The book is called Noise. You can check out the promo site Salvage Country and learn all about author Darin Bradley (Twitter )

Here’s the short synopsis (spoiler free, as is the rest of the review) : the book follows a small group of characters as they navigate societal collapse in modern America. And when I say societal collapse, we’re talking about events that trigger violence, rioting and looting on a scale that destabilize the nation entirely – a complete breakdown of social order that necessitates violent acts to ensure ones own survival. The characters in the book are right in the thick of it, and you’re right in the thick of the characters as they deal with their own survival, as everything is in the act of coming completely unglued. The events in the book cover only a few days at most.

That all may or may not be your cup of tea. But you should read this book anyway, for several reasons. Here are a few.

Let’s start with the easiest : It’s good. It’s really good. It’s well written, takes chances, and has a lot of little touches that really stand out. There are moments in the book where the author does more with a single well chosen word than could be done with paragraphs of narrative. I suspect these instances reflect places where the author took great care in choosing his words, because it’s too difficult to believe he lucked into them repeatedly.

That’s enough of a reason by itself to read Noise. Are you looking for a good book to read? This one was exceptional. But there’s more.

The author has tapped into something here that is worth looking at, and he’s done so very well. For the last few years, there has been an increasing din in the background within certain (perhaps all) circles of American culture. I’d like to say the din is about self-sufficiency in the face of chaos, but it’s probably more accurate to say it’s Fear Of Collapse. This is not a new topic, by any stretch. People were putting bomb shelters in their backyards in the 50s and 60s, afraid of collapse caused by The Bomb. In the 80s we were convinced that the Russians were just around the corner, and that collapse would be imminent. In the 90s, compounds were all the rage. And let’s not get started with what’s been going on the last 9 years or so. Fear of Collapse is something that comes back in vogue every few years. But what’s been captured in Noise is something that runs deeper, and I’m having trouble putting my finger on it.

We’ve become increasingly interested in being more self-sufficient, both at the national level and individually. Growing our own food. Raising our own chickens. Micro-manufacturing and the Maker movement. The amount of thought people put in to their Zombie Apocalypse plans. All of these things I believe tap into a pulse, the general worry in our culture that we have become too dependent on the infrastructure around us, and less able to take care of our selves. Noise taps into this same pulse, and expresses itself in that context in ways for which I was unprepared, even knowing what I knew about the book going in.

There is also a lot to get from the book as a game designer or game enthusiast. It’s impossible to miss how playing RPGs affected the author’s voice when writing Noise. There are a number of overt DnD references that anyone who has played RPGs will understand. But there’s more than just a couple inside references to be taken from Noise. There is an overall grittiness and tone to the book that I think would be tremendously useful to any GM if they read the book and take certain lessons to heart. Primary amongst these lessons is that violence and violent acts have an effect on everyday people. Too often in our games, both as players and as GMs, people get away with unspeakably violent acts with minimal blowback to their person. And that’s just not realistic. Sure, our games are a place of fantasy, a place where we sometimes go with the intention of escaping harsh realities. The characters in Noise suffer. Less, certainly, than would a normal person in the same circumstances. But more than characters typically do, in books or in games. But the suffering of the characters adds a great deal of depth to Noise that would otherwise be absent. Without the suffering, the story would ring terribly hollow. By embracing this same suffering during the creation and evolution of characters, NPCs and scenarios, I believe GMs and players alike could add depth and tone to their stories that would otherwise be absent.

I could go on at length about Noise, but it would be difficult to go much further without adding spoilers – spoilers that you don’t need. Nobody reads books because they know if the heroes live or die or because they know it has a happy or a sad ending. We read books because someone says, in one way or another, “This is a good book. You should read it.”

Noise is a good book. You should read it.

When this game first came out, I didn’t pay much attention to it. It’s not normally the kind of thing I play, and I’m coming to feel like games based on the Cthulhu mythos have just lost their magic. There’s a solid market for mythos inspired games, and it seems like everyone’s angling for a piece of that market. Sometimes, the games are excellent. But the bad ones are really bad. If you combine that with me being more or less an indy snob, this game just wasn’t really on my radar.

After having met the brains behind the game at a private horror gaming event, I added the book to “The List Of Games I Need To Look At Closer.” When I was offered a review copy of the main book, I jumped at the chance.

Obvious things first. The book is 50 bucks (with PDF it’s $60). It’s gorgeous, and it’s full of stuff. The setting is a mixture of Cthulhu Mythos and Giant Mecha Anime. There’s more than enough here for you to start running your game or writing a campaign. If you’re already on the fence, then I’ll say it now: You Want This Book.

The system used is called Framewerk, a custom job that will probably remind you of White Wolf’s Storyteller system. They mix up the dice rolling a little by letting you pick different combos of dice from your dice pool for success, which is cool but may seem a little too fiddly for some. There’s some structure in place to spend points to affect die rolls, a mechanic I always like. And they stress pretty heavily throughout the book that telling a good story is the most important thing.

Which brings me to the setting. As far as the Cthulhu Mythos goes, if you’re looking for something that sticks closely to what Lovecraft wrote, this game isn’t for you. I’ll go further, and say if you are looking for something that sticks to what people traditionally think of as the Cthulhu Mythos, this game isn’t for you. The game takes great liberties with the source material and the Mythos – indeed, there would be no way to write this game if it didn’t. The question is, is the end product worth it. In this case, I have to say yes. The book lays out a rich history and background for the setting, and a judicious use of fiction in the book helps bring the setting to life. There’s a lot of meat there, and it’s clear that a lot of thought has gone into it. The setting alone can suck you in.

As for the Mecha, when you’re dealing with any game with giant robots, there is only one question to answer: Are The Giant Robots Awesome? In CthulhuTech, I can pilot a Mecha that has a plasma cannon, a tentacle sheath, and a tongue I can use as a weapon. The Mecha are also partially organic, and they heal on their own. In other words – yes. Yes, the Mecha are awesome. But as with the Cthulhu Mythos, if you have particular ideas about what Mecha are and how they work, you may not like how these Mecha work.

You can also play what they call a Tager – a human merged with a creature from beyond time and space in a kind of symbioses. Shifting between human and alien forms, Tagers are strong, but horrific. It’s a nice touch to the game, and I could see a lot of great story coming from dealing with being a Tager.

I’m not so into the idea of running CthulhuTech. I’d much rather play it. And I haven’t had a chance to do either yet. I don’t think it’d make a good game for a brand new player. As a game it just feels a little too involved to use as someone’s introduction to gaming. But if you dismissed it off hand, like I did, then I’d encourage you to give it a chance. It’s a great looking game, with a lot of meat to it, and conceptually it just works.

Clearly, at 50 bucks, the game is not aimed at people who want to run a one-off. I think it would take a couple sessions to get into the swing of thing. Buy this book to set up and play a campaign. If you want more detail than that, you’ll need to do some more reading:

• WildFire: CthulhuTech Quick-Start Rules
• Atomic Array: Episode 013: CthulhuTech RPG
• Mad Brew Labs: CthulhuTech: The Game That Almost Wasn’t
• Critical Hits: When Horror Meets Awesome: CthulhuTech
• Kore Dice: Interview with CthulhuTech’s Mike Vaillancourt
• Stargazer’s World: Review: CthulhuTech
• Stan!: The Stars Will Be Right
• Arcane Underground: The Saga of CthulhuTech (Updated)
• Atomic Array: Episode 040: CthulhuTech
• The Village Barbarian: Review: CthulhuTech Core Book
• Dice Monkey: Review: Vade Mecum
• Blog of a new RPGer: Review: Dark Passions
• Stargazer’s World: Review: Damnation View
• allgeektout: Review: Mortal Remains
• The Spirits of Eden: Review: Vade Mecum
• Creatively Anomalous: Review: Dark Passions

I stopped off at my friendly neighborhood game store, just to pick up a battle mat. That’s all I needed. Oh, and maybe the Paranoid Card Game. But that’s all. Just a quick browse through the used section maybe, but really nothing else. Just here for a battle ma- oh, what’s that?

“That” turned out to be Let’s Kill. Another Atlas Games card game.

Let’s Kill grabbed me for two reasons. The first was that it used stick figure art. And I have a soft spot for games that can pull off that look. The second was that it was blatantly about killing people. And I’d had a rough week.

Anyway, I like Cthulhu stuff, but I’m not so interested in racing or racing card games. Art looked kinda nifty, but in general I dismissed it.

Jokes on me, as it turns out.

First off, the art isn’t kinda nifty. It’s good. Darn good. In fact, one might go so far as to say it’s Rad. But one would be dating one’s self by doing so.

Secondly, the presentation is very clever. I’m a big fan of puns and wordplay anyway, so maybe that’s personal taste, but when you’re playing a Cthulhu based racing card game, and you come across the card “Rats In The Whitewalls,” you either chuckle, or you’re in need of repair.

But above anything, this game meets the one standard I have for all card games: Can I sit at the Sunday night game table, and use this game to irritate the guy across from me?

Yes. Yes I can.

What is not to love about a game in which the primary goal is to kill off your family in the most tragic way possible. Especially when it’s with cards like “Pestered By Poodles” or “Delighted By Ducklings”…

The game’s setting and design oozes Edward Gorey from every pore. If that’s not your style, then the game probably isn’t for you. But then, you probably didn’t read this far anyway. Which is a shame. Because while the setting makes Gloom entertaining, it’s the mechanics that make it interesting.

For starters, the turn design demonstrates a mature understanding of common card games, as well as where they fail. Specifically, you may only kill a family member at the beginning of your turn. This essentially means that you can’t drop a really powerful modifier on a character and then immediately kill them before anyone can try to do something about it.

The cards are printed on clear acrylic. The cards are designed such that as you play them on the characters, you stack the cards, sometimes obscuring (and thus overriding) elements of cards already played. This is really the payoff for the game, though it is not without its flaws. It’s an interesting mechanic in an area traditionally overstuffed with games trying to find creative ways to tell the player to turn the card 90 degrees.

As mentioned, though, the acrylic cards have their flaws. Sometimes the cards can be difficult to read. This is especially true where red ink was used on a black background. Most of the time, this text is flavor text only, but it still makes for difficult reading. Additionally, the cards show fingerprints very easily. And because the cards are transparent, you can generally tell if a person is drawing a modifier or not, and if it is positive or negative. I consider this less of an actual problem than an interesting quirk to the game – you can generally guess what type of cards a person may have, which can allow you to adjust your strategy. But the door swings both way.

The biggest problem with the acrylic cards seems to be a minor flaw in the way some of them were put together. To prevent damage to the paint used to print the cards, it appears that the cards were printed on a piece of acrylic, and then laminated. In some cases, the laminate used shows some imperfections – tiny spots where the laminate did not seal to the card, or maybe a place where the card was scratched before being laminated. I have seen it across a few different copies of the game. It’s never so bad that the card cannot be read, but it does tend to detract from the beauty of the game. Hopefully this is a design problem that can be solved in future printings.

Speaking of, if you think you want a copy, and your Friendly Local Game Store has one copy left, you’d better snag it. From what I’ve seen locally, it’s very popular and selling very well.

Overall, I love this game. I’m looking forward to expansions already, because I want to know what the Duck means. If I wear out my deck, I’ll just pick up another. Gloom plays well. It’s the light and fun way to die.

I give Gloom a rating of “Lemur”