OSR Review & Commentary On Subsector Sourcebook: Ashima By John Watts For The Earth Sector rpg

 "Is this where you meet your fate?

Ashima Subsector is named for a Semitic goddess of fate and, like all the subsectors in Earth Sector, the names were given long before anyone went into these areas much less settled them. However, here, the name has been rather appropriate. 

Originally, most thought that the Argentinians would end up dominating this subsector, but that was not to be.  Others thought the United States might move aggressively into the
subsector, but that never happened.  Some thought Nigeria would do the same as would Australia but, in the end, nine of the systems of Ashima Subsector would remain independent.  Argentina, the United States, Australia, and Nigeria each hold only one system while Israel, a late arrival to interstellar colonization, holds four."

"Ashima Subsector is a mix of colonies held by nation-states and independent worlds.  Often used as a gateway into the Sacrament Sector frontier, many still come to the subsector for opportunity."

"Filled with system maps, world maps, and physical data for each world, this book is a treasure trove of information for Referees who want to take their Earth Sector adventures further afield or for those who simply want a variety of worlds for their uses. Government, legal, cultural, and population details will assist the Referee in painting a picture of each world for their players.""

 Subsector Sourcebook: Ashima By John Watts For The Earth Sector rpg is the latest in the Earth sector rpg line of books. Everyone seems to forget just how cut throat the Earth sector is.  Subsector Sourcebook: Ashima does an excellent job of reminding the player's PC's just how cut throat and dire the colonial process is. Earth sector unlike other colonial entities is a combination of nation states supported by mega corporations for thier colonies. This creates deadly competition and sometimes outright warfare among these entities. 

 Subsector Sourcebook: Ashima has some great power plays between Isreal,  Argentina, the United States, Australia, and Nigeria colonies. These colonial worlds are varied and very well done. The writing of John Watts is tight and well done. We get a snap shot of each and every world along with it's meshing of the interstellar politics. These politics overlap and influence the Earth sector as well because it takes a lot of cash to support these colonies. 

This presents plenty of opportunities for spacers and adventurers to take full advantage of these colonies for shipping of passengers, gear, food, equipment, and more. There's plenty of trouble to be had as well because these worlds are highly dangerous and full of trouble. 
Is  Subsector Sourcebook: Ashima By John Watts worth getting?! In a word,' Oh yes!' especially if your into the Earth sector like myself. This Subsector sourcebook brings a lot to the table with plenty of new colonial worlds, factions, and opportunties for adventures. At one hundred and twenty three pages it doesn't overstate it's contents and brings fresh Earth sector goodness to the table top of a 2d6 

OSR Commentary On Flames of Doom MX4 By David 'Zeb' Cook For Marvel Super Heroes Advanced Rpg

 "Citizens of North America!" "It is your right to live free of fear! It is your right to choose your future! Do not support the evil work of an illegal government!" "The end of the Terror is at hand. Humans and mutants alike are rising up against the criminal agents who have usurped the rightful positions and duties of our government. Now is the time to strike! Only guns can free mankind!" "The Canadian Resistance Army is your ally. Strike down the Sentinels! It can be done!" --by order of Nick Fury, commander, Canadian Resistant Army It's no longer a game."

" It's not a fight for survival. It's not even hitting back at those who have hurt you. Now, it's all-out war. You have the chance to go from hunted mutant to leader of the revolution. Are you up to the challenge? How does the future end? Here is your chance to shape the world in the image you want. This adventure presents the end of a nightmare future, the fourth in the MX series of giant robotic mutant hunters versus super-powered resistance fighters. Can you prevail over the forces of tyranny and evil? Can you face the Flames of Doom?"  This blog entry picks right up from our coverage of MX3 Reap The Whirlwind. 

Flames of Doom MX4 By David 'Zeb' Cook is the fourth module in the series and the one where things got seriously weird for our group during the early Nineties. Flames of Doom appeared in Eighty Seven and acts as a bookend for the Nightmares of Future Past series. Make no mistake events, things, and sentinels are desparate. According to the Flames of Doom Wiki entry which has an adventure plot break down; " In the adventure, Mystique has become aware of the player characters, and sends the Sentinels to kill them. If this fails, Mystique meets the characters in disguise, and sets up an ambush. If this fails, Mystique offers a cease-fire in order to safeguard civilian lives if the characters will join her cause. If the characters reject her cease-fire, she declares all-out war." 

The USA is under Sentinel control but the Resistence has a plan involving the Iron Man armor. And the PC's are in the middle of it. Bear in mind that by this time our party of adventurers had been deeply involved in this campaign. We had been running resistence operations, blowing up Sentinel factories, running mutants through the underground. Flames of Doom has the PC's literally turning the war on it's ear. The PC's are the movers and shakers here. 
And this also means that the PC's are in the crosshairs and the sentinels as well as the Resistence.Even if the Resistence wins there's going to be decades of rebuilding of the world. And this means years of playablility & we went for another two years of actual Marvel Super Heroes Rpg Advanced play. 
David 'Zeb' Cook keeps his writing tight and the world building high with lots and lots of details on the Canandian Resistence, the Sentinel control zones, and more. Attitudes & reviews  towards this module go mostly postive; "  In The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games, Rick Swan called the Marvel Super Heroes game "a smooth introduction to role-playing for fans of the comics, and as such it's an qualified success." Swan went on to highly recommend Flames of Doom and the other adventures in the Future in Flames series, noting they "feature a future Earth where super-powered mutants are hunted down and imprisoned in camps." However, Swan warned that this adventure was not for the faint-hearted but rather for "ambitious players.""  We did a Hell of a lot with the Nightmares of Future Past series of modules from preventing the release of Sentinel Prime in the past, too taking out pockets of Human Supremecy cells, and taking out desparate mutant Resistence revenge weapons. 

Intergang Cash Out! -- Ascendant Rpg - Session Report

 During tonight's game it was a question of closing in on some of the cartel informants following last week's Ascendant rpg session. This week found our group of Dreadnaught Security specialists exchanging power armored mayhem through several small shops and offices downtown. This was after Intergang's sniper armored operatives were trying to pick off three of our guys last week

Our speedster Silver Streak made short work of the sniper armor and then took down the bigger bruisers waiting in the shadows! The forces of Intergang weren't done by a long chalk as they went about breaking into the local Bluddville museum,bank, and a credit union. Something's up because they've been wanting something really badly & our party isn't letting them have it. We simply brought the Intergang operatives back to the neighborhood scheduled for demolition and then brought it down on thier heads! Literally.  

We left them for Dreadnaught Security pick up later on! We want the cartel that hired them and feel that all of this stems back to events from Capital City Casefiles #2: Served Cold

Debts of Honor & Cash - Part II - Trey Causey's Strange Stars - Session Report

 We pick right up from part I of the last session with our party having going on a series of  trucking and cargo runs to get our former party member out of debt. During these runs we did a bit of trading along the way at the hyperspace gate waystations. 

Our group came across two blasters that were from Old Earth's United Planets & therefore very rare. The trader had a map to ship laden with treasure from the same empire. We bargained our trade goods and some fire gems for the map. 
We were able to secure the map for a small fee and then transmitted our completing the cargo run for the debter. We knew that our friend would soon be freed of his debt so it was time to take a quick VR trip to the local representive of the Library of Atoz-Theln about map. The representive didn't want payment per say but a favor back on Circus for the library. They varified the interstellar map being legit and from an earlier time period. This might be a rare coup. 
We ended the session here and then for the next five days I came down with whatever form of the 'plague' was going around. I was in bed & got very sick. As quickly as I came down I recovered! 

OSR Commentary On The Darker Rpg By The Red Room Crew

 My Red Room Wretched rpg campaign dried up several weeks ago due to scheduling conflicts with two of my players who are long haul truck drivers. That's scheduling conflict has changed & the second thing that's changed is the fact that all of the players are on board. 

The third thing that's changed is that I now have a 'working copy' of the Darker rpg to use at the table top level. The Darker rpg clicks almost all of my my boxes; "Darker is a contemporary mature horror RPG, OSR-compatible, challenging you to confront themes of faith, morality, and the human condition amidst escalating supernatural peril. Face the true nature of Good and Evil, moral erosion, and humanity’s decline, investigate modern-day horrors hidden behind a façade of normalcy and tackle contemporary issues like corporate power, ideological grooming, and the erosion of traditional values."  Darker rpg 'Red rpg system is kinda close to a B/X Dungeons & Dragons that's been expanded. 
The basic themes of Darker is that God is gone & no one sits on Heaven's Throne. Monsters & demons roam the Earth taking victims at will.  Spirits & gods carved out the planes of Heavens into their own planes. The various occult  factions of Earth are carving humanity up like a Christmas turkeys. Here come the PC's as do gooders & anti heroes just as creepy and dangerous as the foes they face. 
In our own Darker rpg campaign we had a local Tempus Fugit cult has been abducting children & offering them to the Machinatores. The cult's cybermancer's have been opening a portal under the direction of the Machinatores.. All of this is taking place in a rundown tenament building in New York.This portal connects both New York City and Avilidad with a fascimile of the building existing in both places because of the portal. This allows travel between the two places. 
The Machinatores are taking the kids for an unknown purpose while showering the cult with high end technology. Within the building are two laboratories within the tenament to try and analize them. 
The Machinatores guard thier portal with Scarri black monsterous asssassins. These assassins are used as terror weapons against the cult's enemies. The Machinatores are breaking down the local space time continuum & reality anchors to allow the Underworld to gain a foot hold. The PC's have been called in by the parents of one of the missing kids because they fear something sinister is happening. 

OSR Commentary On Reap the Whirlwind (MX3) By Caroline and Warren Spector For Marvel Super Heroes Advanced Rpg

 ""You've been hounded by jack-booted, white-shirted vigilantes. You've been hunted by killer robots."

"You've lived like an animal."
You've had enough.
Now it's time for mutants to fight back, time for the hunted to become the hunters. You've learned to survive, to thrive, by striking from the shadows. A thrust here. A blow there.
Now word has begun to circulate of a mutant with power enough to frighten the sentinels ... of equipment which can give mutants a fighting chance against their oppressors ... of a man with a vision, a vision of a mutant army capable of overwhelming any foe.
You'll strike like a whirlwind and reap what you can. Your lives will never be the same.
The thought appeals to you."

 Reap the Whirlwind (MX3) By Caroline and Warren Spector For Marvel Super Heroes Advanced Rpg amps up the themes & tone of the other modules that we've covered in this series to eleven. The PC's are at the center of the Resistence & come in as experienced operators & agents. The plot according too the MX3 Reap The Whirlwind wiki entry goes something like this;"In Reap the Whirlwind, the player characters must find and free a mutant woman whose power allows her to mask her mutant abilities as well as the abilities of mutants near her from Sentinels. The woman, Gilda Ginsel, was accidentally captured by a Sentinel and is being sent to a research facility where her power will be unmasked unless she is rescued. Once the player characters have freed Gilda, they must make take her to the relative safety of Canada via an Underground Railway, where they will meet up with Nick Fury and Wolverine." 
Make no mistake MX3 Reap The Whirlwind is a campaign module in every sense of the word. Not only are the PC's embroiled in Underground Railroad for mutants smuggling into Canada. But they find themselves  taken to the Canadian headquarters of Stark Enterprises, and have to fight off a cross-border raid by Sentinels.Then there's also the mini adventure in which the PC's have to join a mutant army down in Texas to overwhelm the local Sentinels! 
 Reap the Whirlwind (MX3) is a campaign module in which the world & campaign of Nightmares of Future's Past come vividly alive. The PC's are heavily invested in & a part of this world. They are a party to the future of this Earth in every sense of the word. The MX series of modules isn't for the faint of heart and are highly flexible. Even if the Resistence wins there's going to be decades of rebuilding of the world. 
Are the Future in Flames series modules worth the download especially MX3 Reap The Whirlwind? According to the module's wiki entry;"In The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games, Rick Swan recommended Reap the Whirlwind and the entire "Future in Flames" series as an excellent introduction to the super hero genre, but warned that these adventures were for "ambitious players."" 
We were one group of  "ambitious players." back in '91 or so. We took our PC's and played for through months of operations, assignments, sabotage, heroics and more in order too thwart the Sentinels. We lost a ton of PC's through this series of module but they were a blast. 

Things Among The Oort Cloud - Hostile Rpg Session Report

 At the edge of the Oort Cloud a giant radio telescope has been tethered on a super Earth near the Tyche gas giant. The Eye is a massive radio telescope &  joint collboration between three of the largest mining mega corporations. The Eye is  used to search large swaths of the galaxy for worlds with large swaths of natural resources. The mining mega corporations funded the Eye at the end of the Second Recession. The PC's are playing guard dogs to the exploratory science team.  This blog post picks right up from here on the blog. 

Randy's World is a large super Earth that has an unusually dense alien jungle eco system with tons of alien prehistoric lifeforms. The PC's are exploring a desert section of Randy's World & have found something interesting. There are scattered alien ruins & odd foundations in the middle of the desert. There is also a series of ponds & catch basins filled with organic liquids. These catch basins are surrounded by weird plants that appear no place else on the planet.
 What's really going on?! The fen is actually the holding point for the Things From Another world. There is a nearby hyperspatial gateway that leads to other points at the edge of the galaxy. The party hasn't investigated past the planet's natural resources and just learned about the ruins tonight.