I wouldn’t normally go out of my way to watch Never Back Down but it happened to be on a movie channel and there was utter shit on TV so I figured what the heck. 

This is essentially a modern take on the Karate Kid story.  A troubled youth hooks up with the wise master to overcome the bully.  In this case, instead of karate the fighting style of choice is based more on MMA–though the fights in the movie have far more flare than real MMA fighting.

The story is pretty straight forward and doesn’t get bogged down too much in teenage drama.  It feels similar to something that you could see in a show like ‘The OC’ or most other current teenage-centric drama’s on TV.  But fortunately, it just moves the movie along from fight to fight and it’s not all up in your grill or full of angst.  Parts of it almost come off as believable.  The acting is pretty standard fare for a movie full of TV actors and doesn’t excite or disappoint. It’s right down the middle and watchable.

So that leaves us with the fight scenes. I have to say, I rather enjoyed the fight scenes.  Yes they were rather choreographed, but they looked good, the camera stayed back far enough so you could see the action and it was only at the end that they put in a cheesie CGI effect to show some bones breaking.

I (and my wife) found ourselves shocked to admit that all in all it was a pretty good little flick.  One that we’d actually have no problem sitting through again, like a favourite episode of a TV show.

On a side note the good guy had a young Tom Cruise thing going on and the bad guy did a pretty good, Brad Pitt from Fight Club.  They were fun to watch on screen.

I’d actually go so far to say that if you like that style of movie, this one is worth watching.  It’s worth the price of the rental and makes a good popcorn flick.

3 out of 5

But wait, there’s more!

I typically hate most of the ‘how do you….’ chapters in most rpg’s.  I find them to be typically pointless because of the redundancy or to not really offer anything of significance to anything but the most newbish of players.

I’m not saying Reign is truly ground breaking in this respect, but it did do one thing rather well in my opinion in this chapter.  They did a good job of describing what goes into making a good character to work within a group.   They stressed that it’s better to have 4 other players looking out for the well being of your character instead of having 5 individuals only looking out for themselves.

It also goes on to talk about why it’s a good idea to have a rounded party and not a group of ultimate ass kicking machines.  There are some pretty stereotypical examples given to support it, but they fit well.   Such as a group of stealthy thieves may be fantastic at getting into the casstle – but kinda limited with what you can do from there.  Or how a group of Southsayers could predict the future with pinpoint accuracy – but would be powerless to stop it.  Rather obvious examples, but worth pointing out specially for newbs.

Another rather interesting read in this section was the reinforcement of having the GM’s campaign ideas and the players expectations on the same page.  We’ve mentioned that several times in the podcast but it was nice to see it worded rather plainly.  They don’t get into the concept of contracts or anything like that just the concept.

Again nothing here in this chapter is ground breaking or new.  But it was one of the few books I’ve read that treated the general subject of character, group and campaign expectations well.   It didn’t go over and over on how to be a good GM (that could be later in the book though) it was a nice several page bit on group cohesion concepts plain and simple.

If you would like to discuss this, please visit the forums.

I’ve been waiting for a good long while to get my hands on Reign, primarily because I couldn’t bring myself to paying the ridiculous amounts I’d have to pay for shipping through the various Print on Demand services. Fortunately this year Fraser managed to snag me a copy at Gencon.

Now I haven’t really even dented the surface of the game, but what I’ve read so far my expectations are being met. The ORE engine used in Reign is easily the best take on it yet. Not so much that it’s really different from Godlike or Nemesis. But they’ve done a much better job of explaining the system. The biggest problem I’ve always seen before in ORE is that it’s typically seen as most other rpg’s where you frequently call for dice rolls. The ORE doesn’t work well under those systems and it’s better suited to only make story driven rolls where there is some significance to the roll.

A Painter can paint – it’s assumed. No need to make a roll. However if the quality of the painting being offered to a king could mean the painters death then you roll. No it’s not rules light – god no. There are a lot of rules and ways to interprit situations. However the core system itself is very streamlined. Your figure out your pool (Strength + Climb for example) and make your roll. Pretty simple. The complexity comes in when you are dealing with opossed roll situations and how you interprit those rolls. Does your opponents better roll, stop you or does it mearly alter your initial intent etc…

Combat uses the same system but there is more complexity to it involving various types of attacks, defense and timing between attacks. For example a fast, but sloppy attack may be more difficult to block then a well placed, but slower attack, things like that.

The special power mechanic has a familiarity to those in Exalted or to the magic like abilities in D20′s Book of Nine Swords. You have esoteric levels of skills that go beyond what just a normal person could do.

I haven’t touched on the magis system yet either, but it seems to be a little more open ended with types of elements you can control and the level at which you can control them.

Of course one of the biggest draws of Reign is the Company aspect. In which your character is one part of a larger group that all the players can control. I haven’t started getting into this section yet either as I want to give it the attention it deserves.

As I read more I’ll post more. But so far from what I’ve read and skimmed it’s definitely a solid product. I’d certainly recommend it to anyone. But the whole POD method of getting it really is a pisser. I think if this game was more readily available in stores it’d be a much bigger hit then it is through internet word of mouth.

Originally published on my blog.

Though I spoke to a few publishers at GenCon, the only ones to provide review copies were the publishers with whom I didn’t do interviews. I find that really odd. Two of the three interviews did offer PDF review copies of their print books, but only after I asked if review copies were available. It might be because the Accidental Survivors aren’t known in those circles, though Chris Pramas at Green Ronin was free enough with the review copy once he learned we were podcasters.

And that is great, because I’ve been doing some reading of True 20, Revised Edition. There’ll be a review proper on the podcast, of course, but I just wanted to fire off a quick note and give the True 20 team a big two thumbs up. I’ve been a big Conan RPG (derived from d20), and that remains my choice for gritty, sword & sorcery type games, but True 20 in its fantasy form looks perfect for heroic fantasy, even low-magic. The three base classes (adept, expert, warrior) along with the heroic character archetypes (like champion, mentor, trickster and many more) is pretty near perfect.

But for my modern games, I’m thinking a synthesis of Modern20 and True 20 (TM20 anyone?). I prefer the ability based classes (call it Dedicated Hero or Empath, whatever), and the use of Backgrounds, Occupations and Hobbies M20 offers, but the mechanics of T20, especially the damage track, would work for everything but the most granular of game moments.

The damage track initially threw me. The more I thought about it though, the more I realized hit points don’t do anything differently. True, by decreasing by points rather than by sections, they are more–her comes that word again–granular, but is that really necessary? I usually graft on injury rules in order to replicate degrading abilities due to damage. The damage track does that automatically. It also allows for one-shot kills, though this is very, very difficult. M20‘s called shot system will help with that.

Something to note, most of the rules are available in the Pocket Player’s Guide. I asked, and the rules there are apparently the same as in the Revised, just that the explanations have been updated, so that is always an option. The cool thing about the Revised rule book are the options for adapting True 20 to fantasy, horror, sci-fi and modern. As mentioned above, I especially like the fantasy archetypes and their interaction with the three basic classes. The information for the other genres is also pretty good.

I’m a fan. Now I just have to find a group to play my new favouritest game with me!

Just when you thought it was safe to go to Indianapolis . . . oh, wait, it is safe now, since the Accidental Survivors have left the building. And by building I mean the convention centre which hosted GenCon. But even though the Survivors are gone, their thoughts remain.

Possibly forever.

Now that’s frightening to consider.

From IMDB: “John Hancock (Will Smith) is an unhappy and reluctant superhero who is living in his own world. For some unknown reason, Hancock is depressed and has started drinking very heavily. He has saved many lives in Los Angles over the years, but in doing so, he has no regards for damaging buildings, trains, roads, cars, or anything that gets in his way to get the job done. The last time he captured several criminals, it cost the city $9 million to fix the damages. The public has had enough of Hancock, and they want him to stop or go to another city. Then one day, Hancock saves the life of Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman) from being run over by a train. Ray is a Public Relations executive who now can go home to his wife and child, because Hancock was there. Ray owes Hancock his life, and he makes it his mission to change his superhero’s image and have the public cheering him. Ray’s wife, Mary (Charlize Theron), believes Hancock can not be fixed, and she doesn’t want Ray to be hurt.”

Despite some less then favorable reviews I rather enjoyed this movie. I wouldn’t recommend it to younger kids, but it’d make a pretty good date movie.

Hancock (played by Will Smith) is a drunk Superhero that has a huge PR problem. When he inadvertently saves a PR rep the rep pays him back by helping to boost his ego. Of course it wouldn’t be a movie without a few little twists towards the second half. But they all (I thought) played out well and didn’t disrupt the story in anyway.

The acting wasn’t out of the world, but Will Smith did a good job of playing a burned out superhero Justin Bateman I always enjoy in whatever role his in and Charlize Theron did a good job as well playing off both Smith and Bateman.

The action scenes were solid and looked good and they kept to the physics of the world well so nothing really felt out of place. They mixed in some good little comedy moments to pass the time and the movie didn’t lag at all from beginning to end.

Overall I’d rate this a 3.5 out of 5. It was enjoyable the first time through, but nothing I’d really need to add to my DVD collection.