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Author: Bob Byrne

Future (Video Game) Treasures: Conan – Age of Exiles

Future (Video Game) Treasures: Conan – Age of Exiles

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Conan_ExilesShot1Funcom is the developer of the MMO Age of Conan – Unchained. AoC is the only MMO I ever played more than a few times and stuck with. I think it’s an excellent game with a novel fighting system and superb graphics. It did a nice job of using the Conan world setting and I enjoyed playing it.

Sadly, as with most MMOs which aren’t named World of Warcraft, it just doesn’t have a ton of players. There were many times I would roam an area and only see one or two other characters. But it if you’re looking to check out an MMO, I highly recommend it.

Well, Funcom is bringing Conan to PCs and consoles with Conan Exiles:

An open-world survival game in the brutal lands of Conan the Barbarian.

You are an exile, one of thousands cast out to fend for themselves in a barbaric wasteland swept by terrible sandstorms and besieged on every side by enemies. Here you must fight to survive, build and dominate.
Hungry, thirsty and alone, your very first battle is that against the harsh environment. Grow crops or hunt animals for food. Harvest resources to build weapons and tools. Build a shelter to survive. Ride across a vast world and explore alone, or band together with other players to build entire settlements and strongholds to withstand fierce invasions.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: More Playing Sherlock Holmes – 221B Baker Street

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: More Playing Sherlock Holmes – 221B Baker Street

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221B_BoxLast week, I looked at the reissued Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective (SHCD), originally released in 1981. That game was undoubtedly influenced by 221B Baker Street: The Master Detective Game (221B), which had come out a few years earlier in 1975.

In 221B, two to six players take on the role of Sherlock Holmes, though there’s a reference in the rulebook to being “Watsons.” It makes no difference, but I’m gonna go with being the world’s first private consulting detective, myself.

The game comes with 20 Case cards, generic, colored plastic player pieces, Scotland Yard and Skeleton Key “cards,” a solution checklist pad and a slim booklet with all the rules, clues and case solutions.

Unlike SHCD, which included a map, 221B uses a board. Players start and finish at 221B Baker Street, moving to various locations on the board, such as the Apothecary, Hotel, Museum, Tobacconist, etc. Each location is assigned a number in each case. When the player moves to the location, they look up the corresponding number in the clue section of the rulebook. The clue, such as “Earl Longworth has constant headaches” is recorded on the solution checklist – kept secret from other players.

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Discovering Robert E Howard: The New Conan RPG

Discovering Robert E Howard: The New Conan RPG

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ConanRPG_QuickstartThere’s a massively successful Conan Kickstarter wrapping up this week.

I’m a fan of Mongoose’s Conan RPG. It ran from 2004 through 2010, with over three dozen books between the 1st and 2nd Editions. It used the Open Game License. Well, dice rollers will once again be wreaking havoc throughout the Hyborian Age. Modiphius Games seems to have hit the jackpot with Robert E Howard’s Conan: Adventures in An Age Undreamed Of.

The base goal of $65,344 was to produce the Core Rulebook. As I type this, the KS is at $393,000. 13 stretch goals have been unlocked, adding 1 adventure book, 1 bestiary, 6 sourcebooks, 2 sets of geomorph tiles, 2 maps and double the art in the Core book. With the late surge successful Kickstarters inevitably get, I expect a few more items to be unlocked. There’s also a slew of add-ons (need a Conan backpack?) you can toss more money at, as well as stuff like a sourcebook tie-in to Monolith’s massively successful Conan board game.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: SH – Consulting Detective

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: SH – Consulting Detective

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SHCD_CoverLast week, we talked about the Dungeons and Dragons Adventure Game line. Today, we shift to something a bit more in line with this column’s title. Back in 1981, Sleuth Publications produced Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective (SHCD). Expansions, containing additional cases followed and it was also turned in to a PC game. I never played any of these games. Which might make you wonder why I’m doing a post on it now. Well, if you’ve visited this column before, you know that I don’t let little things like that get in my way. However, I have played the 2015 reprint of SHCD and that’s what we’re looking at today.

In the game, you are one of the famed ‘Baker Street Irregulars,’ the ragged street urchins. I’ve read in reviews that you play Wiggins, but that’s not quite the case. But that makes no difference to the game: just wanted to point it out. Holmes is too busy (and presumably Watson is too clueless) to deal with some unsolved crimes, so he sends you (and Wiggins) out to do his job for him. Really, that’s what’s going on.

The game box contains five components. First is a very slender rulebook. There’s also a map of London with quadrant and building numbers. There is a London Directory that tells you where to find people and places on the map. This ID system ties back to the Casebook, which briefly describes the crime (this is where Holmes gives you your marching orders) and contains all the leads you will follow to try and solve the case. And there are some replica newspapers that contain mostly chaff, but there is also a little bit of wheat to be sorted out.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The D&D Adventure (Board) Games

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The D&D Adventure (Board) Games

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Wrath_BoxBack in 2010, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) decided to put out a board game that replicated playing 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons. Now, 4th Edition was a debacle, but Castle Ravenloft, which was the first of four games in the Dungeons and Dragons Adventure Game line, is quite the opposite. It’s a cooperative dungeon crawl with set scenarios but random tile placement and in which the game itself serves as the dungeon master.

I’ve not played Castle Ravenloft (previously discussed here at Black Gate), which uses the iconic D&D setting. However, I am pretty familiar with 2011’s follow-up, Wrath of Ashardalon. Ashardalon is a red dragon and the party explores a cave system to eventually try and stop him. It was followed by The Legend of Drizz’t (here atBlack Gate), based on the NY Times best-selling books by R. A. Salvatore. I have also played this one several times. It looked like that was the end of the series, but last year, WizKids stepped in and in conjunction with WotC, produced a fourth installment, Temple of Elemental Evil (and also here at Black Gate). I own that but haven’t played it yet.

The games are all quite similar. There were a few changes in the first three, but I would say they’re at least 90% the same, maybe even a bit more. Temple added a campaign mode, (where you can keep items between scenarios!) that looks to be a notable change and one I look forward to exploring.

THE PARTS

Wrath_ComponentsWrathEach game comes with about a dozen sheets of interlocking tiles that make up the dungeon, as well as on average, 200 Encounter, Monster, Treasure and Hero cards that are the game play, plus tokens of various types. There’s a nice glossy, short, easy to read rule book as well as a similar Scenario book. And of course, one 20 sided die. But the real draw is the figures.

Each has about 40 heroes and monsters! They are not painted and all are reissues of official D&D minis. But where else are you going to get this many minis for the price? And you can always paint them or buy painted versions (I did that for some) if you want to jazz it up. For me, the components are well worth the cost. It all comes in a HUGE, sturdy box. I sleeved one game and everything still fits (though not in the same places). If you like to buy board games that come with a LOT of stuff, these games absolutely are the kind of thing you’re looking for. And nothing looks cheap: they use solid components.

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Discovering Robert E Howard: Fred Adams Jr. on Esau Cairn – A Man Outside His Epoch

Discovering Robert E Howard: Fred Adams Jr. on Esau Cairn – A Man Outside His Epoch

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Almuric_Cover1As you can see from the list of prior essays in this series down below, we’ve wandered all over the Robert E. Howard landscape. But we hadn’t touched on Howard’s science fiction. Dr. Fred Adams goes off-planet for us and examines one of Howard’s cult classics, Almuric. Blasting off…

In his novel Almuric, published in Weird Tales in 1939, Robert E. Howard presents a one-shot protagonist named Esau Cairn, a man in many ways typical of Howard’s barbarian warrior-heroes, but who departs from them in that he is more philosophical than most of Howard’s creations, and perhaps in many ways best speaks to Howard’s personality and philosophy.

Much of the discussion of Esau Cairn and of Almuric hinges on what I call the WWCD? Issue: ‘What Would Conan Do?’ in the modern world. That topic has been exhaustively covered by the discussion threads of the Robert E. Howard Society, and several interpretations have been postulated. To me, the importance of Esau Cairn as a character is that he gives voice to Howard’s own frustration at being a man of action trapped in a relatively genteel world.

Howard wrote, in “The Tower of the Elephant,” “Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.” Cairn bears out that rule when his barbarism rises to the surface and he kills a corrupt politician (perhaps rightfully so) with a single blow to the head.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Solar Pons & Cthulhu?

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Solar Pons & Cthulhu?

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PonsCthulhu_CthulhuTo the extent that August Derleth’s name is famliar to most Black Gaters, it’s in relation to his major role in the Cthulhu Mythos. I’ve read a fair amount of H.P. Lovecraft, but frankly, his stuff creeps me out and I’m not too into those stories: nor the ones by other authors – for the same reason. Of course, I am a devotee of Derleth’s Sherlock Holmes-like Solar Pons tales. Within the Pontine Canon, one can find an emerald thread…

Luther Norris was, is and will certainly remain the foremost Ponsian of them all. In his introduction to The Memoirs of Solar Pons, he points out that Pons has a wider range of interests than Holmes, using the titles of their published monographs as his foundation. Now, we can certainly take issue with Norris’ statement that “Holmes..has little concern for topics not related to his ‘little problems.’”

I do not believe that the polyphonic motets of Lassus had anything to do with one of Holmes’ cases. And it’s quite likely that his monograph on the Chaldean roots in the ancient Cornish language was not work-related. However, the majority of his writings were on topics useful to his career as a consulting detective, so we will agree with Norris in principle.

Norris points to two monographs as examples of Pons’ more varied interests: “An Inquiry into the Nan-Natal Ruins of Ponapae” (1905) and “An Examination of the Cthulhu Cult and Others” (1931). The context of Norris’ discussion implies that these are non work-related topics. It is this point regarding the latter that we are addressing.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: A Pair of Holmeses Named Alan

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: A Pair of Holmeses Named Alan

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Napier_Napier2In 1937, Holmes made his first appearance on American television in The National Broadcasting Corps’ rendition of The Three Garridebs, starring Louis Hector. Regular television service from NBC hadn’t even begun yet when this test show was transmitted and it’s likely few people saw it. Sadly, I’m only aware of one picture taken from a television screen, though I believe someone in the industry once told me there are other stills in the archives. There’s certainly no belief an actual recording of the broadcast exists!

In 1949, CBS aired a series of 30-minute literary adaptations in the Your Show Time program. The tenth episode was The Speckled Band, starring Alan Napier as Holmes. Napier was certainly a stuffy, stiff detective, with a bit of Raymond Massey (Holmes in a 1931 film of the same story) and Leonard Nimoy in his look.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: How George Raft Made Bogie a Star

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: How George Raft Made Bogie a Star

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Raft_BogaratLast week, we talked a lot about Humphrey Bogart as we roamed around The Maltese Falcon. And I had already done a post on Bogie’s only horror-sci fi film, The Return of Doctor X. Today, I’m going to talk about one of my favorite aspects of Bogart’s career. In the annals of Hollywood, never has one actor so torpedoed his own career, while making another actor a star at the same time. Let’s take a look, shall we?

George Raft grew up in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, where he was a childhood friend of Owney Madden, who would become a powerful mobster in the days of Prohibition. Raft toyed with being a boxer and then taught himself to dance, hitting it big in Vaudeville in the early twenties. At the same time, he hung out with professional gangsters, gaining access to them through his friendship with Downey. He studied how they walked and talked, and mastered the ability to imitate them.

After appearing in a few films as a dancer, Raft broke through in 1932. Long before Rod Steiger and Al Pacino played Capone roles, Paul Muni made a classic gangster film: Scarface – Shame of a Nation. Raft had a part as Rinaldo, a coin-flipping gunman. Emulating the men he knew, he received strong reviews for his performance.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Stuff That Dreams are Made of

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Stuff That Dreams are Made of

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Much of my hard boiled knowledge came from Black Lizard's editions of the classics.Last week marked the 86th anniversary of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon in book form. It had been serialized the year before in the pages of Black Mask Magazine. Hammett gets my vote for best writer of the hard-boiled genre. And I am quite the fan of Red Harvest (the uncredited source for Bruce Willis’ under-appreciated gangster film, Last Man Standing) and of the Continental Op stories (well worth reading). But I happen to think that The Maltese Falcon is the best private eye novel yet to be written. Period.

Sam Spade (who looked like a blonde Satan) also appeared in three short stories, which I wrote about in a prior post here at Black Gate. Sadly, they aren’t particularly memorable and definitely aren’t in the upper half of Hammett’s works. In 2009, Joe Gores wrote Spade and Archer, an authorized prequel. I love Gores’ Daniel Kearney Associates series of books, but I’m still saving this Sam Spade gem for a future read.

A great deal has been written about Hammett’s novel and about Spade himself, including William Maynard’s post here. It’s certainly worthy of a post all by itself. But I’m going to focus on the media Falcon: specifically the third of three filmed versions. It’s far and away the best known and I’m guessing that many people who haven’t actually read the book have seen the movie.

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