Radioactive Review: 'Carnosaur' (1984)

 

Going through more of my own personal stash of Paperbacks From Hell.

Read it as a wee one circa 1985-ish, and thought I'd give it another gander.

(Y'all know by now I loves me some dinosaurs, so will spare the usual navel-gazish rambling.  And OF COURSE y'all are aware Jurassic Park hit the stands in 1990.)

—

Like Thomas Hobbes' "State Of Nature" and Billy Barty on a bender, Carnosaur is nasty, brutish, and short.  It's a lean 214 pages, and the exploitative pulp is exploitatively pulpy enough (despite a nigh-dinosaur-less middle slog).

Starts promisingly, as a "scythe-like middle claw opened up [him] from neck to groin before he even realized what was happening" by Page 4.  (The him in question is an unpleasant, misogynistic farmer who catches a critter in his chicken coop.)

On Page 5, his aggrieved wife sees "something out of a nightmare.  It was all teeth and claws and it was eating him... the monster pushed its snout into her husband's open stomach and tore out a length of intestine."  She dies via heart attack.

Later on Page 5, there's some backseat statutory rape; by Pages 7-8, there's a headless, unpleasant lothario and an unpleasant head-crashed-into-a-tree jailbait.

Whew!  And that mayhem was all inflicted by the same beastie!

—

Flip the page, and we meet the ostensible protagonist, one David Pascal: an unpleasant, misogynistic reporter yearning for His One Big Break to escape the sleepy English hamlet of Warchester, England.

He gets to investigatin' the mysterious deaths, presumably caused by a rogue tiger from unpleasant local aristocrat-slash-captain of industry-slash big game hunter Sir Darren Penward's manor menagerie.

Cue some stuffy politics and corrupt-ish law enforcement, which is blessedly interrupted by more mysterious monster mayhem on Pages 31-33:  a dead little girl ("[She] died instantly, her skull completely crushed."), a dead pony, and a dead mom ("The cruel, razor-sharp middle claw slashed through [her] neck and deep into her chest.  She was already dead by the time her body fell backwards onto the blood-soaked hay.")

Again, all the same critter!  Thang gets around.

Now onto the slog.

There's more politicking.

There's Jenny, Pascal's fetching ex who is both a better journalist and, unpleasantly, a doormat for his nonsense.

There's a scummy plan for Our Hero to seduce Lady Jane (Penward's unpleasant, nymphomaniacal-in-a-judgy-way wife) to gain access to the menagerie.  The graphic fellatio makes it more unseemly.

There's Pascal's break-in to the compound zoo.

And finally, on Page 94, action resumes.  Those are a lonnnnngggg dinosaur-less sixty-something pages.

—

Pascal gets captured.

Penward, a lifelong dino-fanatic, monologues on Pages 109-110 about his demented Master Plan that involves cloning dinos via extracted-from-fossils-DNA merged with chicken embryos.

Crichton Knew A Good Idea When He Heard It...

Going to put it here in its entirety, because it's GLORIOUS.

"I intend to re-establish the dinosaur on earth, Mr Pascal.  I intend to release dinosaurs into the wild in [remote properties in Africa, Australia, Canada, New Zealand].  I am giving the greatest animals that ever lived a second chance.  And then we will see who is the rightful victor in the struggle between mammals and dinosaurs."

[insert Pascal's protestations here]

"People don't interest me, Mr Pascal.  There are too many of them on this planet as it is.  They... are like some awful vermin that has spread out over the world leaving filth and pollution everywhere.  As far as I'm concerned, they are one of nature's failed experiments.  It is time they went."

[insert Pascal's confidence that Man's technology, like "cannons and guided missiles", will defeat dinos here]

"Man's technology is about to run amok, Mr Pascal.  I predict an atomic war, either by accident or design, within a few years.  It is inevitable.  And when the pieces settle, my dinosaurs, by then well established in the remote areas of the world, will be free to thrive and multiply.  What remains of the human race will be helpless against them."

—

By Page 125, the book turns into pretty much into the second half of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

Yes, Penward Manor Even Has A Fossil Museum!

The jilted Lady Jane releases all the dinos and they rampage throughout the mansion and into the countryside.

The Dilophosaurus and Deinonychus eat unpleasant security guards and butlers.

The Tarbosaurus wrecks a vacant shopping mall.

The Megalosaurus [which I need to mention suffers from madness-inducing horniness] fights an eighteen-wheeler, ultimately losing but taking out an unpleasant, rapey trucker in the process.

The Scolosaurus demolishes an army tank.  (It's off-handedly described as carnivorous early on, and then detailed to be herbivorous later.)

Add That Editorial Goof To A Few Typos And
An Annoying Mis-Count Of The Actual Number Of Dinos In The Book

The Plesiosaur eats a bunch of unpleasant party-boaters, fishermen, and navymen.

The Altispinax eats a cow.

The baby Brachiosaurus gets adopted by a kid.

The military ultimately wraps everything up.  The book's in the final pages...

...but then out pounces the secret double-Deinonychus that devours Jenny's family and baby sister!

Pascal pitchforks it.

And then the extra-secret ending happens, where two Tyrannosaurus rex hatchlings eat Lady Jane and the already-dead-from-bloodloss Sir Penward.

The end.

—

I feel the need to reiterate how much David Pascal sucks.

He's a mopey sad-sack that, at the onset, broke things off with Jenny outta both professional jealousy and she'll-just-hold-me-back-and-keep-me-stuck-here-in-Shitburgh-itis.

He later walks in on Jenny having secret office sexytimes with her new beau and has the gall to make her a villain, using that incident as fuel for his seduction of Lady Jane.

But Lady Jane is both a codependent and a fragile abuse victim, and Pascal grossly exploits her by manipulating her affections.  Like so:

"It is true!  If only i could prove [my love] to you!  I promise!  I promise I'll stay with you forever!" — p. 114

Then, mere pages later, Jenny has launched her own covert attempt to rescue Pascal from the compound.  Cue this exchange:

"I love you!  Of course I do.  I finally realized how much this afternoon when I was locked up downstairs.  I knew I only had hours to live... and the most painful thing was the thought I'd never see you again." — p. 128

It's not long before Lady Jane realizes his deception and true feelings for Jenny, so she unleashes dinosaur hell...

Substitute 'Heiress' For 'Barbarian'

...leading Pascal to confess his scumbaggitude:

"Jenny, I knew she was mentally unstable, but what I did to her tonight has pushed her over the edge.  Don't you see?  She was pinning all her hopes on me--she saw me as her last chance--and I more or less kicked her in the teeth!" — p. 140

Later, after some dumb (in the "this is terrible timing" sense) office sex, Pascal and Jenny encounter the mall-crawling Tarbosaurus.  Because she's competent, she daringly tries to get photos of it for a big news scoop.

Pascal's reaction:

"You stupid bitch!  Don't ever do that again!" — p. 193

Romance lives, eh?

—

Despite being chock full o' unpleasant, awful people, Carnosaur goes by quickly and has, in the style of the time, plenty of satisfying British creature carnage.

Also deserves points for using atypical dinosaurs.  I mean, John Q Civilian had never heard of a Scolosaurus or an Altispinax before, and the pint-sized T-rexes aren't even a plot point until the end.

Carnosaur also definitely deserves credit for throwing the pass that Jurassic Park turned into a touchdown.  [Editor's Note:  That's the only sports analogy Yours Truly has made in his life.  Hope I did it right!]

And it got a Roger Corman flick outta the deal (with some some primo blog-fodder, too!), so can't be all terrible.

—

RPG Relevance:  "Doomsday dinosaurs bio-engineered to become dominant post-apocalyptic lifeforms" is a ready-made campaign.  Just pick yer game engine and let 'er rip!

—

Final Review Score:  Three Dinosaurs Attack! Wax Packs Outta Five

Radioactive Review: 'Bats' (1993)

  

Haven't done one of these in a while, and as I'm clearing out the shelves, figgered what the hell.

—

Bats is terrible.  And gets worse the more ya think about it.

The novel doesn't deserve further explanation.

—

Sighhh, fine.

In the swampy wilds of Podunk, Louisiana, our ostensible hero–one Johnny McBride [not his real name, because he's a retired super-spook who "worked for ASA, CIA, DIA, NSA, and a dozen other intelligence-gathering organizations all over the world" and in hiding from All The Planet's Bad Guys]–hears the titular bats on Page 2, and finds desiccated, bloodless livestock less than ten pages later.

Potentially interesting, as the hero knows about the furry threat from the get-go; usually, with these Animals Amok™ books, the beastie menaces lurk on the periphery until rampaging about two-thirds through the story.  But, nope!  Vampire bats are namechecked in the last sentence of the first chapter.

About Johnny McBride:  He's hunky.  He's wealthy.  He drives a cool car.  He built a bayou Wayne Manor equipped with secret hatches and an arsenal that puts militaries to shame.  Best of all, he's COMPETENT, with the sort of calm, cool, collected, confident, always-right mojo that makes all Good Government Officials kowtow in reverence and all Bad Government Officials scoff to their inevitable exsanguinary comeuppance.

Now Crank That Sentiment To 11

Chapter Two introduces us to Dr. Blair Perkins, the female McBride (gorgeous; financially sound; armed; COMPETENT) who, upon investigating the aforementioned livestock, intones, "We're in trouble.  I think we're in a lot of trouble."

Spoiler:  He Does.

Chapter Three has the leads capture footage of the bats, discovering they are enormous (four-foot wingspans!), active 24/7 (being diurnal, nocturnal, crepuscular, and everything in between), number in the tens-of-thousands, slobberily rabid, and intelligent enough to circumvent electric fences and detect / bypass boobytraps.

"'Well, I'll be goddamned!' Johnny said.  'The bastards can think and reason!'" (p. 38)

Thanks to our heroes and the discovery of some draculized human corpses, by the end of Chapter Four, anybody and everybody knows about the bats.  Knows they're smart.  Knows they're carnivorous.  Knows they're Deadly-with-a-capital-D.  Knows they probably number in the millions.  Knows that potentially apocalyptic events are about to transpire.

Oh, what further genre-bending thrills-n-chills await us over the remaining three-hundred pages?!!!

And, whoa!  Chapter Six amps up the weirdness!

Some rando mentions decades-old, unsolved vampiric murders where everyone involved moved away, was sworn to silence, and / or deceasified (killed or suicided), introducing the threat might be supernatural!  Ooh, a twist!

A mysterious NSA Agent, one "Mr. Smith"–yes, really–shows up, alluding to secret government experiments and bioweapons and Top Secret toxic waste dumps causing mutations.  Ooh, another twist!

There's also a cult of 1970s-Satanist-voodoo-hippies-as-written-by-a-1990s-Dittohead who love drugs, orgies, and the blackest of masses.  Ooh, a third twist!

THIS IS GONNA BE AWESOME!!!1111!!!!!

"No, no it's not."

—

That's about as far as the book goes in the first fifty pages before turning into a joyless, repetitive slog [before that, it was just a slog-adjacent].  The text is perfunctory and boring, making humdrum scenes agonizing and the (theoretically rollicking) setpieces perfunctory text blocks, and the next two-hundred-fifty pages play out essentially the same.

McBride fortifies his home / base of operations.

McB issues grave warnings to all the surrounding city and county governments about The Bats (with frequent author's-true-feelings, Dale Gribblean lamentations about liberal judges, liberal newsmedia, liberal gun-control activists, liberal welfare recipients, and all the other liberal soft folks Who Can't Do What He Does™).

Perkins agrees.

Everyone scoffs, and goes barhopping / mall-crawling / Friday Night Light-ing without care.

The Bats attack, blinding, eating, and / or infecting everyone.  (There are sooooooo many mentions of plucked eyeballs and ripped-out tongues and throats, but they're just... there.)  And the winged menaces intentionally leave power / phone lines undamaged (yes, they could destroy 'em if wanted) to lure in more victims.

There Are Indeed Passages About
The Bats' Thought Processes... EVIL Thought Processes!

Rabies-zombies [the devil-hippies got bitten on purpose, and spread the contagion] attack the uneaten civilians.

Law enforcement kills the rabies-zombies but dies via The Bats.

Medical personnel rush in to save law enforcement but die via The Bats.

So heroic duo re-fortifies their homes / bases of operation.

Then warn the next batch of towns.

Repeat ad nauseum.

—

Everything above should create a bonkers, gonzo, crazy-go-nuts blood-romp, but it's so tragically, brutally boring.  Absolutely no panache nor suspense.  Even all the nausuems are dry and flavorless.

Remember all the weirdness introduced in Chapters Five and Six?  It's all pointless and useless.

Mr. Smith is never seen or mentioned again.

Total.  Waste.

Speaking of waste, the other NPCs (mostly police) are all but identical and interchangeable, with only told-not-shown one-line quirks to distinguish them (like, the sheriff resenting a deputy because the latter "eats too much on meal tabs" and the deputy resenting the sheriff because "it was only one instance of eating too much on a meal tab".  Every time the two are on the same page at the same time (which is blessedly rare), they bicker about the food incident.

Says It All

(McB and P also adopt some bat-induced orphans, and only mentioned because it's perhaps the most hand-wavingly preposterous part of the book.)

Regarding those unsolved vampire-murders?  Turns out the Satanist leader did 'em.  Just a throwaway line about it, too.

Oh!  Same about The Bats being atomic mutants.  Again, in one line, it's revealed that they're not hybrids resulting from Forbidden Science / Mother Earth Seeking Revenge, but seeeeecret bats that have been around since The Dawn Of Time and show up every century or so to cause mayhem.

All of the above are reasons to loathe Bats, but it's the unmitigatedly galling idiocy that really gets me.

Let me count The Dumb.

1)  The Bats, about halfway through the book, get even more dangerous by figuring out how to open any and all doors–residential knobs, shopping center push / pull handles, and even car door latches–so there's no way to escape 'em.

But that info is conveyed exactly like this:  "The Bats learned to open doors."

There's no discussion of the physiology involved, nor the reasoning process.  Just—BOOM!—they can.

2)  Turns out The Bats have intentionally picked their civilian targets (which now encompass almost all of The South, all the way up to Washington, DC and out to Texas and Florida) to create, when connected on a map, a goofy picture because–I kid you not–THEY HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR.

I'm Not Even Joking

3) And then there's the last fifty pages.  Krishna H. Vishnu, the ending.

A wizened, mysterious, inscrutable South American professor–who happens to be The World's Foremost Chiroptera Expert–flies to Louisiana to join our heroes.  He has some theories, see, that will save Humanity if he's right or doom it if he's wrong.

What are his theories, you ask?  Don't bother–he won't tell, because he doesn't want to offer false hope!

"Helpful, I Am Not.  Useless, I Am."

And he really doesn't have to say a word, because the solution becomes apparent in the literal last ten pages of the novel when MILLIONS OF REGULAR, GARDEN VARIETY BATS OF ALL SPECIES FLY IN OUTTA NOWHERE TO CHOMP HOLES IN THE SWARMING BATS' WINGS, CAUSING THE BAD BATS TO CRASH INTO THE EARTH AND DIE.

Yes, that's the ending.  Deus Ex Flappina saves the planet.  This ritual, too, has seemingly been going on since The Dawn Of Time, so the heroes ultimately do jack and squat to stop the bat invasion.

And as the genre demands, some last-page Evil Bats escape to breed again....

In conclusion, Bats fucking sucks.

—

RPG Relevance:  Doesn't get much more Dungeons And / Or Dragons than giant, diseased bats slavering for the blood of the living, but making them cunning geniuses definitely amps the threat.

—

Final Review Score:  One-and-a-half Jerry Dandriges outta five.

Radioactive Review: 'Rotted Capes' (2013)

While I generally try to keep things on the radioactive-n-mutalicious side of the post-apocalyptic spectrum for this here blog, zombageddons certainly come close enough to count.

Cross-posted from my more monster-centric musings over at The Haunted Spookshow Of Channel X.

—

—

If you buy me a beer and have a few spare hours you'll definitely wish you could get back, I'll wax necrophilic about how and why zombies became the pop-cultural juggernaut of the new millennium.

(Some snippets:  vidya games; the Y2K non-event; September 11th and the GWB presidency; 28 Days Later and the Dawn Of The Dead remake; Reality TV; Internet comment sections.)

Funnybooks certainly get their due in my sermon, and definite credit / blame goes towards the insanely popular—and wholly disgusting—Marvel Zombies franchise.

EARTH'S BITIEST HEROES!!!

Starting in 2005 (and years late to the undead zeitgeist shindig, as is Marvel Editorial's wont), Marvel Zombies involves a necrotic infection that turns Marvel's good guys into intelligence-retaining-but-now-malevolent ghouls that devour and / or corrupt all life on Earth... and beyond.

Over the last decade, Marvel's published about a dozen assorted mini-series starring the superhuman shamblers, and they're still going strong.

It's only natural that RPGs jumped on the bandwagon, which brings us to Paradigm Concepts' Rotted Capes.  I Kickstarted the rulebook over two years ago, and glanced at it and put it on the shelf.  But I just finished a zombies-n-supers novel (Ex-Heroes), and got in the mood for more gore-n-spandex.

Despite A Flaw Or Three, It's A Nifty Little Diversion

Time to revisit the game!

—

Rotted Capes takes place after a devastating zombocalypse ("Z-Day") and puts the players in the roles of the B-Listers:  the sidekicks, the street-heroes, the has-beens, the never-weres, and the low-rent villains.  All the A-Listers and assorted big guns got devoured by the ghouls... or worse, transformed into them.

There are no more cities proper to protect, so the B-Listers' duties include establishing hideouts, defending survivors, scavenging for supplies, and avoiding being eaten (which means fleeing, more often than not).

Rotted Capes combines superheroics and survival horror and post-apocalyptic gaming into one package...

I'm Positive There's A Zombie Under That Armor

...which means it's pretty much Necessary Evil, using zombies instead of aliens.

Works for me!

—

Being based on comics and all, I'll start with the art.  Rotted Capes has some evocative images that capture the right mix of grody and heroic.  Groderoic?

I dig it.  Gets me in the mood to serve up some two-fisted, brain-pulping justice!

The cover of the Limited Edition version of the book is pretty cool, too...

RPG Cover by Rudy Nurdiawan (2012)

...but it's obvious some serious Swipe File'n went down.

Promo Poster by Drew Struzan (2010)

Here they are again, side by side:

Sure, All Zombies Look Pretty Much The Same, But...

Yeahhhhhhhhh.  Let's move on.

—

The core system involves your standard "beat the Target Number" mechanic.  Roll 2d10 (the Action Dice), then add the relevant Attribute Die, then add modifiers from Combat Maneuvers and Skills and Tricks and whatever, and exceed the baseline.  There are Exploding Dice and Criticals and Bumps and Penalties that modify the grand total.

It's cumbersome, but not complicated.

On to char-gen!

—

Rotted Capes uses a buy-build system, and intro B-Lister characters start at 150 points.  Other tiers include the more proficient Beta characters at 300, plus the opposing A-Listers at 600, Omegas at 1200, and Cosmics at 2400.  

That scale is terrifying, and really drives home the scrawniness and out-classed-ness of the PCs. But I'm totally down with that, because plenty of My Very Favorite Comic Characters score high on the Mort-o-meter.

The Legion Of L-AWSOMES Is More Like It!

To build a B-Lister, first you pick your Power Source (Super-Human, Skill Hero, or Tech Hero), and that determines particular Attribute Bonuses, Unique Advantages, and Unique Disadvantages.

Then you pick an Archetype (Blaster, Brawler, etc.).  Not only does your Archetype yield more Attribute Bonuses, but it also indicates what Primary Powers you can get at a reduced cost.  If you're, say, a Heavy, you can buy Growth cheaper than an Infiltrator can, while an Infiltrator gets Illusion cheaper than a Heavy.

B-Listers are supposed to have only a handful of Powers, to really represent their underdog statuses; points-wise, three seems about the doable maximum.

Then you pick Disadvantages, which are physical disabilities that provide more build points.

After that you have to choose at least one Personality Flaw (Darwinist, Haunted By Nightmares, Villainous Past, etc.), which when triggered, provides Fate Chips Plot Dice to alter outcomes in game play.

Then you pick a Tagline ("It's clobberin' time!"), which allows further manipulation of Plot Dice when bellowed on the battlefield

FINALLY, you get to spend some points, starting with Attributes (and the corresponding Derived Attributes), then Skills (which come in bulk discount if you buy Skill Sets, like Athlete, Detective, etc.), then Advantages (Attractive, Martial Artist, Rapid Draw, etc.), then Powers (almost all the usual in some form or fashion, with "weather control" conspicuously absent).  Attributes, Skills, and Powers are all purchased by the Rank, at an escalating scale:  Rank 1 costs 1 point, 2 costs 1+2 points, 3 costs 1+2+3 points, and so on.

After that comes Power Modifications (tweaks that make Powers more or less, uh, powerful, and correspondingly more or less expensive), and Gear (weapons, armor, batteries(!), etc.) rounds out the process.

In conclusion, char-gen is a hot fucking mess.

—

Everything listed above encompasses sixty-five pages of confusing, jumbled, disorganized nonsense.

The step-by-step character guide lists eleven parts, but there are actually twelve... and the steps don't jibe with the order of the book's contents.  Commence copious page-flipping.

And the rules describe numerical bonuses and costs pertaining to concepts before defining said concepts.  Take Attributes.  The "choose your Power Source and Archetype" phases both make key notations to Attribute Bonuses, but you don't know what the Attributes are or do until 10 pages later.

It's infuriating,

Then there's the Ranks.  Trying to figure out how much, well, anything ultimately costs is a nightmare, especially when incorporating the assorted Power Source bonuses and Power Modification discounts / penalties.

I'm no rookie when it comes to point-buy games, having played Champions / HERO System pretty much non-stop since 5th Grade, with meanderings into Mutants & Masterminds and World Of Darkness and Savage Worlds along the way.  I grok building my own characters.

But with Rotted Capes, trying to build what is essentially the simplest PC possible—a Tech Hero in a no-frills bird suit—took me two evenings and over six hours total, and I had ZERO confidence I actually did it right.

THE MOST COMPLICATED CHARACTER EVER CONCEIVED!!!

I even tried comparing my character to the sample NPCs in the back, but the numbers didn't sync up. So that led me to writing out a few of the NPCs in longhand, trying to reverse-engineer them... and after copious crumbled pages of notebook paper, I'm 99% certain that the designers' math is wrong on their own damned characters.  And there's absolutely no way to verify which of us screwed up, as the official write-ups don't break down how the numbers shake out.

"MY KINGDOM FOR A HERO CHARACTER SHEET!!!"

I wanted to hurl the rulebook across the room.

I ultimately scrapped the Tech Hero version of my flying-guy—fer Mephisto's sake, THAT'S ALL HE DOES!!!—and worked him out as a Super-Human.  Things seemingly fell into place then, but I'm still sore that I didn't get to make the character as conceived.

Seriously.  Char-gen in Rotted Capes suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks.

—

After character creation, there's eighteen pages of combat rules, with damage and stunts and status conditions and vehicle crashes and the like.

The key timing mechanism is The Clock, which is a Frankenstein'd combination of basic "rolling for Initiative", HERO's Speed Chart, and Savage Worlds' card countdown.

I'm so irked at Rotted Capes' char-gen that I can't give proper attention the combat section. I have zero clue if the system works, but my gut tells me it's unreasonably clunky, because of stuff like Actions breaking down into four speed categories: Trivial, Simple, Complex, and Ehhhhhh, Who The Fuck Cares, Because I'll Never Use These Rules As Written, What With Them Being So Terrible And All.

Oh, yeah—there's Burnout, which is when powers shut down from exhaustion, leaving the PC in the lurch.  Tech-based characters seem particularly susceptible to Burnout, and it looks about as fun to play with as Encumbrance in D&D.  At least everything resets after each scene (which is appropriate, modeling the "recharge effect" that happens between comic panels).

—

As lousy as the first half of Rotted Capes is—and, boy howdy, is it lousy—there's great stuff in the Game Master Editor-In-Chief section.

Rudimentary survival is key in all artworks of zombiedom, and the book details all the important hazards:  contaminated eats, diseases, starvation-n-dehydration, animals (domestic, wild, and "escapees"), survivors (antagonistic and otherwise)...

...and zombies.  Zombies, zombies, zombies.  There's standard shamblers, plus video-gamey types like Damsels (smart and  disguise-y!) and Ninja'z (sneaky!) and Cleavers (stabby!) and Phasers (ghostly—gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!) and Abominations (monsters!) and Super Zs (your former costumed friendlies and foe-ys!).  There's an infinite variety of undead antagonists.

With No Mention Of Plastic Mini-Zs, It's Actually "Almost Infinite"

For those lacking imaginations and / or windows to the outside world, there's a sample setting (Paradigm City—sigh) with an extensive (but stat-less, which is totally okay) Who's Who that hits all the standard comic beats.

Perhaps most interesting is the section on building an Enclave, the little hold-out of humanity your B-Listers protect.  It almost reads like a mini-game, with figuring out logistics for encampments, defenses, caravans, governments, laws, entertainments (now with bloodsports!), and agriculture.

Anyone remember Gamma World 6e, with the mechanics for PCs to actively design their community's philosophy, size, manufacturing, etc.?  Enclaves are like that in spirit, but without the crunch.  

Enclaves bring novelty and a unique vibe to tabletop superheroics, and that's dandy for this jaded GM.

There's also suggestions of incorporating comic book tropes, such as Drama, Flashbacks, and Issues (as in "very special episode" fodder, not individual comics themselves) into the game.

I totally love the Flashbacks, and would use them in any Rotted Capes session I ran.  Like, do a scenario with a zombie villain, then "flashback" to a pre-apocalypse combat with the PCs and the same baddie.  Play it out and everything to establish the history and relationships, then jump back to the zombified present.  Flashbacks cater to my GM-ing style, and I'd use them with abandon.

Oh—one more thing about Enclaves.  They bring me back full circle to the novel Ex-Heroes, which prompted this whole review.   The tale goes into great detail about the hassles—supply raids, shoring up defenses, illnesses, roving gangs, boredom—inherent in superheroes keeping "normals" safe from flesh-rending hordes.  Ex-Heroes came out in 2010, and it's clear the Rotted Capes crew were inspired by the novel.

That's not a dig, by the way; just noting that the influences run deep.

—

The book wraps up with the handful of math-sloppy NPCs I lamented above.  Almost every Archetype is represented, and the characters are either quirky or lame, with no middle ground.  For every La Pulga ("The Flea" in Español!) and One-Man Mob there's a Shank and a Transporter.  I don't fault the book's writers, though, because the characters were created by the Kickstarter's top donors.

—

Like the zombie comics it seeks to emulate, Rotted Capes is a cool costume over a rotten husk. I'd take everything in the Editor-In-Chief section and convert it to another ruleset.  Savage Worlds (quelle surprise!) seems ideal, because Necessary Evil does the legwork for this exact kind of game.

I'd also love to try FASERIP and play in the Unofficial Official Marvel Universe, just for nostalgia's sake.  That'd be a hoot, converting characters into their ghoulified incarnations.

More Like Kraven The Hunger, Amirite?!!!

Hell, I'd even use Champions, and that's a huge freakin' deal because I swore off running it.  [If I had to describe my current relationship with the HERO System, it'd be: "we're seeing other people".]

What I'm saying is, that in spite of itself,  I really, Really, REALLY like Rotted Capes, y'all.

If you're gonna hunt it down, the PDF is theoretically cheaper than a hardcopy, but certain online retailers have it discounted enough that the prices even out.

—

Final Review Score:  3 Hovering Headpools out of 5 (but it probably deserves only 2.5).

Fun With Feedback — Jurassic Edition

I made this is for Official Friend Of The Field Guide, Legion.

Thanks for enjoying my review!

Radioactive Review — 'Jurassic Park III'

It should come as no surprise that I'm excited for Jurassic World.

Yes, the trailers are obnoxious in their video game-y effects, and I can't think of a single Bryce Dallas Howard flick I've enjoyed.  

But there's gonna be a mosasaurus and Chris Pratt and trained velociraptors and motorcycles (which HAS to mean Chris Pratt and trained velociraptors on motorcycles!!!), so I'm totally psyched.

THIS.  BETTER.  HAPPEN.

In preparation for this surefire blockbuster that can in no way, shape, or form shatter my fragile heart beneath crushing disappointment, I've spent the week re-watching the original JP trilogy so I won't miss any nuances.

Jurassic Park (1993) is awesome.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) is hot garbage.  Yet I've mellowed—and trust me, no one is more surprised than me—on the flick, as it no longer fills me with seething, blistering vitriol; hell, it's even demoted from my Top Five Most Reviled Films list.

But what about the much-maligned Jurassic Park III (2001)?  Not only is it better than I remembered, it's interesting enough to revisit with a rambling quasi-review fourteen (!) years after the fact, particularly in the context of this here blog.

—

The Setup:  Jurassic Park III begins with a pretty flimsy premise:  obscenely wealthy, extreme (in the Mountain Dew-ian sense of the term) vacationers Paul and Amanda Kirby want to do a fly-by of The Isle Of Dread Pellucidar The Savage Land Isla Sorna (evil dino-company InGen's secret breeding ground for bioengineered beastes, as revealed in TLW:JP) for a photo safari, and need the chronically under-funded and ever-chapeau'd Dr. Alan Grant to give them aerial commentary on any fauna they spot.

Remember This Prop

Grant wants nothing of it, however, because of his aversion to being devoured.

There's Historical Precedent

But money talks, and Grant believes the Kirbys when they insist they'll pay any sum, and swear they will never, ever, Ever, EVER land on the island,.

So he and his pretty-boy assistant agree to the trip...

Seriously—It's Important

...which proves problematic because Paul and Amanda are bald-faced liars.

Portraits Of Punchability

Nope, the Kirbys aren't wastrel billionaires; instead, they're hardware-store-owning schmucks who happen to be divorced (AWKWARD), and team up again (in spectacularly awful fashion) to find their kid, who just so happened to go missing months ago on dino-island via a parasailing accident with Mama's new beau.

In other words, they're the freaking Van Houtens.

Ravenous Dinosaurs Are Preferable To These Two

Oops.

Dr. Grant comes across pretty terribly in this sequence.  I mean, I realize that this is a movie from the World Wide Web wasteland of 2001 and "Google" didn't become a verb until 2006, but everybody knows you investigate your employer(s)...

...particularly if they look like doomed grifters straight from a Tarantino movie.  

At the very least, Doc, you wait for the check to clear.  Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

"I've Made A Huge Mistake."

—

The Action:  Of course, they land.  Cue thundery, lizardy hijinks.

And there's a ton of 'em, with chases through forests and ruins and more forests and more ruins.  With a run time of 92 minutes (a good 30 shorter than its predecessors), JPIII wastes little time and deftly moves from setpiece to setpiece to setpiece.

They eventually find the missing kid (because, Spielberg), and wonder of wonders, he doesn't suck.

He's crafty.  

"Wardrobe Provided By Botany 500"

He hides out in a wrecked ATV.

I Bet There's Shag Carpeting And A Waterbed In The Back

He scavenges the InGen ruins for eats, weapons (like gas grenades), and tools.

Proper Diet Is Always The First Thing To Go 

And, best of all, he isn't whiny.  Kid's made of pretty resourceful, stern stuff.  He even keeps jars of tyrannosaurus urine around to scare away the smaller predators.

"You're A Teenage Boy Who's Been Alone For Months
Without Kleenex Or Socks.  Disgusting, But Understandable."

All things considered, Kid Kirby is the only competent person on the whole damned island.

—

The Setpieces:  There's some doozies.  My favorite involves a crazy aviary.

I've been a sucker for pterano-related mayhem since I saw The People That Time Forgot in 1977 as a wee one, so this bit was a hoot AND a holler.

One Might Say It Imprinted On Me...

...As Unto A Fanged, Clawed, Leathery Baby Bird

It's suspenseful as hell, and shows that even man-sized-ish, hollow-boned dinos are a legitimate threat.

Someone's Been Watching Too Much Batman.  Or Darkwing Duck.

"I Am The Terror That Flaps In The Night...."

The Kid even gets dropped into a nest chock full o' babies, and they do their damnedest to gobble him to death.  

And because I'm a terrible person, I laughed.

At Least I'm Embarrassed About It.

And though Kirby Junior survives his ordeal, Pretty Boy does not.  He gets hammered and bludgeoned and drowned and pecked to death.  It's a bad way to go.

But It Sure Makes A Bitchin' Obituary

Another neat sequence involves midnight dino-piracy in the rain.

Something, Something, "Bigger Boat", Something

When watching the Jurassic Park franchise back to back, it's obvious the production crews had a fondness for combining inclement weather, darkness, and monster attacks.  I can't decide if it's a budgetary thang to skimp on FX, or a way to mask clumsy animatronics, or just a case of "the audience liked it before, so ...."

Oh, What A Feeling

Hurm.  With the misty aviary and the midnight boat ride, there sure is a lot of "fog of war" in JPIII.

And, obviously, there's Mandatory Fun With Velociraptors.  They're essential to the series.

—

The Stars:  All that said, Jurassic Park III excels when it comes to the entire reason for watching in the first place:  the dinosaurs.

The first two installments focused on the creatures' grandeur and power and capacity to terrify, and chronicled how the humans reacted to them.  But in JPIII, there's a new-found intimacy with the beasts, and plenty of attention paid to how they respond to the humans.

And it's hysterical.

I mean, just look at that dripping disdain... that complete and utter contempt... that sublime whatchoo-talkin'-'bout-Willis-ness.

Glorious.  Absolutely, positively glorious.

And this little scene, where the protagonists do a collective slow turn to see what terror's behind them, ripped a surprise guffaw right from me because it's obvious what that spinosaurus is thinking:

"Y'all crackers done fucked up."

Sure, there's a lamentable over-reliance on CGI instead of practical effects and puppetry, but the dinosaurs generally work.  

Speaking of puppets, one raptor in particular brought a certain favorite felty fiend to mind.

You Can't Un-see It

—

The Issues:  Jurassic Park III's biggest flaw is that Téa Leoni doesn't die.

A Face Made For Being-Eaten-By-Dinosaurs

Women haven't been well served by the Jurassic Park franchise, and you'd think it impossible to find a character more inept than The Lost World's stone-stupid "wildlife expert", Sarah Harding (she of the "only there to document and record, but gotta first pet this here hatchling and almost get bludgeoned to death in the process" and "running around a carnivore-filled jungle bathed in the blood of a baby T-Rex" fame, a thankless role portrayed by Julianne Moore).

But you'd be wrong, as Leoni's Amanda Kirby is The Worst.

"THIS IS MY IMPRESSION OF A DINNER GONG.  PRETTY GOOD ONE, RIGHT?!!!"

"HUH?!!!  YOU WANT ME TO—WHAT'S THAT—BE QUIETER?!!!
SORRY!!!  I CAN BARELY UNDERSTAND YOU OVER THIS BLARING MEGAPHONE!!!"

She's shrill, obstinate, and—most egregious of all—oblivious, and the direct cause of 99% of the reptile-related havoc that befalls our protagonists.

Her First Victim

She's solely responsible for stranding the group on the island.

She gets half the cast devoured, and loses the only satellite phone in the process.

And she consequently creates and unleashes nothing less than JP's version of Tick-Tock, cinema's saurian stalker supreme.

The Resemblance Is Uncanny

And because Amanda's a parent in a Spielberg movie, you're supposed to root for her, and savor her triumphs.  Like finding her son, repairing her broken marriage, and, you know, not dying.

But not a single victory is earned...

I Despise Her Happiness

...and the one thing she does deserve doesn't happen.

"Just One Bite.  Please.  You'd Be Doing Me A Solid." — Dr. Grant

And the movie is the lesser for it.

PS:  She also looks almost exactly (sans glasses) like my first ex-girlfriend.  No good comes of that.

The Jawline Of Nightmares

—

But Wait, There's More:  There are some other major problems, like Dr. Grant communing with the dinosaurs.

Remember that pic at the top, where he's holding what looks like a horrifying marital aid? Turns out it's a model of a "skull resonance chamber" that allows the wielder to speak fluent Raptese.

That Skull Resonance Chamber Ain't Gonna Blow Itself, Doc

Yeah, Grant totally Zamfirs away a pack of pissed-off velociraptors.  They telegraphed it in the first ten minutes of the movie, and it's corny as hell.  I remember the audience's collective groan when I saw it in the theater way back when.

Another thing:  the movie doesn't so much end as come to an abrupt, nonsensical halt with a convenient military rescue.

Deus Ex Marine-a

It's like they ran out of money and just slapped on an ending with extras from an adjoining set.

Oh, and during said rescue?  Turns out Pretty Boy is alive, and somehow already safe and bandaged on a transport.  It's totally out of left field and completely insipid.

His miraculous survival ranks in the Top Three Lousiest Cinematic Death Cop-Outs, right behind Tom Cruise's immaculate, completely unscathed-by-interplanetary-invasion family in War Of The Worlds (2005)...

Not Seen:  LITERALLY EVERYTHING Outside The Frame Is Smoldering Rubble

 ...and Mario Van Peebles' "reverse-Bruce-ing" in the execrable Jaws: The Revenge (1987).

They Say Saltwater Aids The Resurrection Process

Pretty Boy straight-up needed to stay deceased.

Everybody Knows You Never Go Full Van Peebles

One last thing:  the music is utterly forgettable.  Jurassic Park gave us a sweeping, epic John Williams score that was as much a character as the actors themselves, but JPIII's composer Don Davis doesn't have the chops.  He does all right with the action bits, but overall, the soundtrack is sorely lacking... and big chunks are just reused from the prior movies.

Second Billing Behind Recycled Snippets?  Ouch.

—

RPG Relevance:  Jurassic Park III is the Platonic Ideal of a Tabletop Game Session Ported To The Silver Screen.

I mean, you just can't get more elegant in role-playing simplicity than "the party is trapped on a ruin-laden, monster-infested island with nothing but their wits and scavenged equipment to save them".

A True Classic Of The Medium

And JPIII's Isla Sorna is absolutely perfect for post-apocalyptic gaming in the Metamorphosis Alpha-ish / Mutant Future-y / Gamma World-ian vein.

Just look at the place!

Those ruins!

Those artifacts!

Those mutants!

That wreckage!
That rubble!

That overgrowth!  

As Dr. Grant says in the very beginning of the film, "what John Hammond and InGen did at Jurassic Park is create genetically-engineered theme park monsters."

If you can't mine that quote for hours and hours of gamma-gaming goodness, you need to surrender your Mutant Lord credentials.  Hell, I've even done a ton of heavy lifting for you, when it comes to those aforementioned lab-grown critters.

And if you tire of pure beastliness in your antagonists, JPIII's velociraptors make amazing foes.  They're clearly smarter and more linguistic than their relatives in the prior installments, and it wouldn't take much to make them sentient and technological.  (Again, someone else—in this case, Goodman Games—has done the work for you.)

Courtesy Of The (Woefully Unappreciated) Broncosaurus Rex Line

Me?  I'd really irradiate those raptors, and make 'em full-on telepathic, with a full suite of Mental Mutations.

And probably laser-vision, because I loves me some overkill.

—

The Wrap-Up:  As a movie, Jurassic Park III is definitely flawed, but also innocuously fun.  And it goes by so quickly that it doesn't wear out any welcomes.

But as a source of role-playing ideas?  It's a veritable goldmine.  Definitely one of the most inspirational gaming flicks ever.

—

Final Review Score:  Three Carnosaur 3 VHS cassettes out of five.  (Though it's probably closer to 2.5, mosasaurus-induced giddiness makes me generous.)