Reading Review - Claim the Sky

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For the TLDR rating, click here!

It’s no secret that I am a big fan of tabletop role playing games. Also, I’m pretty sure I’ve written that exact sentence on this blog at least once before. I play a lot of games. I read a lot of game books. I think that my reading time is likely evenly split between game books and fiction books. Non-fiction is thrown in there, too, but I read a lot fewer non-fiction books than I do fiction and game books.

Okay, getting out of the weeds, there: I recently picked up Claim the Sky, which is a superhero supplement for the Cypher System by Monte Cook Games. I read through the book, slowly and bit by bit and… I gotta say that I really love it.

The Book

Image from MonteCookGames.com

Like all of the Cypher System books I have, it’s a beautiful book. The layout is clean and colorful. The text is easy to read, and has loads of references on the sidebar. Honestly, I ignore these the first time I read through such a book, because there’s just so much. But, when I go back and am reading for review and reference, these sidebars are invaluable. And, they’re just so good! It seems like very page has the sidebar full of references, pointing you to other places in the book, or pages in other books, giving you everything you need to understand what’s being discussed in the text.

Some of the art in the book has been recycled; I recognize it from the Cypher System core book. Other pieces, I don’t recognize, but I don’t know if they were made specifically for this book, or were reused from something else. There are some pieces that I can say with certainly are new to this book, because they are of characters and locations created for the setting section. But, wherever the individual art pieces come from, they all look really nice and fit the superhero theme of it all.

The book is divided into two sections: “Gaming With Superpowers”, and the setting “Boundless”. To tell the truth, I really appreciate them splitting it out like that. Cypher System is a generic system and this division supports that. They understand that, yes, you might love their setting and want to play in it, but then again, maybe you want to create your own world! Or play in a different world, already published by someone else, that has dozens of movies in it, with endearing cameos and such!

Ahem…

Rules Section

The first bit with the rules is my favorite. I’m a sucker for rules. Whenever I buy a new game book, the new rules are the first things that I look at, and if there aren’t many, or if they don’t have much substance, I’m disappointed. The new rules in Claim The Sky are pretty good! The rules are mixed in with a lot of discussion on how to make the Cypher System rules work with superhero stories, but they’re easy to find. There are 5 new character Descriptors and 7 new Foci. Along with the options in the core book, and all the other Cypher System games out there, I think those are good numbers of new material. And, the options look like fun! My favorite of them is the ‘Sensational’ descriptor. A character with that one gets more points for their Pools, more skills and is Popular! Yes, with a capital ‘P’!

Power Shifts are also expanded on in the rules section. I played with Power Shifts once during a solitaire game while I was podcasting and I thought it worked really well for superheroes. I think that this presentation of Power Shifts shows how the Cypher System has matured over the years. They’re all specific in what they affect, and all of them are very powerful. There is further discussion on changing powers on the fly and doing off-the-wall things with a character’s abilities, which is also very superhero-y.

The final bit about rules is just two pages dealing with Cyphers and Artifacts. Given how important cyphers are in the Cypher System, I expected this section to be bigger. The material given is fine, and I honestly couldn’t tell you how to make it bigger, but it was a let-down the first time I read it. Honestly, were I to run a superhero campaign, cyphers might not even make up a big part of the story. With Power Shifts, the characters are already extremely powerful, in their individual wheelhouses. Having zero cyphers might not break the game.

Setting Section

The Boundless setting is the next section, and is a lot of fun. Their world is a lot like ours, but there are some changes. The authors quickly go through the history of the world, and how major world events looked with superheroes involved. Then, they get into the major factions and NPCs of the world, and finish up the book with three different adventures.

All of the individual hero and villain NPC write-ups are in the first part of the book, and are referenced in this section with those amazing sidebars.

I liked this part of the book. It was a fun read and there are a lot of interesting ideas on how to change our world into a world with superheroes. There are a ton of ideas that I found to be wonderfully inspiring. Several times during my reading, I stopped after reading a detail, lost in my imaginings of how awesome a game campaign would be, based on that idea.

The adventures look like fun, too. They vary in length and complexity, and I honestly did not give them a very detailed read. If I ever decide to run them, one day, I will, but I didn’t feel like they’d add much to my reading of the additional rules or the game setting.

All in all, I really enjoy this book and I’m glad I picked it up. I’m already planning on pitching this game to one of my game groups as soon as we finish the games we’ve already got planned.

Addendum: As I was wrapping up the writing on this review, my son wandered down to the kitchen, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He asked what I was doing, and I gave him the rundown of the book. He expressed interest and started to flip through the book. With every page he flipped, his excitement grew and he ended up saying he really, really wants to play this game.

Re-Addendum: While putting this post together, I saw that the wonderful folks at Monte Cook Games have put together a free preview of the book!

TLDR

Rules Section: 4/5

Setting Section: 5/5

Flash Fiction - Lighthouse

 This is a short piece I wrote for submission to a zine last month. They passed on it. I'm very proud of it, and I like it a lot. I hope you enjoy it, as well.

--//--

The ship bucked, throwing Captain Opa into the console where he'd been writing a letter to his family. The console's edge slammed into his gut and hip, drawing a surprised and pained grunt from him. He managed to catch hold of the console's edge before the violent shaking threw him into another surface in his cabin.

With calm but hurried motions, he saved the letter to his partition where it joined the others waiting to be given to his family when they returned to their home stellar system and planet, then hit the key and opened the ship's intercom. "Bridge, this is the Captain. What's going on?" He modulated his voice to radiate calm. If he panicked, so would everyone else, and panicked people couldn't do their jobs. A strained voice answered as if the person speaking were facing away from the intercom's pickup, "It's... pressure wave... -where."

"Bridge, this is Captain Opa. I didn't catch that. Say that again, what is going on?" The only response was a strange, fluting whine that came through the speaker. The sound scratched at his eardrums and made him wince and pull away from the intercom speaker. With a frown, he let go of the button and turned to the door.

The first step went fine, the second missed the deck somehow, then he floated up from the floor to bump uncomfortably against the ceiling as the ship's thrust, which created the perception of gravity, was cut off. Now he was worried. Quickly, he pushed off the ceiling, made his way through the door and floated up to the bridge, using the handholds installed in the corridor for that exact purpose.

The sight that greeted him as the hatch slid open was baffling. The on-duty members of his crew sat at their stations, strapped into their seats as required by the rules, but their eyes were wide and unseeing and their mouths hung open in slack surprise. Opa shoved off the hatch frame towards Lieutenant Rogers, who had command of the bridge during this shift. The young woman didn't react as he pushed her shoulder while catching an armrest to arrest his micro-gravity flight.

"Rogers, report," he said in a tight voice. What was going on? Rogers didn't respond to his words, or the gentle slaps he laid on her cheek in a vain attempt to bring her back to reality. "Rogers, what is going—"

The ship heaved, ripping his grip from the armrest. The deck and bulkhead plates surrounding the bridge started to sing. The noise was high-pitched, fluting and... wonderful! The sound, the sweetest music! Colors splashed in front of his eyes as his ears tasted his favorite smells and his skin tingled in the most pleasurable sensations and his hair stood and vibrated—

Opa shook his head, alarmed, snapping himself out of that... whatever that was. He looked around, the noise still clamored in his brain, telling him to give in, to enjoy it, to let it transport him to happiness. He could taste the pollen that filled the air around his home during the spring. It seemed that the sound, somehow, brought out every memory and experience that had ever made him happy.

With a grunt, he pushed himself away from Rogers' chair and soared through the air towards the helm. Miner, the helmsperson, sat there, strapped in, a vacant look on their face. He quickly unbuckled them and pulled them out of the seat, not-so-quickly maneuvering them to the wall where he quickly strapped them into an emergency restraint. He pushed off the wall to quickly fly back to the helm and strapped himself in and keyed the engines back on.

The ship shuddered and jerked as if it were pulling away from some physical restraint and gravity returned. Something clattered to the deck behind him and the singing in the bulkheads lessened. He had just enough time to sag with a sigh of relief before the ship bucked again and the music redoubled. This time, it clawed into his ears, and scratched at his brain with long, sharp talons. The images that the music drew up and flashed in front of his eyes were still happy, but there was pain, too.

Desperation welled up inside him as he hit the controls, sending the ship skirting to the side with the maneuvering thrusters. He heard the fallen object behind him roll across the deck, but the singing didn't lessen. Then, with a jerk, the ship bucked the other way, and the singing became a howl. His eyes watered with the effort of keeping hold of his mind, with his refusal to give into the feelings and images the song inspired.

Suddenly, there was a flash of light through the front viewscreens. His mind cleared, the song was pushed away. What was that? he wondered. A point of light in front of them, a— Another flash and his mind was filled with another image: a starfield. And there was a line, twisting, turning, weaving in and out and around signs he somehow knew meant rough space. And, outside the rough space, a point of light, the same point that he could see in front of the ship.

Another flash and he found his fingers dancing across the helm controls, laying in a course that matched the line he saw in the starfield inside his mind. It took mere seconds, and then he hit the 'Execute' button and the ship jerked and bucked as it pulled away from that binding force. The point of light in the viewscreen flashed again, and his mind cleared completely of the song. The ship, on autopilot and following the course his fingers had laid in, accelerated away and out of the 'shoals' that he now knew, somehow, lay in wait for passing ships. The point of light lay directly in front of them as they broke free of the shoals' pull and the haunting, attracting song they sang.

The crew around him began to stir, with sudden gasps and jerks as they returned to their bodies. Those sounds faded into the background for Opa as the light in front flashed again and he knew what it was: A pulsar, a spinning neutron star, somehow changed, instructed or given purpose, to guide ships out of the trap his ship had fallen into. But... how? He had no idea how something like that was possible.

The light grew bigger as the ship approached it. The crew, now talking amongst themselves, called around to make sure everyone was all right. Following the final section of the plotted course, the ship used the pulsar's gravity to slingshot around and boost away at a speed faster than its engines alone could manage.

Home. They were heading home. And all because a star told them how. It was... overwhelming. Opa keyed a command to show the pulsar on the helm's screen, watching as it slowly shrank behind them. He didn't understand it. He couldn't. But, somehow, it had saved him. Saved his ship. His crew. And, they were headed home, again.

With a quick few commands, he noted the location of the pulsar, and the shoals. They would need to study this phenomenon. But, later. For now, he laid his hand on his heart and gave a small bow to the pulsar in thanks as it shrank back into the black of space and they left it behind.