Scavengers Reign - An Exploration of Xenomorphology

I saw this trailed last year and, as a big fan of the art of the great french comic book illustrator Moebius aka Jean Giraud, I was gobsmacked with how similar in style it looked to many of his amazing strips.

It immediately brought back memories of watching Les Maîtres du temps (The Masters of Time) and I knew I would have to give it a watch.

More than just a Robinson Crusoe Rehash

The story revolves around the lives of three groups of survivors who landed their escape pods on a lush and verdant planet in very different circumstances.  Many of their shipmates have not been so lucky and did not survive to reach the surface, although it is not long before you start to realise that maybe its the dead who are lucky.

The 12 episodes are a busmans guide on how to create a planet full of interesting and diverse flaura and fauna which spends all of its time trying to eat you.  Wrapped around this core survival trope are evolving backstories which explore why each of the very differnt characters chose to thrust themselves out into the great void.

Beautifully animated and biologically complex, the writers have crafted a world which has so much natural diversity and complexity in their life cycles and symbiotic relationships with each other.  This goes well beyond the simple and makes Gieger's Xenomorph look like a children's story book.  

In the same way, the individual backstories of each character are explored in detail from the venal and pathetic Kamen to the strange relationship between Azi and her robot companion Levi.  These are as complex and interesting as their surroundings.  However, sometimes I feel this is designed to lull you into a false sense of security.  Needless to say in these more tender moments their next brush with the disaster is only around the corner.

Traveller Eat Your Heart Out.

This is exactly how I remember early Traveller scenarios going back in the day.  Every scenario was an exercise in exploration and discovering new and deadly lifeforms.  I remember playing those classic double adventures like Shadows or the Chamax Plague and loving them.   

Justifiers - Out of The Mists	Traveller - Shadows

It also brought back memories of running my favourite long dead sci-fi exploration RPG Justifiers.  With only a little modification each of these episodes would make for an entertaining set of encounters for any party.

Is Scavengers Reign Worth Watching?

If you enjoy carefully crafted and beautiful landscapes filled with interesting biology then yes, absolutely.  If you want fast paced action then this is not the animation for you.  If you can imagine watching a 6 hour long Studio Ghibli masterpiece where your own mortality is repeatedly rammed down your throat in the most violent but interesting ways.  Only then are you getting somewhere close to the gorgeous grotesqueness of this show. 

It is rare for a show like this to ever get greenlit or make it past a 30 minute long short so we have to reward the creative geniuses behind the scenes and watch their show.

Justifiers - Long Dead Game Unofficial Miniatures Review

Last week I blogged about my love of one particular long dead game from the 80s, Justifiers RPG.

I have subsequently unearthed some of the custom miniatures I made for each of the player characters.

Justifiers was already dead when I acquired my copy and it was never a big game to begin with.  There were never any officially licensed miniatures and back in those days sci-fi minis were very much dominated by the Grim Dark 40K style.  There was a very small cottage industry of gaming miniature makers like Denizen but they were focusing on anime and movie properties.  There was nothing I could do but make my own.

Custom Justifiers PC Minis (LtoR: Fox, Rhino, Gazelle, Bat and Owl)

I wanted the characters to be wearing their company issue vacc suits, so I turned to the nearest simalcrum 1/72nd scale flight crew.  Specifically I chose the the Italieri #1246 Nato Pilots and Ground Crews box set which you can still get today from Amazon

#1246 Nato Pilots and Ground Crews Buy From Amazon

A bit of Milliput sculpting later and I had added the necessary ears, horns, wings, snouts and other animal features to turn these into the required Fox, Rhino, Gazelle, Bat and Owl miniatures to match my players characters.

Needless to say these went down a storm and the other miniatures from the set were given a liberal black undercoat and left to represent NPCs.  The game plot was essentially an escape from a rival corporate spaceyard, so I bought a box of Russian Infantry to be the enemy force.  I have a feeling they were also by Italieri or Airfix.


Being plastic these are too lightweight to be left unbased and I chose the extravagant option of mounting them to 5p pieces (1p pieces were too large).

The moral of this tale is that you can still give your long dead games some table time with a bit of imagination and a few plastic soldiers.

If you want to relive the 80s and play the Justifiers RPG you can buy the watermarked PDF from DrivethruRPG. 

Long Live Long Dead RPGs: Justifiers

I recently joined the facebook group Fans of Dead Games, where members share their stories and pictures of Roleplaying Games throughout history.

Whilst my collection is myriad, it doesn't come close to some of the shelves I've seen shared in the brief time that I've been a member.  Here's my little contribution:

Justifiers RPG (ISBN: 1-878711-00-8) p128

Published in 1988 by Star Childe Publications, Justifiers RPG puts you in the role of a Betahumanoid.  A half human, half animal genetically modified hybrid, you are the property of your corporation and your job is to "justify" or explore newly discovered planets.  If anthropomorphic sci-fi adventure in the style of Traveller is what you want, then Justifiers is for you.

Reviews from Ryleh gave Justifiers a good going over 

The rule book also contains the scenario The Axon Confrontation written by Battletech author Blaine Pardoe.

Justifiers RPG
(Core Rulebook)

The Tower
(Adventure)

The Insidious Campaign
(Adventure)

Out of the Mists
(Adventure)

There are a handful of other books I do not (but would love to) own to complete my collection:

Aborigine Sourcebook

The Corporate Sourcebook

Poseidon
(Adventure)

The Hybrid Sourcebook

The CyberMedTech Sourcebook

Cold as Ice
(Adventure)

Silent Corp Sourcebook

Justifiers Boxed Set
(Dark Tower Enterprises)

UPDATE:  Thanks to the wonderfully generous people in the Fans of Dead RPGs facebook group I have discovered that there was in fact a reprint box set released in 1992 by Dark Tower Enterprises.  This contained: Core Rulebook, Hybrid Sourcebook, Aborigine Sourcebook, Poseidon Adventure, an unknown bonus adventure and a Poster.

I have also subsequently discovered that Justifiers is not technically dead and some of the books are available as Watermarked PDFs from Drivethru RPG.  Apparently more are in the works.

Other StarChilde Books

Domination: Sabot and Laser - I can't tell if this is a standalone game or a supplement for something else.  The cover has a modern soldier and a generic insect atop a WWII tank so this could be something completely unconnected.

UPDATE: This is the blurb from the back of the book:

"In 1961 mankind struck out into space...In 1992 space struck back! Play out the critical campaigns of mankind's most desperate war. On the one side the superior technology of the Kalotian Empire. On the other, men and women who know too well that the fate of the Earth rests with them. With a complete role playing interface for Domination."

 So clearly this is a standalone game and nothing to do with Justifiers.

Guardians RPG - StarChilde Publications also made this Superhero roleplaying game.  From what I can research this amounts to two even rarer books (someone should really create a Starchilde wikipage).

UPDATE: As with Justifiers RPG both of the Guardians books are now available on Drivethru RPG as Watermarked PDFs. 

Guardians RPG
(Core Rulebook)

Freedom Union
(Scenario)

If anyone out there has any more information regarding any of these books please drop me a message in the comments below.

Purity Test

The PCs are sent to a location by their corporation on the pretext of a mission when they intercept an SOS message from an unknown source.  Locating the source of the SOS the PCs discover that it has been sent by a group of ex-corporate troubleshooters who famously bought out their respective corporations contracts. These NPCs are the rolemodels the PCs look up to in their respective fields. The NPCs tell them that their former corporations want them dead... or worse.

The quandry for the PC's is do they join forces with these dissidents and face the wrath of the corporation or do they turn them in?

The scenario is in fact a corporate purity test and the PC's will be "retrained" if they support the refugees rather than alerting the corporation to their whereabouts.

Suitable Game Systems

Anything with a heavy corporate setting: CYBERPUNK / JUSTIFIERS RPG / PARANOIA

Valley Forge

60 years ago an eccentric Billionaire tired of the dog eat dog existence of Mega City 1 started a "simple living" commune known only as The Valley. The residents of The Valley think that they are on a colony spacecraft to a distant planet. They have been living in isolation from other citizens of Mega City 1 for their entire lives. All is well until one of their number finds out the truth and commits suicide by throwing himself out of an airlock.
Phillipe Stark Towers is a 2000m tall luxy block the top 900m or so which are the property of the walker foundation. Entering at any of the pedways or blockparks below 1150m, the PCs will find that the elevators do not have buttons for the remaining penthouse levels. They will need to hotwire an elevator, Barney will be too busy to override an elevator (The control panel is voice activated and will not allow any unauthorised access to or from the upper levels.

The upper levels house The Valley Forge commune, the brainchild of eccentric multi-trillionaire Findus Walker. A commune in which the inhabitants have no knowledge of the existence of Mega City 1, it is an elaborate 60 year psychological experiment to test the theory that the psychological stress of inhabiting a Mega City is the cause of the anti-social behaviour demonstrated by it's residents.

The experiment has been the life work of Findus Smith-Walker who has undergone many bodyswap's in order to witness the result of the experiment at first hand he is currently residing in the body of a 12 year old girl. The residents of the commune live under the pretense that their accommodation is in fact a space colony seed ship destined for a remote corner of the galaxy on a one hundred year long voyage. Many of the original inhabitants who were specially selected for the voyage have since died and their descendants currently inhabit the "space craft".

Oh and just in case you thought the judges were getting off lightly Smith-Walker uses a private army of War-droids (dressed in Judge uniforms) which the residents know only as "space pirates" to keep them under control and at a stable population density.

Suitable Game Systems

Originally written for JUDGE DREDD RPG, but would work in any city based sci-fi setting with heavy corporate overtones such as CYBERPUNK / JUSTIFIERS / PARANOIA / SLA INDUSTRIES with some minor tweaks.