Book Review – “The Savage Tales Of Solomon Kane” by Robert E. Howard

Solomon Kane is one of Robert E. Howard’s most enigmatic characters. First appearing in 1928, there were nine short stories, three poems and four fragments written by Howard about the dour-faced Puritan avenger. All of these woks appear in “The Savage Tales Of Solomon Kane” by Robert E. Howard. This edition contains all of Howard’s published work on Kane, as well as the known fragments that were never completed. Also included is a dedication to Robert E. Howard by H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft admired Howard as a writer and as a man. Through their correspondence, they shared their ideas and experiences with each other, forming a friendship that lasted until Howard’s death in 1936.

Some of the Kane stories are much darker than others, but they all share the same dark mood, symbolic of Kane’s time. Taking place sometime during the late 16th, early 17th centuries, the stories follow the Puritan avenger all over the globe. From England, Africa, Cathay, and beyond, Kane travels the world and goes where fate leads him, one day at a time. Read more

Michael Bassett on the SOLOMON KANE movie: "It’s classy and intense"

QuietEarth.us has some really cool news about a movie I’m fairly giddy about…

In my cinema obsessed mind, Michael J. Basset is currently battling Neil Marshall for British genre director supremacy and, as it stands right now, it’s a dead heat. Both have proven themselves to be genre aficionados who are hungry for attention and equally adept at creating hard edged flicks with great ensemble casts. In fact, each burst onto the scene in the same year (2002) with equally impressive first features- Marshall with Dog Soldiers and Bassett with Deathwatch. Their follow-ups were just as impressive, though Marshall’s The Descent managed to capture the collective conscience while Bassett’s fantastic Wilderness failed to find a large audience.

So now it’s all down to Bassett’s adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s Soloman Kane to decide which director will be the new strong arm of British genre film. Doomsday was hard-core and a real blast no doubt, but Bassett’s Kane might trump it based on the fact that it won’t be as steeped in obvious homage. But where’s the film? It was supposed to be out in 2008 but there has been nary a word or new piece of marketing for the film since those early teaser posters dropped at the end of ’07. Well just today, Bassett updated us on the status of his dark fantasy epic which sounds oh so close to being unleashed. Read more

Review: Savage Worlds RPG by Pinnacle Entertainment Group

Savage Worlds Explorer’s Edition is a pen & paper roleplaying system developed by the guys over at Great White Games – Pinnacle Entertainment Group.

Savage Worlds, from the very first page, is designed to be easy to run, easy to play, and easy to enjoy. It takes most of the bookkeeping out of the mix and allows the game master and his or her group to be creative without bogging them down in too much detail. However, if detail is what you like in your game, it’s in there as well. It’s very scalable.

A brief overview of Savage Worlds’ game mechanics:
Character attributes are represented by a die type. For example, strength would be a d8, so that if you needed to perform a function using your strength, you roll a d8 and check the result. Skills are also represented by a die type and are linked to an attribute.

There are no hit points to speak of; characters have wound levels so that if you are hit and take damage, that number is checked against your vigor and any modifiers that apply to see if you receive a wound. This makes combat move extremely quick and there is little or no down time for waiting players during a battle.

Along with skills, players have edges and hindrances which are physical or mental traits which balance out the character and give it a beginning personality.

Character creation is easy, with enough choices to make it interesting but not too much to make it confusing. The emphasis is on playability, pure and simple.

The explorer’s edition gives rules and stats for running a game in just about any genre imaginable. After reading through the material once, I took my son through a practice scenario with him battling a few villains with guns and swords. Our short session went really well and I was running the combats without thumbing through the book during every encounter.

Initiative is done with a deck of standard playing cards with the Jokers left in as “Wild Cards”. Starting with the Ace down to the Deuce, action is resolved in order. The Jokers act as Wild Cards, allowing that player to go whenever they want during the round. Jokers also give some bonuses to rolls as well.

Also included in the mechanics of the game are something called “Bennies”. Bennies are handed out at the beginning of a game session and can be used to re-roll an attribute or skill test, and can also be used to soak up some damage in case a character takes a hard hit during combat. Bennies are also given out to the characters during a session for creative roleplaying, overcoming major obstacles, or even just entertaining the game group with a memorable moment during play.

There are many world settings for Savage Worlds that are already commercially available and more are being created all the time.

The Savage World Of Solomon Kane:
The Savage World of Solomon Kane is a roleplaying game based upon the incredible works of Robert E. Howard, author of Conan the Barbarian®, Kull the Conqueror®, and countless other great heroes and heroines.

Inside this lavishly-illustrated 352 page book are the complete and award-winning Savage Worlds rules customized for Kane’s world, as well as all-new setting and magic rules to capture the spirit of Howard’s dark tales.

Game Masters will also find terrible creatures and merciless foes drawn from Kane’s own travels—and beyond—as well as dozens of Savage Tales and a ready-to-run Plot Point™ Campaign.

Rippers:
Jack the Ripper has the Victorian world on its knees and it’s up to you to fight back. You are the Rippers, once Jack was your ally, now he is your mortal enemy. And he’s not alone!

Rippers is a complete setting for Savage Worlds featuring a full plot point campaign that pits the heroes against the fearsome creatures of the evil Cabal.

Inside this setting you will also find rules on creating Rippers, the brave monster hunters who face the growing evil, new Edges and Hindrances, a huge bestiary of hellish adversaries, and details of the Rippers’ most controversial weapon—Rippertech!

Necessary Evil:
When all the super heroes of the world are blown to kingdom come by an army of invading aliens who will save the day? Evil… The only forces left to take on the alien menace are the crafty and self serving super villains!

Necessary Evil is a supers game for Savage Worlds. Inside this twisted Plot Point setting you will find complete rules on making four-color super powered characters, a whole slew of adventures weaving in and out of a resistance story, new Edges and Hindrances, a bestiary of out of this world critters, and more!

This 144 page full color book has everything you need to start leaping buildings and zapping your foes right away!

Deadlands Reloaded:
Pinnacle’s flagship product is Deadlands, a horrific journey into the “Weird West”. Mysterious beings called the Reckoners have given life to monsters and magic, causing history to divert from July 4th, 1863 forward. The South has won its independence, California has shattered into a labyrinth of flooded sea-canyons, and a mysterious super-fuel called “ghost rock” has spawned as much war and strife as it has “steampunk” devices.

Players are steely-eyed gunfighters, card-slinging sorcerers called hucksters, mysterious shamans, savage braves, mad scientists, and more who battle against evil and attempt to prevent the “Reckoning”.

Sundered Skies:
A shattered world. A thousand floating islands. A constant glow of madness. Sundered Skies begins where every other world ends.

The people of the Skies survive, tested by an unimaginable apocalypse, struggling daily against ravenous beasts, sky pirates, and the effects of the inescapable voidglow! But the fate of the Skies is in danger! The magic of the glow is not the only taint in this unforgiving realm. Dark forces conspire to bring the Skies to the brink of an even greater catastrophe.

Can you survive long enough to discover the secrets of Sundered Skies? Sundered Skies is a dark fantasy Plot Point™ setting for the award-winning Savage Worlds RPG™

Daring Tales of Adventure by Triple Ace Games:
Daring Tales of Adventure are Triple Ace Games’ new line of pulp adventures. Set against a pre-World War II background of two-fisted, heroic action, each issue contains a complete adventure. To begin your pulp campaign you just need to buy an adventure, download the sheets, and start rolling dice! By the time the heroes reach the end of this line, you’ll have played through over 450 pages of pulp action!

Those are just a few of what’s available on the market for Savage Worlds. There is also a huge online community of popular conversions from other systems over to the Savage Worlds system and many of them can be found at the Savage Heroes website.

I have about 30 years of roleplaying experience having started during the summer of 1978. The Savage Worlds system is just about the best roleplaying system I’ve come across in all those years. It allows everyone at the table to concentrate on the gaming experience without worrying about which chart to look at or if they remembered to bring their calculator to role up a new character.

I highly recommend Savage Worlds to anybody that wants to experience roleplaying that not only plays well, but is full of “Fast, Furious, Fun!!”

Savage Worlds Explorer’s Edition 2nd Printing
Soft Cover – 160 pages
9X7 format
$9.99 retail – as of this writing
2008 Edition – Great White Games, LLC

Comic Book Review – Solomon Kane #4 – Dark Horse Comics

I have been a fan of the Solomon Kane stories by Robert E. Howard for several years. I have all of his published works on the character, plus his fragments. “The Castle Of The Devil” is one of the fragments that Howard either decided not to finish or set aside to finish at a later date. The fragment itself has just enough in it to set a tone for the story so that it could go in any direction, be it a human enemy or something supernatural. Dark Horse Comics and Scott Allie decided to take the supernatural approach for this mini-series, which takes the fragment of “The Castle Of The Devil” and fleshes it out to create a complete story.

I would definitely suggest reading the series from start to finish as the majority of the writing doesn’t lend itself to jumping in mid-story, in case you’ve read the original fragment and just want to find out what happens after that. Allie seems to bounce around with the dialog, which caused me to back track several times to make sure I was where I thought I was in the story.

Mario Guevara and Dave Stewart’s combined talents give the series a bleak, sketchy feeling that reminds me of an overcast day that just won’t clear up. Some of the pages gave me the impression that some of the coloring was added as an afterthought. The blood effects, for example, don’t really feel like a natural part of the page in some of the panels. It almost seems like the pages were headed for the printer and someone decided to splash a little red here and there at the last minute.

Dark Horse’s Solomon Kane is a series that you’re either going to love or not. I will read the final issue, but I won’t be adding it to my list of books to re-read. I’ll stick with Howard’s originals.

Solomon Kane #4 of 5 – Dark Horse Comics
Writer – Scott Allie
Artist – Mario Guevara
Colorist – Dave Stewart
Letterer – Richard Starkings & Comicraft
Cover Artist – John Cassaday
Cover Colorist – Dave Stewart
$2.99 – 32 pages

New Comics Shipping For The Week Of 1/21/2009

CONAN THE CIMMERIAN #7
MAXIMUM RIDE TP VOL 01
SOLOMON KANE #4 (OF 5)
WATCHMEN MOVIE OZYMANDIAS BUST
WATCHMEN MOVIE RORSCHACH BUST
WORLD OF WARCRAFT #15

New Comics Shipping For The Week Of 01/14/2009

DOC SAVAGE DOUBLE NOVEL VOL 23
SHADOW DOUBLE NOVEL VOL 09 VAR SPECIAL
SHADOW DOUBLE NOVEL VOL 24
SOLOMON KANE #4 (of 5)
BATMAN #684
MIRRORS EDGE #1 (OF 6)

The Savage World Of Solomon Kane RPG – A Review

Since a previous post dealt with the Solomon Kane character as a personality reference, I thought I would share a video review of the RPG, The Savage World Of Solomon Kane by PEG (Pinnacle Entertainment Group). The review is hosted by Kurt Wiegel and is extremely well done. In fact, this is one of the games on my short list of things to get my hands on as soon as possible. Read more

Solomon Kane – A Character Profile

Solomon Kane was created by Robert E. Howard sometime around 1928. Howard created 9 short stories, 3 poems, and 4 fragments about his Puritan avenger.

The following is a description of the Solomon Kane character from the novella “The Moon Of Skulls”, which was published in 1930. Read more

Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane #1 Preview – Marvel Comics

Written by Scott Allie, penciled by Mario Guevara, colored by Dave Stewart, covers by John Cassaday and Joe Kubert.

Robert E. Howard’s vengeance-obsessed puritan begins his supernatural adventures in the haunted Black Forest of Germany in this five-issue adaptation of Howard’s “The Castle of the Devil.” When Solomon Kane stumbles upon the body of a boy hanged from a rickety gallows, he goes after the man responsible–a baron feared by the peasants from miles around. Something far worse than the devilish baron or the terrible, intelligent wolf that prowls the woods lies hidden in the ruined monastery beneath the baron’s castle, where a devil-worshipping priest died in chains centuries ago.

32 pages, $2.99, in stores on Sept. 24.

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