Beyond the Storm: Shadows of the Big Easy (by Various Authors)

By Mike

Beyond the Storm: Shadows of the Big Easy
6x9 Trade paperback format; 157 pages. Published by David Wendt through LuLu.com

To purchase:
Print on Demand: $19.99
PDF: $10.00
Official website

A friend of mine, and contributor to this project, Caz Granberg asked me if I would be willing to review Beyond the Storm. And as the other half of Animalball Partners had just purchased a copy, I stole it from my brother and agreed to the review. [Ed. Note: We don't condone electronic piracy. Reviewers are normally provided free copies. Stealing anything, including pdfs, is a fast path to hell... thieves.]

It turns out though that this is a hard work to judge, because the content, while maintaining the general themes of “New Orleans inspired” and “vaguely gaming related” rather runs the gamut. There are 17 chapters by 17 authors. There are full role-playing games in here, as well as adventures for existing games, plus some fiction, supplemental material about New Orleans itself, one true-life tale, some poetry, and even one non-fiction essay about the Katrina disaster. Also, since “all proceeds go to help the victims,” a reviewer feels like a total ass giving a product like this a pan. But I’ll do my best to be fair. (As a disclaimer, I know several people involved in this product, and consider at least a couple to be good friends. But again… we’re here to be objective.)

First, a word on the layout. The book looks great. There’s plenty of art, and all of it high quality. The layout and formatting are tight, and it all reads well. However, it bothers me that there are 24 blank pages in the book. I understand the editorial decision to make each chapter a complete and removable section with the front page facing up, but that still means that 15% of my book is blank. More annoying than that is the total lack of anything to identify the subject matter of each chapter. It would have been a small matter to add 2 or 3 words to each section in the table of contents to say “Lacking the Rainbow Connection, a short story by Crazy Elf,” or “NEO Orleans, a self contained RPG/adventure by Caz Granberg.” Once you begin reading them, some items make the content clear from the first sentence, but not always. Sometimes there’s a question of whether you’re reading a short story, or just the flavor fiction to kick off a new game or adventure. A little clarification in the TOC would have gone a long way.

Overall, I give the book high marks. Again, with the nature of the product, there is bound to be some unevenness, and while I thought a couple of pieces were not to my taste, the vast majority of the book was above average at its worst, and inspiring at its best. Even if you never play any of the games, it is worth your money just for the read. At first, I balked at the price. I’m not much for reading a whole book in PDF, and $19.95 for a 6x9 paperback just seemed like a lot at first blush. But I have to remember I’m not judging it as a paperback novel, but as gaming material, and 20 bucks is about the going rate for 70,000+ words of gamey goodness.

I’m not going to give a full review of each chapter, but I will sort of gloss over the high points for you. First, the parts I didn’t like (ie. anything not directly gaming related): You Cannot Mourn, the essay by Stacy S. Wendt, and The Memories I Will Keep, poetry by William D. Edmonds. Call me shallow if you will, and I know that part of the project is honoring the loss of life and property and culture as a result of Katrina, but I was really just excited to get to the gaming goodies. Once I realized that these weren’t game material, I skipped them. (Yes, I came back to them and read them later for purposes of this review—I’m not a total swine. Get off my back.).

There was one other non-fiction piece in here—a supposedly true tale from Matt Forbeck called Truth and Lies in the Big Easy. I’m a sucker for industry tales (this one takes place at a gaming convention in New Orleans), and even moreso for ones with hot naked chicks. It’s a cute piece.

There are three short stories, and as with the non-fiction pieces, I was eager to hurry through these to get to the game stuff, but I tried to be fair. Lacking the Rainbow Connection, by Crazy Elf, and Take Me to the Mardi Gras, by Mikko Rautalahti, were both decent enough. Had I been actually looking to read fiction, they would have been good. Jason L. Blair’s It Rained All Night the Day I Left, though was disjointed and rushed. The intriguing setting left me wishing it had been more than just a punchline piece.

Supplemental material for many possible games: A Small New Orleans Lexicon, by Lindsay Labanca. Exactly what it says. A very cool and useful little glossary. Also, A Shambling Tour of New Orleans by Viki Picker, by Mur Lafferty—a very entertaining undead’s-eye-view travelogue. It was played off a little too cutesy for my taste, but it was still quite good. I could see a whole book of undead location guides being an entertaining and informative addition to any game with that sort of bent.

There are five full original games included here. All of them are quite unique, and I was fascinated at the variety. I’m mostly a roleplaying traditionalist, so there were a couple of these that were simply too unlikely or too unwieldy for me to be willing to try, such as Seth Johnson’s The Quarter (a game with only one stat), or Jason Mical’s Crescent City, which while full of flavor and well-written, totally put me off with its Tarot card resolution mechanics. Not surprisingly, I was very fond of Caz Granberg’s sci-fi translation of New Orleans into the self-contained game/adventure of NEO Orleans. The mechanics are simple, but traditional, and the setting is captivating and nuanced. Jazz Voodoo, by Sean Riley, was a nice surprise—an eclectic little game about mystical musicians that translates its mechanics comfortably into musical terms.

The biggest surprise for me in games, though, was Don’t Wanna Make Groceries, by Mischa Damon Krilov. It seems like a gamemaster’s nightmare to set up and coordinate, but I so wanna try it. In it, you play the wait staff for a New Orleans restaurant. The shared narrative of the game seems fun and challenging, as players are, first and foremost, part of team, but also are in competition for tips. I’m in awe. Damon’s bio says he’s also written an award winning RPG called 1984 Prime. Based solely on the quality of Groceries, I put it on my Christmas list.

Lastly, there are four game adventures from the Big Easy here. All of them are good. That Voodoo that They Do, an adventure for Shadowrun by Brook Willeford, held the least interest for me, but that’s probably because I’ve been avoiding buying Shadowrun 4 since it came out. But it was quite good nevertheless. Hotel of the Black Oak, by Geoff Skellans, is a good creepy haunted mystery, written with no particular game system in mind. The Devil’s Trumpet, by Scott Bennie is a superhero tale, and somehow he works in a short story, supplemental supers info about New Orleans, and game stats for both Mutants & Masterminds AND Hero System, all in just 13 pages. I’m impressed.

The high point of the adventures for me was Spider Meat, by S. John Ross. Apparently based in his previously developed Uresia world, Spider Meat does not designate a game system, but a GM could easily adapt it to any fantasy gaming system. It’s a fantasy adventure with wayward royalty, political intrigue, witches, monsters, restless natives, and… FOOD. The whole adventure revolves around the greatest damn gumbo that ever was. And I was mesmerized by it. No seriously… it’s about the God of Stew. You have to read it to believe it.

Bottom line: Beyond the Storm is a good book. Go spend your money. It’s for a good cause, and you’ll enjoy yourself besides.