The Inside Scoop on Gaming

As with all of my other reviews, there is spoiler information to be found below, so if you are a member of a posse and you want to let your Marshal keep his surprises, you can just mosey on.....

Major Strengths: RVC contains 44 new beasties for your posse to slap leather against.

Other strengths: The book also includes rules for animal companions (Trigger, Comet, Lassie, Old Yeller' etc.). RVC also has the stats for several staple normal animals like the wolf, scorpion, and Texas longhorn that were missing from the main book.

And it contains some very good tips on how to scare your posse and run your creature encounters in a more effective manner.

The book also divided the monsters into two sections, dividing the monster between eyewitness accounts of the creature, and the game stats. It makes for a better read if you are just reading the descriptions of the monsters.

Major Weaknesses: While I called it a strength, splitting up the monster descriptions was also a major weakness. It was quite annoying to flip back and forth throughout the book to get the full description of the monsters. The majority of the time the critter profile (Marshal section) just duplicated the information in the bestiary (front section) and then tacked on the monster stats. Occasionally the critter profile didn't include all of the information that was in the bestiary. The split doesn't even allow me to give handouts to my players. I found that the bestiary descriptions were almost always too accurate and gave away all of the weaknesses of the monster in question. Also to use the bestiary as a handout would require either me cutting up the book or photocopying. Cutting up my book would not allow me to hand out individual monster data due to two sided printing and such a mass photocopying would probably be frowned on by the nice folks at Pinnacle. (and the black on grey format would be a hindrance to photocopying as well).

Other Weaknesses: Familiarity breeds contempt. While there were some great monsters in there (Ghost Train, Two Faces and Pox Walker immediately come to mind), the majority of the monsters suffer from familiarity in one of two ways. The first are the monsters that are straight from legend (Headless Horseman and Scarecrow, for example) or from other well known sources. X-files and bad Sci-Fi being prevalent, as was mentioned earlier on the listserv. The second way that they suffer from familiarity is that most of the monsters are treated as species and not as unique encounters. The unknown is scary. The second time you encounter something it is familiar and you've killed it before, been there, done that, head mounted on the wall, got the t-shirt, etc.... The Mojave rattler is a good reason why species are not conducive to terror. The general advice when dealing with a 70 foot long worm is to throw dynamite and/or run like hell. The whole Weird West knows about them and while there is fear involved in dealing with one (it is a 70 foot long armored man eater), there is no terror there. My advice - never reuse a monster, unless it's in a whole new context. (Dread wolf tracks you say. Remember the fight that was in it that last time? Well, where's this one going?.... Whadda ya mean, pack of 'em? More then six..... one of them larger then a man.... )

RVC introduces yet another good guy organization. There are now no less then seven groups spread over six books devoted to hunting down evil and exterminating it (eight and seven if you want to count possible Garou crossovers). And that's not including any religious organizations - I suspect that the upcoming Fire and Brimstone book will contribute to the number of monster hunter groups out there. While I certainly do not have to use all of these groups, they have been written up and need to be addressed by Pinnacle in the future, because someone will be using them. I understand that it is a wide and complex world, but just as too many cooks spoil the soup, too many protagonists spoil the story. And good guy organizations just don't quite feel "Wild West" to me, nor does it convey a horror theme very well. Isolation is terrifying. Belonging to a group hunting evil turns you into another bug hunter, uniform optional.

Trivials: The comments by Nicholas Tevalyan (NT) was irritating. They seemed there, not so much as to add to the flavor but to even out the page count so that the editors could have neat divisions in the monster descriptions. His comments can usually be summed up as "Been there, killed that, head mounted on the wall, etc.." His "advice" to adventures was also annoying - "shoot it... shoot it some more..... get some dynamite....if that doesn't work, get a mage...." That's been the standard formula for my posse since day one, and it's the formula they have been carrying since the D&D days.

I'm still waffling on the Living Legends (Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill). They should not have appeared in a horror game and they seem to go against the whole point of the reckoning - which is that magic returned to the world to spread fear. Living legends inspire. But, I LIKE the stories of Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill and they certainly needed to be discussed somewhere. RVC is as good a spot as any.

Additional notes. The monsters in this book were mostly player submissions. That explains the lack of focus and connection to the deeper plots that I felt while I was reading the book. Pinnacle has announced it's intention to do an in-house only monster manual later on.

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 3 (Average)

Rascals, Varmints, and Critters
Author: Player submissions, Editors: Hal Mangold and Matt Forbeck Category: game Company/Publisher: Pinnacle Entertainment Group Cost: $20.00 Page count: 128 ISBN: 1-889546-06-2 Playtest Review by Allan Seyberth on 04/21/98. Genre tags: none	As with all of my other reviews, there is spoiler information to be found below, so if you are a member of a posse and you want to let your Marshal keep his surprises, you can just mosey on..... Major Strengths: RVC contains 44 new beasties for your posse to slap leather against. Other strengths: The book also includes rules for animal companions (Trigger, Comet, Lassie, Old Yeller' etc.). RVC also has the stats for several staple normal animals like the wolf, scorpion, and Texas longhorn that were missing from the main book. And it contains some very good tips on how to scare your posse and run your creature encounters in a more effective manner. The book also divided the monsters into two sections, dividing the monster between eyewitness accounts of the creature, and the game stats. It makes for a better read if you are just reading the descriptions of the monsters. Major Weaknesses: While I called it a strength, splitting up the monster descriptions was also a major weakness. It was quite annoying to flip back and forth throughout the book to get the full description of the monsters. The majority of the time the critter profile (Marshal section) just duplicated the information in the bestiary (front section) and then tacked on the monster stats. Occasionally the critter profile didn't include all of the information that was in the bestiary. The split doesn't even allow me to give handouts to my players. I found that the bestiary descriptions were almost always too accurate and gave away all of the weaknesses of the monster in question. Also to use the bestiary as a handout would require either me cutting up the book or photocopying. Cutting up my book would not allow me to hand out individual monster data due to two sided printing and such a mass photocopying would probably be frowned on by the nice folks at Pinnacle. (and the black on grey format would be a hindrance to photocopying as well). Other Weaknesses: Familiarity breeds contempt. While there were some great monsters in there (Ghost Train, Two Faces and Pox Walker immediately come to mind), the majority of the monsters suffer from familiarity in one of two ways. The first are the monsters that are straight from legend (Headless Horseman and Scarecrow, for example) or from other well known sources. X-files and bad Sci-Fi being prevalent, as was mentioned earlier on the listserv. The second way that they suffer from familiarity is that most of the monsters are treated as species and not as unique encounters. The unknown is scary. The second time you encounter something it is familiar and you've killed it before, been there, done that, head mounted on the wall, got the t-shirt, etc.... The Mojave rattler is a good reason why species are not conducive to terror. The general advice when dealing with a 70 foot long worm is to throw dynamite and/or run like hell. The whole Weird West knows about them and while there is fear involved in dealing with one (it is a 70 foot long armored man eater), there is no terror there. My advice - never reuse a monster, unless it's in a whole new context. (Dread wolf tracks you say. Remember the fight that was in it that last time? Well, where's this one going?.... Whadda ya mean, pack of 'em? More then six..... one of them larger then a man.... ) RVC introduces yet another good guy organization. There are now no less then seven groups spread over six books devoted to hunting down evil and exterminating it (eight and seven if you want to count possible Garou crossovers). And that's not including any religious organizations - I suspect that the upcoming Fire and Brimstone book will contribute to the number of monster hunter groups out there. While I certainly do not have to use all of these groups, they have been written up and need to be addressed by Pinnacle in the future, because someone will be using them. I understand that it is a wide and complex world, but just as too many cooks spoil the soup, too many protagonists spoil the story. And good guy organizations just don't quite feel "Wild West" to me, nor does it convey a horror theme very well. Isolation is terrifying. Belonging to a group hunting evil turns you into another bug hunter, uniform optional. Trivials: The comments by Nicholas Tevalyan (NT) was irritating. They seemed there, not so much as to add to the flavor but to even out the page count so that the editors could have neat divisions in the monster descriptions. His comments can usually be summed up as "Been there, killed that, head mounted on the wall, etc.." His "advice" to adventures was also annoying - "shoot it... shoot it some more..... get some dynamite....if that doesn't work, get a mage...." That's been the standard formula for my posse since day one, and it's the formula they have been carrying since the D&D days. I'm still waffling on the Living Legends (Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill). They should not have appeared in a horror game and they seem to go against the whole point of the reckoning - which is that magic returned to the world to spread fear. Living legends inspire. But, I LIKE the stories of Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill and they certainly needed to be discussed somewhere. RVC is as good a spot as any. Additional notes. The monsters in this book were mostly player submissions. That explains the lack of focus and connection to the deeper plots that I felt while I was reading the book. Pinnacle has announced it's intention to do an in-house only monster manual later on. Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 3 (Average)

Rascals, Varmints, and Critters