Great Stories by Jonathan Moeller

When I started reading books on my Kindle, Jonathan Moeller was one of the first authors that I picked up. I've never been disappointed with any of his books. The Demonsouled series is a great story about a troubled knight who must learn to overcome his own dark, inner nature. Each book in the series draws you in more than the one before it.

While I was waiting for the release of the latest in The Demonsouled series, I started reading The Ghost Series. This second series about a young woman turned assassin/spy drew me in even more than the first, and I found myself reading one after the other. I recently picked up Ghost in the Stone, the latest in this line and after only the first few paragraphs I expect this to be one of the best yet.

Each book is its own story and I can't stress how important I find that after reading so many series that never seemed to be able to bring a story to an end in any of the books.

I enjoy sword and sorcery fantasy. Knights that defend the weak, wizards tempted by dark powers, and heroes that stand against the forces of evil all keep me turning pages late into the night. Jonathan Moeller’s work delivers on all fronts.

Jonathan is a prolific writer. In addition to the ten books that make up The Demonsouled and The Ghost series he has two other series, The Third Soul Series and The Tower of Endless Worlds that add another nine books to his list.

My greatest concern with his books is that I'll eventually read through them and there won't be another to pick up. I try to pace myself so that I always have a new book to look forward to reading. Fortunately, he continues to publish, and I hope he will continue to do so for many more years.

You can find out more about his books by going to his website at http://www.jonathanmoeller.com/writer/ As of today, Child of the Ghosts and Demonsouled, the first book in each of their respective series, are available free at Amazon.

Scorn The First Book of Pandemonium

On October 29^th, I lost power as Sandy (the storm, not the squirrel) passed over Pennsylvania. The power remained off until around 11PM on Halloween night. After checking out a few other things I finally logged onto my PC, and at just about Midnight, I discovered this on my Google+ feed.

This is Scorn-Pandemonium. Scorn-Pandemonium is an RPG. It is a dark and twisted RPG, or as the author  says, "Scorn is a game about meat." In other words, it is the perfect gift to find in the pumpkin patch as the witching hour strikes on All Hallow's Eve

This is not a game for the faint of heart. If you have ever watched a horror flick and laughed, then this game might be for you. Or, you might just need counseling. Could be both. And while the rules say you could play a G rated game, the rules themselves are definitely R rated.

I've been gaming for for over 20 years. I have more dice than normal folk will ever understand, but not enough by most gamers' standards, and I think I might have used my 12 sided dice maybe a dozen times. Well, to actually make a meaningful roll anyway. They are pretty cool to stack during a game.

That is about to change. Scorn uses die 12, as many as 18 of them. 18?  Finally my d12 is going to get some love. Fortunately, you don't have to add them together. Just look for the biggest number and compare that to the difficulty of your action. There are some bonus, like for rolling the same number multiple times or for being descriptive in stating how your character acts, but overall the system seems pretty straight forward.

If you succeed, the player sitting on one side of you describes what happens and if you fail, the player on the other side provides the description. All the GM, Story Teller, whatever you want to call them needs to do is assign the difficulty of the action. (Yeah, there is more than just that, but you probably have the idea)

When I first started reading the rules, I laughed a number of times. Then as I continued, the number of "Holy Craps!" far outweighed the chuckles.  There is some dark stuff in there.

The first half of the book is for everyone, Players and Directors (Game Masters), the second half is for the Director. I haven't read the second half yet.

A couple of things stuck with me. First, the players are the story teller far more than the GM is. It seems like it would be easier to get a game going and to keep the players interested with this approach. Second, there is going to be lots of blood and characters are going to die. Horribly. And third, no matter how messed up the characters seem to be, they are still the good guys, well at least in comparison to the bad guys.

I think this would be a great game to play. The rules system seem easy to learn and you could drag a few friends into the pits of hell pretty quickly if you wanted to throw together a game on short notice.

Rafael Chandler has made the rules available on Google Drive for free download. Scorn-Pandemonium.pdf at Google Dive  It is now available at DriveThruRPG and it is still free.

All he asks that if you like his game, you consider buying his novel, Hexcommuincated. A summary of it is available at his web site www.rafaelchandler.com/fiction.html

Even if you aren't interested in the game, take a look at the book.