A little plug for a company I love

[thormagni]

Friends, Romans, fellow gamers, lend me your ears,

Guardians of Order, the company that makes Silver Age Sentinels, is in a financial crisis. It seems that since they are Canadian, the diving U.S. dollar has really hammered them hard. Apparently, even though they had their best year ever sales-wise, they took a real hit to their bottom line. They have apparently laid off all their staff and are operating on a one-person skeleton crew.

Anyway, they make great games, I think. It all has been really well written and well thought out (except, of course, their Canadian insistence on spelling words like "Armour.") I mean, their anime guides, even if they didn't have the game information, are a ton of fun to read. Plus they are really nice people and their books are just beautiful. Big Eyes Small Mouth, their main game, is a cool anime game with versions for D20 and their own Tri-Stat system. Same for Silver Age Sentinels (D20 and Tri-Stat versions.)

So, if you ever had the thought that "Hey, I might just pick that game up someday," now would be a really good time to do it. The Stingy Gamer Edition of Silver Age Sentinels is like $10, or they have a version of Tri-Stat Silver Age Sentinels that is $15 for the hardback (it had a printing error where the art turned out too dark.) In fact, I just bought the too-dark book so we would have an extra copy of the Tri-Stat rules, should we ever want to try that.

Here is their main Web site:
Guardians of Order Catalog

Here is the Rarities and Oddities site with some older, out of print stuff including the printing error SAS Tri-Stat
Guardians of Order Rarities

(And yes, if I could figure out how to come up with the $150, I would buy their Guardians of Order hockey jersey in a heartbeat.)

That's the end of my pitch.

 

[thormagni]

And it is probably bad form to reply to my own post, but on Friday I am going to purchase the player's guide and GM guide for a game Guardians of Order put out a few years ago called "Heaven & Earth." It is about an Apocalyptic struggle for Earth between the forces of evil and the forces of good. I think it would be fun to play the game as the forces for the dark side But it looked interesting, nonetheless, and I had never heard of it before. It is apparently based on their Tri-stat system, which powers Big Eyes Small Mouth and Silver Age Sentinels.

 

[Odovacar's Ghost]

That sounds similar to a game system I bought about 5 or 6 years ago. It starts after the so called coming of Christ. Anyway, you play one of the people who don't get saved, but should have got saved. Or some such. I can't remember all the details.

Is your game similar to this?

 

[thormagni]

Is your game similar to this?

It sounds similar. Although this is pre-End Times stuff. They advertised it as a surreal horror game, set against the Apocalypse. You, apparently, are supposed to get to the bottom of what is going on, sort out what's what, that sort of thing.

Strangely, one of the most readable RPG things I have come across recently was the intro to, I think, it was White Wolf's Demon line Time of Judgment book. Time of Judgment was the sweeping, end of the world stuff they did in 2003 to usher in a fresh game line. Basically, the end finally comes for all the vampires, werewolves, mages, demons and etc. This one was all about Lucifer walking the earth and being misunderstood for all these years. I mean, sure he is evil and a fallen angel and all that, but in this one instance all he really wants is to help humanity and the story is all about him trying to get one guy to believe him and of course the guy won't, because he IS Lucifer after all.

I'm not a big fan of dark or exceptionally deep RPG material but sometimes I'd just like to play a bad guy, y'know? Wander around on the dark side a bit.

 

[Odovacar's Ghost]

Strangely, one of the most readable RPG things I have come across recently was the intro to, I think, it was White Wolf's Demon line Time of Judgment book. Time of Judgment was the sweeping, end of the world stuff they did in 2003 to usher in a fresh game line. Basically, the end finally comes for all the vampires, werewolves, mages, demons and etc.

Damn, are you saying all my white wolf books are outta date? I guess I need to read up on white wolf era and pick up the new books. One of these years that is.......

 

[thormagni]

Damn, are you saying all my white wolf books are outta date? I guess I need to read up on white wolf era and pick up the new books. One of these years that is.......

Ya. That's it. They killed everyone off. Really. They ended it all. Each of the lines had a Time of Judgment book that wrapped everything up. Each Storyteller (GM for us RPG players, Storytellers for high and mighty White Wolf players) was given one of several optional ways to end their Chronicle (campaign, that is, for you and I.) I haven't read all of them, but they seemed to include a Biblical option, a plague option, a technological option, that sort of thing. But especially in Vampire, the gist of at least one was that hey, vampires are evil. We know you blood suckers have been scheming and plotting and backstabbing and partying forever, but God is really, really unhappy with the whole mess. And he is going to wipe you out. So, unless you do something truly heroic and selfless to show you are worth saving, well buh-bye.

Of course, there is no reason that individual GMs (err, Storytellers) couldn't keep playing their old game, or that the old game isn't still playable. Just that it isn't going to be supported anymore.

Basically, it was a way for them to wrap up all the loose ends and start over with a new core rulebook called World of Darkness and then spin off the individual game lines again in a leaner, cleaner way. All the clans and tribes and sabbats and mega plot and that mess? Stripped away. All the games will now be completely interplayable, as I understand it. And the history will be stripped down to the bare minimum.

The Vampire line kicked off with a new Vampire: The Requiem book, Werewolf is coming out with a new Werewolf: The Forsaken book and Mage will be Mage: The Awakening. I haven't read up on what they are doing with, say, Hunter or Demon.

 

[thormagni]

Vampire: Gehenna -- the end of the old Vampire line