Site: Glass and Steel - www.rpghost.com/glassandsteel Owner/Designer: Brian Rickman (?) - no email address available Category: Horror Primary Content: New worlds, races, and occupations for the Fuzion rules system Reviewer: Elissa Carey - drgnfyre@voicenet.com Rating:
The title page to this site greets you with an awesomely gritty and eerie graphic that sets the tone for the rest of the site. It does give a warning at the bottom of the picture that if one is easily offended to leave the site; the link that takes you away from the site brings you to its parent site, the Keep which is part of the Borderlands, a multi-genre role-playing site that uses something called Fuzion rules to play games mixed with KULT and the World of Darkness, mostly, although there is also evidence of some slight cyberpunkish leanings. The mix is practically seamless even though it is still obvious which games the rules came from; since I am a fan of White Wolf's games and KULT, I'm tempted to try the rules to create my own characters.
Exploring Glass and Steel reveals a mostly KULT-based cosmology and foundation, with bits and pieces of WoD showing here and there, mainly in such things as the 'Children of the Night', the Grigori, and shapeshifters. What one also discovers amongst the wonderfully disturbing KULT cosmology and origin stories is a strong occult influence. The Kabbalah is used to name the Archons, celestial beings like angels, with Enochian and Biblical names for the Angels of Death whom are allied with the Demiurge's twin, Astaroth. There are even alternate rules that use legendary artifacts, such as the Spear of Longinus and the Holy Grail, for game/campaign purposes.
There are, however, a few problems with the site, one of them being that it is hard to find anything on it to credit an owner or designer. Since this is in the main a good site, it would be nice to be able to say to whom the credit should go. Another problem is that the site isn't complete; there are a few sections that either aren't there or aren't done yet. And with my appetite whetted for more KULT/WoD goodness, that was a mite disappointing. Lastly, the site is fraught with capitalization and punctuation errors. They distract when attempting to read the pertinent information.
The site, according to the title page, is best viewed with Internet Explorer 5 with the screen resolution at 800x600. Other parts of the site require Javascript on.
AD&D players and GMs, pitch everything but your respective guides! Heck, you might be able to get by with pitching those, too, because this site has everything you could possibly want or need to play or set up an excellent AD&D adventure. You can download and use everything from a netbook on Half-Elves, a 'Complete Guide to Hygiene', and the Net Book of Plots, to a Dungeon-Mapping utility, a Deck of Many Things simulator, or even a Visual Basic Weather Generator. The download and program pages are full of things to explore and use for a reference or your own adventures. The links page also takes you to several other places rich in references and help for AD&D, as well as links to download various programs and shareware such as Real Player, Netscape, Winzip, and ICQ. A separate page appears when you first access the site that provides links to Amazon.com and Rock.com to search for and buy books and music.
The graphics themselves are simple but clean; they don't clutter the page unnecessarily like some fantasy sites tend to do with theirs. One of my few complaints is that the text isn't pushed far enough over from the border graphic; the text is light enough to make it hard to read on that area. There are a few typos, but they don't occur enough to be terribly distracting.
All in all, an excellent site, and one I would recommend using the next time you play.
Site: Beyond Hyperspace - David A. Kanger Category: Sci-Fi Primary Content: Sourcebook/Netbook material, character templates, and alternate rules and settings for the Star Wars RPG Reviewer: Elissa Carey - drgnfyre@voicenet.com Rating:
Fans of the Star Wars saga and the Star Wars RPG will have a good time exploring this site, as it is so chock-full of alternate books, settings, rules, etc. that you could get lost in them. The first page, the title page, greets you with the Star Wars theme music in a fairly smooth midi format, which is a joy to listen to. It then links to a table of contents page (which I highly recommend going to first in order to make sense of navigating the site), and to what looks like an alternate title page - with the same title graphic but no music - which has an introduction to the site as a sourcebook.
The table of contents steers you to many things, such as character templates to use in creating new characters using their alternate character types, a history/lore of the Mandalorian Warriors, pre-generated scenarios, and the Beyond Hyperspace Docking Bay and Cantina, where you can apparently look for ships to hire and then hire their owners/captains. Half the images are either borrowed from comics or original pieces by the site owner's friends.
There is a downside to all of these goodies, however; the red text against the starry background is just readable enough to give one a headache if you plan on reading it for a decent amount of time. The character sheets for the templates are also all on one page, and not organized in a terribly print-friendly format; it would have been easier if the owner had simply put each of them into a document for easy downloading. These things plus the initially confusing navigation unfortunately detract from what is potentially an awesome site.
