[HoE] Review: The Junkman Cometh

[Leanne Opaskar <lopaskar@san.rr.com>]

Heya, fellow junkers! I just picked up a copy of The Junkman Cometh.
Following is a review of same. Included is the obligatory

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All right!

Let me start off by saying that I think The Junkman Cometh is the best,
most enjoyable Pinnacle book I've read since The Quick and the Dead.
That's a mighty long time, pardner. I don't think I've read a book
that's added more to this universe's mythoi since Ghost Dancers, either.
(Ob. caveat: since there are no Doomsayers or Templars in our game, I do
not possess either of those books.)

I am *soooo* pleased with this book. It was an excellent read -- smooth
and moved at a good clip, entertaining too. John Hopler has done me proud.

While the concept of tech spirits may seem cutesy to some people, I
really think it's a bang-up idea and completes the circle in the Hunting
Grounds very well. It nicely parallels the physical world's
slavery/Civil War concept touched on in Deadlands. Spirits are not so
far from humans, after all ....

What I really really like is that the junkers are by-and-large good
guys. There's much less of the gray shade about a junker than there is
about a mad scientist or a huckster. Junkers are trying to do things
that will make both people and spirits happy. This is good. I'm of the
firm belief that player characters should be heroes, and this kind of
character naturally lends itself to that.

Another thing I'm very pleased about is that the powers are nicely
balanced between all kinds of devices, not just weapons. What's even
better are some of the tricks. While many are 'purposeful', there are
some that are just cool to have and use. My junker is looking forward to
picking up Finish, Light, and Mirror, particularly. (: The browser
spirits have so many nifty abilities, too. What really makes me pleased
is that the browser abilities, by and large, are very useful for
roleplaying and not so much for combat fu. My junker knows she'll
probably attract an appliance and a building browser, and I frankly
can't wait, 'cause they're just so darn cool. (: (Of course, I'm still
trying to figure out if our boat is a car spirit, a building spirit, or
some combination of both -- we're in the Great Maze, so we live on it...)

The Taint. Somehow this reminds me of the Shadowlands. <wry grin> That's
OK. I really like the whole concept. I just wish it had been hinted at
in the original Hell on Earth book, because my junker has plenty of
trade: gunsmith, and she wouldn't have taken that if she'd known about
the gun spirits earlier.

Now, on to the few gripes that I have:

1. There's no Flight power in the book, even though it's listed under
Car Browsers. I know there aren't supposed to be many airplanes, but the
campaign I'm in has a slightly different background, and there are
airplanes. I wish that had been in there. VTOL is not the same thing. If
it got left out, please post it up!
2. There's no boat version of Locomotion. Boats are *not* the same as
cars. This really surprised me, since the Great Maze is such a part of
both Deadlands and Hell on Earth. Guys, if the boat/jetski/etc version
got cut, I'm beggin' ya, please post it somewhere, because I know I'll
use it.
3. There are no stats for trains for Locomotion. Since they're a
different variety of Wheeled/Tracked, I would have thought they'd have
at least gotten a mention.
4. I think I'm going to have to write a computer program to handle all
the number crunching. *sigh* But that's how junkers work, so I'll live
with it.

One longer not-quite-gripe, more confusion. It says in the book that
junker devices have to be powered by GR/spook juice/sykers/spirits. What
I don't understand is this: normal electric devices (we know they're
around because of the Pure Science resurgence) get tech spirits too. So
why is it necessary for junker devices to be powered by-and-large off of
Bad Mojo? As far as I understand the junker concept, the junker builds
the device, and invites the spirit to come in and make the pieces work
together. There's no real connection there between that and the power
source; the spirit ought to be able to do that regardless of what's
powering it.

Now, if you make the argument that the spirit in the device eats the
spirits and bad mojo in the ghost rock, and thus gets bigger (like the
browser spirits), that might make more sense, but I'm still not real
sure that's how it works.

On the whole, this book is FANTASTIC. It's given me multitudes of ideas
-- and given my Marshall even more (I'm now worried about why spook
juice gushes out of the ground in Ripon ...). It is excellent. Go get it
today. (:

		==Leanne

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Leanne Opaskar                         lopaskar@san.rr.com