Support for Sentinels of Echo City is back, and it couldn't be cooler! In one page, you get two new superheroes, and one new supervillain for your game....and also for 50 cents! Heck, the publisher isn't even forcing you to pay that much! They also aren't stopping you from paying more than that, either, which is what I did. Get it! Encourage the creation of more issues!

Another fantastic issue! This a perfectly bite-sized but power-packed product, filled with just enough short fiction and statted-out gaming goodness to make you really feel like you are taking a quick vacation into the Stalwart Age of the SOEC universe. Buy it, enjoy it, and encourage the author to make more of it!

With this latest issue of "Zindagi," the story really starts to move forward, adding new elements even as previous developments come to a head. The philosophical themes are still very much present, but they are woven into the action instead of being used to stall it like some navel-gazing coffee break. I've said it before, and it bears repeating: Ken is creating a ground-up indie-comics cosmic saga the likes we haven't seen since Jim Starlin was the "new kid in town."

Jay Piscopo is one of the best creators working in independent comics today. If you need proof, you can get it right here, for the insanely low price of 75 cents! Jay's art is dynamic, his storytelling is clear, and his pacing is crisp. Get in on the ground floor with Jay Piscopo's Manowar, and go find anything else he's worked on. You won't be sorry!

This is an independent comic book with a reason to exist and something to say. A new cosmic yarn is being spun, here, and not just some retread of something you read back in the day, either. Read it here before you're disappointed by the studio-driven movie later :)

Endlessly fun character creation, simplified rules that don't alter the game too much at all, and an expanded setting/background material section that is interesting and inspiring to read. This is my favorite supers RPG from 2015, made better, stronger, faster, and cooler. So, you could say that this is my favorite supers RPG of 2018. Sorry, Icons, but hey: it's a close race, I promise.

Another excellent entry in the "Code" series of games. Does this game "do D& D?" No. And that's one of the things I like about it. This game does fantasy adventure. Don't expect all the D&D tropes of characters loaded down with dozens of spells, magic items, or...."feats" here. Your character will be based around a solid, thematic concept of your choosing, and you'll be done creating them in minutes. Is there room for advancement, adding more abilities, etc? Sure, but that's not the focus of this game. The focus is set squarely upon the story, on the "scenario" level, and on each character's own "sub-plot" level. Pick this (or any of the Code games) up if you want to get going quickly, keep things moving along, and tell some stories while rolling some dice.

This is a great book, and an excellent resource for Icons. The PDF is reasonably priced, but $30 for the Premium Hardcover seems a bit steep, now that I have the book in hand. It's a nice little book, for sure, but it does seem a bit...slim for Thirty Smackeroos. That said, the content is great, the art keeps getting better, and it's a fun, useful, interesting read. The Archetypes are super handy, and the Background generator is fun to take for a spin.

This is a cool, well-thought out designed bad guy for your V&V game. The inclusion of Plot Seeds, along with notes on Personality and Tactics really fleshes it all out, making this a very solid investment of your 99 pennies. Get it, and encourage more cool indie stuff for V&V.

Superhero RPGs are a compulsion for me, I admit. I have well, a very high percentage of them, let's say. That being said, this is one of the most original approaches to the genre that I've seen. The central dice mechanic is fresh and felxible enough to feel substantial without feeling overly complicated. You have to be willing to let go of "power intensities," "strength levels," and other such hoary old benchmarks, but once you do, the ability to make (and play) literally any superhero you can imagine shows through...and you can make that hero as quickly as you can think of them. I obvioulsy haven't had time to try this game out at the table yet, but the game seems very well set up to encourage and reward the kinds of gameplay that you'd want to see happening in a 4 color comic book style game. I can't help but wish there was a clearer "advancement path" than the one provided (spending "Triumph" points on any number of different improvements at will), as I think it would help players to create "more experienced" heroes right away with ease, but that is my only bit of criticism. Otherwise: it's excellently designed, it's well written, and it's free! Get it!

If you want superhero comics packed with action, fun, and an actual sense of wonder, look no further! Nemo Publishing has always delivered on this front, but with "Thorus," the cosmic afterburners seem to have kicked in, taking us all the higher vibrations of the 10th Dimension: the home of the Supergods! There is a lot of love for Jack Kirby in this book, but it's not a rote attempt to copy the King. This book has a character all its own, and I can only hope that there is more to come, and soon. If that's not enough for you: there is a character within these pages called "Space Caveman." (Also: "Dr. Bigfoot.")

I am admittedly something of a compulsive superhero RPG "collector." So, odds are I would have bought this game any way, regardless of the pedigree. However, given the pedigree, I was even more interested, as I had bought and read through the author's previous "Mythweaver" and "Resolute" games, and thought both were very well done. My mouse wasted no time in hovering over the "Add to Cart" button.

Then it paused. The fact that this game was "based on B/X D&D rules" started to bother me. I had yet to check out this author's "Tales of the Splintered Realm," so I wasn't aware of how he had adapted the system for his own uses in that game. Still, the cover homage to the classic "blue book" Champions cover won me over, and I gave it a shot.

And am I ever glad that I did. This is a fast, flexible, easily understood game that takes the B/X rules and uses them as a basis to make something that feels truly original and very well suited to the superhero genre. There's a good balance between old school mechanics and new school flexibility (or just a new school approach to the old school flexibility that was always there).

There is a unified mechanic used for most actions (a "check", either standard or superhuman in scale), but there are a few subsystems (combat is "to hit AC", there are "FEAT checks" like saving throws, etc) to keep things feeling a little more old school, too.

Can you create every superhero that ever existed with this book? Not really. But, modifying the game to do so, or to suit any other idea you might want to try, would not be even close to difficult.

Also, the game is all open content (or some such thing, I'm not a lawyer), which means you are encouraged to tinker with it and make it your own.

Overall, this game has the refreshing mix of old and new school gaming flavor that makes for an RPG that I really want to get a chance to play.

Highly recommended.

(Note: the author is planning some additions to the core book soon that sound very cool, too.)

This is the third iteration of Simon Burley's "Code of" RPG System, and it is even more refined than the previous two. What you have here is a very open, flexible system with just enough structure to get a group of people playing quickly, but with enough depth to it to provide plenty of interest for more than just a handful of pick up sessions. The steampunk genre is a great fit for this system, and I hope to see more iterations of this system to come.

Miss the days when comics were fun, original, and driven by the need to tell a good story rather than by the need to satisfy a movie studio or some faceless corporate overlords?

Well, miss those days no longer, friend! Nemo Publishing has just what you're looking for, and then some!

Capt'n Eli is the "center" of the "Nemoverse", but all of the other Nemo titles can be picked up and enjoyed whether you've read the Eli Volumes or not.

Great characters, cool story lines, and a sense of fun and wonder infused into every page; I can't recommend these comics highly enough.

Since the other existing review for this product does such a good job of giving a thorough overview of the system, I will forego writing what would amount to a paraphrased version of the same.

I will say that I am a supers RPG junkie. I have pretty much all of them, and no time to play even one these days. Still, I like to buy them, read them, and check out the new twists and turns in their different approaches to a more or less common design goal.

"The Comics Code" has one of the more original approaches to that goal that I have yet to stumble across.

In short, you are "limited" to choosing three powers for your hero in this game, and, furthermore, you may only use each of those powers in a specific situation (unless you want to incur a pretty significant in-game penalty for doing otherwise). So, in this way, this is a game that seems to walk away from the usually understood contract between a player and a supers RPG: "You can create any character you want to play from the comics!"

I don't ultimately see this as a bad thing, just different, and in ways, more creatively challenging. Making "Captain America" into a character in this game might be a bit difficult, for example: if Cap's shield is his "Defence" power, then he can't use it to attack, even though he does that all the time in the comics. However, if you make Cap's shield into his "Attack" power as well as his "Defence" power, then are you saying that Cap can't punch out a bad guy without his shield?

The answer, I feel, is that: this game is not about you pretending to be Captain America. It's about creating a hero under this very specific set of easy-to-learn, quick-to-play rules, and ending up with some more limited (perhaps) characters that are not merely transparent clones of all the usual favorites (Hey, it's my version of Batman/Superman/Wolverine, etc!).

As for me, I think this game would work really well as a framework for playing some of the more light-hearted superhero-related antics, like "The Tick."

If you're into supers RPGs, but want something with a more specific focus than the usual "kitchen-sink-every-superhero-comic-ever-all-at-once" approach, this should be added to your shopping cart right now.

Note: I ordered the PDF and the Softcover. The Softcover is holding up pretty well so far, and I've read the rules about 4 times now.