Weird Wars Rome Continues Pinnacle's Long Run of Great High Concept Campaigns

A few years ago, at the height of the d20 Boom, a medium sized game publisher called Pinnacle Entertainment Group released a d20 version of their signature role playing game Deadlands. The d20 version was released in an attempt to take advantage of the recent increase in interest in the role playing game market sparked by the 3rd Edition of Dungeons & Dragons. The book sold well enough, but instead of increasing the Deadlands fan base it ended up alienating some fans who believed Pinnacle was abandoning their old Greg Gorden designed masterpiece. This wasn't the case, but the damage was done and sales declined.

By this time Pinnacle had already released their customizable and easy to learn and play Savage Worlds role playing game system. That game went on to be an award winning game and the Phoenix that helped Pinnacle rise from the ashes of their declined sales. Sales that had declined so much that three Friendly Local Gaming Stores in the Los Angeles area informed me that Pinnacle went out of business. Pinnacle wasn't out of business. Far from it. They were - and are - an innovative company and were at the cutting edge of the sale of digital products. Their sales for digital as well as physical Savage Worlds products saved the company and built them a loyal and passionate fan base. Staying at the fore of industry trends, Pinnacle has already had an extremely successful Deadlands Kickstarter campaign and they hope to repeat that success with their most recent project.

Pinnacle Entertainment Group recently launched Weird Wars Rome a new Savage Worlds game setting on Kickstarter. The project quickly surpassed its initial goal and is quickly conquering the stretch goals that the company has put forth. So far the digital rewards that backers of this project will receive include an original soundtrack, short adventures, and interior outlays for poster maps. All backers of the project will also be receiving an 8 page supplement by Jack Emmert (of Cryptic Studios) that discusses the role of class and race, the gods, and myths and legends in ancient Roman society.

Weird Wars Rome is the latest in a series of tabletop roleplaying game books for Pinnacle's Weird Wars line of Savage Worlds settings. The Weird Wars product line reimagines historical military campaigns and twists them by adding supernatural and horrific elements to create entertaining alternate world game settings. Game settings to date have included Vietnam and World War II. In Weird Wars Rome, players are legionnaires living in the vast Roman Empire who encounter the terrors of war and of far darker things that lurk in the shadows of the fringes of the Empire...and in the heart of Rome itself.

Unlike many Kickstarter projects, the Weird Wars Rome Kickstarter automatically provides all new digital rewards to backers as each stretch goal is reached. There are no "pay for" add ons. Shortly after the Kickstarter campaign is completed, backers will be able to down load the completed pdf the book and any digital rewards that have been completed to date. The basic funding level is $20 for which the backer will receive a copy of the base Weird Wars Rome rulebook and some digital rewards. Other levels allow backers to get more physical products like dry-erase poster maps, custom dice, a GM Screen and some adventures.

Pinnacle Entertainment Group has long been one of the kings of "high concept" when it comes to games and campaign settings. Their DEADLANDS game set the tone for undead/Western mash-ups and many of their Savage Worlds settings have taken long standing narrative tropes and given them a "savage twist." The Savage Worlds game system is marketed as being Fast, Furious, and Fun and I have very much found this to be the case.

Klarkash-Ton the Oft Overlooked Master

Today, in 1893, one of the great trinity of Weird Fiction authors was born. Of the big three Weird Fiction authors, Clark Ashton Smith is the one who has least captured the popular imagination. Robert E. Howard's Conan is a figure that looms large in the popular psyche, and Lovecraft's Weird Tales inspired countless authors and a number of films and television episodes. Awareness of Lovecraft's "Cthulhu Mythos" has long been lurking in the depths of the popular subconscious and is slowly surfacing into full awareness. When one reads Smith's prose, one is quickly taken with its poetic qualities.

Then, with ineffable terror, I beheld the thing to which the light clung like a hellish nimbus, moving as it moved, and revealing dimly the black abomination of head and limbs that were not those of any creature wrought by God. The horror stood erect, rising to the height of a tall man, and it moved with the swaying of a great serpent, and its members undulated as if they were boneless. The round black head, having no visible ears or hair, was thrust foreward on a neck of snakish length. Two eyes, small and lidless, glowing hotly as coals from a wizard's brazier, were set low and near together in the ^noseless^ [formless] face above the serrate gleaming of bat-like teeth. -- The Beast of Averoigne


Sadly, it is likely the very poetic nature of Smith's prose is one of the reasons that generations of readers have been unaware of this great weird author. For a good portion of the 20th century expansive "Victorian" style prose was ostracized in favor of the more "clean" and "direct" writings of the so-called Modern literary tradition. Critics and academia didn't value expansive and rich descriptions, the writing they favored followed the guidelines set forth in George Orwell's Politics and the English Language. Ironically, the academic community which has failed to recognize and promote Smith as a writer has been a far worse violator of Orwell's criticisms than Smith ever was. It is true that things can be overwritten to the point where their meaning is unclear, or even that the writing itself is meaningless, but this is not true of Smith's writing.

When will the popular psyche become aware of Klarkash-Ton's literary influence on modern fantasy? Let us hope that day comes sooner rather than later.

I first encountered the writings of Clark Ashton Smith when I read the X2 Castle Amber module for the Dungeons and Dragons Expert Set game written by Tom Moldvay. Castle Amber was one of the first truly narrative adventures written for the Dungeons and Dragons game. It influenced the structure and tone of the classic Ravenloft module, and permanently embedded the name "Etienne D'Amberville" into the hearts of fans of the Known World D&D setting.


I had purchased Castle Amber believing it had some relation to the Amber stories of Roger Zelazny. I was wrong, but I have rarely been so glad to be incorrect. The Castle Amber module is a celebration of the Weird Tale, combining narrative elements from Edgar Allan Poe, H P Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith. The Poe references were obvious to me, even though I was quite young when I first read the module, but the references to a wondrous place called Averoigne were entirely new to me. I had never heard of the "Beast of Averoigne, (nor the Beast of Gévaudan for that matter) "The Colossus of Ylourgne," or "The Holiness of Azédarac." I likely never would have, but for the fact that Moldvay had a brief bibliography listing the stories that influenced Castle Amber.

Up to that time, I had not encountered anything quite like Smith's writing. My fantasy experience had been primarily limited to Tolkien, Brooks, Greek Myths, Arthurian Legend, Moorcock, Zelazny, and Lewis. The truly weird tale had escaped me, but that small bibliography opened new avenues of fantastic fiction to me.

In recent years, publishers have printed some very nice collections of Clark Ashton Smith's works. The University of Nebraska Press has printed Lost Worlds and Out of Space and Time. Night Shade Books has been compiling Smith short stories in wonderful editions. I highly recommend purchasing physical copies of Smith's works, but for the digital reader Eldritch Dark has collected much of Smith's written work -- with proper concern for copyright.

I could write, and talk, about Smith for hours. When I discovered he had lived in Auburn, CA (a city close to my wife's home town), I began a brief obsession with Smith. I even began reading his correspondence...for fun mind you, much of which you can read at the Eldritch Dark website.

I am not the only person on the interwebs celebrating CAS's birthday, the excellent gaming and weird fiction website Grognardia has a wonderful post up today.

Please Forgive Me for Passing Edgar Allan Poe's Birthday Without a Mention

Yesterday, January 19th, 2010, was 201st anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe's birth. Poe is a figure who looms so large over the genre that I most enjoy, that it is truly impossible to imagine my reading world without his early contributions.

What would Detective and Mystery fiction be without Poe's invention C. Auguste Dupin?

For that matter, what would Weird Fiction be without Dupin and his obsession with "Darkness" and his, and his Bosworth's, obsession with ancient and mysterious tomes?

What would modern Thrillers be without stories like "William Wilson" or "The Black Cat"? Poe's use of unreliable narrator in these tales, as well as in "A Cask of Amontillado," provides a wonderful tool for authors of Thrilling tales -- for authors of any tale.

What would the world of Literature be without The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket? It is possible there would have been no At the Mountains of Madness, Moby Dick, Land that Time Forgot, or "Dust of the Gods."

Poe helped to set the foundation for modern Science Fiction, Weird Fiction, modern Horror, Mystery, Fantastic Fiction...etc. Quite a remarkable achievement for a man who was long overlooked as a creator. Overlooked until those he inspired referenced him so often that his legacy could not be ignored.

To these reviewers Poe would have written (and G.R. Thompson argues that Poe did write in the Library of America edition of Poe's Essays and Reviews) the following:

THE GREAT FAULT of American and British authors is imitation of the peculiarities of though and diction of those who have gone before them. They tread on a beaten track because it is well trodden. They follow as disciples, instead of being teachers. Hence it is that they denounce all novelty as a culpable variation from standard rules, and think all originality to be incomprehensible. To produce something which has not been produced before, in their estimation, is equal to six, at least of the seven deadly sins -- perhaps, the unpardonable sin itself -- and for this crime they think the author should atone here in the purgatory of false criticism, and hereafter by the hell of oblivion. The odor of originality in a new book is a "savor of death unto death" to their productions, unless it can be destroyed. So they cry aloud -- "Strange! incomprehensible! what is it about?" even though its idea may be plainly developed as the sun at noon-day. Especially, we are sorry to say, does this prevail in this country. Hence it is, that we are chained down to a wheel, which ever monotonously revolved round a fixed centre, progressing without progress.

Thankfully, Poe cracked the spokes of the wheel and allowed future generations of writers to feel free to attempt originality and push the boundaries of what constitutes literature. After all, how dull would the world of Literature be if all short stories were -- as Michael Chabon describes much of modern short fiction -- "contempory, quotidian, plotless, moment-of-truth revelatory stor[ies]," devoid of fantastic, horrific, whimsical, or bizarre counterparts? Chabon laments that the "short story" post 1950 has returned to Poe's wheel and cries out for us to forget the critics and look for the new.

It was Poe's lesson first, but it is a lesson that requires constant renewal.

While I got so caught up in RPG/Conan geekiness yesterday that I forgot to honor Poe's birthday, our friends at The Cimmerian were not guilty of the same oversight.

Happy Birthday Klarkash-Ton!

Today, in 1893, one of the great trinity of Weird Fiction authors was born. Of the "big three" Weird Fiction authors, Clark Ashton Smith is the one who has least captured the popular imagination. Robert E. Howard's Conan is a figure that looms large in the popular psyche, and Lovecraft's Weird Tales inspired countless authors and a number of films and television episodes. Awareness of Lovecraft's "Cthulhu Mythos" has long been lurking in the depths of the popular subconscious and is slowly surfacing into full awareness.

When will the popular psyche become aware of Klarkash-Ton's literary influence on modern fantasy? Let us hope that day comes sooner rather than later.

I first encountered the writings of Clark Ashton Smith when I read the X2 Castle Amber module for the Dungeons and Dragons Expert Set game written by Tom Moldvay. Castle Amber was one of the first truly narrative adventures written for the Dungeons and Dragons game. It influenced the structure and tone of the classic Ravenloft module, and permanently embedded the name "Etienne D'Amberville" into the hearts of fans of the Known World D&D setting.


I had purchased Castle Amber believing it had some relation to the Amber stories of Roger Zelazny. I was wrong, but I have rarely been so glad to be incorrect. The Castle Amber module is a celebration of the Weird Tale, combining narrative elements from Edgar Allan Poe, H P Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith. The Poe references were obvious to me, even though I was quite young when I first read the module, but the references to a wondrous place called Averoigne were entirely new to me. I had never heard of the "Beast of Averoigne, (nor the Beast of Gévaudan for that matter) "The Colossus of Ylourgne," or "The Holiness of Azédarac." I likely never would have, but for the fact that Moldvay had a brief bibliography listing the stories that influenced Castle Amber.

Up to that time, I had not encountered anything quite like Smith's writing. My fantasy experience had been primarily limited to Tolkien, Brooks, Greek Myths, Arthurian Legend, Moorcock, Zelazny, and Lewis. The truly weird tale had escaped me, but that small bibliography opened new avenues of fantastic fiction to me.

In recent years, publishers have printed some very nice collections of Clark Ashton Smith's works. The University of Nebraska Press has printed Lost Worlds and Out of Space and Time. Night Shade Books has been compiling Smith short stories in wonderful editions. I highly recommend purchasing physical copies of Smith's works, but for the digital reader Eldritch Dark has collected much of Smith's written work -- with proper concern for copyright.

I could write, and talk, about Smith for hours. When I discovered he had lived in Auburn, CA (a city close to my wife's home town), I began a brief obsession with Smith. I even began reading his correspondence...for fun mind you, much of which you can read at the Eldritch Dark website.

I am not the only person on the interwebs celebrating CAS's birthday, the premiere pulp website The Cimmerian has a couple of good posts up today that are worth reading.