Fallout: The Series season two review

 
    I found season two was a bit...meh. Like eating Sugar Bombs that are two hundred years old, you're getting a lot of rads but not very much in the way of nourishment. Before you begin clutching your Pre-War pearls, I should clarify that I am both a huge Fallout fan who has played all the main games as well as a guy who actively hates those outrage merchants that reflexively despise everything on the internet. 

    I came into the franchise with Fallout 3, became a huge fan, and have generally followed its efforts ever since. But I’m not mindlessly supportive either. I felt Fallout 4 was a step-down storytelling wise from Fallout 3 (let alone New Vegas) and that Fallout 76 started in a state that was absolutely missing the point of the franchise. Nevertheless, I loved season one and thought it was a fantastic introduction to the setting for newcomers..

    This is frustrating because I was super excited about them visiting New Vegas and the greater Mojave Wasteland after the teaser for it in the previous season’s finale. Unfortunately, there’s something to be said about being careful what you wish for. In this case, the attempt to write around the events of Fallout: New Vegas while paying homage to them proves to be a needle that the showrunners just can’t thread. More on that later.

    The premise is Lucy Maclean (Ella Purnell) and Cooper/The Ghou (Walter Goggins) are on the trail of Hank Maclean (Kyle MacLachlan), Lucy’s father and the mastermind behind Shady Sands’ destruction. Hank has a nefarious plan to use mind-control technology to build the kind of paradise that the vaults were intended to be (or so he claims).

    Maximus (Aaron Moten), meanwhile, is now a highly decorated Brotherhood of Steel paladin and preparing for his Chapter’s overthrow of the Commonwealth Elders. Norm (Moisés Arias) is meanwhile trapped in Vault 31, surrounded by cryogenically frozen middle managers from Vault-Tec and Chet (Dave Register) is unwillingly caring for his sorta-girlfriend, Steph’s (Annabelle O’Hagan), baby. Oh, and Mister House shows up (Raffi Silva, Justin Theroux).

    There are a lot of plots and eight episodes mean that we move around at lightning pace to deal with each of them. Unfortunately, the season just keeps adding new plotlines while not taking sufficiently long enough to develop its current plot. There’s the Great Khans, Caesar’s Legion, The Kings (now feral ghouls), a focus on who is behind Vault-Tec, what Cooper’s wife’s true motivations are, and how the US government is involved. No sooner does it introduce a new element to the show than we move on to introducing another one.

    The biggest problem with season two is lore bloat. The first season was perfectly enjoyable if you’d never experienced Fallout as a gamer (my wife is proof) but the second season I suspect must be damned near incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t played Fallout: New Vegas. It’s not terrible but I feel like they could have cut two subplots (probably Norm’s and Chet’s, entertaining as they may be) or at added another couple of episodes to develop the existing ones. Probably both.

    The show also feels like it’s in conversation with the online critics of its first season. A lot of the more controversial decisions of season one like Vault-Tec being behind the war, Mrs. Howard being evil, and the death of the NCR are all walked back. But this happening didn’t feel organic. It also does its best not to provide any answers as to what happened at Hoover Dam or the Courier’s existence, which is a bit like ignoring who won WW2 in the Fifties, A lot of beloved franchise elements are also treated for laughs that don’t really work like the Brotherhood of Steel chapters feeling like they belong on Rick and Morty.

    Season Two isn’t bad, at least if we’re measuring whether I’m entertained. I was, mostly. I loved things like finally getting to see Pre-War Canada and now think that would be the perfect place for the next Fallout game. I also felt the acting of all the leads and recreation of Vegas was well done. I think Caesar's Legion was well realized if terribly underused. Sadly, everything else was a bit too exaggerated and comical. Will I watch season three? Yes. However, I hope they dial everything down and focus on the things that matter most: the characters and their journey.

7/10 

Undercity: Rebellion by SC Jensen review

    UNDERCITY: REBELLION by SC Jensen is a post-apocalypse dystopian adventure novel that I absolutely loved. Anyone who knows what I write is aware that I am a huge post-apocalypse fan and I absolutely love when weird new civilizations emerge out of the wasteland. I’m also a fan of SC Jensen with her Bubbles in Paradise books that are goofy cyberpunk adventures. So, I was all set to read this one and just didn’t get around to actually enjoying it until this week. Yeah, my TBR is huge and that sunk me from my efforts to get around to it for almost a year. Now I’m kicking myself for letting it get so long.

    The premise is that society has been destroyed by war in the distant future. Out of the ashes of this apocalypse has emerged a new civilization divided into two separate parts: the top dwelling Elysian Empire and the bottom-dwelling City. The Elysians still have access to advanced technology ranging from genetically engineered supersoldiers to immortality while the City only has a few districts where electricity is available. It is a distinctly uneven relationship with the Elysians also frequently buying unwanted (or wanted) children as slaves.

    One of the City’s scavengers, Ghost, has a worse life than most citizens because her younger sister, Lyca, has been missing for over a decade. Ghost vainly (?) hopes she’s still alive somewhere and that her searches will ease the guilt she has for not protecting her. It is after one of her last leads dries up that Ghost encounters the mysterious Lynch, a man who claims that not only is her sister alive but that he can lead her to her. Unfortunately, this comes with the strings attached that Lynch is a well-known anti-Elysian terrorist and wants Ghost’s help in organizing another attack on the upper levels.

    What follows is an interesting variation on a caper story and a revolutionary story in one. Ghost must use her contacts with the city’s underworld to assemble a group willing to suicidally throw themselves at the overwhelming power of the Elysian Empire while also deal with the fact that most of them have severe issues with Ghost herself. Ghost also has an attraction Lynch but this would mean betraying her relationship with her existing girlfriend, Mirelle. Ghost is not the only LGBTAQ character in the book but I like how it’s just not a big deal in the City.

    As antagonists, I had a few issues with the Ursaal. He’s basically a Baron Harkonnen-esque monster with no redeeming qualities whatsoever that affects my enjoyment of the story. In post-apocalypse stories, I generally prefer more moral ambiguity. The Time Keepers, of which the series is named, are much more interesting on that level. Are they good, bad, or a mixture of both? They’re supporting Lynch’s war but definitely put off an incredibly shady vibe. Certainly, they’re extremely ruthless and that is something I hope to see more of in future installments.

    In conclusion, Undercity: Rebellion is a fantastic novel that I really enjoyed. The world building was well-done and evocative. I really felt like I understood both the Elysian Empire portions of the setting as well as how the City functions. I like the characters, especially Ghost, and I hope to see a lot more of these in the future.

Available here 

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga review

    Furiosa: A Mad Max Story is the prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, one of the best movies of the 21st century as well as arguably the best of the Mad Max franchise. The movie was originally supposed to be filmed back to back with Fury Road, starring Charlize Theron, but events resulted in it being filmed a decade later with a new actress. The recasting and the long wait time may have contributed to its failure at the box office. There is also the question of how much of a niche property a Mad Max movie is without Mad Max.

    The premise is that Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) is a young woman living in a desert oasis when she’s kidnapped by raiders and brought before wasteland warlord, Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). Dementus is a bizarre and flamboyant character, leading his biker gang as much on whim as anyone coherent strategy. Dementus adopts Furiosa, against her will, and kills her mother before her eyes. Thus begins Furiosa’s decade-long quest for revenge against the individual that involves rival warlord, Immortan Joe, and his army of War Boys. Furiosa also befriends a rig driver named Praetorian Jack, who may be something more.

    My opinion on the film? Well, it’s good but not great. A prequel is something that always has an uphill battle to win over viewers because a large amount of the tension is removed. We know Furiosa is going to live and eventually rebel against Immortan Joe. Thus it is on the movie to make side characters whose fates we care about or make the events compelling enough that we don’t care about knowing what is going to happen to them. Furiosa, unfortunately, doesn’t quite do either.

    Anya Taylor-Joy is likable enough as Furiosa but it is hard to believe she is the hardened protagonist of Fury Road. She is mostly silent throughout the film and while this is the case for Mad Max himself in most of the movies, this is a far more talky film than most of them. Some more scenes where we find out what she thinks of her Devil’s alliance with Immortan Joe and her relationship with Praetorian Jack would have been welcome. Indeed, the complete lack of romance scenes despite one being central to her relationship to Joe’s regime is unfortunate.

    As a result of Furiosa’s silence, Chris Hemsworth steals the movie for better and worse. The movie makes the bizarre choice to give him a fake nose and teeth, perhaps to distract from his natural good looks, as well as have him speak in an especially nasal voice that is just confusing. Dementus is perhaps the most interesting character in the movie, though, with a surprising amount of nuance. He does terrible, unforgivable, things in the movie but you understand his perspective. Indeed, part of the movie’s problem is Dementus is charismatic enough and Immortan Joe is so one-dimensionally evil that you root for the former against the latter. This despite Furiosa being on Joe’s side(ish).

    Really, the movie feels like a tamer and toned down version of Fury Road. Fury Road was in your face about its feminist message, contrasted with two hours of relentless action that, nevertheless, kept its message clear. Furiosa, at its worst, feels like the PG-13 Hunger Games version of the post-apocalypse. Furiosa is sold to Joe’s harem and it pretty much skips over that part (not that I wanted to see the trauma involved) despite the fact that seems like it is a pretty important part of her story. We also have only a couple of other women in the movie, none of whom really interact with Furiosa. She is, to quote a lot of bad fiction, “not like other girls.”

    Spectacle-wise, the movie also falls short. It’s a very pretty film, don’t get me wrong. Unfortunately, CGI is heavily relied on in this film to the point that it feels less gritty and grounded by a significant degree. Fury Road had some CGI, but it’s a lot more noticeable here. The characters pull off cartoonish stunts that make it feel like an anime at times. I think it says a lot about my opinion of the movie that some of my favorite parts of the film were the appearance of Mad Max video game characters like Scrotus and Chumbucket, canonizing them.

    It’s not a bad film, but if you want to know a single moment that defines it for me, it’s when Furiosa has been masquerading as a boy for years in the pits of Immortan Joe’s mechanics shop. The wind picks up at one point and reveals her beautiful flowing hair, revealing her to be a girl to Praetorian Jack, which says the movie didn’t think that Furiosa would shave her head to protect her identity. It’s the kind of thing that takes you out of the film.

Available here 

Paradise (2025) review

    Paradise is a 2025 political thriller that shockingly diverts into a science fiction one after the first episode. It’s one of those things that is best experienced without spoilers so if you want to enjoy Paradise in the best manner possible, you should go and watch it without reading any further. It’s a good series. There are some flaws but it is a solid and serious take on the subjects it tackles. It also has a truly spectacular seventh episode. That’s about as much as I can say about the series without spoiling anything.

    You ready for more?

    Okay then.

    The premise for Paradise is that Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) is the head of the United States Secret Service, protecting the President of the United States, Cal Bradford (James Marsden). Cal is assassinated and there’s a severe question of how the Secret Service could fail so utterly. A lot of allusion is made to things having gone horribly wrong as well as a once close friendship between the two that went horribly wrong. At the end of the first episode, we finally find at least one of those secrets out.

    You ready?

    No take backs.

    Specifically, the secret is that the two are living in a massive underground city and the rest of the world has been destroyed in some sort of unnamed catastrophe. The disaster was successfully predicted by a billionaire tech mogul, Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond (Julianne Nicholson) who used both her and their government’s resources to make a luxury bunker to ride out the apocalypse.

    Paradise basically takes the premise of Fallout and proceeds to do it completely straight. If I had to make a comparison, I’d say it’s what happens if you combine Fallout with Lost. Every character is carrying immense survivor’s guilt as well as dealing with a variety of tragic backstories. America was not in its best shape even before the apocalypse and what happened to the surface world is another driving mystery. We get a decent set of answers to most of the pressing questions but, like all good writing, adds more questions.

    Sterling K. Brown does a fantastic job at making a lead that isn’t necessarily the most likable individual. His wife didn’t make it down to the bunker in time for it to be shut and his hatred for both the President he’s sworn to protect is only matched for his own. The fact his kids depend on him to provide a semblance of a normal life and the remainder of what qualifies as military force/security in the 10,000 person community falls under him doesn’t relieve his stress. James Marsden also gets to show off his acting chops as Cal is a somewhat Bill Clinton-esque figure who has his vices but was, ultimately, a good man in a horrifying situation. Much of the series deals with flashbacks to his tenure as President as well as setting up his life in the bunker.

9/10 

If the episode has a highlight and lowest point, it will be the seventh and eighth episodes. The seventh episode finally provides concrete answers as to what happened during the End of the World and how everyone responded to it. It is well-written, dramatic, and even genuinely horrifying at times. Some of the best television I’ve seen in the past decade. The eighth episode, sadly, provides a thoroughly unsatisfying answer to the President’s murder.

Paradise has a lot of themes of class consciousness, environmentalism, wealth inequality, government corruption, corporate malfeseance, and more but they’re all very subtle. All of the survivors in the bunker are the “lucky ones” that get to live in a climate controlled Rockwellian community while the rest of humanity has gone extinct (maybe). However, society is set up so there’s still people who clean the toilets, pour coffee, and serve an elite that doesn’t make any sense to have anymore.

In conclusion, I strongly recommend this series. It’s some of the best science fiction I’ve seen in years and certainly deserves to have many more people talking about it than I’ve seen. I was a bit disappointed by the final episode but absolutely want to see another season of this if not several more.

The Last of Us season two review

    THE LAST OF US season two was...okay.

    If that sounds like I'm soft pedaling the opening to a negative review, well, then you are extremely perceptive. The Last of Us season one was one of the best, if not the best, video game adaptations of all time. The only real competition I would say it has is the Fallout show and that is an entirely different genre despite them both being post-apocalypse science fiction programs. It was immensely popular for a reason and introduced a whole new audience to the world of Joel Miller and Ellie Williams. I feel like the attempt to retain this audience is what hurt it versus challenging them like the video game, The Last of Us 2, did.

    The premise is that a fungal outbreak has turned the majority of individuals into horrifying monsters. Ellie Williams (Bella Ramsey) is a young girl immune to the condition protected by Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal) that ended the previous season with a devastating secret between them. The second game was deeply controversial as it shifted focus from the relationship between these two to a devastating cycle of revenge between Ellie and a new character, Abby Anderson (Kaitlyn Dever).

    I'm generally a defender of the video game and its most controversial choice (spoilers ahead) with the fact that it is an attack on the typical post-apocalypse lack of morality that is in so many works. The two women are incredibly hardass survivors and vicious without civilization to hold them back. However, it is shown to be a dark path that doesn't make either of them better. Instead, it just gradually winnows down their morality and breaking the cycle of violence is more important than any form of justice. It wasn't very popular in some circles because of Joel Miller being the most popular character in the franchise by far but it was an effective artistic statement.

    Season Two of the Last of Us seems to really wish it wasn't adapting the second game. I say that as a strange criticism but it feels like the best summary of the show I can think of. It doesn't change everything but it tries to softpedal, move around events, explain everything, and generally screwing with the tone. Ironically, it doesn't change any of the actual story so that its efforts are more or less vain. Like if you have someone who hates beef stew (or grimdark), you can't really prepare the beef stew in a way that will satisfy the negativity. The story is a horribly dark and depressing one that was still too dark for a lot of people.

    Since it's Pride month, it's also fascinating to see how the show handles its queer romance and leads with Ellie and Dina. The show seems to be much more interested in the chemistry between Bella Ramsey and Isabel Merced. The show seems like it would much rather be doing a story about them falling in love in the post-apocalypse rather than how vengeance poisons even the best things in our lives. Maybe I'm merely misjudging the pacing and we'll see that happen. Also, the scenes between the two are genuinely cute with some bittersweet ones like the fact the pair have no idea what the rainbow signifies when they enter one of Seattle's neigborhoods.

    The show has some genuinely fantastic acting throughout with Pedro Pascal and Jeffrey Wright (who was the voice of Isaac in the game) doing amazing jobs. Bella Ramsey is always great when she's the younger Ellie and Isabella Merced is a cool collected survivor throughout. I certainly don't think the show is bad by any means. I'm definitely going to watch the next season. However, I think the show pulls its punches.

    Ellie Williams in the game is someone on a horrible road of revenge and while the show version definitely does some terrible things, I feel like it doesn't feel like she's fully committed to the path of revenge that would match a book accurate Arya Stark. This one seems to not fully in the mind of wanting to kill Abby and all of her crew but just Abby, which doesn't make sense to me and weakens the game's message. I think this may be a Catch-22, though, because a lot of more casual viewers were horrified by even the softened version on display here.

    Oh well, we'll see where the road of revenge leads in...two years.

    Oof.

Civil War (2024) review

    CIVIL WAR (2024) by Alex Garland is a movie that a lot of people prejudged before they watched it. This is a tumultuous time in the United States of America, hardly the first time, but the prospect of a second American Civil War has occasionally popped up in political discourse. Usually, the individuals speaking are either joking or the absolute most extremes of the Far Right. The movie based around the premise of that finally happened was either viewed as taking advantage of sensationalism or possibly propaganda for either side. As fan of politically charged cinema and speculative fiction like The Division, I thought it would be interesting to give it a try.

    The answer to most people’s questions before they even ask them are as follows: 1. This has nothing really to say about any divisions in America today. The Loyalists, Western Front, New People’s Army, and Florida Alliance are all incredibly vague in their politics. There are references to the “Antifa Massacre”, “Portland Maoists”, and the President (played by Ron Swanson himself, Nick Offerson) is vaguely Trump-like but there’s no real sides taken by anyone. Indeed, just about every side is shown to be constantly committing war crimes with no real sign of any moral authority. 2. This is its own statement. 3. It’s still a good movie and has things to say but its politics are about as meaningful as Far Cry 5.

    The premise is as follows: The President of the United States has made a royal hash of things and about half of the country has seceded but into multiple factions. The US military seems divided on which faction to side with, and everyone is at each other’s throat. The US economy has collapsed and there’s a great deal of violence being done on citizens by other citizens with shortages of everything from food to gasoline. Canadian dollars are far more valuable than US dollars. Vigilante justice is common. There’s a rush to crush the President of the United States but no real sign that killing him will reunite the country or even stop the fighting.

    Some people have commented on how weird the premise is and how Texas and California uniting into one country (The Western Front) is ridiculous. I don’t think that’s unlikely at all since people forget that both states have about 40% of the other party that they are most considered opposing. You could easily have said party seize power in one or the other, but it represents that you shouldn’t go into this movie expecting any meaningful world-building related to present day ideals. No, what it actually has to say is that, and get this, civil wars are bad for their citizens.

    The Civil War is cataloged through the eyes of a group of reporters led by Kirsten Dunst playing Lee Smith (named after the famous female war journalist). The reporters are incredibly jaded and seemingly uninterested in any of the politics involving each faction. They just want the scoop. Given the behavior of everyone involved, it’s perhaps understandable why they’re incredible cynics. Cailee Spaeny plays Jessie Gullen, her Kitty Pryde-esque sidekick who wants to be a war photojournalist herself but has never seen a dead body outside of a newspaper article.

    What follows is essentially a road movie as we pass through town to town and see how each community is dealing with the conflict. Some are using the war as an opportunity to settle old scores, others are trying to live their lives as if it wasn’t happening (which gets more contempt than it deserves given no faction is worth supporting), and others are carrying out massacres that are implied to be race or ideology related. If you don’t get the lesson that neighbor turning on neighbor is bad, then you aren’t paying attention. Ironically, perhaps the sharpest critique is of war journalism in general as the photojournalists seem like psychopathic vultures with their detachment as well as exploitative handling of their surroundings.

    Dunst and Spaeny do a fantastic job in this movie but it really just feels like it’s only message is, “We really should avoid shooting at each other.” Which, again, IS a message. It’s not a particularly DEEP message but I can’t fault it either. The problem is that for a large portion of Americans, the issue isn’t my dislike of the other side’s policies on taxation. The problem is that for a large portion of Americans, the issue is my dislike of the other side’s general policies on wanting to kill or deport my friends. Oh, and deny them bodily autonomy. You can’t really “both sides” that.

Available here

The Division: Compromised by Thomas Parrott

    COMPROMISED is the second of the OPERATION: CROSSWORDS series for TOM CLANCY'S THE DIVISION franchise by Ubisoft. The premise for that series is that the Dollar Flu AKA The Green Poison has spread through the world and wiped-out ninety percent of the planet. The survivors of humanity are fighting over the remainder of the world's resources with most of them running out within a few months of the events. Humanity, or at least America's, only hope is the brave soldiers of the Strategic Homeland Division that have been given extraordinary powers to "save what remains.”

    RECRUITED was a fun novel for fans of the series with the character of Maira Kanhai being recruited (hence the title) into the Division after the events of THE DIVISION 2. The book resolved some of the larger questions of famine and other issues that needed to be addressed in the semi-realistic world bearing the name of the late Tom Clancy. It also introduced some new factions as well told an interesting story regarding Rogue agents, revenge, and moral compromises. Basically, what fans of The Division like about the games.

    Recruited takes place some months after the events of the original book with the characters still recovering from their injuries. Unfortunately, there is no rest for the righteous in the post-apocalypse world and Maira is activated to journey down to Texas in order to try to secure one of the few remaining oil refineries left in the world. It is under attack by eco-terrorists who believe that the Green Poison is the best time to start making a serious effort to start a sustainable lifestyle. This would be more sympathetic if there wasn't millions of people depending on gas-powered trucks to deliver food.

    Honestly, while I enjoyed this book, I feel it is inferior to Recruited. The Reborn and Molassi are interesting new factions but don't feel as original as the Freighties and Roamers. Plus, eco-terrorists are a questionable villain to begin with before you have most of humanity dead and even the most Malthusian economist going, "Woah there." It also doesn't help the Reborn get treated more sympathetically than they probably should be given the atrocities that they carry out as well as the, well, frank stupidity of their arguments. Recruited also has not one but two dead characters show up as surprise reveals as well, including a long-lost brother.

    I think the book would have been better if it had continued focusing on the role of fossil fuels as a resource necessary in the post-apocalypse world. The Road Warrior managed to tell a fantastic action movie with much the same plot and never lost sight of how oil was something simultaneously a curse as well as blessing to mankind. Instead, the entirety of the plot is cast aside fairly early for some more Rogue Agent nonsense that is usually entertaining but just doesn't work here.

    Still, I enjoyed this volume, and it is still something I recommend for fans of The Division games. Maira is a great character and seeing her slowly develop into an experienced agent able to negotiate as well as fight is a nice process to see. I like the new characters introduced to their squad as well, though I don't think either of them is as enjoyable as Brenda or Leo.

Available here

Fallout: A Tale of Mutation review

    FALLOUT: A TALE OF MUTATION by Erwan Lafleuriel is a book available on Kindle Unlimited that details the creation of the first four Fallout games (no real information on Fallout 76 or the series, which is a shame). This is basically a book discussing how each game came to be and some general discussion about their themes as well as world-building. It's nothing that hardcore fans wouldn't already be familiar with.

    The premise of the book is that it details the origins of Fallout as a proposed sequel to Wasteland by Tim Cain before going off and becoming its own thing. It details such stories as how Brian Fargo came up with the idea of a retrofuturistic 1950s style for the Pre-War Era, how Tim Cain got so many big name Hollywood actors to do the voice work for the bare minimum required by their unions, and how the game was a smashing success despite not being a major priority for Interplay at the time.

    The book doesn't just follow the production development of Fallout, though, but also the sequels. It moves effortlessly to the development of Fallout 2 and how the game's story development was passed on to Chris Avellone and others who explain their reasoning for some of the game's controversial choices. It talks about the behind-the-scenes that eventually led to the game franchise being acquired by Bethesda too.

    Erwan Lafleuriel isn't shy about his editorializing during the book, showing his clear preference for the original two games while referring to what he thinks about as plot holes in both Fallout 3 as well as Fallout 4 (especially Fallout 4). Nevertheless, he doesn't go into pure hate either and I find that made all the difference for me in the book.

    If I have any complaint about the book, it's the fact that it's a little light on content regarding the games themselves and the latter half of the book goes over the various factions and concepts in the series like Super Mutants. This is more of an encyclopedia entry for the setting than something than sharing the origins of the game. Still, I enjoyed the section on themes and discussing the music that have become iconic to the series both in terms of original as well as 1950s tunes.

    Overall, Fallout: A Tale of Mutation is a very enjoyable book and I think fans of the franchise will very much enjoy it. Fallout is a fantastic video game franchise and the world it's created deserves this kind of scholarly analysis. Could it have gone deeper? Yes, but that doesn't mean it's not worth picking it up.

8/10

Available here

The Guy in the Corgi Shirt 1#: Fallout the Series

 

Exactly what the title says. I really enjoyed Fallout: The Series and here's a video where I discuss it with fellow post-apocalypse author Eric Malikyte. I think the two of us provide a pretty unique perspective on the show from people who make these kind of stories for a living. As a note, "The Guy in the Corgi Shirt" is my Youtube persona.

The Division 2 review

    The Division 2 has been out since 2019, so this review is a bit late but it’s an interesting time to take stock of a game at the end of its game life rather than the beginning. Ubisoft have been keeping The Division 2 steadily updated after a meager opening and the final results are very different from the beginning ones. With the announced multiplayer free-to-play sequel, The Division: Heartland, in the works, it also feels like a good time to go back and review what worked as well as didn’t for this installment of the franchise.

    The premise for The Division universe is that a genetically engineered smallpox variant called the Dollar Flu was released in New York before spreading across the globe. It has killed most of humanity off and left the survivors forced to fight over resources as well as territory. One government agency, the Strategic Homeland Division, is still a active and was given authority to do whatever it took to rebuild society.

    The Division 2 picks up several months after the events of the first game. You may or may not be playing the original Division agent but it’s not a character driven game so there’s not really a problem with this. Basically, after an attack on New York City facilities by mysterious forces from Washington DC, your character heads down to the former nation’s capital to contact the former federal government’s remnants in the Joint Task Force (or JTF). They are a pathetic shell of their former self with most of the city controlled by three gangs: the Outcasts, Hyenas, and True Sons. Go kill them, retake city. You know the drill. There’s also the occasional hints toward a larger more advanced force that has been feeding the chaos post-Dollar Flu.

    At the risk of spoiling a five-year-old game, The Division 2 retcons away the premise of the original The Division. One of the cheekier twists of the lore was that it turns out there was no major scary conspiracy behind it all. No, the Dollar Flu was created in a personal lab by a crazy Malthusian scientist who wanted to save the environment by killing off 98% of humanity. He did it with some basic university equipment and stuff you’d buy online. This goes out the window in The Division 2 and now there’s a massive Russian-owned PMC, treacherous Vice Presidents, and dark money trying to rule the ashes.

    Honestly, this was probably a smart play on the part of Ubisoft because the original twist works fine in the works of Tom Clancy (that is this ostensibly based on) but he wrote novels rather than ongoing video game franchises. Indeed, in Rainbow Six, the novel by Tom Clancy that the Division universe actually takes a lot of its premise from (with the villain succeeding), there was a corporate conspiracy that had much of the same motive. Indeed, I dare say that Tom Clancy would appreciate once more making the Russians the bad guys of a techno-thriller involving taking over the world with bioweapons.

    But enough of the plot and lore business. How does the game play? It’s a lot better than the first The Division. I am extremely biased in this because The Division was perfectly designed as the team-based game that it was originally designed as. However, if you are like me and are an antisocial nerd who prefers to solo his multiplayer experiences then The Division 2 is far better balanced. It also has endgame content with plenty of missions after the original and an eternal “gang war” going on where areas you’d previously liberated fall back into enemy hands.

    As a cover-based looter-shooter, there’s not much attempt to reinvent the wheel. You shoot a bunch of bad guys, level up your loot, and attempt to get enough collectibles to craft what you don’t have. Some of the systems are better than others with mods being something I flat out didn’t bother with and feel like the game didn’t care if I did or not. There’s taking outposts, bounties, liberating prisoners, destroying propaganda, and other side activities that are fun. You can get killed but that just knocks you out temporarily. Your goal is to finish the story missions and upgrade the various survivor settlements, so they go from being tent cities to thriving post-apocalypse communities full of children.

    Washington DC is an excellent setting for doing post-apocalypse adventuring and has the same general appeal as Fallout 3, except instead of the place being a radioactive desert, it’s overgrown and graffiti covered. Having shoot outs in the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, and Congress will never not be fun. The nature of the highly visible landmarks and recognizable architecture gives it a lot more entertainment value as a setting versus NYC. Can you believe there was no Statue of Liberty mission in The Division? I can’t. There’s one in The Division 2‘s WARLORDS OF NEW YORK, though.

    Ubisoft was criticized for denying the game had a political message and, honestly, I’m kind of with the developer on this. As difficult as it is to parse, “Government flubbed a pandemic response and as a result bad Russian-aligned people are trying to take over in order to end democracy” not being political, I’m pretty sure that was an accident rather than intentional. One of the groups is even a bunch of conspiracy theorist cultists but they have about as much personality as orcs.

    In conclusion, The Division 2 is a solid game that gives you a definite “meat and potatoes” shooter experience. It’s an improvement on The Division in terms of solo play as well as having a lot more to do perpetually. You can go on missions post the “final” one like attacking Camp David, going to a zoo, and other enjoyable experiences. If you also manage to beat the game (technically before but I wouldn’t recommend it), there’s Warlords of New York. The game includes several seasonal events, but these are one that you’ve probably missed the majority of.

The Division: Recruited by Thomas Parrott review

    THE DIVISION: RECRUITED is an expanded universe novel set in the universe of TOM CLANCY’S THE DIVISION by Ubisoft. The premise is the United States (and probably world) has been devastated by a plague called the Green Poison. With the majority of the human race dead, the survivors attempt to eke out an existence in the aftermath with various lawless factions rising to compete for limited resources. Standing in the way of utter chaos is the Division, a secret agency of disaster responders with special equipment as well as training. Oh and the authority to shoot any individuals who are standing in the way of you rebuilding America.

    This book is set around the time of The Division 2 and in the Washington D.C. area. Maira Kanhai is a cyber security specialist from the US Navy who served her term before the pandemic occurred. After a failed attempt to rejoin the US Army, she ends up the protector of a small community of survivors that is just barely holding on as the lawlessness of DC continues. After a bloody battle that results in many deaths, she is taken on as a probationary member of the Division.

    Maira proceeds to travel with a pair of other Division agents as they leave the DC area and start a lengthy road trip to the Midwest in hopes of setting up food convoys to prevent famine from finishing off the millions of survivors on the East Coast. It’s a very good acknowledgement of the infrastructure being the real issue that would finish off humanity’s remnants. The apocalypse can’t continue as a scavenger-esque society for more than a year as eventually the survivors would go through all remaining supplies.

    I give props to the writer as they successfully create new factions to add to the Division universe rather than just reusing the ones from the games. We are introduced to the Freighties and the Roamers, two bands of truckers who have developed radically different ideas of what they should do with their gasoline powered transports in a society where that suddenly means a lot of power. We also have a plot related to a Division agent going rogue because it seems they can’t keep their personnel from doing so in any spinoff.

    I have a few complaints about the book related to the fact that it sometimes imitates the game a little too much. For example, over the course of the book, our protagonists kill something akin to a hundred or more Outcasts. You know, the plague obsessed crazy cultists menacing DC from the second game. That’s me being literal about their numbers rather than exaggerating too. They get into several pitched battles with the Outcasts rushing them like Zerg. In the game, that’s understandable, but you’d think that would be a significant chunk of their actual forces. It just took me out of the book, especially since Tom Clancy’s name is attached despite him being a brand rather than actually involved in the IP.

    Even so, I overall really enjoyed this book and think that it will be a good introduction for people trying to become acquainted with The Division franchise. While you’re probably going to get more out of it if you’re already a fan, I had a lot of fun with it. I recommend getting the audiobook over the Kindle or paperback version as well. The narrator does a fantastic job.

Available here

Review - Silo: Season One

    SILO is based on the similarly titled book series by Hugh Howey. After finishing FALLOUT, I was still in a post-apocalypse mood and didn’t want to deal with zombies, so I decided to check out this series on Apple TV that I’d seen advertised at my local comic book store.

    I'm a fan of Rebecca Ferguson from her work in the Mission Impossible movies so I figured it would certainly be up my alley. I have to admit that it was the look of the show that sold me on it and the idea of living in what appeared to be a literal nuclear silo was something that I definitely was attracted by. Certainly, I ended up getting the book after finishing the first season. Still, it’s not going to be a wholly positive endorsement. It’s a good show but I have thoughts.

    The premise is that humanity, at least as far as we know, only exists in the Silo now. There’s ten thousand people living in a single vertical tube stretching down into the depths of the Earth with the outside considered to be wholly toxic. They have forgotten all of their history and all records of it have been destroyed due to a great rebellion that was put down a century and a half ago. Relics of the before times are illegal and a vibrant trade in them still exists. If you screw up or are feeling suicidal, you are sent outside to clean the cameras watching the outside and will inevitably die within minutes.

    The first couple of episodes deal with Sheriff Holston Becker (David Oyelowo) and his wife, Allison (Rashida Jones), dealing with the fact that they are unable to conceive during their preordained period to have a child. They are also people who have stumbled into possible secrets of the time before, including an actual hard drive. This story will segue into the story of Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson), a “Mechanical” working in the lowest, dingiest levels of the Silo. Opposing their efforts is Robert Sims (Common), a sinister Judicial agent, and the ambiguously loyal Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins).

    The plot is, obviously, stretched from the original novel. You can tell they have added a large amount of content in order to fill out the show’s ten episode runtime. This seems like it could easily have been a movie and probably should have been. There’s quite a bit of melodrama that feels contrived and designed to just maximize the conflict despite the fact that the story is fairly straightforward despite a few twists.

    Next, Silo feels a great deal like a an adult aged cast of characters in a YA novel. There’s the sinister conspiracy, the plucky heroine with way too much plot armor, and the somewhat contrived backstory that lets her keep a role as a working class hero while also being an educated young woman with ties to the upper class as well as eventually falling her way into law enforcement. Having read the books, I feel like they did a much better job of getting straight to the point and not getting sidetracked.

    That doesn’t mean the show is bad, per se, but it does lower its score a bit. The show has fantastic set-building and a strong claustrophobic feel throughout. Much of the technology is analog and feels very much like Fallout without the retro-futurism or wacky humor. Everything feels appropriately worn down and you believe these people are living in a slowly dying ruin. The little rules and feel of the place are all well done as well.

    The acting is good, too, and none of the performers do anything less than their A-game. All of them are very talented and even if they don’t have much to work with, they manage to expand the characters and give them a humanity that the writing doesn’t necessarily justify. Even if you can see who the villains are from a mile away, you also believe that they have justifiable (at least to themselves) reasons for their activities.

    In conclusion, this is an entertaining show with some flaws. I recommend it to individuals who enjoy dystopian fiction, post-apocalypse storytelling, and those who don’t mind a little melodrama to round out their dramatic acting and tragedy of circumstance. The world of Silo is well-realized and the acting is good enough that I can ignore most of its flaws.

Fallout: The Series Season One review

 

*plays Atom Bomb by The Five Stars*

    I love Fallout to an unhealthy degree. Seriously, I had a Fallout wallet for years. My wife got me a Fallout themed Xbox as a birthday present. I've loved Fallout since Fallout 3, like many fans, but have also played the original Interplay games. I can tell you the secrets of the Vaults, who three fictional Presidents were, and why you should never eat Iguana on a Stick. So, I am THE target audience for Fallout: The Series. Mind you, I'm also going to be one of those annoyingly hard to please people that notices everything wrong too.

    So is it fantastic? Or an atomic bomb? Well, much like the games themselves, it has a little of both but is closer to Fallout: New Vegas versus Fallout 76. It is something that my wife, who is only familiar with Fallout through what she can see over my shoulder, enjoyed very much and probably benefited from someone to tell her little details about but is perfectly accessible to a newcomer. Indeed, what I think people are most likely to complain about is going to be from hardcore fans who are going to be upset about some lore changes-probably unreasonably so but fan is short for fanatic for a reason.

    The premise for the franchise is that it is an alternate 23rd century where the world was nuked two hundred years ago. Technology is more advanced in some ways with power armor and robots on one-hand but black and white televisions on the other. The nuclear war that happened has still not been recovered from, if such a thing were possible, and it remains a mixture of Mad Max and Sixties science fiction movies. This is already a thing super-Fallout fans will be annoyed by as some fans insist the Earth would rebuild and only Bethesda Games is keeping it stuck in ruins.

    The story follows three protagonists with the first being the Ghoul/Cooper (Walter Goggins), who is a survivor of the Great War and a former Hollywood cowboy. The years have not been kind to him and he's gone from being a singing good guy cowboy to a murderous Spaghetti Western one. The second is Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell), the daughter of Vault 33's Overseer (Kyle MacLachlan), who is setting up for her arranged marriage with a stranger from Vault 32. Finally, there is Maximus (Aaron Moten), who is a new recruit to the Brotherhood of Steel and a survivor of the sacking of Shady Sands.

    I'm disinclined to spoil any of this show because it's such a wonderful road trip that involves so many Easter Eggs, callbacks, plot twists, and surprises. We get a longstanding mystery from the franchise resolved as well as the plugging of a plot hole that has existed since Fallout 2 (why are Vault-Tec experimenting on people after the apocalypse when all of that data would be seemingly irrelevant?). We also get nods to all of the games ranging from the first ("Our water chip is busted") to New Vegas and the Commonwealth.

    The GOAT (Greatest of All Time) for this series is definitely Lucy and I hereby dub her "Vault Girl" as her official nickname for inclusion among such luminaries as the Vault Dweller, Courier, and Lone Wanderer. She is naive without being stupid, kind without being insipid, and believable in her journey to becoming a survivor. She never quite sheds her Good Karma Pacifist Run playthrough ideology and is all the more lovable for it. Cooper is almost as entertaining and utters an immortal line about how, no matter how important your goal is, you will always be sidetracked from it in the Wasteland. Maximus, by contrast, is...okay. This is no fault of the actor but he seems to be a lot more naive than Lucy in some ways with none of her excuse.

    The show manages to achieve a fun balance between world-building, characterization, plot, and humor. The humor, especially, works well by exploiting Fallout's peculiar tone of zany over-the-top violence with an alternate 1950s wholesomeness. Poor Lucy will be splattered with blood many times in this show and never quite lose her perky can-do attitude for example. She needs to definitely put a few more points into her Speech score, though. Fans of the Fallout soundtracks will note a lot of the songs get use in the show and it is all the better for it. They can also afford actual Johnny Cash tunes this time around too.

    The show makes the correct choice to embrace the absolute ridiculousness of Fallout's retro-future aesthetic with appearances by a Mr. Handy, the 1950s dinner decor of the Vaults, green DOS computers, and how the fact PipBoys geo-tracking works exactly like they do in the games. We don't see as many robots or mutants as we might have in the games but I suppose even the show's extensive budget had to draw the line somewhere.

    There's been some confusion over an error in the show's timeline, though. One that some fans believed resulted in New Vegas being rendered non-canonical. The developers have already come out and said this is not the case and the show makes many-many references to the game, so its extra strange but some people presumably need a reason to complain. Fans of NCR will also be upset with some of the developments in-universe but, well, War never changes. Oh and I was upset they didn't get Ron Pearlman to do a voice over. Those are my only complaints.

    I can't wait for Season Two.

Available here

The Crimson Legion (The Prism Pentad #2) by Troy Denning

    THE CRIMSON LEGION is the second novel of the Prism Pentad series by Troy Denning. Set in the harsh world of Athas AKA Dark Sun for TSR's Dungeons and Dragons, it is a post-apocalypse story except the pre-devastation world was a typical fantasy setting. Now everything is desert, evil wizards, and guys dressed up like Lord Humungus. In the previous book, the city of Tyr was trying to overthrow its evil Sorcerer King and now we're following Rikus the Gladiator as he attempts to lead its army against an invasion by the city of Urik.

    Generally, I absolutely love The Crimson Legion and think it has a lot going for it. It's a war novel and has a huge amount of interpersonal drama. We get a lot more character development for both Rikus and Neeva, who are two of my three favorite characters from this series. It does have some areas that I'm willing to criticize and if The Verdant Passage is a 4.5 to 5 out of 5 then this is a 4 to 4.5 out of 5. Which is perfectly respectable and well above most other Dungeons and Dragons fiction that usually is a fun but substanceless 3 or 3.5 out of 5, numbers wise.

    The book is essentially a running chase as Rikus and the army of Tyr achieve an unexpected victory against a vastly superior force through what amounts to sheer dumb luck. Basically, the big superweapon/monster of the Urik army was controlled by a mind-controlled slave that they just so happen to free. Rikus confuses the fortunes of war for military genius on his part and proceeds to lead his army into greater and greater danger. Rikus is driven by revenge as much as victory as Maetan Lubar, the enemy commander, happens to have once owned Rikus.

    Maetan Lubar is a perfectly hateable villain, a smug Urik nobleman and slaver who intends to clap as many Tyrians in chains as he can. Even though he spends the entirety of the book fleeing from Rikus and his armies, he maintains his insufferable superiority. If you're looking for particular depth to your bad guys, he's not the guy to look to. However, that doesn't mean he's not realistic as there's alot more people who look down on their social "inferiors" and are pathologically incapable of recognizing how they've screwed up.

    Indeed, the moral ambiguity of the novel isn't from the villain but the hero. Rikus is arrogant beyond belief and his personal flaws alienate Neeva as well as those among his command. I'm a big Neeva/Rikus shipper, so I wasn't happy about how he increasingly drives her into the arms of Caelum the Sun Priest. Caelum is just as flawed as Rikus but not in as interesting a way. However, you can see why Neeva wants something more stable as Rikus keeps trying to convince her to live in polyamory with him, Sadira, and Agis. Not exactly the sort of plot you expect from Dark Sun, eh?

    The book also provides a lot of foreshadowing for the eventual revelations about the nature of Athas, the origins of the Sorcerer Kings, and the mysterious entity known as Rajaat. This is all spoiler territory now but I appreciate Troy Denning was willing to get into the meat and drink of the setting if not set the banquet himself. Athas was largely undefined and mysterious before this series and the history he creates for it is fantastic.

    In conclusion, another great entity in a book series that I feel is fantastically underrated. It was an influence on my Cthulhu Armageddon series and remains a personal favorite. Would I prefer more Neeva and Rikus? Absolutely, but I also understand why he's screwing up what is an otherwise good thing. 

8.5/10

Thirteen Tips to running Dark Sun in 5th Edition

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    Dark Sun is one of my favorite campaign settings but one of the least played according to sales figures at TSR during the heyday of Loraine William's tenure as CEO. It is a difficult setting to get a handle on as it rejects the traditional good versus evil setting to do something more akin to fantasy Gamma World. No Dungeonmaster's Athas was the same as some were ones that emphasized the dark antihero element while others emphasized the heroic liberation fantasy. Others were drawn to the survival element and others still the loin cloth clad barbarians and sexy gladiators. Dark Sun was a big influence on my writing early on as its austere survival-orientated bleakness was in mind when I wrote on Cthulhu Armageddon.

    Here's a few suggestion for how I choose to roleplay the setting. Some of these are against the original choices of the setting and my own interpretations but I feel these all together are good ones for people who want to experience life on a dying but fantastic world.

1:] Dark Sun as Desert Punk and Planetary Romance

    In 1912, Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote a story of a Civil War veteran visiting a post-apocalypse high tech society that had been reduced to naked people murdering each other for ancient rivalries. Over the course of the series, they would find out that many of the religious cults of the world were scams and that ancient conspiracies were designed to keep the people in bondage under technological wizard kings. John Carter would go on to liberate the slaves (somewhat ironically given which side he fought for in the Civil War) and become a legendary hero. It was grand, romantic, and weird for an author who predated most pulp fiction.

    Simultaneously, Athas also draws from modern day post-apocalypse stories with Mad Max being an influence. There's bands of weird roaring tribals that look like depraved versions of your typical fantasy world. This was once a world like Krynn or Toril but it's since been turned by evil magic into something that Immorten Joe would find perfectly acceptable. Finding the right balance between heroic fantasy and anti-hero survival stories is a hard choice but my recommendation is to look to Fallout for inspiration. Specifically where our Vault Dwellers go out into the wilderness and proceed to kick the bandits as well as fascists in the ass. Athas is a shitty-shitty place but it is also a hopeful one because the should make a difference.

2:] Establish your game's maturity level with your group ahead of time

    One problem people ran into while running Dark Sun is that they stumbled in just how dark and serious they wanted to run the place. In simple terms, the villains not only won in Athas but they won a long time ago and rule over the ashes. A simple analogy to make is that the Tablelands are Mordor and there's six or seven Saurons living in close proximity to one another. Slavery is a thing that the city states practice and it can be easy to fall into the trap of assuming that your player characters are meant to find as normal as your typical Ancient Egyptian or Roman would. Which, honestly, isn't the kind of attitude many players will find fun or heroic. That's not getting into the fact that many Dungeonmasters are interested in exploring how "dark" the setting can get and that's led to some horror stories over the years.

    My general take on the setting is akin to Mad Max: Fury Road as a general maturity take. R-rated with a lot of appalling horrible stuff taking place in the background but you don't need to dwell on it. Player characters, barring a villain campaign where everyone is all in, should be part of the heroic liberated slaves and working class of Athas out to overthrow the evil sorcerer King as well as liberate the masses. Nothing about the reign of their millennia-long tyranny is natural and the majority of people are oppressed by it rather than invested. You're out there to change this world. Some players may be more interested in a "Game of Thrones-esque" darkness mixed with Athas and that's fine or a much lighter story about gladiators and insect people. This is fine. Just establish that you're all on the same page.

3:] Toss out the original level scaling

    The original 2E book Dragon Kings established that the Sorcerer Kings were all 40+ level and a later adventure flat out said, "Oh, you can't kill Borys. Even though we've already given him ridiculous stats and superpowers, if your players somehow succeed then he's a clone or whatever." Troy Denning notably looked at this and went, "Screw this" before writing his 13th level or so heroes killing them off one after the other in the Prism Pentad. Honestly, as I grow older, I'm kind of with Troy on this. My suggestion is that each Sorcerer King is somewhere around 16th to 20th level with this making them formidable but not unkillable.

    You may argue that this dramatically changes the feel of the campaign setting from a place that is utterly screwed to some place that could, theoretically, be liberated from tyranny. To which I say, yeah, that's the point. If I'm playing STAR WARS, I don't expect to fight the Emperor or Darth Vader but if I'm 16th level then I'm up there with the people who could defeat them in this alternate reality.

4:] Mine the Novels but don't be beholden to them 

    One of the most controversial things about Athas is the Prism Pentad wrapped up most of the story beats and resolved a lot of the setting's mystery. I never had an issue with this as the aforementioned Star Wars is a place I've enjoyed playing during Palpatine's reign as well as Legends-inspired warlord period following his death. Dragonlance had a similar "problem" and I don't really think there's anyone who has an issue playing the War of the Lance period. Hell, some people I know play the Kingpriest era despite knowing how that ends.

    I don't think the canonical post-Prism Pentad material was very good but that's a different story from it being a bad premise as you have potentially thousands of would-be conquerors, petty Sorcerer Kings, theocrats, and more rising in the wake of the power vacuum. I had the survivors of Ur-Draxas invade and conquer the "liberated" kingdoms with the dragon worshipers working on resurrecting Borys. I may have drawn heavily from Fallout's Enclave for them. A bunch of deluded fantasy fascists deluding themselves into believing they can rebuild the world they destroyed.

    But the novels have a lot of good material to them such as the story of Rajaat, the Cleansing Wars, and things like Sun arcane magic. Maybe you want to have your PCs be the assassins of Kalak or discover the secrets of the Blue and Green Ages. Let's face it, if they haven't read the novels, it's not cheating.

5:] Athas is more Law versus Chaos than Good versus Evil, And Law is the Bad Guys 

    Part of Dark Sun's appeal to me is the fact that there's no Gondor, Knight of Solamnia, or Bahamut to appeal to in this setting. The closest thing to a force for good in the setting is the Veiled Alliance and they're closer to the Rebel Alliance or Harpers than people who can actually do good. Aside from the Free City of Tyr, most cities are treacherous tyrannies ruled by corrupt Templars as well as nobility who achieved their positions by hitching their wagons to the Sorcerer Kings.

    In simple terms, the PC's job as being heroes is not to patch a hole in the house's roof but to burn it down so a new one can be built in its place. There's no good guy authority to serve and if the PCs are very likely to be outlaws or bandits themselves. Emphasizing the corruption, decadence, and tyranny of the setting should incline the players to want to make their own alliance or throw a wrench into the gears of oppression. They should get used to also using safe houses, keeping a low profile, and other fun spy tricks.

6:] Athas stereotypes aren't the end all of characterization

    Dark Sun's chief selling point was similar to Planescape's in that it tore down a lot of the assumptions of D&D. Elves were not Tolkien-ish but more like the Fremen, halflings were jungle dwelling cannibals that turned out to be the ancient rulers of their world, and dwarves are life quest obsessed dudes who hate body hair. This is fun but the joke has lost some of its punch because we've got so many new variants of the traditional races in popular fantasy media. It's good to embrace the cultural differences of Athas but I think it's also important not to stick with the negatives ones alone but keep them as stereotypes in-universe.

    Which is to say in my games I make it so halflings aren't cannibals (anymore than anyone else in Athas when life is short), Muls don't kill their mothers when born (anymore than anyone else in pre-modern medicine child rearing times), and elves are only as likely to rob you as any other merchant unless you bring up how all elves are thieves in their presence. Throwing this in-universe rumor and slander about helps ground how the people of Athas are carrying plenty of pointless grudges about.

7:] Make Defiling a temptation for Preservers 

    This is a direct rules change but in 2E Defilers and Preservers had the same powers but Defilers leveled up much faster. You also were either one or the other. Defilers destroyed the land and ecology of Athas while Preservers just didn't. The books handled it as a choice between two different kinds of magic and leaving that for player characters is something I think would make the consequences more stark. 

    My suggestion is that Preservers can gain bonus dice by Defiling as well as possibly certain spells that aren't available to them otherwise. An easy solution would be that all Necrotic damage spells, Life Draining, and Necromancy are Defiler related. In a survival situation like Athas, you might find that extra bonus worth destroying the local oasis, "Just this once." I also recommend giving Defilers the ability to create ways of draining life from people and animals then "storing it" as an in-universe set of magical items.

 8:] Borrow heavily from 3rd party material for Psionics

    This one doesn't need to be explained but with no Psionics in 5E or sign of the new you need to either use house rules, the Mystic class, or third party material. Home brewing is possible with just substituting Sorcerer and a "psionic-y" spell-list (ESP, Mage Hand, Disintegrate) but this is inferior and a cheat. Then again, it might just be the easiest option. Sorcerers are also somewhat at odds with Athas as described unless you want to do the leg work about children being born witches and stoned to death unless found by the Veiled Alliance or Sorcerer Kings. Hmm. I better write that down.

     Now, obviously, if you are NOT playing 5E then this isn't a problem whatsoever. However, I would be remiss in not bringing up this issue if a DM wants to start a new campaign with new players not necessarily familiar with the old material. If you're a 3E grognard like me, you might even prefer point 8 to be, "Make sure your players are familiar with the setting assumptions of your edition." Because 4E Dark Sun (it does exist) also made dragonborn and tieflings a massive part of Athas.

9:] Survival should be a story seed not a mechanic

    I remember a Dungeon Master who managed to alienate all of his players by the fact that he kept meticulous records of food, water, and what his players were wearing before pretty much using that to wipe out everyone. He treated travel between the city-states as massive epic adventures. Needless to say, he was never played with or Dark Sun again by the players. None of us have grown up in a post-apocalypse dying world but our player characters certainly have and generally know the general needs to get from Point A to Point Z.

    There's nothing wrong and it should be encouraged that player characters be aware of how important food, water, and other supplies in-setting. However, they should be only aware of this as a story point rather than a constant mechanical threat. Otherwise, they have "just enough" to get by unless they're devoting a good chunk of their adventuring money to supplies and that's their choice. Generally, it's fine to say, "you start the game with sand beetles having eaten all your rations and the water gone bad. You're on quarter rations and your lips are already cracking." You need to find fresh supplies soon." Just expect that to be the focus of the story if you do.

10:] Athasians are ruthless not stupid

    Post-Apocalypse settings frequently emphasize that humans are the real monsters versus zombies, disease, or giant monsters. This is true and there's going to be a lot of really awful people in Athas ranging from the Templars who destroy thousands to the local slave owner at the bazaar. Betrayal should be something that PCs fear when trusting strangers and sometimes even allies can turn on you (for coin or threat). Still, it can be very easy to overemphasize the dark side of Dark Sun.

    Athas culture has managed to survive in horrible conditions and that does means that people have learned to cooperate. There's no such thing as a free lunch in Athas and people have little enough to share but that doesn't mean that everyone is out to screw you. Indeed, I strongly emphasize when player characters get attacked by bandits or betrayed that it's very often because it's a choice between life or death for them. Except when it's by slavers. Fuck those guys.

11:] Emphasize how WRONG the setting is

    One thing to make clear when describing the world is that defiling has royally screwed this planet up. This should be in every landscape one encounters and every vista. The oceans have been turned from water into silt, the Sun is a black orange color, and both the remaining plant as well as animal life is horrendously mutated. The familiar made foreign is also something to consider as you can use ruins of ancient dwarven holds, petrified elven forests, and other ruined more traditional fantasy to show how far the world has fallen. 

    The fact metal is more precious than gold is not just a stylistic choice but a sign that something had made this world resource poor. Doing this in big and subtle ways will help your players immersion. After all, if a merchant prince serves you a bunch of snakes and insects, it's not a Temple of Doom scene but a wonderful feast. You can also take any of Dungeons and Dragons many monsters and make them a unique terrible encounter. The last bulette in the world may be an undead creature more terrifying to locals than a dragon.

12:] Don't be afraid to reward players but not too generously 

    Athas is a horrible, desperate, dying world. It's also a place where you can have a massive amount of fun. However, it should be the kind of place that rewards Sword and Sorcery antiheroes when they decide to walk on the wild side. Even if you're a heroic hero who heroes, nothing says you can't make a little money in the process. When Conan the Barbarian robbed the Tower of the Serpent in the 1982 movie, he and his friends got months of carousing out of it. If your player characters are of the unusual NG side, they could also use that money to free slaves or feed starving families. 

    One thing to emphasize, though, is that there's no banks in Athas and storing your money with the local nobility or merchant princes has its own risks. Player characters may be hopping from score to score but there shouldn't be bags of holding containing vast treasure hordes or an armory of magical items (even bone ones). Players should be living from month to month or uncomfortably aware their coin is under the floorboards of their inn. Just remember if you DO have thieves rob them, they should have a chance to get it back.

13:] Religion and the D&D cosmology is weird in Athas but exploitable

    The gods are dead, the Sorcerer Kings are able to grant magic, and the Elemental Priests as well as Druids are the only true priests. However, that doesn't have to be the case. Athas is the perfect setting for warlocks making pacts with unimaginable things in the Dark, shamans gaining power from worshiping giant monsters, and family gods that may or may not exist as idols in every household. I'm inclined to think that Templars should be clerics and evil paladins instead of Warlocks but that's just because I enjoy the thematic element. Depending on where clerical magic comes from in the setting, you can also grant it to a large number of groups beyond the traditional 2E ones. If it is based on belief then Repentant Templars might be able to continue harnessing their power after turning on their Sorcerer Kings or their masters are killed.

    Athas is the kind of setting that should probably avoid having much contact with the Great Wheel or Spelljammer setting but you can certainly include Fiends and Deva as leftovers from the kingdoms of the gods long ago. Also, you could do a plot where a Sorcerer King or Defiler Archwizard may open a portal to another world in hopes of continuing their ravaging of life for power. Take advantage of this and you might well have an Elemental Knight or a paladin worshiping a god long dead that he carries the memory of on.

The Verdant Passage (The Prism Pentad #1) by Troy Denning

    THE VERDANT PASSAGE by Troy Denning is the first installment of the Prism Pentad series for the now-defunct DARK SUN campaign setting for TSR (later Wizards of the Coast). The premise was that it was meant to be a blasted arid wasteland where magic has destroyed the world that was half-planetary romance as well as half-Mad Max. It was a post-apocalypse setting that had a strong influence on my CTHULHU ARMAGEDDON series and still holds an important place in my heart.

    The book is fairly simple and could easily be read as a standalone if you wanted to just have an enjoyable read for a time. The evil sorcerer king, Kalak, is building a massive ziggurat for reasons unknown with the entirety of the city-state of Tyr being forced to help. Slaves are being confiscated from the plantations of the city’s nobility, the resistance against him is prepping for a major offensive, and there are plots afoot. The half-dwarf gladiator Rikus, called a mul, is the perfect person to carry out an assassination plot against him. Unfortunately, Rikus has no interest in politics and just intends to win his freedom at the games.

    Rikus is just one of an ensemble of interesting characters for this group of misfits, though. There is also Sadira, a half-elf sorceress who is willing to experiment with black “defiler” magic in order to get the job done but is also romantically interested in Rikus. She’s also romantically interested in Agis, a nobleman who deludes himself into believing that he is a benevolent slave master when there is no such thing. Finally, there’s Neeva, a beautiful female gladiator who has reluctantly tolerated Rikus’ many affairs.

    Neither hero nor villain or, perhaps, villain but not our heroes’ enemy is Tithian of Mericles. The leader of King Kalak’s templars or state priests, he’s a cowardly and scheming scumbag. However, Tithian recognizes that Kalak is not the kind of guy to reward loyalty. As such, it is his goal to do whatever it takes to survive as well as prosper. It makes him an unusual sort of character in Dungeons and Dragons fiction and all the more entertaining for it.

    The book contains a strong anti-slavery and pro-environmental message. The former may not seem like something that was important but I grew up in the Deep South in the Nineties where Confederate apologia was still a thing. Agis’ belief that one can be a “good” slave owner’s values is called out and every other slaver is treated as complete scum who needs to be murdered with no attempt to soften the blow like A Song of Ice and Fire seems to do when the latter books appear. I support that strongly.

    The book isn’t particularly accurate to Dungeons and Dragons with the fact that Rikus, Sadira, and the others are able to take on a Sorcerer King (which were 41st level at the minimum according to the original 2nd Edition boxed set). However, I don’t believe that being accurate to that overpowered crazy bunch of ideas is a good thing and our heroes being able to smack down the evil tyrant is pretty much the “point” of D&D.

    In conclusion, The Verdant Passage is an enjoyable epic fantasy story. It is also fairly self-contained and while it is part of the larger Prism Pentad, everything is wrapped up enough that you could stop after reading this without much difficulty. I also like the book has an unusual take on romance with Sadira simply dating whoever she desires and saying that anyone who has a problem with it to stuff off.

Available here

Series Retrospective: The Prism Pentad by Troy Denning review

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Magic…Magic Never Changes.

Warning – This article will include spoilers for The Verdant Passage.

    Growing up in the Nineties, I think I read something akin to two hundred Dungeons and Dragons novels produced by TSR. If that sounds like an excessive or unlikely number, I should note there’s over one hundred and ninety Dragonlance novels alone and that doesn’t include four hundred Forgotten Realms novels or twenty-two Ravenloft ones.

    No, I didn’t read anywhere near all of them but it was certainly not for lack of trying. However, I have a confession to make, I think there’s only three true “epics” among them. Stories that take full advantage of the massive scope of the universe and world-building. These three epics are the Dragonlance core books (Chronicles to Summer Flame), the Legend of Drizzt, and the Prism Pentad.

    The Prism Pentad by Troy Denning (The Verdant Passage, The Crimson Legion, The Amber Enchantress, The Obsidian Oracle, and The Cerulean Storm) is sort of the odd man out in the group. Dark Sun was one of the lower selling of the Golden Age of TSR and never quite generated the same level of fanbase others did. It was, however, a fantastic setting. A combination of post-apocalypse fantasy and planetary romance where magic has destroyed the environment with all of the survivors living in oppressed city-states ruled by evil Sorcerer Kings.

    Dark Sun was uniquely bleak with most races reduced to xenophobic survivalists, the forces of “good” being cell-based resistances always on the verge of extinction, and the environment being so hostile that players were encouraged to keep three characters that all started at level three because the lethality was believed to warrant it. It predated the grimdark Renaissance of assumed antiheroes in a corrupt society but also called back to Conan the Barbarian, Burroughs’ Barsoom, and Jack Vance’s Dying Earth.

    The Prism Pentad was special to me, though, because Troy Denning took this bleak uncompromising setting before saying, “What if our protagonists were allowed to actually make it better? What if the way they did that was to challenge the status quo by utterly overthrowing fantasy assumptions about how the world should work?” The first book deals with a planned revolution against one of the Sorcerer Kings, a slave revolt, and plans to bring an end to the old order so that a newer freerer society could emerge from the ashes.

    And it works.

    So many revolutions and attempts to build better societies in fantasy completely fail. Either the people trying to change the status quo become just as bad as the oppressors or they go “too far” in some way that renders any attempt to do better than putting slightly less awful people in charge as wrong. The idea of real systemic change isn’t something that most fantasy, let alone Dungeons and Dragons fantasy, is willing to engage with.

    Here, the Free City of Tyr emerges from a liberation of the people from tyrannical rule and you know what? Everyone is better off for killing those slaving bastards and liberating the people they held in bondage. Kings are not something the people need and the only time our heroes make any mistakes is when they’re persuaded they should make any sort of compromise with the old aristocracy. The lesson of our barbarian hero, Rikus, and sometimes Defiler, Sadira of Tyr, is not, “Are we going too far?” but “Maybe we should have gone further?”

    The book wrestles with a lot meaty subjects and our protagonists make mistakes along the way. Sometimes they do let the fame of being peasant heroes go to their head and a few times they do ruthless things that get the job done in the short term but have horrible consequences. It also plays with a lot of common fantasy assumptions, at least in the early Nineties. The protagonist simultaneously being in love with two other heroes that they settle into a polycule is pretty abnormal versus love triangle garbage. Even more so is when it’s a woman with two men. A female heroine becomes a mother and it changes absolutely nothing about her heroics.

    Troy is also not afraid to be political in a way that doesn’t lecture the reader but makes it clear that there is a decided point A to point Z line for how the world became the horror show it is. The Sorcerer Kings were genocidal racists out to purge all-nonhumans from the Earth and didn’t care about magic being a finite resource in the world as long as they ruled the ashes. Years before Warcraft III, Troy had the “monster slaying is righteous because they’re bad and we’re good” as the ideology of the villains. It left an impression on me that maybe, just maybe, aristocracy, self-righteousness, and appeal to tradition were BS.

    Plus Sadira was like Kitiara uth Matar and my thirteen year old self’s first fictional crush.

    The Prism Pentad was conclusive in a way that only Dragonlance was really allowed to be. So much so that many fans complained about the canon changes at the end. For me, it was more a sign that the books were willing to tell the kind of epic fantasy that our PCs should be allowed to be the stars of. Besides, we had Dregoth the Dracolich to take the place of any people who were overthrown along the way. And if you get that reference, take a 100 EXP.

    You’ll need it in the Tablelands.

Available here