Cancelling The Dino Apocalypse

When Evil Hat Productions announced they were KickStarting a series of pulp novels set in their Spirit of the Century universe, I was all over it like fleas on a gorilla! I jumped at the chance to support this endeavour to produce new stories in the genre I love so much. While the KickStarter resulted in a whole slew of novels by the time it wrapped, it began as a trilogy by Chuck Wendig. Since then, the first two of the Dinocalypse trilogy have been released, Dinocalypse Now and its sequel Beyond Dinocalypse.

The Dinocalypse trilogy follows the adventures of the core members of the Century Club as they battle strange creatures from beyond time, lead by the villainous Gorilla Khan in his attempt to take control of the world from the hands of man. Dinocalypse Now takes place in the 1930's, while Beyond takes place... elsewhen. I don't want to spoil anything.

Chuck Wendig does a great job of recreating the action of the classic novels that were written when pulp ruled the book stands. The first book opens in the middle of the action, and barely lets up from then until the last page, sending the heroes jet-setting from tall cities of secret lairs. Mysterious artifacts, impossible devices and wondrous weapons from ancient worlds are all presented in classic pulp fashion.

But it is the characters that shine through all else. As well as the larger task of wanting to save the world, each gets their own personal goal. Some simply want to prove themselves more that their progenitor, others want to impress their colleagues, while more simply want the fame and glory. They are real people with real emotions and desires, and they can be hurt, both physically, with punishing blows, and emotionally, with humiliating defeats.

Everything in these books is paired down to a sharp point. Chuck Wendig manages to set up more inthe opening pages than some authors manage in opening chapters. We immediately get a sense of who we're up against, and what's at stake. When the twists and reveals come, it simply reinforces what's already there, rather than taking the story on a wild, unexpected tangent. Dialogue is equally sharp, with every character having their own voice, reading sufficiently differently from each other throughout the story.

The two books available in the Dinocalypse trilogy so far are a blast, taking readers on a thrilling ride through a suitably epic pulp adventure. I have no doubt that the final volume, Dinocalypse Forever will be equally as exciting when it hits bookshelves and e-readers everywhere in 2014.

Edit: The original upload of this post had a mix-up with the names of the second and third books in the series. It has been corrected here. Annoyingly, I didn't notice, despite the correct titles clearly visible on the embedded cover art. Sorry for any confusion caused.

Steel Yourself For Adventure

On January 1st, 1900 a group of people were born across the world that would go on to be a little more than human, a little faster, a little stronger, a little more intuitive. As adults, they would form the core members of the Century Club (along with a talking gorilla, but that's for another story), an organisation whose mission is to protect the world from the evil that lurks in the Shadows. They would stand tall against the darkness, becoming a beacon of hope and of honour. Those who met them would call them heroes, those who knew them would call them friends.

But even heroes and friends have to spend time growing up, learning life's hard lessons and allowing events to mold them into the people the world will come to love. Few heroes start adventuring in their twenties or thirties, and in the world of Spirit of the Century, the best start out as daredevil teens who have a tendency to get themselves into more trouble than your average kid.

Sally Slick and the Steel Syndicate is an action packed Young Adult novel from author Carrie Harris (Bad Taste In Boys) set in the world of Evil Hat Productions Spirit of the Century roleplaying game. It follows the release of other books set in the same world that focus on the same heroes, but later in their adventuring careers, including the first of this wave of pulp adventure novels, Dinocalypse Now, by Chuck Wendig.

Sally Slick and the Steel Syndicate follows the adventures of The Century Club's premiere inventor and gadgeteer, Sally Slick, during her first brush with the world beyond her home and away from racing tractors and tinkering with engines in her fathers garage. In this pulp action novel, Sally is just sixteen years old and unaware of her potential, or her future as a globe trotting adventurer with her childhood friend and co-star, Jet Black.

This first book, in what I hope becomes a series, is a fantastic introduction to the world of pulp heroes and villains, packed with fresh takes on classic tropes. I really, really don't want to spoil a single moment from this book, but if you're a fan of the pulp genre you'll enjoy the twists and turns the story takes as our heroes battle the bad guys to save not the world, just a family member who has fallen in over his head. If you're a fan of the Spirit of the Century world, either from the roleplaying game or the previously published novels, then you'll love seeing the characters grow over the course of the story from imaginative children into the heroes you already know.

There was much to squee loudly about over the course of Sally and Jets adventure, for new and old fans. Reveals were masterfully executed, especially... well... especially one in particular that had me smiling with joy and slapping my head that I hadn't seen it coming, despite the setup that suddenly seemed so obvious! Villains are suitably nefarious, action scenes are daring and dramatic and characters are incredibly well realized, leaping fully formed into my minds eye.

"But Dennis", I hear you asking, "what about if you've never played Spirit of the Century, or read any of the other books in the setting?" First of all, it's Denis. One "n". The French spelling. Secondly, and more important, however, is the fact the Sally Slick and the Steel Syndicate is just simply a great book. The story is fun and fast paced, the central characters are all well crafted, and each gets their time to shine, while even the secondary characters seem more rounded than some big-budget movie supporting cast (I'm looking at you, "Man of Steel").

Sally Slick and the Steel Syndicate is the perfect introduction to the world of the pulp adventurer for the young reader, and a wonderful addition to any library that might also contain Flash Gordon, Doc Savage or The Shadow. It's an easy read, without ever being too basic, an action story that gives its characters time to develop between rounds of intense and masterfully written conflict.

If Carrie Harris is a new name to you, you'll be keeping an eye out for her work after reading this. If Sally, Jet and The Century Club were unfamiliar titles before starting this adventure, then you'll find yourself seeking out their other tales of daring and heroics before you even reach the final page.

You Gotta Share The Love

I've been a role-player since starting college in UCC in 1998. Before then, I had vaguely heard of the concept, but wasn't all that familiar with how it worked. I got asked to join a once-off adventure with pregenerated player characters, run by one of the taller members of the Wargaming and Role Playing Society, or WARPS. If I recall correctly, it was a Lovecraftian horror, in which I played the wife of a crackpot inventor who ended up being revealed as a clockwork automaton, much to everyones surprise, including myself! At that point I killed my husband and everyone else and escaped into the wastelands with my son who had been locked away in the attic.

Basically, I was hooked.

It was like reading a book with friends and choosing the outcome. Brilliant! I found out much later that those kinds of books existed as well! Amazing!

I spent the next several years playing and running various games, learning various systems and introducing more people to the world of tabletop RPGs, as well as making new friends through it.

Then that tall man with the twisted and uncanny sense of storytelling, who had gone on to write RPG's professionally, told me about a new game on the market, one focused more on storytelling and description than rolling bigger numbers. Gar laid out all the reasons why I should get excited about Spirit of the Century, then hit me with the homerun. It was a pulp setting, based in the 1920's and 30's, styled after the adventures of the Shadow, Indiana Jones, Doc Savage and, of course, the Rocketeer!

Once he got hold of his own copy of the book, he ran a few games, and I jumped at the chance to be in it. Before we were even finished the character creation section, which was most of a session in itself, I knew that this was going to be my system. The system I used for every game I ran. The system I stole elements from even if I was playing with a different rules set. The system I would love and support from this moment on.

I got the beautiful and low print run hard cover edition, read it cover to cover and ran my first successful campaign, including twelve sessions, guest appearances by other players and many, many happy memories.

So when Evil Hat annouced in late 2012 that they were Kickstarting their new edition of Fate, the rules system used in Spirit of the Century, I was stuck to it like gum on a Cirrus X-3! I watched as the Fate Core stretch goals were destroyed as the amount pledged shot through the roof. My own pledge amount rose as more and more was made availalbe as print add-ons. I became involved in the swiftly growing community around it in ways I have never done for anything before. I loved seeing the love Fate Core was getting, and sharing that love with others online.

Jump to PAX Prime 2013.

I'm wandering the main exhibition floor early on Saturday morning. I've decided to cross to the other side of the hall to check out a particular booth when I stumble across a guy chilling out on one of the complimentary seats one of the big booths has lying about its area. His head is stuck in a copy of the recently released print version of Fate Core. I stop briefly to comment on the book.

It turns out he's not a role-player! He saw the book and thought it looked like an interesting read, and already he's about a third of the way through. We chat briefly about the hobby and the book, and I suggest a few places to start, as well as answering a few quick questions he has. Before I leave, I suggest that he takes a look at Fate Accelerated Edition, a companion pick-up-and-play version of the Fate Core book, then I wish him well in his new adventure and keep on wandering.

Saturday goes by and Sunday rolls about. It's late afternoon, and I'm in the convention hall again, but this time I'm looking for my wife. I check my email and discover that she's on the sixth floor, in the Console Freeplay Area. That means having to go up the back stairs, a route I don't usually cover at PAX, as that side of the sixth floor is mostly for various panels.

I reach the fifth floor and sitting on one of the comfy chairs by himself is the guy from yesterday, still reading Fate Core. He's noticably further along in it. I stop and say hi. He recognises me immediately and we both get a good laugh out of running into each other again in a convention of over 70,000 attendees, especially here, as he picked this place to stop and read expressly because it was so quiet and out of the way. I ask him how he's enjoying the book, and he tells me, with much excitement, that he's thinking of running his first game tonight!! I wish him the best of luck in tonights game and many more beyond before leaving to find my wife.

I sit down with Claire and realize my brain wants to tell me something, so I relax and listen. It tells me this:

You have never been monetarily wealthy. You went to college away from home and had to pay for rent and food. Even with a job, you had to borrow money from your parents at times. You finished college with a degree and got a job doing something you love, but for only four hours a day, and you still had to pay for food and rent, as well as now paying back borrowed money to the bank and your family. Any time you thought you had money, an unexpected expense came up to take it all away. And then, you decided to move to Vancouver, so you had less money than ever to spend freely.

In all that time, from your first day in college to today, tomorrow and beyond, you have had amazing friends. They have shared with you all kinds of things, from cards to make your L5R deck better, to board games and books, from video games to comics, to food and clothing. You have long thought about how you haven't often been able to return that kindness to them.

But karma is a universal thing. Others do good things to you, you do good things to others, others do good things to even others. It does not have to be a closed loop. They do not have to be the same people. And

Every.

Little.

Thing.

Counts.

It's not the value, it's the friendship behind it.

You know what to do.

And suddenly I do. I get up and tell Claire I'll be back soon.

I race down three flights of stairs to where I know it will be and I buy it.

Then, I go back up two flights of stairs and find that guy again, still in the same place, still reading the same book. I interrupt his reading one last time and hand him a fresh copy of Fate Accelerated Edition, because I can do that now for someone. It's nothing, I say. It only cost me five dollars. This is incredible, he replies. I've never had a stranger gift me something before. I really appreciate it.

Enjoy the game, I tell him as I head back to my wife. It's the best hobby in the world.

Race To Adventure

Racing across the globe to collect stamps from exotic locales and rescue prisoners from the sunken city of Atlantis, Race to Adventure is a fast playing board game based in the universe of Spirit of the Century, the Fate powered RPG from Evil Hat. You play as one of five characters from the RPG and novels, including the gorilla, Professor Khan, and star of the upcoming Young Adult novel, Sally Slick.

Each turn consists of players choosing from a number of items, such as the Jetpack, Biplane or Raygun, starting with the current First Player and proceeding clockwise. Once everyone has chosen, all players do their actions together, simultaneously. Then the First Player token moves clockwise to the next player and the next turn begins.

Race is a very easy to learn game, with a well laid out, clear and simple rulebook, and lovely colourful cards with big, clear symbols for the actions. Honestly, the most difficult thing about Race for us during our first games was learning that the game really does play that fast! Turns flash by. Players move together, reaching over each other to get to their tokens and perform their daring feats. Because everything is so well laid out and the visual design is so clear, everyone knows what everyone else is doing, and how it might effect their turn this round. The rules are easy, but overcoming that ingrained board game concept that each player should finish her turn before moving to the next players actions is harder. But once you get it, you understand how the game can be over in 30 minutes, despite a lot to accomplish to claim victory.

The board is made up of tiles that are laid out in a 3x3 grid, beside the heroes base of operations in the Empire State Building that makes up the leftmost column. In a move that is nothing short of genius, each tile has a standard side and a Shadow side. This ties nicely into the setting, where the heroes are Centurions, while the villains of the universe are referred to as Shadows. The Shadow sides offer a higher level of difficulty through greater mission requirements and more impassible borders, requiring more thought on strategy for the current and upcoming turns.

As it was funded through Kickstarter, the copy of the game I received included the expansion, adding more tiles that can be swapped in, as well as new enemies and objectives. That said, even just the base game has a lot of replayability, as the tiles play in a different order every game, making it fresh and new with each play. As well as that, you can play on the standard side, the Shadow side, or a random combination of both. Nigh-limitless variation!

Race to Adventure is another fun, fast game that I love to play whenever we feel like something shorter than Battlestar Galactica! In fact, Race can play faster than some games of No Thanks!

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Sally Slick: Centurion Of The Century

Way back in 2012, while we were between visas and unemployable, Evil Hat lived up to the "Evil" part of their title and started a KickStarter that I had no hope of resisting. Their goal was to release a trilogy of novels based in the Spirit of the Century universe, following the adventures of the Century Club, a team of heroes that have been, quite literally, born to protect the 20th century. The books were to be true pulp action, inspired by the pulp novels of the early 1900's.

I threw in my money, and watched in joyous horror as the number in the corner went up and up, far beyond anyone's expectations! More and more novels, from more and more incredible authors were added to the line-up, and the final tally leveled out at seven books! For the princely sum of $10 that I could scrape together at the time, I got everything in digital format!

Later, after I was blissfully back at work, Evil Hat tried their hands at another crowd funded project. This time, they sought to update their Fate System, the engine upon which Spirit of the Century and later Dreden Files, was built. They chose to call the new system Fate Core, and the KickStarter was set at a lowly $3,000 asking price.

Which it managed in minutes.

I was lucky enough to get in early enough to nab one of the elusive limited Pledge Levels. As the Stretch Goals piled up, so too did my pledge, slowly rising as I sought to get more and more physical content.

And then, late in the run, Evil Hat announced a new novel as part of the Fate Core campaign!

Sally Slick and the Steel Syndicate was to be a young adult novel based before the events of the Spirit of the Century role-playing games and the previously funded novels, set around 1914, when Sally is just discovering the wider world, and the world is just about to discover her!

I was delighted! Not only was I in love with the idea of more material from the universe, but I had recently discovered the Young Adult genre of novels, and found them a wonderful, refreshing change of pace from the heavy, all-too-often dark and depressing, plain old adult novels I usually read.

I've been reading all the Spirit of the Century books as they've been released to the KickStarter Backers, and enjoying them all. Each one is crafted with love of the characters and the era. Each is packed with thrilling adventures and daring escapes. Each is a joy to read, and as soon as I finish one, I can't wait to read the next.

With that in mind, having been following the development of this whole thing from the start, it gives me great pleasure to be a part of this official world reveal!

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you the wonderful art of Dani Kaulaki that will adorn the cover of Carrie Harris's Sally Slick and the Steel Syndicate! Take it home, Dani!

[Click to View in Full Glory]

Title: SALLY SLICK AND THE STEEL SYNDICATE

Release date: December 3, 2013

Publisher: Evil Hat Productions

Ages: 12 and up

Jacket description:

Every hero has a story. This one starts with a girl and a racing tractor.

Sally Slick knows she’s meant to be more than a Midwestern farm girl. What she wants more than anything is to be an inventor when she grows up—and she has the custom-built racing tractor to prove it. But good girls in 1914 don’t go off to the city in search of adventure. Everything changes when Sally’s big brother comes back from Chicago with a robot in hand and mobsters on his heels. With the help of her friend, wannabe hero Jet Black, Sally will risk everything to protect the people she loves.

Those bad guys are about to get a giant wrench thrown right into their plans.