New Books From Todd Leback to Review

Author's Note: Sometimes, life kicks you in the balls. Sometimes it just doesn't stop. If you don't laugh some or all of it off, you'll go nuts. This post is in that laughing spirit. 

It pokes fun at my situation, skewers my reviews and pays homage to a spammer that used my 52 Weeks of Magic series to promote a consignment shop by implying items sold were possibly magical. It also promotes a pair of titles by Todd Leback.  

This morning, I found a package on my porch. I also noticed that it was snowing, which is odd weather before December. This is Buffalo, NY, so we are no strangers to snow, but snow before December is unusual. Typically, we get all 47 feet on one day and it stays no longer than January 2nd. 

Since it was unusually cool today, I knew this package contained a new book from Todd Leback. How do I know that? All of Todd Leback's books are magical. 

In defiance of all FTC rules, I told all of my readers Todd Leback's books are magically protected from fire. In all seriousness, it's totally true that one of his titles, Into the Wild survived a housefire. So clearly, there is some unknown physics happening here, if not out and out magic. 

Snow this early in Buffalo New York is so unusual, I find it hard to believe that a single book could possibly cause it before December. 

Well, it turns out that is correct. 

In order for me to cause it to snow so early in the year, I had to order two books from Todd Leback. I ordered both A Guide to Thieves Guilds and Basilisk Hills Ultimate Hexcrawl. This order was placed back on November 11th and arrived the morning of November 27. I know DriveThruRPG is urging people to order early to allow time for Christmas delivery, so I might have just been lucky. 

Or it was magic. You decide. 

The Minus Faction by Rick Wayne Review

Title: The Minus Faction

Author: Rick Wayne

Year: 2017

Pages: 782 pages

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

I hate superhero novelizations. These types of books try to take a comic book character from a visual form of media and place them in a verbal or textual world. The problem with that is the hero or heroes always escape back to the visual media. It's never good.  

So, why I am reviewing Rick Wayne's The Minus Faction? Because these superheroes were created in the form of a novel from the get-go. John Regent feels like a characterization in the novel. Mr. Wayne managed to fuse the superhero tropes with real-world speculative fiction to create a strong cast of characters in a series of stories. The characters and the threats seem real, the storytelling is as a work of fiction should be. 

The Minus Faction starts with John Regent, a grizzled veteran of many black operations. Disabled, he is pulled out of his former world of adventure and thrust into a wider, wilder world of fantastic threats. John is forced to come to terms with both his abilities and disabilities while fighting against forces he does not understand. 

Along the way, John picks up a collection of misfits that he must forge into a team worthy and able to take on the new arising threats to themselves and the world. Xana, Ian, and Wink join John Regent, each bringing a host of dissimilar powers and problems to the team, which makes John's life more challenging, not less. Xana is seeking her son, Ian is on the lamb from the government and Wink is... just Wink. As individuals, their powers are ill-suited to their personal tasks, but as a team, they can fulfill their goals and desires. Along with John, Xana, Ian, and Wink, a collection of secondary characters join the team to either assist or create new challenges for them. 

Mr. Wayne wrote this series in an episodic fashion in 7 books, which lent itself the escalation of challenges and the introduction of the four main characters in a believable and enjoyable fashion. In order, the episodes or novels are: 

Breakout

Crossfire

Meltdown

Blackout

Aftershock

Shockwave
Outbreak

This is how I became hooked on the series, through the episodic releases. However, by book three, Meltdown, I cut to the chase and picked up the Omnibus Edition which included all seven stories plus bonus features. Aside from the collection of these bonus features, the individual books are no different than the Omnibus. In fact, some of the bonus features appear in a slightly different form, which is neither intrusive nor disjointed. There is a soundtrack, fan art, and behind-the-scenes information on how this collection came to be plus links to Mr. Wanye's social media outlets. 

Mr. Wayne uses these bonus features to expand the world he has created, taking the reader on a journey that matches the adventures of John, Ian, Wink, and Xana. This is how new heroes are made in the 21st century. 

Review - Lenovo 300e Chromebook

We've got a lot of Chromebooks going on here. This one is my daughter's Lenovo 300e which is ostensibly to be used for school work aSometimes, anyway. Notice the power cord. It typically isn't charged when it needs to be. 

Children...

Here are the stats: 

• Screen Size: 11.6 inches
• Screen Resolution: 1366 x 768
• Processor Model: Intel Celeron 
• Processor Model Number: N4000
• Processor Speed (Base): 1.6 GHz
• Solid State Drive Capacity: 32 gigabytes
• System Memory (RAM):  4 gigabytes
• Graphics: AMD Radeon R4
• Operating System: Chrome
• Battery Life: (up to) 10 hours

This Chromebooks greatest weakness is its strongest feature: the storage space. Being designed for Education, children should not be saving stuff to the hard drive. The machine is meant for the cloud. And as a cloud-based machine, it does very well. The wi-fi is solid, as is the Bluetooth. 

As a sub $300, sometimes sub $200 machine, it has some lacks which make it a true cloud machine. There is no HDMI or Ethernet port. 

The speakers are mildly ok, which is actually desirable in the classroom. It does have a headphone jack which is the preferred method of listening for students. The stereo headphone jack also has microphone capabilities. The screen has the same performance factors as my HP-14dk1000 laptop in a smaller format, locked in at 1366x768. For schoolwork, this is just fine due to the assumed connectivity issue. Students won't plug into their phones and such for images of high enough resolution to make a difference. 

It has 2 USB A and 2 USB C ports, where one of the USB C ports is used for charging. Battery life is great if your child charges it. It also includes a standard camera and microphone, built-in. They are fine for Zoom or Google Classrooms. The lappy is rounded out with a micro-SD card slot. 

Normally I don't mention the frame or case, but the frame is solid with no flex and the case has a variety of textures for easy gripping. 

Performance is nice for basic Google Drive Work. It will run good-sized videos at a decent rate. At least for 1366x786 resolution.

As an educational laptop, it doesn't have guest mode or other features. It is a managed device. If you purchase one of these "refreshed" or used, it should be unassociated with the school district. If it isn't, I would suggest returning it. School districts have a protocol in place to release products for "refreshed" or "renewed" sales, it's worth money to them. If you find your "renewed" Chromebook has an administrator account, it is probably one of the zillion computers lost or misplaced by a child. It probably won't be worth the effort of "fixing" it even if you find such things to be trivial. 

Try a reputable reseller if at all possible. 

Hexes - The Greatest Gift to Gamers

Hexes are great. For gamers, they might be the best tool for maps and other measurements. 

Many of the relationships that can be created with hexagons occur because of a simple formula: Side Length = Perimeter over Number of Sides. If you have two of those numbers, you know the third. From there you can find the apothem, the distance from the center to a corner, and the radius. 

This is true for more than just hexagons, but hexes are nicer looking and more useful than triangles and squares which are the only other two shapes that tesselate*. 

*See comments section below. Many shapes tesselate: they are called regular, semi or demi tesselation. 

Anyway, I want to show you a gift I received from my father. I believe that it was gifted to him at some point back in the 80s or 90s. 

It's a set of styrofoam hexes. There are 72 full hexes, 14 flat half hexes, 6 pointy half hexes, 10 two-thirds hexes, and 4 quarter hexes. Each full hex is 8 inches flat to flat side and each flat is 4 5/8ths inches. Every part is 3/4 inch thick. 

In addition to these regular shapes, there are dozens of smaller scallop slope-edged pieces that are used to make terrain, like ridges and hills. You could make a hill multiple steps high. By laying down blue cloth or paper, rivers spring to life. 

Each piece has a biscuit cut at each corner, for a cardboard biscuit that holds every piece together. I have a zillion of those. I would imagine that any map could be reproduced by this one set. 

Now would you like to hear the crazy part? 

They're obviously handmade. Every edge is hand-painted brown and the playing surface is faced with railroad-style grass. Every edge is perfectly straight, every corner exactly 60 degrees, every biscuit cut is exactly the same. There is not a bit of waver or imperfection in any of the 100s of pieces. 

Mindblowing!  

Have you ever tried to draw a hex? It's not easy. I know, I created a set of paper hex templates for mapping. Even on a computer, the process can drive you mad until everything just clicks. I cannot imagine a scenario where foam cutting hexes just "clicks". Every cut is perfect. I can't believe the effort that went into this. 

At this point, I don't know what to say. I'll just share some pictures. 

Model is 1:1 scale.

The edge pieces.

I didn't have blue fabric or paper.

Models are 1:72.

If you can't remember which side is which, 
just place models at random. 

A few notes on this series of images. At the start of this post, I knew I wanted to have a map of the UK. After 90 minutes of crawling around on the floor, my desire gave way to the fact that I am out of shape so Great Britain is misshapen and lacks terrain. It could be done, but not in the time given. 

Like the map, I had a list of things to photograph like Battlemechs, tanks, D&D figures, X-wings, etc. After taking a few images, I realized that I would have to spend another session of crawling around on the floor to clean up. My drive gave out at the English Civil War models. Maybe another time. 

Review - Acer CB311-10H Chromebook

I have several Chromebooks to support my websites and my kid's educational needs. I will be looking at the Acer CB311 series of machines, but today I am reviewing the Acer CB311-10H. 

The black CB311 on the left, as compared to another 311 model on the right.

Display size: 11.6 Inches
Screen Resolution: 1366 x 768 Pixels
RAM: 4 GB
Hard Drive: 64 GB SSD
Graphics Coprocessor: Intel UHD Graphics 600
Wireless: ‎802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth

This is a sub-$300 machine, very often coming in at a little over $225 on sale. It's a lightweight machine for basic computing. At 2.42 lbs (1.79 Roman Catholic) the 7.83 x 11.65 x 0.71 inch machine feels solid. It even passes my one-hand carry test, where the machine still responds to the keyboard and trackpad while walking around. It doesn't flex at all. It's a rubberized, bombproof basic. 

The wi-fi is good and it has built-in Bluetooth capabilities. It features two USB ports, a pair of USB C ports, one of which is for charging, a micro-sd card reader, and a headphone jack. There is no large card reader or Ethernet port, which really shouldn't surprise you at this price point. 

The 11.6-inch diagonal screen feels well proportioned to this laptop but is on the small side. The resolution is capped at 1366x786 which isn't horrible on 11.6 inches. It plays video well enough but you can forget about 4k even though the dual processors and graphics card could maybe do it. It is also not a touchscreen, so there is that.  

The standard laptop camera and mic pair are fully functional and work rather well. However, you won't be mixing A/V on this machine without Linux. 

The one kick in the pants right out of the box is the speakers. It has two but they seem very poor on the first boot. Oddly, if you run the update they actually improve. I am not sure why this is, but it was a nice save by Acer. Granted, these are laptop speakers. Don't expect too much. Running Youtube or YouTube Music natively is nice and the machine does an adequate job of audio rendition. It's not like you work in a dance club. 

The other downsides are the lack of a mic jack, HDMI, and the previously mentioned Ethernet port. Well, it was cheap. USB do-dads are an option but I only use an external mic even though the internal mic and camera are nice. 

The CB-311-10H is not a touchscreen unlike other 311 models. 

Additionally, the lappy runs Android Apps and of course has all of the Google Drive features that are standard on modern Chromebooks. I also have Ubuntu 16.04 running in Crouton, so while the 4 GB of memory seems light, it is functional for basic work. 

All and all, this basic sub $300 laptop earns a solid 3 stars. 

Chaotic Good Fun - A True Lie

Ever have one of those players that creates a character that just doesn't make sense? You know the kind. The person who shows up with a Chaotic Good Assassin. 

Actually, this story is not about me. Well, sort of. 

I did create a Chaotic Good Assassin as a part of a party tasked with killing off the evil overlord of the land. I can't remember the lord's name but let's call him Lord Farquaad. 

Now for the setup. I was late for the session that night and missed the bit about killing the lord "someday". Since I was late, the DM handed me a set of pre-generated stats. I was only allowed to shift scores around or swap points for prime requisites so I didn't have the stats to be anything interesting. 

The DM looked mulled over my sheet while describing the villain and prompted me to fill out a character description. You know, the boring eye color, hair color, skin color, etc. Since he just described the lord, I simply wrote down what DM said. Since I just pulled a fast one with the alignment, I didn't wait to draw attention to myself by flat out stating that my assassin character looked just like his quarry, Lord Farquaad.  

Right off the bat, I had a humorous way of wrecking this campaign and went for it. My character infiltrated the castle and promptly failed to kill the lord. The only person to see my assassin was Lord Farquaad and the would-be assassin managed to escape by a dangerous and inexplicably lucky leap into the moat. 

Rather than getting upset by my shenanigans, the DM ran with it. Since Lord Farquaad was hunting just one obvious assassin, it gave the party all kinds of opportunities to bushwhack him. Ultimately, the lord survived all of these attacks and went on a crazy, bloodthirsty hunt for the party. He used my foolishness to really make this lord despicable. 

That's where my rouse kicked into high gear. The party fled to the silver mines. We infiltrated the lord's own most secure outpost posing as guards. At this point, my character's secondary gambit was discovered by the DM. A Magic-User was detecting alignments on new guards and the DM was non-plussed to discover my assassin wasn't evil. 

Where it became laughable was when my character got his hands on some forged paperwork that said his name imperfectly matched Lord Farquaad's. His cover story was his mother had a tryst with Lord Farquaad and she had high hopes for becoming the legitimate Lady of the Kingdom, to the point of naming her son "Lord Farquaad". His first name was actually "Lord". This got snickers all the way around the table. 

Suddenly, the whole theme of the game shifted to a ridiculous, fantasy version of the film, "Catch Me If You Can". 

Now here is the really funny part. I didn't come up with this on my own. 

There was a family friend that had a name that matched a landed person in England from the 1700s. In the early 80's, the UK did something that I can only equate with an "estate last call". They wanted people to claim abandoned estates so that they could get back to collecting taxes or clearing their records for sale or perseveration as needed. 

This family friend was big into genealogy and laid a claim to an estate back in England. It was kind of a big deal. He managed to provide all of the documents necessary to back up his claim as his family had the same name and this particular Englishmen did visit Western New York. 

It turns out that this landed gentry from England came to New York in search of a criminal. The criminal escaped all attempts at capture by taking the name of the Lord pursuing him. Annoyed, Lord went back to his estate empty-handed. 

Here is where the story goes south and where the U. S. Government got involved. It turns out that this family friend was not related to the Lord, but the criminal quarry. Which he was fully aware of, it's is kind of illegal in rather surprising ways when you seem to have documentation that says one thing, but the reality is another. Forgery isn't always required to produce "correct" documentation, sometimes hiding contradicting documentation is better than an outright fictional document. 

I'm not sure where the B.S. starts and ends with this story as this story is about the 1700s criminal leading to a land claim in England in the early 80s. I would have been about 8-11 years old myself. While I was aware of what was happening, I didn't really understand. While it's funny enough for people to retell, it's the sort of story that gets changed with every telling. 

Review - In The Hollow Of The Spider Queen

This review needs a little background or perhaps a disclaimer of little background. I picked up this game set off the indy rack at Gather & Game, a local shop. Unbeknownst to me, there is a  whole game system out there called "Powered by the Apocalypse". 

I had zero awareness of this ruleset and at this moment, I can't decide if "In the Hollow of the Spider Queen" or "Powered by the Apocalypse" needs a 5 gold star rating. 

Yes, there are games I simply don't know about thanks to a vibrant OSR and general explosion of gaming systems available. 

Perhaps both need 5 gold stars. By the time I complete my 52 reviews for 2021, I'm sure we will know. 

Title: In the Hollow of the Spider Queen Rule Set: Powered by the Apocalypse  Year: 2021 Author: Aaron M. Sturgill Publisher: Trail of Dice Games Pages: 60 pages, plus a character sheet and 3 color maps.  Rating: 5 of 5 Stars

In the Hollow of the Spider Queen In the Hollow of the Spider Queen

"In the Hollow of the Spider Queen" is an intriguing concept, just reading the back cover. It is a DM and one-player hexcrawl game based on old-school crawls. 

Whoa. Sign me up.   

Now for the twist, the rules are meant for one referee and one player but are scaleable so that up to 3-5 players can join the fun. 

And there is no need to wait. The set comes with one character sheet and a 3-page explainer of how to create a character. Like D&D, characters have a couple of stats to populate. Your character will have a spread of points that are positive, negative, or neutral. In addition to those, you have Resolve and Hit Points that are modified by two of the stats you previously selected. Gather your gold, pick equipment and answer some questions to start playing. 

This system uses an XP clock that turns lemons into lemonade. If you botch a roll, you fail but also fill a tick of the XP clock. Get four ticks, receive one XP point. XP is used to gain many advantages, so taking a risk is usually always worth it even if you fail your roll. Languages use the same sort of clock to create a dynamic scale of proficiency. 

In the DM's section, we get the core rules plus details on the world or Continent as the author calls it. By the rules, this set is a little more complex than combat. The set has an interesting system of Resolve vs. HP loss, which means that players can be defeated (or not) by something a little more complex than an axe blow to the head. Should the hero die, there are options for continued gameplay. 

The Continent is populated by various races or factions all spelled out on their own page. Each page has a detailed description, a helpful list of names and rumors which apply to the race or faction as a whole. Each page builds on the last to create a great history and background of the world the players will explore. In this case, less is more. 

What is so impressive about this little book is the fact that so much is rammed into 21 pages. There is still half a book to go. 

Page 22 introduces the movement rules. This is a hex crawl, after all. Characters have 3 starting locations. Where your player(s) will go is based on the questions they answered in the creation process. Random encounters are linked to locations, delivering the DM information as they need it. After that, the lands of the Continent are described. Within those descriptions, there are more random Encounter tables paired to locations with the lands. Again, necessary information is provided only when needed. 

To flavor and enhance gameplay, the ruleset comes with 2 Appendices and an index. Indexes seem to be a highly underrated feature in the digital age but are amazing when you have a physical copy. 

I am amazed that for just $16, this book does everything as advertised on the back cover. You can pick up either a physical copy or a digital one at DriveThruRPG for a few bucks less. In looking at the author's website, this is not an either-or proposition. If you find a physical copy, you can request a pdf at the website.  

Gather & Game Review

I have no idea why it took me so long to get to this shop. Gather & Game is a real gamers' shop. I took my son, Nathan, and my daughter, Catherine. Nathan was more impressed with the shop than Catherine. She had been playing guitar while my wife was at an online class, which is less than optimal. 

Name: Gather & Game
Location: 205 Grant St., Buffalo, New York 14213
Phone: 716-342-2823
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gatherandgame
Website: https://www.gatherandgame.com/

Gather & Game is located on Grant Street, a historic neighborhood with charm. Many of the shops have been there for decades and the game shop is no exception. The storefront is painted in vivid hues of purple and pink. From the outside, you'd have no idea that they crammed that much product into such a tiny space and left room for tables and gaming. 

There is no missing this place from the street, even when surrounded by equally colorful shops. 

Inside is cramped but comfortable. Shelves, displace cases, and gaming tables occupy most of the space. If you want to stroll along, you'll need to walk down Grant Street, which is always an adventure. 

I had to contain myself walking through the shelves. They have so many games. Everything from board games to Traveller5. I also had to remind myself that I had a budget to stick to, otherwise, I would have walked out with an armload of Warhammer, Battletech, and e5 products plus half a dozen board games that caught my eye. They had a few featured products but the shelves are crammed with perhaps 100 different types of games. 

They have something for everyone. 

Even better, the staff and owners are so knowledgeable about the wide array of products they have on hand. And it's not that salesman sort of knowledge, it's that warm and friendly passion about play and enjoyment that shines through. Even my heavy metal daughter smiled a bit when talking about products. 

They are already back to hosting game nights and I can't wait to go back. If you get a chance to visit Buffalo, make time to stop at our local shops for your gaming fix. 

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