, the listener is not at the table, so his investigator is not going to suffer the consequences of actions being described. Of course, not only do you get the game play in the recordings, but you get the “table talk,” something that we all know about as gamers, but it is never really talked about. Some listeners might find the “table talk” not their liking, but it is not present in spades, in part because the very act of being recorded imposes a time restraint and a focus. Yet it is there, so you get to know the players as much as you do their characters.

Imagine if you will that role-playing as a hobby died and became a lost art, no one being quite sure of how it was actually done. Archaeologists and historians could doubtless read the many books available and get an idea from there, but were they instead to listen to Lovecraftian Tales from the Table, then it is possible they would get a greater understanding of what the hobby involved and what it was about. This in a way makes the DVD an interesting artifact, one of time, because the technology is likely to change.

In a curious move, Lovecraftian Tales from the Table was not accepted as a nominee for the 2009 Origins Awards, despite being submitted. Not so curious though, if you consider that this DVD is anything other than a commercial product and at its heart is an amateur creation, neither which lies within the Origins Awards’ purview. Similarly it does not recognize the podcast and it took an overly long time to recognize any RPG that did not come out of the mainstream. Arguably though, what Lovecraftian Tales from the Table does more than any one RPG title published in this year, or any other year, is capture and represent what gaming is really like for many of us, and that is why it deserves not just our appreciation and interest, but our applause too.