Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Star Trek: Picard: Firewall by David Mack review

    Star Trek: Picard is a controversial spin off in my circle as it draws out very strong emotions from its viewers. Some people love it, some people hate it, and some people's feelings change between the seasons. On my end, I think the Picard show was of varying quality but came up with some of the best ideas the franchise ever had. Also, I think that it has consistently produced some of the best novels that Star Trek has ever produced. THE LAST BEST HOPE by Doctor Una McCormack and ROGUE ELEMENTS by John Jackson Miller are two of my all time favorite Star Trek novels ever. FIREWALL by David Mack is now up there as well.

    The premise is that Seven of Nine has found herself adrift after the ship's return to the Alpha Quadrant. Starfleet has made the possibly justifiable decision to exclude her from Starfleet based on the idea she might be a danger. Which becomes considerably less justifiable when you remember that if she could be remotely hacked or was going to taken over by the Borg, would have probably happened during the show's seven year run. It becomes even more spiteful and prejudice-filled when you find out they've also denied her Federation citizenship. Which doesn't actually prevent her from living there but exists purely to make her feel unwelcome.

    I wasn't a big fan of "Ad Astra Per Aspera" from Star Trek: Strange New Worlds because it depicted a Federation that was engaged in hate crimes and ghetto-ization of a large chunk of its population in the Illyrians. I like to believe in Roddenberry's future, we may not be perfect but we've moved past Nazi/Terran Empire behavior. I'm more inclined to accept Seven's treatment, though, because it is far more isolated and we see pushback from Janeway and others. It's also practiced only by a handful of individuals in the Federation which, sadly, include people of power.

    Anyway, Seven seeks to find herself by living on the fringes of Federation society that are also pretty dystopian and seem capitalist despite the fact they don't have money. This is a pretty common issue in many works, though, so I don't mind. That's when she's offered a chance to get her membership in the Federation and possible Starfleet commission if she infiltrates an organization called the Fenris Rangers.

    Like all prequels, the actual destination is less important than the journey. There's a lot of interesting character beats in this book like Seven coming to terms her bisexuality and also analyzing the idea that the Federation's Romulan Rescue Plan resulted in a total collapse of necessary humanitarian relief in other parts of the galaxy. It makes the question to cut their losses after the destruction of Mars seem more justified.

    Some fans were offput by Seven's attraction to women but I think it results in some of the more interesting parts of the book. We also get a relationship that is surprisingly drama free and one that I feel like will resonate with queer reader. I really liked the character of Ellory Kayd and hope she shows up in future Star Trek material. I understand that David Mack envisioned her as played by Jessica Henwick and I think that helped my mental picture a great deal.

    The Fenris Rangers are actually given a backstory and we get a sense of what they are, other than having a cool name and fighting crime. Apparently, they were once a legitimate law enforcement/security company (for lack of a better term) contracted to protect the Qiris Sector. When the governments collapsed, they continued carrying out their jobs of enforcing the law of the previous regimes. Frankly, Starfleet labeling them vigilantes in that respect is a sign of Federation arrogance as who else would qualify as a legitimate government in that situation?

    The villains of the book are also interesting because they're some of the vilest ones in Star Trek, up there with the Cardassians, but some of the most easily understood too. General Kohgish and Erol Tazgül are guilty of horrific crimes against sapience but their motives are both believable as well as extremely petty. General Kohgish just wants to make as much bank as humanly possible while Arastoo believes that he's able to keep the Romulans out of the Federation by making a buffer state via any means necessary once the Neutral Zones collapses. I also appreciate Erol isn't a part of Section 31 as that would be the "easy" way to do it. No, he's just a guy who got fired for his extreme politics.

    Admiral Janeway gets something of an off kilter performance and why I put this book as a 9.5/10 instead of a 10 out of 10. Well, that and because I feel like some of the locations like Starfield are a little too like capitalistic intolerant Earth than the Federation should be. Basically, Janeway seems awfully naive throughout the book. She doesn't seem to understand how much pressure and prejudice Seven is getting or that Starfleet's opinion on the Rangers are wholly unjustified. I wonder if those blinders are just something every Federation citizen has or it's because she wasn't in the Dominion War and saw how fallible the Federation's leadership could be.

    In conclusion, I find this to be a fantastic novel and one I really enjoyed. Seven of Nine has always been one of my favorite characters in Star Trek and this is a great bridge between her VOY and Picard personas. I really liked the Fenris Rangers as a concept and hope they eventually invite David Mack to do a sequel or perhaps even a series of novels set between this one and Season One of Picard.

Available here

Star Trek: Resurgence (PS5) review


    Star Trek
is a deceptively hard franchise to adapt to video games despite the fact there's been dozens of games that have adapted it. There's good games, good Trek adaptations, and very rarely good Trek adaptions that are good games. Usually, the video games content themselves to try to do one thing very well like Elite Force where you are a bunch of Space Marines shooting up other universes on VOY or Bridge Commander where you single handedly eliminate the entire Cardassian Navy (Commander Saffi Larson, shut up!). Star Trek: Online is like a heart monitor for quality with some missions versus good and others just killing the entire population o the Beta Quadrant. As you can tell, a lot of these games don't fit into the spirit of utopian peaceful cooperation even if they're fun as hell.

    Star Trek: Resurgence is not a perfect game but it manages the mixture of exploration, investigation, diplomacy, and techno-babble mini-games better than the vast majority of Star Trek games. A lot of reviewers say it is close to a Telltale game (and had several developers who used to make those for a living) but that isn't a very good description. More precisely, it feels like one of the BETTER Telltale games before they just started churning them out and removed all interactivity from them. The game has multiple endings even if the story is mostly linear and you can choose whether some characters live or die based around your actions. A sequel is unlikely, which is a shame, so they do let you make some significant changes.

      The premise for Star Trek: Resurgence is that you are two characters on the U.S.S. Resolute. Random aside but I think Star Trek: Resurgence is a pretty awesome title by itself and it get a little confusing to have the two similar words in the game. Anyway, you are either alien-human hybrid, Commander Jara Rydek (Krizia Bajos) or engineer Carter Diaz (Josh Keaton). Both of them have defined personalities but ones you can choose the leanings of. Jara is cool and professional but torn between being loyal to her captain or the ship's crew. Carter is an amiable lower decker who either wants to do what's right by his friends or do his job professionally. The "right" decision in the game isn't always the immediately obvious one too.

    The Resolute is a ship that just underwent a refit after half the crew was killed in one of those horrifying events that happen to every ship that isn't the Enterprise. Jara is the replacement first officer and notices immediately everyone is on edge and the captain is a lot more conservative than is typical for Starfleet. He demands absolute loyalty and is petty if he doesn't get it. They're on a mission to a planet which recently had a revolution and is between the exploitative overclass versus the exploited laborers. Should be pretty easy, right? Well, it would be if EVIL wasn't involved. 

    I won't spoil the plot of the game but it is full of little adventures spread throughout what feels like an entire season of a Star Trek series that never happened. "Episode" happen with a continuing story throughout from picking up Ambassador Spock to investigating weird technology to dealing with ancient precursor races of the kind that had been mentioned in the franchise before. You do flying, shooting, science, and diplomatic missions throughout the game. Whenever you think you're done with new mini-games, a new one is introduced.

    This is one of the flaws of the game, however. Basically, a lot of the game is made up of busywork. The real appeal of Star Trek: Resurgence is the storytelling, characterization, and fidelity to the Star Trek universe. This really feels like the TNG era of Star Trek and it is as bright and optimistic as Star Trek usually is while balancing it against drama. I rapidly came to care about a lot of the characters and that's something I rarely say about Telltale games except for rare exceptions (The Wolf Among Us, Game of Thrones, and the original The Walking Dead).

    Of the two protagonists, I have to say I like Jara Rydek a lot more than Carter Diaz. It's not that Carter is a bad character, it's just I'm all about those smooth confidant Number Ones. The fact she's an alien-human hybrid also is a nice change of pace from the usual collection of humans. I wouldn't mind having her as the star of a sequel if this game manages to find enough of a following to warrant one.

    I like the simple set up of the Hotari versus the Alydians. The Hotari have been mining dilithium for centuries on behalf of the latter because they were a Pre-Warp civilization that couldn't take advantage of it. Now, they've seized the means of production and are ready to join the galactic community on their own terms. However, the Alydians aren't one-dimensional villains and are more interested in a negotiated settlement versus a military one.

    In conclusion, Star Trek: Resurgence is something that fans of Star Trek will probably get the most out of. It's a very fun game that manages to embody the spirit of the franchise. However, the game tries to insert a lot more gameplay even when it's not necessary. They should have focused on making things like the phaser fights and flying more fun versus throwing in mini-games that, well, aren't.

 Available here

Saturday, March 23, 2024

Halo season two review


    This is a big improvement. I'm not the kind of guy who gets caught up in trivialities. There's plenty of people who would only want a Halo TV show if the Master Chief never removed his helmet, and it only depicted a straight ten-episode adaptation of the first video game with most of it being using Needlers on Grunts. I mean, I'd watch the hell out of that, but it doesn't get into the deeper lore of the Halo universe. Halo does have a pretty deep lore too despite being the Expanded Universe for a bunch of third person shooters. I've read dozens of books in the setting, and they mostly hold up.

    Unfortunately, Season One wasn't good despite the fact it got into things like the recruitment of child soldiers, unethical medical experimentation, the Insurrectionists, and the fact ONI is full of a bunch of incompetent man children. The Halo games were made at the height of the War on Terror and were influenced by the geopolitical situation of the time. There was the seemingly all-powerful Covenant and humanity's own authoritarian government as the two choices for the setting but Master Chief just trying to save everyone. We're in a post-War on Terror environment, sort of, and the story is much more muddled in the idea anyone can save anyone. Plus, no one really wanted Master Chief to have sex. Not unless it was a virtual reality simulation with Cortana. Ahem.

    Season Two realizes that most viewers want to watch the Master Chief versus aliens and the Covenant finally shows up to start glassing planets. The fact the season opens with the glassing of the planet Madrigal and the elimination of every single plot from that world kind of says what the developers think of it too. Season Two has the Covenant as a threat humanity is on the backfoot fighting and that instantly raises the stakes as well as provides the season some well-deserved focus. Indeed, we finally get the goddamn Halo as a focus for the season with its discovery a central theme. I feel like the fact the Halo WASN'T the focus of a show called Halo until this point as one of the bigger issues of the adaptation. Sort of like The Legend of Zelda without Zelda (or Triforce or Ganon).

    The premise for this season is that humanity is being pushed back by the Covenant in every engagement with Master Chief considered unreliable after briefly being possessed by Cortana during their confrontation with the Prophets. Doctor Hasley is under house arrest for her role in the SPARTAN-II insurrection and Admiral Ackerson (Joseph Morgan) is now in charge of the project with Parangosky (Shabana Azmi) seemingly removed from her position as ONI's chief. Unfortunately, any Halo fan knows this precedes the Fall of Reach where humanity is opened to full-scale invasion by the Covenant. Makee (Charlie Murphy), the human raised by the Covenant, also has some of the keys necessary to find the Halo and has been assigned an Arbiter (not the one from Halo 2) to help find it.

    There's a lot more going on with the season and the show seems more interested in redeeming character's plotlines than ditching them. Kwan Ha (Yerin Ha), Soren (Bokeem Woodbine), and others are still all in the show, but they are more closely tied together. We also get some casualties among the SPARTAN-IIS that I feel was badly needed to establish the threat of the Covenant after their poor showing in the first season. SPARTANS never die but there's a reason the Master Chief was the last of them for a long time.

    Overall, Season Two is just a huge improvement to the series by incorporating a lot more of what people loved about Halo. Unfortunately, it's not an unqualified success as the show is still weighed down by cramming too many extraneous plots into eight episodes. The Fall of Reach lasts all of one episode when it could have been three episodes of fighting for survival. Hell, it could have been an entire season. For a show based on an action video game, Halo suffers from not that much action. Still, there is some action and most of it is pretty good. I'll never look down on Master Chief versus an Elite using plasma swords.

    In conclusion, Halo Season Two is a success and I am glad that they listened to fan feedback to modify what they were doing. They also manage to finally get the story to where it probably needed to be by the end of Season One. I'm not going to spoil the ending of the season but a lot of buildup for fan favorite elements are realized and they leave me excited for Season Three. Would I have done things differently? Yes. However, it's no longer a series that I feel fails to represent the franchise that I love. Halo: Infinite on the other hand...

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Space Punks II: Nightingale's Song by Anna Mocikat review


    SPACE PUNKS II: NIGHTINGALE' SONG is the sequel to SPACE PUNKS, which is at least a very accurate title to the story. I'm a huge fan of Anna Mocikat's BEHIND BLUE EYES series and really enjoyed the first of this series.  If I had to describe it, I'd say it's close to COWBOY BEBOP except hewing closer to cyberpunk motifs instead of Western. A bunch of sexy cybernetically augmented mercenaries live on the starship Nephilim, doing odd jobs for their mysterious boss, while being involved in both organized crime as well as politics. Most of humanity was exterminated when Earth was destroyed in the wars against the machines but the survivors live in comparative high tech luxury.

    In the previous book, we had the discovery that newcomer David was actually an android that had been sent to infiltrate the crew. We also had Nightingale being horribly injured This book picks up with giving us David's origins as well as a follow-up on Nightingale's condition. Well, it's not good. If he doesn't receive a super rare part then he'll be dead in a week. He also can't have sex with his girlfriend, Aztec, that he has just proposed marriage to in a time when that institute is considered to be obsolete.

    Much of the book is divided between the protagonists showing their complicated and fascinating relationships, world-building so we understand how this new society works, and the "big heist" where they attempt to hit a military depot in order to get the rare part that Nightingale needs to survive. Say what you will about the Nightingale crew but they are willing to do whatever they have to in order to protect one another.

    The best part of the Space Punks series is definitely the cast and all of the characters are interesting with a variety of dark and troubled pasts. They're a rare sight in science fiction in that most are in committed relationships and deeply devoted to one another while still being no less "cool" and edgy for it. As stated, the crew is intensely loyal to one another and seeing how they can rely on one another makes them easy to root for despite they're a bunch of dedicated ruthless cyborg mercenaries.

    We get a good look at Mars this book and find out how he's gone from being first of Earth's colonies to the center of human civilization in the setting. Despite being a space based series, it is very cyberpunk and the Pentad substitutes for the evil megacorporations of most fiction. They are a ruthless oligarchy with control over all of humanity's vital supplies as well as militaries, so they can do more or less whatever they want without fear from the public. We also get regular tidbits from an in-universe encyclopedia that help fill in the blanks on how the universe functions.

    I'm especially fond of Lucien, the villain, who fills all the depraved psychopath folders that make for a good cyberpunk villain. It may be cheating that one of the heads of the cyborg armed forces is also a serial killer but it certainly makes for a delightfully hateable villain. His scenes have genuine menace and you are worried about the protagonists when they are up against him.

    In conclusion, Space Punks II: Nightingale's Song is an excellent dark and edgy piece of science fiction that would make a good television show with a sufficiently pretty cast. Anne Mocikat is one of my favorite indie writers right now and if you want dark, forboding, and yet fun adventure fiction then this is definitely for you.

Available here

Friday, March 15, 2024

GI Joe: Retaliation review


    Oh God, this movie is terrible.

    It's fun but it's terrible.

    There are so many weird and inexplicable decisions throughout this film. The cast is fine, better than fine, I'd argue, but what they're working for is a trainwreck. I was somewhat hard on GI JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA but I felt that it was a movie with a lot of potential. It certainly set up the sequel pretty well with the character relationships and world-building off to a good start. Unfortunately, the sequel throws all of this out the window and the result is a mess that none of the cast can save.

    Part of this wasn't the fault of the writers, directors, or producers. Virtually, the entirety of the cast from The Rise of Cobra didn't elect to return to the sequel. Channing Tatum would only return if they killed off his character, Duke, who was the star of the previous movie. Christopher Eccelston said filming the first movie was like having his throat cut.

    Sienna Miller, one of the most popular parts of the film for multiple reasons (including fanservice), also felt she was a horrible fit for the Baroness. Not even Gordon Joseph Levitt returned as Cobra Commander because he was filming Inception. Given so much of the previous movie was setting up the complicated dynamics between all four of these characters, it effectively meant you'd need a total recast or to throw out nearly everything. They chose the latter. Honestly, it probably would have been better to do a total reboot if they hadn't done a recast because the plot barely makes any sense and when it does tie-in, it makes you upset about what's done. 

    The premise is that GI Joe has gone from being an international team of heroes to an American group of special forces doing missions in places like North Korea as well as Afghanistan. Duke (Channing Tatum) is now the leader but his second-in-command is Roadblock (The Rock), which already raises questions because Dwayne Johnson is about eight years older than Channing Tatum so why is he his subordinate? 

    The President of the United States has been replaced by Zartan (Arnold Vosloo) but, sadly, it's Jonathan Pryce on screen for the most part. Which is fine but he's not exactly projecting menace and I'd prefer Arnold. With Zartan's help, Storm Shadow (Lee Byung-hun) rescues Cobra Commander (Luke Bracey, Robert Bakker) and frames the Joes for terrorism, so they're wiped out by a group of Cobra soldiers pretending to be a new group of American soldiers. The Joes go out to clear their names and, well, screw up.

    The thing is, this is actually a fairly decent premise. Adrianne Palicki is also a great recast for Scarlet and...oh, she's playing Lady Jaye. Just playing her exactly like Scarlet. Okay then. We also have Jinx (Daredevil's Elodie Yung) introduced and the Blind Master (played by RZA), which odd choice in casting aside, sets up a nice ninja arc where Snake Eyes (Ray Park) goes after Storm Shadow to continue their eternal blood feud. If the movie had kept to this premise then it would have been a pretty serviceable flick.

    I'd miss Destro and the Baroness but it would have been a good story salvaged from bad circumstances.
It's not a spoiler since it's in the trailer but there's an utterly insane and stupid plot about nuclear weapons where Cobra ends up getting rid of all of them before destroying London. Yes, London. The Joes fail to save one of the world's most populous cities and ten million people die. That's not exactly a great premise for future movies in the franchise nor does it really reflect well on our heroes who utterly fail to save the day. There's some good scenes but our heroes kind of get their efforts dwarfed by this.

    Yeah, this movie sadly killed the GI Joe franchise for awhile when it could have been every bit as successful as the Transformers one if not more so. It's not hard to do GI Joe as you can do it either like Call of Duty or something much-much sillier. The Fast and the Furious movies basically became the GI Joe movies at one point. Do that. The franchise has since been rebooted with Snake Eyes: Origins but it's been left on the table since. Which is a shame.

4/10

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Argylle (2024) review


     If Michael Bay isn't willing or able to do the GI Joe movies then Matthew Vaughn might be the person to do so. As the guy who did the Kingsmen movies, he clearly has a great love for the Roger Moore era of James Bond flicks which is something that the more serious Connery and Craig fans turn their noses up. Given GI Joe is basically doing to special forces missions what Bond did to spies, I think it might be a good fit.

    ARGYLLE is basically another entry into the Kingsman franchise in terms of tone, comedy, sending up spy movies, and oddball action hi-jinks. The actual Kingsmen don't appear but easily could have if not for the fact each movie keeps killing them off (that's not a spoiler so much as the films mid-point premise).     It's a gleefully silly spy movie that's only slightly more serious than Austin Powers and wouldn't be nearly as much fun if it was any more dramatic.

    In this case, the premise is Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) is a writer of cheesy spy novels starring her idealized man, Argylle (Henry Cavill). After releasing her latest novel, a real-life spy named Aiden Wilde (Sam Rockwell) shows up to inform her that her novels are eerily similar to real life to the point that a rogue intelligence agency called the Directorate is now after her. They're led by Director Ritter (Bryan Cranston), who is about as realistic a bad guy as Doctor Claw. Elly must do her best to survive even as she keeps flashing to Argylle. There's also an adorable, sometimes CGI, cat she's carrying around in a little kitty backpack.

    This is a gleefully stupid movie and I know exactly why the critics are lambasting it while audience approval is far more forgiving. This is a live action cartoon for adults and a bloodless bunch of action sequences, great music, and utterly nonsensical twists more at home on a soap opera than anything limited to reality. It's fun and the most I cared about anything going on was wondering about that poor cat and it getting constantly thrown about. The movie is like an even sillier version of Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise's KNIGHT AND DAY.

    There's a bit of false advertising with the film: Henry Cavill is actually a fairly minor character in the story with Agent Argylle only appearing in a few select (but fantastic) scenes. The real star of this is Sam Rockwell, who I already liked as a spy in Charlie's Angels. I feel like they probably should have tightened things up so that Sam Rockwell or Henry Cavill was the basis for Argylle in her head as well as the "real" secret agent. This is me judging how the movie could have been versus how it is, though. 

    Bryce Dallas Howard does an immensely likable character in this role and everyone else is also a lot of fun. Sam Rockwell is also good and is perfectly believable as a ridiculously over-the-top secret agent. Having him show up first as a dirty hippie is a great choice even though we know he's going to morph into the suave superhero later. Bryan Cranston supervillaining all over the place also never gets old. I even liked Catherine O'Hara (you know her as the mom from Beetlejuice) playing Elly's mom and her character going in an odd direction that I won't spoil.

    I give props to the movie's soundtrack as well with a lot of disco-esque and neo-disco-esque beats. David Bowie's "Let's Dance", "Electric Energy" by Ariana DeBose, and "Do you want to Funk" by Sylvester and Patrick Cowley are all standouts but a lot of classics that just add to the weird timelessness of it all. The extended musical number during the train fight is definitely a highlight and I'd buy the soundtrack if they still sold music on compact discs. :rimshot:

    I don't really know what to say about this movie other than it's an all-star cast doing their darnedest to have as much fun with a ridiculous plot as possible (and the movie not suffering from said ridiculous plot either). The cast is so good I barely remember that Samuel L. Jackson is a central character. If there's any flaws with the movie, it's probably the fact there's an extra ten to fifteen minutes at the end of the film that didn't need to be there and they could have just ended with the heroine's plan working. I won't bring up the specifics of the twist but they added a bunch of complications for some silly action sequences that didn't need to be there. Otherwise, a very good movie.

    Well, very fun movie.

    There's a difference.

8/10

Monday, March 11, 2024

Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Sigils review


    BLOOD SIGILS is a supplement for VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE FIFTH EDITION. It is a supplement detailing the use of Blood Sorcery, Thin Blooded Alchemy, and the black market that has emerged around the use of magic among vampires (called “The Scene”).

    Blood magic supplements were quite popular in earlier editions of Vampire: The Masquerade and it is surprising its taken this long to have a book discussing its use. Could the book have contained more information on things like Oblivion and Church of Set magic? Probably but we’ll mostly be judging the book on what it is rather than what it could be.

    Overall, I think Blood Sigils is one of the best books released by Renegade Studios so far. I was not fond of The Second Inquisition or Sabbat: The Black Hand supplements but was much more appreciative of Blood-Stained Love. Blood Sigils benefits from a decision that I hope more books will take heed from in the future: the decision to incorporate more lore from the classic era of Vampire: The Masquerade. Given so many other supplements seem interested in ignoring or quietly retconning classic lore, it’s nice to see this book is best appreciated by those with a decades-long familiarity with the material.

    Seriously, the book’s best parts are updating both Clan Tremere and the Banu Haqim with references to their extensive history. Not just the now-destroyed chantry in Vienna is referenced but also House Ceoris from Vampire: The Dark Ages. “House Goratrix” has taken over the section of Clan Tremere that is attempting to rebuild the Pyramid as it used to be and its leader is someone that will be familiar to anyone familiar with The Transylvania Chronicles. We also get a sense of what happened with the Banu Haqim Schism that was the focus of Clan Book: Assamite Revised.

    This book is perfectly usable by players who have never experienced Vampire: The Masquerade before Fifth Edition and these are just interesting references. However, as Easter Eggs for those who have spent thirty years playing in the World of Darkness, they are a reminder that our fandom is appreciated. I could have done with even more but I’m certainly not going to begrudge the book for including what it did. Sadly, those looking for updates of things like Thaumaturgy Paths and specific rituals will have to look elsewhere. The majority of the book is devoted to the creation of a thriving magical subculture in the wake of the Tremere’s stranglehold being destroyed by the Second Inquisition.

    Everyone who wants to learn magic can learn magic these days, at least among the Damned. But being the immortal parasites they are, this comes with a price. The majority of magic for sale is watered down, erroneous, or from copies of copies. Experimentation is the order of the day and back alley deals are happening in every major city.

    The central conceit of Blood Sigils is that magic is like drugs and especially drug dealing. Quality, ingredients, violence, crooked law enforcement (human or otherwise), and cheats are all things you run into in “The Scene.” It is also strongly related to the Blood Trade where buying nourishment is significantly easier than buying the blood of a specific seven year old that was born under a blood moon. Much of the horror is implied and that is what makes it appropriately punk.

    The book contains sample NPCs of dealers, crooked Sheriffs, crooked cops, dabblers, veterans, diablerists, and Thin Blooded alchemists. It contains a large number of blood cults and magical secret societies that vary in quality (my favorite is a Masquerade breaking pharmaceutical company from India). There’s also several magical artifacts meant to show how they might be implemented into the setting. Much of the Storyteller advice is based on creating mood and, for once, actually quite useful.

    Blood Sigils is probably the most “punk” book that Fifth Edition has produced and actually reads like someone who has more than a television show’s familiarity with drugs and the underground night life of a major city. Whether they have or not, it feels evocative and actually manages to live up to the potential of Fifth Edition. Paradox Interactive has continually wanted to capture an adult counter-culture feel for its middle aged veteran audience and newcomers alike. This actually succeeds.

Available here