Review: Heavy Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad

I've been meaning to post a review of Metal Gods for some time, Issue 3 definitely sealed the deal.

Do you ever go online and start reading something that looks like it's pulled out of your own head, only someone put all the work in to make it awesome already?

That's how I feel about Metal Gods.

First off you can find them over at Dispatches from Kickassistan

Written by +Adam Muszkiewicz and a bunch of others, including alot of familiar names from +Drink Spin Run - An RPG Talk Show Podcast .

The feeling of this whole group is the same as walking in on your older brother playing D&D with all his cool friends while you're still playing with your He-Man figures.

They play the kind of Game that we all wanted to play, and Ur-Hadad is the tip of that mighty iceberg.

Ur-Hadad is an eternal city. One full from wall to wall with bands, Gangs, cults and adventure. Streets of excitement, sewers of mystery, docks on iniquity.
And like other eternal cities it makes a great place for adventure. It's not just a place to go between adventures, a place to sell your loot. It's a place of adventure itself.
It seems so large and vast that it can easily absorb the actions of your players party, burn down few building, kill a few local magistrates? Meh the city goes on. Or if they wish they can try for control, meh the city cares not, they will be gone with time.

And what's actually in the books?

Stories, legends, background, myths rumours. Which I love.
The best part is that some of them conflict with each other, and they are still all true!

Yeah but, what else?

Issue 1 has some great stuff, lots of tables for encountering the assassins of Ur-Hadad, a great encounter for any game.
And what is ostensibly a scenario but is actually a great set of tables for randomly generating city blocks. We've all seen this kind of thing before but this one really is different.
It is incredibly simple for one, and doesn't get too caught up with specific streets or houses. But what it does have is great colour detail, random encounters, local places of interest and more, so much more.

Issue 2
You like space? You're going to the moon! Lots of wacky sci-fi to mix in with your fantasy. Nuff said on that. You have to read it to see.
The backup articles are Bounty Hunting in Ur-Hadad. Tables galore again with all the details you need as well as some good guidelines for bounty hunting useful in any game. It's amazing how many games have bounty hunter classes and yet still do not have as useful a set of guidelines.

Issue 3
Currency of Ur-Hadad! I don't know why but I always love articles on Currency. Just having names for the coins adds so much to a game. And this article, like all the best ones, also shows the history, background and mindset of the people using it.
Also in this issue are guidelines for a "Heist" scenario. Again it's amazing how many games have "thieves" or criminals, as character classes and yet here for the first time I have seen are guidelines for actually committing robberies.

Overall:
What more can I say? The articles are all great and each book contains far more than I've listed here.
They are all laid out well and the art is fantastic! The writers all seem to tackle subjects we actually need in all our games, all those little things that we plan on writing up but seem so simple that we never get around to it and just wing it.
Or the things we never even think of but as soon as we see it know that we need it.

The best thing is that they are all written in the spectacular tone of Ur-Hadad, where characters are free to roam to do any madass thing they want and throw every scenario off it's rails and into crazy and insanely fun areas.

I'm sorry to all involved, that I just could not convey the enthusiasm and spectacular fun of Ur-Hadad but I don't need to just head over to kickassistan.net now and you'll see.

~Ripley