Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll podcast.
My Name Is Ryan. And I am a peasant in plague
ridden France. Look at you.
We're between 2 fires here. Look at that luscious beard
you're cracking, dude. Oh, did you did you notice?
I haven't. I have not been, Yeah.
Yeah, no, I've noticed. I've noticed for a while it's
just coming in. It's funny by the way that
between 2 fires comment, we're gonna come all the way back to
that later on, but keep going. Oh, look at look at.
Look at us. Look at us.
I didn't even know we're gonna we're gonna full circle this
one. But today, hey we're here.
I think we. I don't we didn't do episodes
last week because we were. I I was ill.
I think we just had. I think we didn't do episodes
two weeks in a row, right? We can't fucking even remember.
I don't remember. I mean, we've done.
We've done. Stuff.
Yeah, I was sick like 2 weeks ago and you were sick last week.
We both, I think we both had very similar things.
You know something. Yeah, something You had the
stomach stuff. Yeah, I think I legitimately had
some poisoning. I think you just had like a bug.
I had a bug. It was a weak man.
It was like, fucking weak. So I was like mine was only two
or three days so. I still went to my heavy
physical job, which was fun, but yeah, anyway.
I I got I either called out sick or got called off for my job for
most of the two weeks. So, like, I've been chilling,
beautiful, accomplishing nothing in my life.
But you know, here we are. So we're back.
We're back doing an episode. Today is Leap Day.
Happy Leap Day. Mary leap leapness to you.
Yeah, yeah. Isn't.
Isn't there a movie about this where like chicks like where,
where where women can like proposed to men on this day or
whatever and she. Oh, it's the only day.
Yeah, you hear that, Lady? It's the only one.
You're only on the proposed to men once every four years.
Yes, stick to your gender norms, you know.
No, I'm. I'm familiar with the leap Miss
Holiday, where you set out a leap, a leap tree and you wait
for, you know, the the merry leaper to leave gifts.
I'm just, yeah, I'm just going. Yeah, that's the thing.
So. But also that means it's the
last day of zinequest. Kind of, I guess.
If you start. Into March.
If you start a project after today, you're not really in Zine
month, but once I've already started using Quest or whatever.
But it's a Oh yeah, hey, we're we're going to review a game
today. Oh, we are.
Yeah, right. Crazy.
I know we've done so many episodes and most of them
haven't been reviews, but we're going to get back to it.
So today we are going to be looking at this beautiful little
Zine right here. This is Verm Hack from Farrell
indie studio, beautiful, beautiful, gorgeous Zine,
Charlie Furgraves Avery. It's it's good stuff.
We're going to, we're going to be talking about that.
I'll get a little bit more into that in just a little bit, but
seeing as it is the last day of Zenquest, it'll be the last that
we cover Zenquest for the month. So we have a couple projects we
wanna touch on that are carrying over and just a couple we at
some point I'm gonna do a little write up on how much we did in
the last two months on Zingquest.
It's a lot. I looked at it.
It was a little. Bit.
Yeah, it was a lot. Yeah, we're gonna structure it a
little bit better next year and and we'll go over that in the
review of it. I can.
I can almost guarantee we go on, but yeah.
Yeah, well, I I can tell you we're not gonna quite do what we
did this time, cuz man, that burned me out pretty quickly.
But we'll see. But we'll yeah, let's hit on why
don't we hit on a couple of these projects and then we'll.
Get into the review. Yeah.
So first and foremost, so about Swivers, Yeah, you know, we had
Luke Gearing and David Hoskins on the show.
Fantastic. Like, that's awesome.
So cool. That's one of the coolest
moments we've had on the podcast.
That was really a very cool, yeah.
I mean, they were, they were great to have on and and and
they were like very cool to hang out with.
But it was a little bit of a like, OK, I should not stand
over these people, right? Now, right.
Yeah, it's definitely one of those.
It's kind of like our, our very first interview where we had
Johann Friggin Nora on and I was just like, and that was like,
you know, 100 episodes ago. It's like.
A little bit related, but also unrelated.
I I had a friend, my only friend in town over and he's like a big
tabletop guy or he's he's trying to get more enthused and he
pulled out something he was talking about and I looked, I
was like, oh, arts like David Hoskins.
I was like, I just, I just talked to him like it was
yesterday. Yeah, so those who are working
on a project called Swivers for Melsonian Arts Council, you
might know Melsonian Arts Council from a little game
called Troika, as well as Gosh of Shit as I Point behind me.
But they do great stuff and Luke Gearing obviously writes great
stuff and David Hoskins obviously draws great stuff.
So all of that together comes up to Swivers and Urban Heist
role-playing game you can listen to.
We're not gonna go over it too much here because we literally,
as we just said, had a whole episode where we talked to talk
to Luke and David here on the show about the project, went
deep into it. But go back to this, it's got
six days left. This is an urban heist
role-playing game. It is a game of heist and
intrigue through the foggy streets of the smoke.
It is a very British very gosh, you're just some fucking bastard
in the city stealing stuff and it's amazing.
The system is super light and then there's just so much flavor
and just a fuck load of tables and and other stuff.
You can download the quick start right now from the Milsonian
itch page so definitely go do that but if you if you haven't
heard of Luke gearing that's I I would be absolutely surprised if
you're watching our show and don't know who they are.
Wolves upon the coast? Acid Death Fantasy, Gradient,
Descent from Mothership, Fever Swamp for Milsonian, I mean just
amazing stuff from them. And David Hoskins has done some
fantastic artwork. He has like the covers for the
new obviously box sets, Black Knights, which Luke Gearing and
David Hoskins worked on together.
Just a bunch amazing, fantastic art back this project.
This is not one to miss. This is going to be I think one
of the highlights for the year as far as fun games that you're
going to get to play that are really well done and really
flavorful, so super excited for this.
It's only at like $80,000, which is you know.
Just to a goal was the goal was like 2500.
I can't see the screen right now but.
Yeah, it was 2000 lbs, right? And they're at like 62,000 lbs.
But we're Merck. And so, yeah, we're.
We use freedom dollars, brother. Merck.
Yeah. Anyway, yeah.
Anyway, project, it's cool as fuck.
Download the quick start and then you're gonna come back and
get the book. Trust me, it's really cool.
So other stuff. Let's talk about this one.
I'm really excited for this. So this is Miru, AKA Miru 3, an
analog defense game. Defend your village from an
onslaught of machines as an AI. Got it.
Tends to unlive you in this Sillo hex crawling adventure.
This is a wrap up of Miru. This is obviously Miru 3.
As I said, Miru one and Miru 2 are fantastic.
I actually have them right here in this box.
And what's great about this project?
Let me stick this box back in here with that step in the other
box back as you Scroll down a little bit Here.
This is from Anekoto. It is a solo game.
It is solo defense game, as I said, where you protect your
village. If you have mirror one or mirror
two, you're obviously gonna get mirror 3 because they're
fantastic. If you don't have them already,
guess what? You can get them all in this
project and I highly recommend it.
And not only that, some of the stuff you can get in this
current project. Guess what?
A box. You need a box that'll hold all
your mirror stuff. We love a good box.
Yeah, we'll have a good box. And not only that, this project
comes with two different kinds of boxes that you can actually
get. So there is the box with a
magnetic lid and everything that will hold all things Miru.
And then there's also this cards and coins box, where it is a
whole bar, 54 card deck that you can use in multiple games.
It's coins in different denominations that you can
different games, and cardboard cutouts are like punch outs in.
It all come in a box too. So basically it's just like a a
a bonus box of tokens and cards and stuff that you can use for
other systems too. And it also comes in its own
box, so you can get double boxed up in this one.
Two boxes. Yeah, very excited.
Very excited for it because I was already thinking about damn,
I already have two of them and all the stuff that comes with
it. I need a box for it and then
when this dropped I didn't need to get one because because it's
come with the box. So the award-winning mirror
begins the story in 2125. I'm not gonna I'm I'm actually
not gonna read the entire story. It's great.
It's designed to be a solo experience.
You can scale it up to any number of players and do a
Co-op, and you can get the physical editions as a set of
mirror one and two discounted. And the digital editions are on
it right now too. But highly recommend this if you
like solo play. They're both fantastic.
And then you get all of these solo, the HEX kits like the
second one. The stuff is cool.
Yeah, the hex stuff is great. There's a three panel player
board. There's trackers that come with
it. There's cardboard trackers.
I mean, they're going hard on the stuff for this game and I'm
all for it. This is definitely a game that
you want the stuff for, so. And I think it's like the
correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the first you didn't have
as much of an emphasis on stuff and it's like your third good.
Well, there was some stuff, yeah, like there was not as much
as this, not even close, but like there's like the first one
you could get like a a a bag of stuff like dykes and tokens and
stuff like that. There's like a pin that came
with it at one point. Like there was like pins, like
the like enamel pins and stuff. But yes, way more.
Stuff in this one. Yeah, I got.
I got all that. Yeah, I think like, you know,
when you're 3 projects into a successful series, that's a
great time to focus on or shift more focus onto the stuff.
You know, we often talk about Like you don't need a lot of
peripherals if you're doing a project, especially if it's your
first project, you should just put out a book and not worry
about a bunch of crazy stretch goal shit.
But this is a great one to be like, hey, there's all this
other stuff, you know? No, it's cool.
There actually was at 1.2, the the mini disc, you get like a
mini disc. Of course I got it.
I'll never own a thing that lets me play mini disc, but I got.
It. Yeah, yeah.
You never saw that. No what?
The fuck? Hey.
Oh yeah, Right here. Mirror soundtrack.
The Minidisc. Oh my God.
We have to find something that plays mini a Minidisc.
Well, you don't even need to. Because guess what?
In this project you can actually get this as a CD or just get the
digital soundtrack for it. But yeah, if you open this bad
boy up, there's a bunch of extras, of course, because
that's how the indie scene rocks.
And then look at that boom, a Minidisc.
Wow. I mean, that is actually super
cool. You gotta wonder why Minidisc
isn't. It was never a bigger format
because it visually looks so cool, you know?
Yeah, I mean, who? Who knows?
I mean, I feel like Minidiscs and Laserdiscs were like very
close to becoming things and then both pretty quickly went
away. But I don't know if.
It's something laserdisc before. Yeah, the last thing I watched
on Laserdisc, I think was like a science video in class or
something. That's exactly what I was
watching, actually, yeah. So, but anyway, so you can get
the Minidisc or the CD of that soundtrack as well so as what's
on the screen you can get the Miru digital is only 5 bucks,
which is crazy physical is only 15 bucks.
You can get the entire Miru hex kit.
You can get which is 30 bucks. You can get the entire cards and
coins box, which is another 30 bucks and then you can add on
any of the individual scenes and all of those things the the
minidisc, all that stuff. It's great.
Go to the the Kickstarter page here, read the story of Miru.
You get the rest of them. They're really great.
I mean you can get all three digitally for like like 10 bucks
each you know so you can get the entire set physical for like
what like 30-5 bucks you know. And if you want to go digital
you can get, you can get it for even cheaper.
So it's it's it's worth it. Trust me.
Fantastic work and a really great game anyway.
So yeah, so that's that's Miru 3 the wrap up.
The final Miru last one, Castle Elkinstone.
Super stoked for this one. Yeah, I saw something on it.
And then you you said today, hey, have you seen that?
And I was like, fuck yeah, I saw that.
I backed the shit out of that. Yeah, this is actually a game
that I wanted to do on the show sometime.
But this is for advanced dungeon goons from Jacob Fleming.
Oh, I got to. I got to show the dice too.
Oh yeah, I got maybe better. I kept it in the fucking bowl
pack. You know, OK, well, I have a
question for you. If this one's opened, do you
think this is the only one that I have?
No, there's no way to open. You have.
No, of course I have an unopened one behind me.
I just like the presentation of this was amazing, you know?
Oh, it's fantastic. So for those who can't see, it
literally comes in like it looks like a toy you would pull off.
Like the the like the the metal shit like slide thingy at like
the store like Walmart or Target or some shit.
So it's got like a cardboard Topper and then it's got it's
like in a in a plastic bag and it's got this little Zine and
two dice, 4 character sheets. An adventure in it like a Rizzo
graph printed adventure. Anyway, so that's for Advanced
Dungeon Goons, which is a hack of Nate Dream's Tunnel Goons.
I would, I would, I would, I would punch a baby for an
original dungeon goon, since I had the advanced one I've just
never been able to find. One.
Yeah, Yeah, I guess I've never even gone looking for one so.
Yeah, it's cool though, yeah. I mean, I have the PDF, but I
don't have the the original 1. So this is Castle Elkinstone, a
horror scenario for advanced dungeon goons.
So it's got six days left it it only dropped not long ago.
Like it's only been out for like a week.
This is a short. It's a 14 day short.
Run so. Yeah, which is fine.
I mean it already backed they wanted 17150 bucks 3500.
But again, I highly, highly recommend it.
Dungeon Goons is definitely one of those games that I would I
would use to intro people to to role play.
I mean, Tunnel Goons is fantastic and Dungeon Goons just
kind of tweaks it a slight bit and plus taken Fleming does
fantastic work. So anyway, So what is this?
In the outer reach of the forest provinces?
It's a backwater governed by a reclusive and much feared Baron
Lord Boskananath Jacquer. The region and its population
are miniscule and often disregarded or forgotten by the
ruling elite of the greater provinces with very little with
with very little which to trade. Valkengury has fallen into
obscurity. Few travel there.
One in, countless others may return.
Those that have say nothing of the Barony, it's frigid
landscape, or of its few inhabitants.
They come back out of the cold, haunted by a memory.
Raving and wide eyed, the muttering traveler looks deep
into the menacing antlered flames of the fiery Tavern
Hearth. They're incoherent.
Their words are indiscernible. At last, with trembling breath,
the traveler manages 2 words. Castle Elkinstone.
So yeah, right. Crazy.
Really suspenseful there. Castle Lock and Stone is an
adventurous scenario for advanced dungeon goons, which is
act of Tunnel Goons. Obviously good to use it in
Tunnel Goons Eternal Village. This viral murder has been
committed with disturbing implications.
The avid has gone mad, et cetera, et cetera.
It's inspired by The Amityville Horror, The Exorcist, Evil Dead,
and all the still down into a lightweight system.
So obviously, I mean Tickle Flowing's art as dope as fuck.
Dungeon Goons is fantastic. And then obviously Tunnel Goons
is one of the best games ever. I do love.
Yeah, get anything. Nate Train, go back to Patreon,
get their book. So yeah, great projects.
Obviously it's gonna be lightweight because the system's
super lightweight, but with the add-ons you can actually add on
some of the the the dungeon units that we talked about.
You can get just the just the book by itself.
You can get the whole set. I I wanted to get like five
more, but you can only get one of the the pouches at a time.
I think they're available in Exalted right now, but they're
they're much more expensive on Exalted or maybe the same price.
I think they're 12 bucks. Anyway, Look super cool, really
excited for this. The fact that they're continuing
to put out stuff for dungeon units makes me super happy and I
hope they I hope they keep doing it.
So the last one is a deck of dungeons and treasures deck
based procedural dungeon generator for RPGs compatible
with mouse. Ritter, this is from Antonio,
I'm gonna say booch book this person, this person right here,
Antonio. So over on Crowdfunder, it is
funded. It is at almost €700 of a of
€100 goal. Explore a random dungeon each
time you play with this deck based dungeon generator.
Shuffle the deck and step into the unknown.
So this project is a small scene that will you play adventures in
dangerous places with no prep and experience, both surprising
and quick, just what you need when you're playing solo or with
the game master. So it is a streamlined scene
where you layout cards that will become your dungeon map and each
time you find a new room you reveal its cards and roll 24
sided dice to know with which other rooms it is connected.
So it's a really cool like streamline system for solo play,
building a dungeon, populating it, all that kind of stuff.
And you can also use it for master a little Puchen, upcoming
Beatle Knight. The Beatle Knight definitely
gives me mouse writer vibes and I'm super excited for that.
We talked about, we talked to the creator of that on the show
and really, really excited for that.
So it's a really cool project. It has how many days left on it,
11 days left. So definitely go check that out.
I will say, My goodness, Antonio, the background.
The cards in the background just it hurts.
It hurts, it hurts me maybe maybe maybe a darker color or
something, but it just trying to read this, it breaks my brain a
little bit, but the project seems really, really neat.
I don't do I want to do more solo play and I love mouse
rotors. Just something like this is is
really cool. I think the base cost for gosh,
you can get the PDF for only €3, but if.
Good. Right.
If you wanna get like the, the, the regular, the whole thing,
the eight page Zima setting, does it come with it?
I'll create your own setting. It's like more of interestingly
2 euros. What is going on here?
Is it all PDF only? Am I going crazy for settings?
Rules? Is $3 more adventurous?
2 dollars? Yeah.
Anyway, it's cool looking project.
My burning is breaking. It's a deck of dungeons and
treasures. Definitely go back to that.
We'll make sure the link is below.
And it's also nice to see more projects on Crowdfunder.
I'm hoping to see more and more of that as we as we progress.
Yeah. I, for one, have not used
Crowdfunder at all. Actually, I've barely been on
there until this. Until this, actually.
I backed it. I think Grandmothership from
Armando was on there. I backed the ritual magic for
Besties from Kelly Dices on there.
Archive is a cool project we didn't get to talk about.
Archive was a cool mothership project that that was over on
Crowdfunder, I'm pretty sure. And yeah, it's cool.
It's nice to see not Kickstarter, which is
definitely. That is very cool, you know,
Yeah. All right, maybe we must have a
little note quick. So remember to do something and
let's go to our game of the day. We're gonna be talking about
Verm Hack. Very excited for this.
This is one we both love and that you've wanted to talk about
for a while, and this is a good time to talk about it, yeah.
I think we got it like immediately when it came out.
Instantaneously, yeah, I got like 3.
I think it was, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it just, I mean
first of all anything for fail in the city is great.
I literally, well I moved it. But I have like, like I mean
everything, you know, the vast and the dark and everything
fantastic. Art's fantastic, Writing's
fantastic, you know sets and citadel you know and and all
that stuff are really great. So but also I mean the artists,
the the the art is fantastic and and and the colors on that that
that kind of Chartreusey Green it's got some pop right.
What does Vermee Yeah Verme Hack is from Feral Indie Studio which
is Charles Ferguson Avery and Alex Coggan.
This Verme hack originally is. It's a small scale fantasy war
game with the role-playing elements of dungeons and
decreptitude. It originally dropped on April
20th, 2023. An update to it came out July
18th, 2023. It is over on itch.
There are two expansions for it already outlined and they are
supposed to drop sometime after Farrell Indy Studio wraps up Avi
Knox, which is a mega dungeon project that they're working on.
You can get it in print on the website of Farrell Indy Studio
for $14.00 right now. And if you wanna get it in PDF,
what does it cost over there right now?
On their itch. Yeah, it just had that.
I apologize. Bad, bad coast it is.
Name your price. Name your own price.
So. Yeah, name your own price cuz
they were doing like an itch funding thing for it.
It breached over the $1000 goal. So yeah, so definitely go snag
that. I mean you can play it for free,
but also, you know, if you have the money support, the creator
give them money, it's worth it. So we we talked a little bit,
but we've talked numerous times about this because there's a lot
of like downloads for this. There's the original version,
right? And then the creator put out
like an SRD, like immediately for it.
And then they did the update couple months later.
So there's a second version of the press print version like
this. And then there's another SRD
that adds that double s the amount of content but is in
development, it's content that they've written that they put
into the SRD 2. I don't know that you can still
get the original release digital copy from the Edge.
I think it's the new updated one.
I think all you get is a new updated one.
So we have all of the original stuff, but if you get it now,
what you'll get is the updated SRD and updated content.
We're gonna talk about the differences between the two
because there are there's a couple small differences and
then one major difference That is our point of contention.
And I have an opinion, yeah, I'm just saying I have an opinion
about it. So we.
We we don't often have opinions here on the show, but today we
do. It's really usually an opinion
free show. Yeah, all facts.
No spin, no feelings. Yeah, so verm hack.
First of all, the cover again, it's black and white in the
print and it gives you the front and back as one.
Makes it easy to print it yourself, I guess.
But yeah, covers dope fantasy war gaming of dungeons and
decreptitude the world is dying in from its corpse spill vermin.
And you wonder why we backed this immediately.
I mean, could you write a a game that's more for me, war gaming
with RPG elements about like decreptitude and corpses?
It's funny because I looked I so I bought the physical and I
bought the digital on it when they were doing the ITCH
funding. So I've paid for this twice now.
So yeah, so I have up here the this is the cover again.
It gives you the front and the back.
Those in podcast land, just look up the cover.
It's gorgeous. The art from Charlie is, is, is
fantastic. There is the like actual, you
know, press release, like print version of the game.
There's there's a digital version.
There's print version, There's an SAD version.
There's like I said, there's a bunch and then there is the,
like I said in development, verm hack SRD.
I love the little the little dude here hammer with the
picture like working on it and stuff like that.
So we're we're gonna mostly go over the quote, UN quote
official content of the second release, talk about how it
differs from the 1st, and maybe touch on a little bit of the SRD
stuff. But we're not gonna go over a
bunch of the SRD stuff because who knows, it might not even
make it into the the the game even though there's some cool
stuff to it. So so the Verminist hack, Verm
Hack the world is dying from his corpse spill vermin.
This is a small scale war game with role-playing elements.
Players take on the role of a single or band of characters who
explore, fight and survive in a dark fantastical land.
It is meant to be compatible with most old school game
modules and war game style scenarios.
So this kind of, it's kind of in the same realm as like Forbidden
Psalm. Yeah, a little bit like it's
it's it's yeah, a little skirmish gamey, but you could
totally play it as an I would just play it as an RPG.
I would just play it as a straight RPG.
That's what we did because my group played this, we did one
adventure in it and yeah, we just, we didn't.
I don't often do grid in combat unless like I'm playing
something that like tacticians and all.
I'm like, you miss that, you're going to miss the whole game, so
you'll use a grid, you know? But yeah, this one we didn't use
a grid for and I think it worked great.
Yeah, yeah, this, this, I love this this style of game games
that are like war gamey but have those RPG elements where you can
play it as an RPG and if you want to use the war game bits,
it gives you the a different kind of feeling in combat.
It's it's it's nice to kind of have two game modes almost to an
extent because so combat feels like combat and out of combat
feels like you're out of combat, you know, not all the time.
But like exactly for this is, I think this is perfect for it.
So and I love that there's an option to do solo as one,
literally 1 character, solo as a band of characters or as a group
of like people playing one character.
So that's cool. But you need RPG stuff, you
know, dice scale and distance multiples of five feet, so one
inch, 5 feet, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
The whole thing's about 20 pages and let's just fucking, let's
just get into it. So first of all, we can't not
talk about the art. I mean, it's all Charlie and
it's all fucking amazing. It's why it's really.
Very good. Very vibe goodness.
Like this is one of those. Charlie goddamn you is one of
those people who are not only like game writers but also
amazing artists. So you can have amazing art in
your stuff as much as you want because you do it yourself.
So thank you for that. But I mean also it's good great
piece on the second page of this like weird tree full of skulls
that's got like a corpse in the upper branches.
It's like rotting away and some nice vibey riding scoundrel
cutthroat beggar bastard. You are a desperate soul who
scours a life in the blood and cursed corners of this world
with only your flesh, wits and tools to help you.
How far will you push yourself to survive again?
This game was literally written for me, you know can't ask much
more. So so you are vermin.
I'll go through the traits and then we'll we'll kick over to
you for for a lot of this because I know you've read it
and played it a lot more. So yeah, characters created in
Verm Hack have the following characteristics listed on the
sheet. Their level, which is your
overall strength to use to determine additional vitality
actions, bonus to certain roles. Your vitality, which is the
amount of physical harm you can suffer before being knocked out
or killed. Strain.
Strain, which is different. Yeah, I think it was originally
called. What was it originally called?
Stamina. Stamina.
This is such a good change. It's.
Better. It's a It's the good change,
yeah. So so the reason why it says the
amount of physical or mental exertion a character has
undertaken. If your strain is greater than
your vitality, your character is knocked out and gains A scar.
So stamina and. That sounds like it's a good
thing, right? Like you have stamina, right?
But like, yeah, it's like a meter that you build from like
pushing yourself or like, I think you got a casting sorcery
or whatever. So strain.
Great, Great change. Very, very appropriate, yeah.
The moment I read that, I'm like, yeah, that's that's.
Better. You're right.
It's perfect. It's perfect.
Yes. Stamina, I always felt a little
bit off and I can only assume that that's why they immediately
changed it to strain because like you said, stamina feels
like it's this thing that I have that I could spend as opposed
to. It's just it's like basically a
stress system. So strain, strain and it feels
it's more vibey. And also, hey.
Hi. Hi.
Charles Ferguson Ivory in there chat.
Thank you so much for being here.
Hello. You have Strength, which is
measure of your physical strength.
Constitutional resilience used for melee, inventory capacity,
feats of strength, resistant poison, etcetera, etcetera.
Dexterity is dexterity. It's agility, range, tax,
etcetera. Wisdom.
I mean, a lot of this stuff. You played games before.
This isn't new. Wisdom is Wisdom.
Mental fortitude. It's used for casting spells,
finding secrets, etcetera. You have your background, which
are words or phrases that grant the character a bonus on roles,
and then you have traits, which are bones and maladies gained
from succeeding or suffering over the course of play.
So that is all the stuff that will be on your character sheet.
I love this page. I like this kind of breakdown
of, like, these are the things that you'll see.
Now let's talk about it. I think it's a really good way
to kind of give you, you know, how I always say, like, I really
want a little bit of intro before we go right into the
system. I think this is a great thing to
have right before you jump into characterization to give you a
little overall of of what you're going to get.
So character creation. Talk to me about that.
Creation. Yeah, so easy.
Seven step process. Also numbered steps Shout out
numbered steps to character creation.
Always a good choice. Yeah.
Rolling vitality. You start with AD six.
As all good vitality systems or health systems work.
You start with zero strain. You pick a background or
actually sorry, I got ahead. You start, you roll your
strength decks and wisdom stats. You roll 4D6 and discard the
highest and assign each of the remaining values to an
individual stat. So if you roll A4A2A2 and A2 and
you get rid of the four and you have a two strength of two decks
and two wisdom. I actually have a flip on that
that we did that power table, but we might get to that later
because it has to do something else past that background.
You can pick from the fun list to the right a background or you
can make them up yourself. Remember J time, you can
reference your background. You may add your level to the
role. So just a little bonus for a
little narrative backing the backgrounds.
Ryan, why don't you roll 2D6 for a background?
Actually, because they're. They're I can.
There's pretty much not a bad one.
They're all pretty good, but they're good.
As in like some are awful for for you and then some are great.
Yeah, they got two and a four for six.
So two and a four. So you're a frenzied prisoner,
so whatever you can reference being a frenzied prisoner,
you're going to get like, yeah, you know.
Wait, wait, wait, wait. How did you how did you Oh.
I'm sorry, I'm a dumb idiot. Not you.
You said a two and a four An. Indomitable gong farmer.
An indomitable gong farmer. What's a gong farmer?
I don't. Know what gong is?
It might be an in world thing and I my brain might just be
breaking a Privy. You're a shit farmer.
Gotcha. Which that makes amazing sense
for this game and setting. Yeah, so you.
Bring your record I I also real quick I do like I love the way
that they do the 2D6 for the thing like you.
Literally it's one D6 and another D6 and like one through
3. So I think there is still a typo
on this. I could be wrong but it says
1234 through six and five through 6.
I don't. I feel like there was another
spot where that was fixed. Maybe it was fixed in the SRD,
but. And I even noticed that.
Is it that like that in my physical?
Let's see. My thought would be it'd be
123456, yeah, it's definitely in the physical because we've we
have the print of the physical. Well, we have the original
version, yeah. That's there.
Next you're gonna pick a pick or randomly select.
A starting trait, so. You're gonna pick or randomly
select one boon and one scar or mutation, I'm gonna say.
They do fix in the SRD so the that is an error in this and
that in the in the newest in dev part it is fixed 123456.
Hell yeah, yeah. So you're going to pick or
randomly select one boon and one scar or mutation.
Mutations in this are sick, so are the scars actually, and so
are the boons. Very flavorful stuff.
And then inventory. You have inventory equal to your
strength plus one, which is not that many inventory slots, which
is cool. And then starting equipment, you
pick or randomly select 11 weapon, one tool, and one piece
of armor. Alternatively you can just get
rid of tools and armor and begin with a spellbook or fealty to a
deity because there is both a like magic, like a sorceress
magic and then kind of like a miraculous magic as well.
Each party of characters begins with a rundown camp at the edge
of civilization, 3 days of rations between them and someone
or something that is looking for them.
Very cool. Little fire started there.
For your first kind of group. It's like immediately.
They are low on food and stuff and something is coming for them
for one reason or another. And then for advancing rules.
Each of my character survives an adventure.
They gain a level, you roll D6 plus level for vitality, use new
value unless the old value is higher.
You can gain plus one to strength decks or Wiz and you
may gain 1 random mutation. And this is the same piece at
the bottom right of the like the I like the little the one, the
little witchy wizardy person at the front, just like kind of
bent over, you know? Like all hunched over and stuff.
Yeah, it's interesting, the advancement.
It's like a lot like you advance relatively quickly.
You get level more vitality, more of your core stats and a
mutation like every time you advance.
Yeah, I mean, I I killed the character in in our one
adventure very easily so. Yeah, I'm, I'd be curious, like
how at what point do you feel like you're not going to die
like pretty instantly? Like at what point of like level
and vitality and the stuff did you feel?
Good. The cool thing about the
vitality is it's very self regulating, right?
Like it's always just AD 6 plus your level.
And so like that could, I mean you could go multiple levels in
your health, not go up at all. Very true.
And then when it does go up, like frankly, it might just be
like an insignificant amount. I mean like really like if
you're Level 3 AD CS plus three, the highest rating gets 9, but
you're probably not going to get 9, probably going to get like 7,
which it is better possibly. But yeah, yeah, I wonder what it
was like in. The long term I like it.
I like especially because it reminds me of Merckborg a little
bit where like you could literally start with like 1 or
you could get lucky and get like five or six, you know what I
mean? It's like if you happen to to to
get that, get that high six. Like you could literally be the
one person with like 9 vitality while level Notes in your group
has like one or two and you'll probably still be the first one
to die. That's what happened to me.
Yeah, so bones, scars and mutations.
You wanna both of us roll a a boon, a scar and a mutation.
Yeah. So two to six for each.
Yeah, two to six for each. I'm just going to roll 66 and.
That's exactly what I did. So my first baboon I got
Unchained Berserker. When attacking melee, deal light
damage to everyone within range, friend or foe.
So I got. So I got 6:00 and 6:00.
So that takes me all the way down to the paranoid fanatic.
Gain. Two daily favor capital F for
miracles instead of one. Destroy any spell book that you
find and you cannot hold audience with rival faiths.
That's a pretty good one, yeah. Some other good ones.
From this I like to the wretched godling.
I think it's interesting. You, you don't die, but every
time that you do die, you basically go down one level if
possible and then you gain a scar.
So like honestly and the scars are can get pretty bad.
It's like you know your legs and stuff are gone or missing eyes
so you could just be in the mortal.
There's like complete amputee. Yeah, it's like really pretty
genuinely dark, us being. Deaf, paralyzed.
Yeah, everything crazy. What did you roll for a scar?
Oh, so I did 66. My next one was 5-3.
So So this one's only a one to three and a four to six.
So 5. Three nightmares.
You only heal one Vitality from resting.
That sucks. I rolled a six and a six, so I
got the violent roll wisdom at the start of combat.
Otherwise you charge blindly towards the nearest opponent.
But yeah, missing eyes, cool destroyed leg.
I mean just like just imagine playing the character who cannot
die, but instead of dying you're just it's just punishing moving
on to mutations. And mutations are like such a
cool part like this is also you get mutations when you level up.
There is like it's same kind of thing.
There's some kind of like negative trade off to a lot of
these, but they are like overwhelmingly good.
What'd you get for your mutation?
I rolled A1 and A2, so that gives me blind Milky eyes emerge
from under my skin. Really cool.
Yeah it's so so I think 1/2 on all the rules are the ones that
are not. Like if you think just something
weird and flavorful. 2/5 so I got vampire you need only once a
week, but your but your body can only sustain itself on fresh
blood. You must Sup from the corpse of
a freshly slain mortal or beast to feed your hunger.
Very cool one. I was hoping to roll locus of
Sorcery, which is when you cast sorceries.
They don't cost strain, which is what you build for casting
sorceries, but if you do fail the sorcerer roll Every fail is
a critical fail all. Of that all or nothing.
Yeah, it's really like the the boons and mutations are really
good about being like, here's like a positive thing.
But also like this whole game is very horrifying.
It's very like grim. And they were like, yeah, cool,
you have a cool thing. You're powerful.
Also, there's an awful like second part to it.
The boons, the scars and mutations are really what makes
the game. I mean the rest of it is all
mechanics that we've pretty much seen elsewhere.
But the the way that especially like the boons kind of give you,
there's no classes, right? Like but what the Boones do
really is give you a little bit of of of that where you get like
one small like mechanical thing that kind of helps find your
character a little bit. But there's also fucking vibe
and like like you said the scars, especially the mutations.
I mean, you could like, what did you have?
You had the Unchained berserker that was violent and, Oh yeah, a
a violent vampire, you know, And my guy was, I don't even
remember what I was. What was I, oh, the paranoid
fanatic that had nightmares and blind Milky eyes, like, emerging
under my skin like that The, like, so good, so vibey so
fantastic. Like perfectly fits this idea of
like the world's a corpse full of vermin.
And guess what? So are you, you know, so good.
I'm trying to think of what my my player character's role, but
honestly like this came out and I must have played it like
immediately. Like so it's been it's been a
year since I was since we did our adventure in this game.
It was fun, but yeah, there's there's a lot of potential for
weird, grim hijinks. I moved on.
Tools. This is one of the things you
can start with. Tools law character to perform a
task they would otherwise be incapable of, or them, or allow
them to successfully bypass a role that they would normally
make. Tools typically take up 1
inventory space. Large or cumbersome tools can
take up two. Remember that you have like
fairly limited inventory in this game.
I believe it is strength plus one.
Yeah, is the strength plus one. Am I right?
Yeah. I'm pretty sure it was swing
plus one, yeah. We're both a little sleepy
today, so I'm almost instantly forgetting what we're talking
about. Yeah, there's some example tools
you guys know. The tool is a torch grappling
hook, the 1111 foot pole armor. Each use of armor takes up two
inventory slots. When hit with a weapon, subtract
1 damage for each piece of unbroken armor.
Any inventory or sacrifice one piece of armor to negate all
damage from a single hit. Armor, sacrifice or broken is
not removed from inventory, instead is considered broken and
provides no benefits and less repair.
So you just wear broken armor for a while?
Yeah, it's interesting. I like this system of armor in
because it's it's like soak but also kind of inventory
management. Like you don't get a lot of
inventory so you never get to carry like a shit load of armor.
But I like the idea that it's like, OK, you have like, you
know a pauldron and you have like some leg armor and stuff
like that. But like, you know, so that
gives you what, 123 armor that you can soak.
But if you're gonna get something beyond that, you can
just be like, fuck it. It hits my Haltron, my pauldron
breaks, but I take nothing. Like, I really like the armor.
I love silk, but I also love the idea of sundering it to do
whatever. It's nice and clean, especially
like a org game like this. This is such a nice way to do
it. But also, I love simple but fun
inventory management, and that's definitely a big.
Part of it, I love being an inventory mini game.
Yeah. So trading gold and coin have
little value in the rotted world.
Each time you trade with a merchant or other role to
determine what they can or willing to trade.
Trades are at a weight or a like basis.
Tool tools for one armor A1 spell book for one spell book,
etcetera. It's a it's mostly a borrower
system. Like it's essentially A borrower
system. Love it.
Yeah. So circling back to my Between 2
fires, we played a between 2 Fires themed adventure in
Vermach because I thought it was like very cool and similar to a
yeah, we did like a demonic plague ridden France.
Yeah, so it was perfect for like the bartering thing because you
come across people in a plague ridden land who like have
nothing and the world around them is dying and they're like,
I don't know if I can give this to you because I need this, but
I'll if you have that, I'll lend you this, you know?
I say that all the time about about lists of of costs and
stuff that like, why? Why?
Because guess what? It doesn't fucking matter.
It's capitalism, right? It costs what it costs.
Like it costs what you need, right?
Like if you need water in the desert, it's going to cost way
more than if you need water by a river like.
So giving me a list of costs makes no sense.
And I wish more systems were like this where it's just
straight barter. And I love the idea that it's,
it's like a like for like or you know, one up, one down, like
whatever. Like it, it makes sense.
I like it. And I also think that that auto
gives RP opportunities instead of just being like that cost 2.
You're like, all right, here you go too.
It's now, it's no, now you get to barter for it.
Yeah. I did 'cause my player
characters to rob somebody because they were so frustrated
that they wouldn't trade with them and they were better arms
than this person. And you're in like plague ridden
France. I'm like, I mean, yeah, that
that that makes sense. Juan Honda.
Weapons. I love the weapon damage system
here because it's it's one die and I live for that.
So unarmed is 1, just one damage.
You have light, standard, and heavy.
So a light weapon takes up an inventory slot and does D6 at
disadvantage damage. Pardon me, a standard weapon
takes up two slots and does D6 damage.
A heavy weapon takes up three slots and does D6 at advantage
damage. Each weapon has an ability,
which is a very, very cool way to dress up a very simple damage
system for weapons and be critical.
The other cool thing about this, and we'll get into weapon
abilities, is that, like, it leaves a lot of room for you to
make your own weapons and give them the abilities.
They're very simple. Range weapons require ammunition
to fire, which takes up an inventory slot.
If more than one shot is fired in an encounter, the ammunition
is removed at the end of the encounter.
Range weapons do not have a range.
Unless specified, it is assumed they can reach most targets
within line of sight. Thank you for support.
Thank you for making that rule simple.
That's great and it makes perfect sense.
And so when you're creating your character, you do roll up a
weapon. And this is like here, you can
roll up a weapon. And do you want to roll a
weapon, Ryan? Sure.
Auto weapon I know we can talk about so I need one.
So 4D6 so D6I rolled A4 so my weapon weight is standard 2D6
weapon ability. I rolled a six and a six so I
got black powder. My favorite.
Oh, you love black powder weapons, buddy.
Yeah, well, you got gold goggles on too.
And they're like, they're bronze colored and they got green
lenses. And then my weapon critical is a
5, so it's rappel. So we'll get into what the heck
rappel is. Almost immediately so.
I I will say quick before we move on, how did what are your
thoughts on the way that they wrote up the D6, you know,
bracket minus D6 bracket plus thing?
I'm actually into that. So there's a little cipher at
the bottom on the bottom right. It's like, hey, what's it as
plus or minuses like? I mean, I think it's more
concise than and and I think more like stylish to look at.
Maybe maybe that's not the right term for what I'm looking for.
I like it. I'm going to use it.
So. I guess I guess my thought is
maybe if more weapons are listed in the future or maybe it's for
like future ciphering and stuff. Because realistically there's
this whole there's this box that takes up space on the thing
explaining this little cipher for it to be used in 1-2 areas
of the rule set. You know what I mean?
When it could easily have just been D6 bracket adv, D6 bracket
dis adv. You know, I guess my thought is
like, what? Like it feels like an extra step
to say something. I'm not.
I'm not disliking it.
I just think it's an interesting choice, unless you're gonna run
into it a lot. Fair, fair.
Fair. Fair.
Yeah. Yeah.
Weapon abilities and critical. Weapon abilities.
Yes, your weapons have ability and they're pretty cool it it's
a the combat is like this is a war game, and the weapon
abilities definitely add a layer to it.
Most of them you can use them and you you gain strain.
What's the weapon ability that you got?
I got black powder. Oh yeah, so yours deals plus D6
damage. You make range attacks and
require black powder ammo. It can only be fired once per
turn and reloading takes in action.
I mean during that one action you spin your cane with like a
golden eagle's head on it and you like tip your top hat and
has cogs on it because Ryan loves steampunk.
There was a misfire rule for black powder damage is wielder
when unsuccessful double is rolled.
Yeah so lights one damage standards damage as light, so
you take less damage than like feasibly the weapon would give.
So my question is, deals plus D6 damage?
What does that mean to you? Deals an extra D6 of damage.
So you think it's 2D6? Yeah.
Gotcha. All right.
And then that that first D6 is either at advantage or
disadvantage because you could have a light standard or heavy
black powder. Letter I had the standard, so
it's like, so it would just be like a flat D6 plus D6, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's 12 what, 12
different weapon abilities? Yes.
And it's either like when this happens, you can do this or you
can take one strain to do this. And it's a very clean system and
honestly, so basic, I mean work so well that like you could sit
here and write out 10 more pretty easily for your own, like
weird and crazy weapons for whatever you're playing.
Yeah. And then the weapon criticals
are like, it's it's almost like you're special when you do hit a
crit. Yours was repel, which means you
may disengage from your opponent or because this is a war game,
just engaging user thing or push your opponent out of melee
range. Interesting.
So I have the black powder gun, so if something's like up in my
business, I could shoot it. And it, yeah, moves away from me
after it gets shot, it it. I like how they all mix and
match. Together.
Well, that is pretty cool. Sunders.
Pretty cool. You can just break one piece of
the opponent's armor. Otherwise they gain 1 strain and
then bleed. Classic.
But I, I, There's room for like, so much creativity in this, you
know? I love the sun one.
The sun one's really interesting because of the way that armor
works, where like you can choose to to have one break to to do
whatever, but this one, you're literally saying I shoot you.
It doesn't seem like for the crit it's not going to do like a
bonus damage or anything, but like literally either you get
strain or I just break one of your armor pieces and I love
that. Like the the reaching into
someone else's inventory management a little bit to just
be like, boom, I'm gonna break that shit.
So I dig it, yeah. Very cool thing to the game and
and and often when I'm playing like simple tabletop
role-playing games that have that like kind of D6 game
system, I'm like can I add weapon abilities into this
somehow and just like dress it up but.
Yeah, it's really such a great way to do it.
Yeah. And the 12 things that they pick
really cover the like the gamut of like the things you want like
Pierce, throw, weighted brace, range, like there's still
definitely room for more. But like, as far as like the
bit, like if you just pick a weapon, like any weapon off the
top of your head, like it's in here, you know what I mean?
Like it's not hard to even even even even black powder.
I think he says they're gritted teeth.
So playing the game, I love the font that they pick for this
too, because like a lot of black letter fonts aren't very
readable and I feel like this one is pretty readable.
I absolutely agree. And I think it holds up in the
book as well, or in the actual physical scene as well.
And they keep it to headers. They keep it to headers.
There's no black letter font in the actual writing of the book,
which is great. So rolling dice I think is is
the next big change that we're going to have a discussion
about. This is the change we're going
to have a discussion about about because I feel a type of way.
Do you want to read this? Yeah, I'll go.
I'll go through this. So so first of all, rolling dice
during play character attempts a task where the outcome is
riskier, uncertain. They may roll 3D6 and add the
value of the appropriate trait to overcome it.
A value of 12 or greater is considered a success.
A success or failure with double S is considered a critical and
critical failure respectively. 6/6 is always success, 11 is
always a failure. Originally the game what did it?
Was it 2D6 and you had to get 12/6 originally?
Yes. Yeah, and that's basically
fucking impossible. Like the, the, the the traits
are not that much more. It was difficult.
You've actually played it. Did you play it when it was 2D6?
So we played it. So this was more than one
session that we played our adventure.
The first session we played, when you roll your stats you
drop the highest and then yeah and then you roll 2D6 plus that.
There was a lot of failure in my game, but there's also a lot of
success, but there was a lot of failure And so the second
session they re rolled their stats and I had them drop the
lowest stat and it made a noticeable difference in my
game. So like, I don't know, I like
really brutal games and and I think of the first session there
was a lot of failure. In the second session there was
like an acceptable amount of failure, but now it's 3D6, which
if you do the math right, the three D6 is a bell curve and the
Bell's highest point is 11. So statistically, like you're
really going to be rolling very close to that area most of the
time. So I think there's.
So when we go to the SRD, I do think because I think the SRD
came out a little bit after and I wanted to see if it matches up
or if they kind of like cuz I think they streamlined a little
bit of the stuff a little bit in the SRD one.
I think maybe it's just wording. So yeah, a success or failure
with double with double S because my thought and
especially on reading this is like, oh, it still says with
double S, but like, so it's 3D6, right?
And then you get crits on double S, but there's three dice.
Right. So you have to have like two of
them match, right? Right.
I just feel like this is and. Tell me your thoughts on it.
Inelegant. I feel like it's bad math.
Yeah, it's it's a little, it's a little clunky.
This is definitely where it falls off for me.
I was very like, I totally get that when it was 2D6 to hit a 12
plus your stat, that was a really hard point to hit.
But I yeah, I don't. I don't like this as much,
honestly. So here's so mathem.
So the problem with 2D6, mathematically, here we go.
So talking to we we obviously love 2D6 games.
I love 2D6 games and there are a lot of 2D6 games that aren't
make success. They just have like a flat
number right. The thing that reminds me most
of this is like best let's Berry like orbital Blues like 2D6 and
you well that one you get like if you're gonna do 3D6 like it
like you're rolling three dice to hit a value of 12 right.
And originally it was 2D6 to hit a value of 12 but the average I
mean I know there's bell curve right?
But the average of D6 is what 3? Three in a point something,
yeah. Yes, basically 3.
So like my my curiosity was like if you're you have two D6 to hit
a 12 mm. Hmm.
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
So they add another D6 to get to a 12.
My immediate thought in my head is like, so that's let's say in
dumb math, because I know the spell curves.
Fuck off math people, right? You're adding possibly another
three points on average to a diet roll, but making someone
roll 3D6? Why not just reduce difficulty
by three? That is that was I was gonna say
is like, yeah, I mean almost just like take it to 10. 2D92.
D6 to 10 I like. I mean, honestly, I'm like, I
mean they had a hard time hitting twelve session one, but
once I let them reroll stats and drop the lowest, it didn't.
It did make a little bit of difference, but they were able
to drop like ones and twos and stuff instead of dropping like
A5 or A6 and they were hitting twelves.
Not every role and not even necessarily every other, but
they were hitting them like they had success.
They killed the monster, you know.
But but instead of so you you said that worked by letting them
drop the lowest stat. So if you don't do the lowest
stat thing right and again, you're the numbers in D6 systems
often are like threes and whatnot like that.
Just drop it to a nine. Just just drop it to a nine.
If you're gonna add an average of three more points onto the
roll, just reduce the difficulty to 9.
It first of all takes it more in line with games similar to it.
It also makes you not have to roll 3 dice to add together 3.
Dice which is? It's such a weird.
It is weird. And if you're going to do 3D6 do
it like in my opinion like like best up area to orbital Blues
where 3D6 and even just do like a take the highest and have one
be the damn. You know what I mean like.
Yeah. And you just feel like.
This is the OR world is upon the coast house where it's like you
have a you have a static stat that you will 3D6 under.
Even that is. I mean that stat is also defined
by three D6 like it's so it makes a lot of sense together.
But yeah, the fix on this a little clunky, a little
inelegant and not really how I think it's like frankly I'm
going to play this game again with the current group I have
here in Oregon since I moved. But I'm we're going to use,
we're probably going to use 2D6 to be 10.
I know nine's good and mathematically what you were
saying makes sense. But for me, like, I I liked that
this was gritty and difficult and I liked that it like it was
sweaty at points and I kind of like keep that, you know?
Yeah, well yeah, I'd be curious to play with the nine and play
with the 10 and and see with the numbers kind of add out because
like I mean the two D6 is like 7 to 9, like 9 being the highest
end of that bell curve for the average.
So it's still not going to be the easiest thing ever but like
I just don't of all the things we talked about like you would
have to change aspects of the system like oh like do like A
roll under but the stats need to be 3D6 or whatever.
The easiest thing where nothing changes is just to reduce the
difficulty by to 9 or 10 as opposed to adding a third D6
which just feels I don't I just don't like it.
I. Know it is weird like
immediately when I read it like forever ago when they did this
update because I think I talked to you about it afterwards
because it's. Like, oh, we played this, but
you immediately were like, yeah, what the fuck is this?
Yeah, I'm not at yeah. Which is unfortunate, because
actually everything else about this scene I really like a lot.
It's such a super easy thing to to home brew.
I just again, don't understand. I feel like of all the things
you could have done, that's like the last thing I would have done
where I've just been like, oh, my difficulty number's too high.
Or just give them another dice. Well, just lower the difficulty
number. Yeah.
So, interesting choice. We'll see what happens in the
rest of it, but considering that it is literally the cord ice
mechanic of the entire game, with expansions and additional
stuff for combat and like a bunch of other stuff, if this is
what they're going with, I mean, I'll just home brew it.
I just don't. I just.
I just feel like, yeah. Everything else about this is so
good. I'm still gonna get, even if
this is the dice mechanic they commit to.
I'm still gonna get all the expansions and stuff and then
yeah, same. I'm just gonna we might just do
the the drop the lowest die again, because I feel like that
was a fine fix for my table. But I would be interested to try
lowering the difficulties to like a ten.
I think that's. And here's the thing too.
I mean, obviously we should just play it raw as well and see how
it feels. Oh, you mean with the with the
3D six? Yeah, because maybe it worked.
I mean, mathematically it's probably about the same.
Well, the. But if it's if it's about the
same, just use two dice and drop the difficulty number.
Let's say I have any dice pulled up as we're talking actually.
So I've been doing them. I've been like pulling the math
as we go and it's, it's, yeah, yeah.
What's it? Say I mean so obviously 2D6 for
Isabelle curve. The highest point is a 710 is
like on the like. Obviously on the downslope you
have a 8.33% chance to hit just a 10, and that's not to hit like
10 or about, that's just to hit a 10.
On 2D. Six.
If I do 3D6 to hit 12, you have an 11.57.
The the bell curve is a little bit more mild.
It doesn't peak quite as much, but that is closer. 12 is close
to the center of the bell curve. Like there's only one point bell
curve that's higher, and it's only higher by 1%.
So yeah, I mean hitting a 12 with 3D6 is way easier.
Yeah, yeah. And I'm like I said, I'm
curious. I would love to play a session
with three to six with the 12 and then immediately play
another session with 2D6 as a nine and see how they feel
because like if you drop the the two D6 to A9 instead of a 10
like I wonder if those are the exact same numbers too.
Like is it? Does it go to like 11% or
whatever or to like a 11? So as we play in any dice.
Yeah. So like to hit just a nine on
that is it is at that 11% it's. Exactly the same, right?
Yeah, it, yeah. So then just don't make someone
roll 3 dice, just reduce the the the the number to 12 if you
don't need as many dice at the table.
So like mathematically it's the same.
I'm just like why you picked the exact opposite of what I would
pick. Instead of like having 2D6 to a
12 and then jumping to three D6, you could have two D6 from a 12
down to a nine. It's already 3 points in your
dice roll on average, or three points reduction in the in the
difficulty number. It's mathematically almost the
exact same. It's just such a weird choice to
add another dice instead of just reducing the difficulty number.
This is our only point of intention in the whole game, so
This is why we're harping. On it, the only complaint I had
about everything was good and we'll keep going instead of just
going off. On this so, yeah, so.
Good math, Ryan. Good internalizing math, you
know. Well, considering that I only
write systems in my head and stuff as D6 is, I know the
numbers here. So there's the statue.
You get your strength, you get your skills.
The strength, as we said before, is strength.
Brute force, physical stuff, Dex's agility.
You know what this stuff is? Wisdom.
You know what that is? Skills.
Characters may add their level to the role if they have a
relevant skill. I like that Super clean.
I like it's kind of the way the tools work, where like you can't
do the thing unless you have the tool in the new oven.
Characters with necessary tools or skills may bypass the role
entirely. Love that.
Anytime you don't have to roll and you can keep going with the
narrative, it's great. Simple Monday tasks don't
require rolls. It's all referee discretion.
So rolling an advantage, which is the bracket plus and
disadvantage bracket minus. Rolling an advantage means
rolling for an additional dice and moving the lowest.
Rolling a it's you know what it is, you roll another dice.
But here's the problem again. This is why I still think that
adding the extra dice is the wrong choice, when
mathematically it's the same for numerous, numerous reasons,
right? The two biggest of which are the
whole double S Thing becomes weird because you're you're
rolling double S on three dice, and you're just saying, well
only two of them have to match. To me, that's such a weird like
instead of just having double S on two dice, that's just
cleaner. You don't have a random one dice
that doesn't fit. And also if you have advantage
or disadvantage in a 3D6 system, now you're rolling 4D6.
At this point it basically feels like a it feels like a dice pull
system. You know what I mean?
Like having four dice added in anytime you have advantage and
disadvantage. So then also then at what point
do you go, OK, well you have advantage so you roll 4.
You know D6, right? What if, what if you roll double
S right? But it's not like you're rolling
4D6, right? What if you're rolling double S,
but like you would have a higher number with one of the dice?
It's not a double, right? So like, I guess you're
technically critting, but you could have like a lower number.
I wonder if the math would play out where you could roll 46, get
double S but like if you stick with the double S, you wouldn't
hit 12, you know? So it's just such AI.
Don't know. Again, I think it adds A clunk
That's unnecessary, right? Right.
So as I was saying, if with the 3D6 like since all you do is add
another dice, the like double S becomes weird because you have
that one superfluous dice not accounting to the double S, but
the advantage and disadvantage system.
You're rolling 4D6, right? So what happens when you're
looking for double S but you're rolling 46 but only three count?
What if you roll double S, but if you go with the double S,
it's a lower dice roll than if you went with like the not up.
So if you roll 2 twos for example, but then your other
one's like a six, but the other one is like A5, right?
So you could get the double S but if you went 265 instead,
it'd be higher instead of 262, right?
Because 262 would be a fail, right?
Right, right. Because that'd be a 10, right?
But if you went 265, that would be a success, right?
So you got double S, but you have to drop one of them, right?
I guess if it's disadvantage, you would drop the two.
So that's my question. So you roll double S, but it
doesn't count because you're rolling 46 and you have.
Like there's double S and you fail.
Isn't that a crit? Fail.
Right, but what if your double S if you didn't roll the double
like you're at your fourth die, like if you went with the other
ones, you would succeed. You know what I'm saying?
So like for example, like I said, like if you get 6522
right, you drop the lowest so you drop your double S which
means you don't get a crit like it's just a weird.
It creates this almost like dice pool system of a number of
instead of just going OK 2D6 double S is double S You have
the one you you drop off the one anyway and you can.
It's a lot. Cleaner.
I mean, like I I, I like, I think I would, I know what I
would do in that circumstance. Obviously, like, I don't want to
take the crib fail, but it does make it messier overall, you
know? When it's mathematically the
exact same as far as the outcomes, like you know, there's
no reason not to just get rid of that weird clunk of 1/3 and 4th
die you know, makes no sense. Combat.
Start of combat. Characters into combat?
There were a 1D6 for them and one for their adversaries.
High skills first like easy peasy standard world game rules.
Such a such a good thank you for not making initiative a pain in
the ass. I appreciate it.
There are players can perform one of the actions on their turn
1, which is interesting, especially in a war game.
So there are a number of actions.
There's move, attack, disengage, cast a spell, pick up or use an
item, and then additional actions.
Inventory will get to interesting and we'll get to in
a second. That pick up and use an item is
its own action. So moving you can move 30 feet
across open terrain, climb 15 feet, or or basically go half.
But there is charge, which is neat.
If you end your movement within striking distance of opponent,
you may make one attack. I think that's such an
interesting way to do move where like, yeah, you don't get an
attack if you move unless you move into like into an attack
position, then you get to do an attack.
It's really. It's almost like a light push
forward mechanic, you know. Mm hmm.
Yeah, for sure. Oh yeah, for sure.
Oh that. There you go.
That's why I love it. Attack so you can strike an
opponent and may lay our fire at range.
It also between that between move and attack.
It creates this interesting part where since you can't do both,
you have you're going to have people up close and people
farther away because you're going to be arranged people and
your and your things Disengage can step out of melee from your
opponent, but the opponent may spend one strain to make an
attack against you. They.
Spend one strain, wouldn't they 02?
Yeah, we'll get to, yeah. We'll get that string, I
remember, yeah. Yeah.
Cast. This is so.
I really liked this too. I need to pick this back up with
a it's it's Avenger. And again, so clean.
Cast a spell. You can cast a spell, pick up,
use an item, use an item from your inventory, pick something
up, or use a contraption. So it's interesting.
In a lot of games you can just like pick it up as a free
action, this one. Yeah.
Nope. No.
So additional actions. Inventory A character may
perform one additional action if they have any open or unfilled
inventory slots. So you can move and attack right
if you have an inventory. Slot.
You're not if you don't manage your inventory wall, though.
But that's the thing. You don't get a lot of
inventory, and every piece of armor adds to your inventory.
So it's just like, damn, like what do you do?
I love the choice in the house. Simple that.
This is why I like nice, clean but interesting inventory
systems. Because if you keep one slot
open, you can move and attack, or you can fill that slot with a
piece of armor and not get hurt as much.
Like, what do you do? It's really interesting.
So using strain, this is what you're talking about.
Characters may gain strain to perform additional actions.
Mark one strain on your character each time you do this.
You may do this number of times on your turn equal to your
level. If a character has more strain
than they have vitality, they're knocked out.
Accrued strain is removed at the end of each encounter.
When removing strain, you may spend your turn to recover,
removing one strain per level. I think spending strain you did
bring up is a weird way to do it.
Absolutely yes. I would, I would think that like
you may take. Strain.
Take strain, gain strain, accrue, strain, like.
I think those are better. We're spending again.
I think that's probably a holdover from stamina, like
where it felt like it was more of like a a pool as opposed to a
thing that you get. Somewhere on somewhere in Adobe
I have a version of this where I went through and highlighted
everywhere but it was different just so I could go through and
look at it and I don't know where that I don't know where
that copy is. But I think this is one of the
points I might highlight because I I that wording was changed a
lot in this and like overall the change has been very clean.
So this actually I totally missed this, maybe because I
don't remember seeing the spend thing.
The SOD still has spend. I would definitely, I would
definitely. I would definitely change that
to gain or Accrue, especially because using strain down here
it says characters may gain strain to perform a different
action. So I would just do a
consistency. Gain, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, just use. Just use gain.
A quick random aside. They added hide into the SRD,
which is interesting. Yeah, makes sense.
Attacking so attacker I love. I love it's.
So good, so good. Let me tell you that after
playing this like it took a few rounds for everyone to get this
down, but it's great. Yeah, I love this.
So melee, attacking, Attacker and defender both roll strength
and level of relevant skill. If the attacker's role is
successful and greater than the offender's, the attack hits.
If the role is unsuccessful or less than the offender's role,
the attack misses or is deflected.
If the roles are equal, both sides role for damage.
If either side is unarmed, the opposing side roles add
advantage. It's really interesting.
It reminds me slightly of Derf, but the difference in Derf is
that in this one like if you miss, you just miss, right?
It's only if you roll the same number do you both do damage.
In Durf, whoever rolls the highest does damage.
So every time any time you attack somebody you could
actually walk away injured. I in this I would almost like to
do that in this. Counter attack.
Oh sorry, let me keep going. So counter attack.
If the defenders role was successful and higher than the
attacker, they may spin their attention to gain a strain to
inflict a hit on the attacker. I do love any time that you can
gain strain because of the way vitality and knockout works.
Yeah. So it's great.
This made, First off, everyone was really engaged in combat
because every attack that you did or time that you were
attacked, you were actively playing the game because there's
a chance that you can give damage or receive it.
So everyone was really into it. Like my table was thought to
dice like really interesting like that.
This mechanic was really interesting and it was just it
was fun, like it was a blast to do.
Yeah, that's that's one of my favorite things about that the
Derf Mechanicos is talking about is that like, you can't just sit
around and wait for your turn because like every time you hit
or someone hits you, like, you have the chance to either do
damage or be damaged. And this is the exact same kind
of thing, exactly like the engagement at the table would be
so much better. The other part of that is
flanked. If attacked by multiple
opponents, defense roles are at disadvantage, which is so clean.
I love that. It's not some weird, like if
they're directly behind you or whatever, no multiple opponents,
you're considered flanked super clean.
That's one thing I like about this game a lot is that there
are a a dozen different ways that they could do every little
thing. And almost every time they pick
the cleanest, simplest way, which is it's so nice because
again, like, I want to play a game where the rules get out of
the way and that it's easy to internalize so I don't have to
be like, wait, what's the flank rule again?
Because it's so fucking easy. And it's nice for it to be a
skirmish game, which sometimes maybe not in the NDC as much,
but like the wider, like more traditional like scene, they
have the tendency to be a little complicated or particular.
And yeah, very much the rules here are like, listen, this is
still a skirmish game, you can still play very much play it
tactically, but like it's in a very simple and easy to like
parse form. Yeah for sure.
Range Attacker must have line of sight and the defender may not
be sight to defender and not being in melee.
Attacker Defender both rolled decks.
Instead of strength. If the attacker is a little
successful, greater they hit. If the role is unsuccessful, it
misses or is dodged. If the defender is behind cover,
engage, This is if the defender is behind cover, engaged in
melee, or partially concealed, they may roll out advantage.
So like you, your defense roles are are are an advantage.
Yeah damage. For successful hits role damage,
it's subtracted from the opponent's vitality, crystal
maximum damage and apply the weapons to critical effect.
I like that you don't even fucking need a role when you get
a credit, it's just Max damage. Perfect.
Again, cleanest way you can do that, Yeah.
Yeah, characters with armor may subtract 1 damage from each
piece of unbroken armor in the inventory or sacrifice one piece
of armor to negate all damage from a singlet.
Again, love that. Casting spells this is this is
definitely you're you're the you're the wizard boy talking
about this. Wizard boy.
Yeah, yeah. So casting is an action.
Each spell lasts 10 minutes unless otherwise stated.
Great. Some spells allow an opponent to
Wiz roll to avoid weird wording to avoid some of some of the
harm. Many spells increase in power
based on level of the caster. I do also all the way through
this love this like like level like level added on.
Very simple very flat like. It's not some weird like
modifier that increases like randomly or like every other
level. It's like no, it's just level.
There are sorceries, miracles, Sorcerers require a spell book,
and you roll Wisdom to perform. Miracles required fealty and
favor, which we'll get to from a deity to invoke.
Yeah, I love the difference between the sorceries and the
miracles. Again, it's so much more.
It's it's flavor for fucking days.
I can't wait to get to the Miracles part cuz I think it's
like a really cool like yeah, it's a very cool flavor RP like.
Yeah. Thing.
Exploration. We can.
This is stuff that's just kind of like extra bits tacked on.
We don't need to really go through a lot of this guidelines
for various aspects. There's time and travel
sections, light and darkness, terrain, jumping, falling,
wandering encounters, reaction roles, starvation, things like
that. A lot of like pretty standard,
straightforward roles that are in a lot of like clean
exploration games, so. Before we totally skin them, I
would like to say like, not that we need to read them, but they
do follow this theme of they're all very easy to understand.
They're kind of the simplest form while being very
functional. So while we're not gonna go
through every single one cuz we don't really need to, you should
buy it. Buy the book.
Buy. The book, I mean just.
Download it there is this. Focus on the simple and
effective all the way through. Which is really great to see the
whole rest status effects. And then do we get sorceries?
Okay. Yeah.
Then we get more the flavor. So resting there's this little
blur. There's only one or two little
flavor blurbs in this whole thing.
It's pretty much just a rule book, yeah, but it says what
little respect there is in this world must be bought with toil
and hardship. Those who managed to survive
another day count themselves lucky and prepare for the next
one under the cover of night. So characters find a suitable
place to camp or hide up for the night may perform one of the
following activities. Recover, which is your regain D6
at disadvantage Vitality 10, which is Heal, another for D6.
It's interesting that the recovery in 10 because like
maybe I'm not damaged at all. So you can do recover and then I
can tend to you so you can actually get double, which is
cool. I like that.
But you can't do both like you can't.
You can't recover antenna like that.
You can choose to patrol, so there's no wandering encounters.
You can use the forage you gain D6.
Everything is a disadvantage. I love that because the world
sucks. Fuck you.
Yeah, everything's hard and terrible.
Yeah, gain D 6 -, 1 rations, Ritual.
You can cast a spell. Sorceries do not require
Original or strain because you're doing it at the ritual
invocation. You gain your daily favor with
your chosen DD. We'll go over that in a second
repair. You can fix a single broken
tool, weapon, or piece of armor, and it does require a tool or a
skill, and then craft and create a single mundane object.
Simple tool or ammunition requires a school or craft.
And then there's like 12345. There's like 6 status effects,
which I think are more than enough.
They're more than blinded, yeah, and they're pretty
straightforward. Blinded Attack roles are a
disadvantage. Exhausted, you gain 1 strain,
gain again good choice, and lose 1 inventory.
Slide until you rest. This can be gained multiple
times and it stacks. Frightened attacks and skills
are disadvantage. Ray Realism at the beginning.
Knocked down. You must spend an action to
stand up attack against your advantage poison.
You roll strength or gain 1D6 disadvantage strain each day.
Roll Strength. Success at the Poisonous Cured
Fair you gain another strain, a strain loss.
This way you can't be regained into the poisonous cured.
Drinking an antidote or visiting a healer allows for a strength
re roll. I love that Really clean poison
and then stunned lose 1 action at the start of your turn to
shake off the effect. And a great piece of art here
again. So sorcery.
Talk to me about it. You are the magic man.
Oh, sorcery. Yeah, I'm a sorceress boy.
Yes, magic gained from study and experimentation upon the forces
and natural orders of the world. Observed by orthodox scholars
and cell warlocks alike. Sorceries exist as recorded
documents to be exploited by the wielder.
Yeah, so. You got to you got to keep doing
that the rest of the episode get deep in that mic.
That was good, yeah. So this is a classless game, Not
that it doesn't have class, but that that the character classes
aren't there. So any character can attempt to
cast sorcery once per day, if they will, to spell them.
I mean, yeah, you roll Wisdom to cast a successful, meaning the
spell was properly performed and and failure means you failed and
there's a critical failure in which a catastrophe of hers
occurs. And that's fantastic.
A spell can be cast again in the same day but cost an additional
strain for each cast. 2nd costing 2 strain, the third
casting three. Very cool.
I like that you can repeat spells, but also it's like it's
gets harder and harder every single time.
Spellbook is a catch all term. I do like this, it could be
anything. There is a little you know what?
I'm a real spellbook. I'm worth it.
So I rolled A6. So I have a a tablet, a
sculpture or a corpse. We just imagine imagine the
sorcerer that keeps like a wrapped up dead body or like the
arm of another wizard like that's just tattooed and written
on on them. Oh yeah, I start with three
slots and D6 spells roll. Roll another D6.
See how many spells you got. Oh yeah, see how many spells I
got in my? Well, I actually rolled 3D6 and
I rolled the six, six and three. So if we're saying the first two
are ones, that means I rolled the six and I have six slot
spells, so. What if you literally carry the
entire corpse with you the entire time?
Like I was thinking up as a backpack.
Have you seen? Death Strand Are you played
Death Stranding? I mean, I'm aware of of the.
First mission, you carry a corpse to Incinerator, and I was
thinking like that, like it's on your back, like wrapped up, like
a very mummy, like, you know, Yeah, And you have it with you
at all times, yeah. And that's how you go through
the world. That's no.
Sat at my table and said that shit to me, I would be like you
were the coolest person who's ever sat at my table and played.
That is the tightest shit I've ever heard.
Yeah, and there's magical catastrophes.
I rolled the three, so I'll just say that one.
So if you roll, you know, a crit fail.
Detonation, A cascading chain reaction of magic deal, D6
damage to self and everyone within 30 feet.
There's also a mutation where you can gain a random mutation.
A storm where it like an ether ether storm of like lightning
fucking happens for like D6 days and it Oh yeah, and then you can
roll from the storm. That's right.
Cool. Very cool.
I love nested tables. I love nested tables.
I. Love nested tables?
And then this one's cool too, because I like that.
It's like like I rolled the storm and you're like, oh fuck,
I have to roll. What type of storm I I look
forward to seeing the expansions for this game 'cause I have a
feeling this is like an area rife for expansion.
And so Charlie threw in a chat what the next two expansions are
about now that you brought it up.
They said one is on creating a sandbox campaign, which would be
interesting, and one is on balance and combat focused
games. So I assume there will be more
sorceries and stuff in that because that's part of of combat
what not so that'd be. Fun See, moving on to the like 2
schools of sorcery. I believe in the SRD there's
more than two now, but in this version there's two.
There is the oh, you are you going to do it?
There's 1234, there's four, plus the addition of the folk eye
which get the SRD if you want to learn about that.
Yeah, you should pay for this. You should go.
You should go on itch. You should go to Ferrell, Hyphen
Andy, Hyphen Studios dot itch dot IO and get this, because
there's so much cool about this. Yeah, so the earth flame and the
Golden thorn. There's two different styles of
sorcery that have their their their kind of flavor text below
them, and they'll have to signify other things, but the
the sorceries are cool. The Earth Flame Sorcery that we
begin with is Burning Visage, a cascade of fire, A visage of
ruins hidden within AD. 6 damage per level D6 damage per level to
target in line of sight, target roles, Wisdom or becomes
frightened. You see, you're so they're
burning so bad they're scared. The the the next one.
Purify. I don't need to go through all
these actually. We'll go ahead and sorcery next.
The first one you get is in Sorcel with Thorns, Golden Vines
with cruel thorns. Reese your weapon melee weapons
gain the bleed critical. If Thorn only has bleed, normal
attacks cause bleed. Yeah, I like.
The two. Go ahead.
No. Say what you're saying.
No, I just love the two aspects of this here.
Like the sorceries, like all of them are obviously flame
related. Burning Visage, Purified flame,
Cinder Community, firewalk and then the golden Thorn like this
and Sorcerer Thorns, manacles of gold, penitence of briars.
Like those are two such cool ideas for sorcery.
Like obviously flame is going to be super classic but like the
whole like thorn nature bit, just so fucking vibey.
Still in the lane? Like, just so cool.
Yeah, and all of the spells are equally as like as like grim and
ridiculous as like Grim and Gonzo, as everything else has
been as we've gone through. They really hold to the theme.
Yeah, but and still are clean. Like super elegant.
Absolutely one to two lines, Period.
Donzo. I mean, it is interesting.
Like, they're our greatest. Like our greatest critique so
far has been how clunky that the the updated dice mechanic is.
But like, as far as terms of like, clunkiness goes, that's
literally it. Everything else, you're so clean
and easy to understand and like, easy to, like, iterate on at
your own table or like, innovate on at your own table.
Yeah, Miracles. Let's go to Miracles.
I love the art. It's like this weird tentacle
winged, like, biblically accurate Angel type thing.
OK, magic gifted by a divine being that attempts to enthrone
their will upon the world. Invoked by pious hermits and
zealot zealous theocrats, miracles exist as extensions of
deities and their esoteric agendas.
Greater acts of worship are granted greater miracles, steep
and dangerous bargains to the pious fools who would worship
conniving gods. I do like the miracles in this
of the they're almost it almost reminds me of like the D&D war,
like you're making a deal with a greater being.
Although the difference is that the D&D warlock sucks and this
is cool. Yeah, so divine fealty you gain
or cast miracles you must. Sorry.
To gain or cast miracles I can read you must swear fealty to a
deity. Each has their own requirements
and punishments. Casting miracles they require
favor the cast, which is its own.
Like a resource, favor is gained by performing acts of fealty in
order to spend or to spend them to cast miracles.
Each miracle cost one favor. The cast and the character can
hold any amount of favor. Cool.
There's not cap also cooler that really like influences this like
role-playing like you do these acts to like to worship your God
which great and daily favor. Each evening or rest a character
can perform an invocation for one favor.
Unless used to cast a miracle, this favor is lost at the end of
the day. So no matter what, you can gain
your one one free favor for basically like you know, praying
or whatever and but it goes away at the end of the day.
The other ones you can bank and keep, but you have that one
repeating favor next gaining favor characters can gain favor
through access service to the deity.
There's a bunch of examples. I think converting another is a
good one or a sacrifice of magical object or treasure.
I know that hurts ruefully. Deny yourself a tool or boon.
Make things worse for yourself. Yeah, I feel like this is 1
where like that really depends on your table and the deity
you're worshipping. And like you know, and in
gaining miracles, each time a character survives an adventure
they move Forego and the additional level and advancement
instead of gaining an additional miracle from their deity.
There we go. Hello, sorry my I just
disconnected. Moving on to the the two
different deities, you have Sog the body and Ko KO Ko the star.
Ah, I'd probably say Co, but I think Quo sounds cool too.
Two, really. You know, the you know what
reminds me of it? Reminds me a little bit.
This reminds me of how deities work in Eldon Ring.
If it's like they're not, they're, they're not good.
And they all have agendas, and they're all vying to take over
this next age of the Urd tree. But they all follow.
Yeah, they're like greater entities, you know?
So go through Sog, the Body, The Unshaped Matriarch.
The Lord of Resurgence, The body that shall never Die.
SOG is the gift of unceasing life and a united world beyond
the reach of death. To the wise, such a blessing is
a curse unlike any other. For fealty to SOG, you must
never strike a killing blow. Wasting precious living flesh is
sacrilege, which is a crazy act of fealty in a skirmish war
game. And I really wish while somebody
at my table had picked this because I would have loved to
watch the frustration this would have caused everyone else.
I was like, sorry, it's against my religion to take life, you
know, right? Crazy.
You curse. Your vitality is permanently
reduced by half. Crazy.
So initiation mending. This is the first miracle that
you get. This is touch another and
restore them, Restore them of OK restore the restore D6A
disadvantage vitality per level. The the second one is transpose
body touch, another swap any disease status, effect and
damage suffered between self and other roll decks to avoid so you
can swap out. Is it so?
Nope. Never.
Mind, just deck it. Just dodge it.
And then there's auto Communion. Auto communion suffer 1D6 damage
in game 1D6 rations Auto communion.
So yeah, so you, yeah. So self cannibalism for if you
don't get it, yeah. Yeah.
And then the final one, the blessing of abundance.
You touch another restore them of D6 as advantage vitality per
level roll decks to avoid. If the vitality gained from this
exceeds the targets Max, they detonate into a shower of still
living gore, defeated but not technically slain.
That's crazy. So they're still alive, just in
chunks. Yeah, absolutely.
So good. Like you said, I love that these
deities are deity is, but they're fucked.
Like it's so dark. It's so fucked like like, like
you said, it feels more like like a like a like a warlock
patron than a deity. But I love it in this world,
like these are the gods, and the gods are just fucked like.
Yeah I think Ko the star ends up being the more forgiving of the
two. I think Saw the body is by far
the most interesting choice a player could make and I would I
would try to reward them for it and and KO's cool like the the
curses that you become blind permanently but you get stuff
like turning invisible or giving a command to a creature or
giving a command to a creature and if they don't obey it they
may they're struck by lightning or something.
So there's there's two more in the SRD too.
Dusa, the mother and of the Fly. So download it to read those.
Yeah oh the other thing is for Co the star, Co the star is the
one like true Lord. So the fealty you can hold no
fealty or audience to mortal Lords.
Only the cosmic can guide the mortal, which there is a section
here too which talks about like Fealty, the Lords, like that's
such a thing here and like for that to be a it's so cool.
Yeah, I I pray for the problem player that wants to do that
because I'm like, yeah, absolutely do it.
And well, and the curse being permanently blinded.
But I love how all of it is about like the unseen hand, the
eye, like. It's such a good, again,
consistent, clean flavor. And the art by the way we've
been talking about this and but the art for the song about the
and and Co the star are upsetting to say the least.
For those of you listening on podcasts and solve the body is
like a headless torso with like these weird arms that end in
almost tentacles but also the guts are spilling out of the the
body. And then Co the star is a star
with a crown that is connected to it and like jewelry hanging
off it but the star is not like a clean star.
It looks like it's almost skeletal or something.
It's it's very good. I love it.
I love these dark deities. They're so good.
A lot of the rest of this, there's the monsters and
adversaries, so a little more flavor.
The running land attracts monsters as a soft corpse
attract flies, despots, brigands, everything.
So I like, I like how this starts immediately with like
making adversaries and then gives you a bunch of examples.
Like that's what I want. Like don't just give me
examples, give me how to make my own.
So roles and levels. All roles for monsters are made
using their level. Morale is listed under the
stats. When harmed or in danger, they
have a chance to flee. So creating new adversaries you
can literally again like everything else, there's like D6
role tables so you can do one to two, three to five and six for
frail, average or strong. There's morale table, which is
pretty standard. Morale.
So flees if injured, one in six, chance to flee if injured, flees
at half health, one in six set of flees at half health, or
fights to the death. I like that.
That's really interesting and you can roll that before it even
starts. You're not doing like morale
rolling combat. It's just.
I do like that you know you. Decide.
When they retrieve before you even begin.
Yeah, it just makes it so easy to keep track of attacks.
You pick or roll a weapon, that's it.
But select additional abilities, magic hazards to make the
adverture stand out. Just do whatever, Pick a watch
and do whatever. I love that the art through
these is really cool. There's the Lin worm, there's
the briar white, the Musketeer, the hop.
So I do, I do like the connection with some of the
stuff that Briar White, for example, is basically it's like
a person with like briars coming out of them.
But one of the things they have is this gold thorn mantle, which
reminds me of like obviously like it Harkins Back to the
sorcery with the gold, the gold thumbs, stuff like that.
That's cool. Musketeer, hob, charred warlock,
Fallen night, all cool stuff. Nice little example.
Charred warlock obviously being of the Urd flame.
Another like reference back to. Yeah, they know two random Urd
fire sorcery is like, so cool, so cool.
And then maladies are super dope.
Do you want to roll up? Roll up some maladies?
Yeah, so. We got diseases and curses are
what we get for the maladies. So D6 for diseases and two D6
for curses. Is that right?
Yeah. So it says as yeah, as the lands
rots, so to do the bodies of mortal kind, there's a so
diseases each day real strength or some of the effects of the
disease similar to poison and curing a disease.
Each disease lists the cures. So what do you get for your
disease? One gnarl pox roots sprout and
wrap around you, threatening to encase you into a gnarlwood
tree. The effect is -1 strength,
double damage from fire. When your strength reaches 0,
your body gives in to the vines and you are slowly bound into a
gnarlwood cure, 3 consecutive saves, or a painful surgery by
an experienced gardener. Nice.
Very nice. That one's really cool.
The bone weevils are really cool.
The slybering is dope, right? And then curses.
Each day you roll wisdom or suffer the effects and you cure
a curse. Some spells have the ability to
purge curses. Otherwise you must visit a site
of great magic or divine power, SO2D6 possible curses.
What do you what do you got for? Your two D6 on curses.
Whoa. Range projectiles always target
you. That sucks.
So there's just like and it like spins back around to get you.
Yeah, I'm excited for the sandbox campaign for this.
I'll probably end up running it because I I really do like this
a lot. I liked it when it came out,
yeah. So the flavor's so dark and
fucked. It's so good.
I love it. And some of the other ones like
it. It's I love that all the curses
of these like little bitty mechanical bits like I roll to
get sorcery. Targets are always random, but
imagine getting Cannot gain Divine favor and you're a
miracle worker. Like dude.
Or reaction roles are always hostile.
Like literally everyone just hates you all the time.
Do so we're basically done. There's the Lord section, so
despotic mortals sit upon rotting Thrones desperate for
power. So there's service to a Lord
that you can do through the enlistment or threat.
You can do service to a Lord. They grant you food, shelter,
some shares of treasure, or whatever.
So you can roll 2D6 for your Lord's qualities.
What do you got? Oh.
It's a one to three and a four to six table on this one. 4.
Three. Also, it's a glutton.
You got a glutton for a Lord? Yeah, I love these decrepit.
Say this. Like, of course that's what
you're going to do. It's a glutton.
It's a glutton in a dying world of famine, by the way.
So. Yeah, so just an awful, awful
piece of shit. Valuables can be traded for two
times their weight in mundane items.
So that's cool. Like, that's one of the benefits
of having a Lord is that you actually, they're basically like
your like your home spot where you can like, you know, rest and
and and and trade in your stuff. There's a service length, so one
off a season, a year or a lifetime gives you certain
things. So if you do a one off, you get
A1 valuable a season, you get one valuable and a choice of
equipment. If you do a year you get D6
valuables, choice of equipment and lodging.
And if you do a lifetime you get D6 at advantage valuable.
So I'm I'm. I rescind my earlier plus minus
thing because it has been used a couple of times.
Yeah. D6 with advantage, valuables,
choice of equipment, lodging, and one artifact.
And you can break service by reneging on a task or being
caught subverting a Lord's will. They're dangerous adversaries
who hold sway. So it's it's a cool thing to
have. I really like it.
It's clean. It's straightforward.
It basically gives you an auto home base and also gives the GM
some pretty easy like. Someone play with.
So yeah, you could literally, that's, I mean that's just your
quest giver at that point. Like your Glutton Lord is like
fine being flesh and like you have an integer, you know, I I
really like that. It's great.
It is expanded on a lot more in an SRD.
They also like banners and stuff, which is really, really
cool. Yeah, I did see that.
That is very cool. I it is funny, I I think this is
a very operable and not very operational black skirmish game,
but there's great role-playing stuff in here.
I mean there's just like top notch RP stuff in this.
Yeah, see, I mean I I think it's obviously works as a skirmish
game but just like Forbidden Saw, like skirmish games are
fine. But I I, I play Forbidden Saw as
an RPG because you can't. It's like it's basically just
like a slightly it's basically Mark Borg, but there's like
different flavors and it kind of simplifies a lot of
characterization and stuff and gives you some like like this
like I would, I would never play this as a skirmish game.
I would just always play as an RPG.
Yeah, you know what I mean. But you can listen, if you're
not us and you're like, I really actually, I'm more of a skirmish
game person. You can do, you know.
Well, not only that, because you can do it solo Co-op, you can do
it solo as one character, solo as a band of characters.
Like it makes it so easy to have literally pretty much whatever
you want to do. And the system is clean, light
enough and malleable enough to do that.
Except for that dice mechanic. They should change.
But last thing is artifacts and loot.
Why don't you roll me AD 6 for random artifact?
I rolled A4, the resurgent rings.
Two rings of tarnished gold, one set with a grinning face, the
other screaming in terror. It's one slot at.
Two. Parties who wear these rings
transfer their consciousness, swapping bodies.
This effect ends when both rings are removed.
Alternatively, the effect is permanent if one of the bodies
are slain. Dope.
So it's like a Freaky Friday rings, you know?
Yeah, imagine like being in a cursed or diseased body, finding
a random person, putting their ring on them and then and then
immediately killing your original body.
Oh my God, that's so good. So good.
Oh my God. Oh my God.
That is so good. That's amazing.
Yeah. Body snatchers for sure.
God, you could basically be immortal.
Like you just have to keep your rings.
That's so dope. That's so good.
Look at the flavor. Look at the flavor.
And the last thing is loop. Each adversary is typically
carrying watch loop. There's 2D6 random table of
loop. It's there, it's fine.
Something useful, Something to eat?
Something deadly. It's such I love the
descriptions here. That's good.
Something magical, something powerful.
So this is 20 pages. This is the the updated version
of the original Zine, which is 20 pages. 2.
There's really not a whole lot of changes between 1:00 and
2:00. There's just a couple, like
strain. The 3V6 should go back to two
V6. The SRD is, gosh, how many
pages? It's like 40 pages.
It's literally twice the content and the new SRD.
And on each page, Charlie talks about the fact that it's this is
just a bunch of stuff that they threw in as test material.
And it's not the quote UN quote official content.
It's just fun stuff. But a lot of the stuff in it is
really, really good. Obviously I'm not gonna review a
lot of this stuff, but like things that they add into it,
like banners, which is basically like a banner you fight under
which gives like your your band various abilities, which is
super cool. There's a bunch of scenarios.
I've like gone through. I've been like, you know.
There's a bunch of scenarios at the back too, complications and
settings and stuff like that. In the back again, there's
double the amount of sorcery, there's double the amount of
miracles and just a lot of other fun stuff expansion like the
Lords. So it's definitely worth
grabbing. I mean, if you go get the game,
you get access to this, so go do that.
It's super fun and I like how it's, you know, again, it's
modular ish, so you can just add the banners or whatever you
want. So that is Verm Hat from Ferrell
indie studio Charlie Firgraves, Charlie Freaks and Avery.
Let's go to You Ready to score this bad boy?
Oh, I've never been more ready for anything in my life.
All right. So it's only 20 pages.
This is obviously a Zine. We're giving it a Zine score.
Honestly, if it hits like 40-50 pages or becomes like a thing,
maybe we'll bump it up to book. But like, it literally is like,
I'm holding the Zine. So it's a Zine.
Yeah. So visuals.
Thoughts. So the art in it is very good.
The font in it is very good, even the font in past the
titles. But in the regular text font is
incredibly easy to read and my eyes like this font I what font
is it? Actually?
I I am not a big font guy, I should be better, but I'm not.
It's some standard sense. Yeah, listen, it's it's good.
It's easy to read. It's operational.
The spot art on the end of a lot of pages is all very good.
It all fits the theme, the art for the miracles and sorceries,
the art for the Lord showing this like insane person on a
throne, like this dingy insane person.
It just screams like, hey, this is pretty much the end and
everything's fucking terrible and you're gonna have a bad
time. I think visually for like the
setup of the scene, the the two column works and I I take no
issue with it. What are you thinking?
Yeah, I mean you know this doesn't, this isn't gonna be
like a like a BDSM or or something like that where like
the the, the visuals suffuse every page.
I mean obviously Charlie is a fucking amazing artist.
Love the cover, love the spot art.
I think, I think the book itself is very just like all the rules.
Like it's very clean. It's very straightforward.
It's it's what's the word I'm looking at.
It's it's it's it's all the things you need.
And outside the art, it's just there's no flourish.
It's concise. Yeah.
There it's it's very I keep I keep trying to it's.
So great, I probably say it with no.
Let's just say I keep trying to encourage my brain to come up
with the word by like, repeating the word, but it's just not
doing that thing. It's just how clean and concise
this game is, but how I'm still so drawn into it, you know?
Yeah, but I mean, that's great. Like the what's great about
these clean, concise systems and stuff is that again, like, I I
like games where the rules get out of the way so that you can
stay immersed and get into like a flow state.
And a game like this where everything is like so simple and
consistent, like it wouldn't be hard to pretty quickly never
have to look at the rules and and that's what I want.
So visually, I mean, I think aside from the art being
fantastic, it's pretty straightforward.
Like there's no flourishes. There's no, there's no bonuses.
It's very Spartan, you know what I mean?
Like it's pretty straightforward.
So black and white two column layout, you know, not a whole
lot to write home about. I think the Zine itself with the
that chartreuse color on the front is is definitely what I
would review and that's fucking amazing.
So if you took the art out, it's a it's a 5.
You know what I mean? It's A5 or A6 throw Charlie's
Arden maybe like a I'm at like A6 or A7.
You know, I'm at a seven, I think.
So yeah, I can do, I can do six or seven, you call it.
Yeah, I just like, you know, if if anyone sees the spreads and
stuff for Avi Knox or look at or look at things like Bass in the
dark from Charlie and stuff like that.
Like. Something like this, like when
you look at like the vibes that can come through and some of the
other Charlie stuff, like pages like this, you know,
comparatively, like, obviously, I think that if this ever gets
to a final stage, it will be much more, you know what I mean?
But in this space, this is clearly a very, like,
straightforward. This is just the rules rule
book, you know, I think, I don't know.
I feel like I'm torn because I think 7's kind of generous
because it is. It's very, it's just visually
it's it's fine. Yeah, that is fair.
I think it's a 5, and then Charlie's Art bumps it up to a
six. OK if if you're cool with that,
I guess. Yeah, go off.
All right, Yeah. I just feel like, let's go 7
rule set. I mean, we have thoughts on the
core dice mechanic. I.
Do. It's unfortunate because
everything, it's like everything else is so good.
Everything else is so good. Again, just to reiterate for
those that skip to this part of the show and it just makes no
sense. Like to to to to have a target
number of 12 on 2D6 and instead of just reducing the target
number, you add another dice which just muddies everything
because of the use of like double S is still criticals, but
now you're rolling three dice and if you have advantage or
disadvantage now you're rolling 4 dice.
Is just so unnecessary. It's.
Too much for me, I'm not. Mathematically, like we already
looked at, like dropping the difficulty from 12:00 to 9:00
instead of adding a third. D6 is mathematically almost
exactly the same. It it just I just think it adds
a level of clunk that otherwise how many times do we say this
system is like super clean, super straightforward, like like
super concise, you know, always picks easiest thing.
But it's just that one thing. Yeah, it's just a level of clunk
that's not at anywhere else in the game that's just
unnecessary. Like just drop the difficulty to
9 and keep it 2D6 and it's the exact same game with much
cleaner core resolution mechanic.
Other than that, yeah, you're right.
I fucking I fucking love this game.
Like obviously. Like listen, if you watch this
show or listen at all, you know that I love the fuck out of this
game. It's grim.
Dark as fuck. It's like even the deities are
fucking like gross living corpses and shit.
Like it's so good and plus Charlie's artist insane.
So rule set wise, I mean I think, I think if they if, if
honestly if they put it, if they did the 2D6 with the nine is the
difficulty, I'd be at like a pretty easy 8 or 9 on this.
Absolutely. But at this point, I'm I'm lower
than that, you know? I well, I I I do think that it's
super easy to It's not like it breaks anything.
Technically the math still works, but it is clunky and
everything else is fantastic. So I'm I'm like, what are your
thoughts where you had on this? I think I'm coming up against
A7. Yep, that's exactly where my
brand is at. Yeah, honestly if they fix a
core resolution mechanic and then and added like the 20 pages
of the SRD, which I think are all fantastic.
I read it and they're fantastic. Yeah, I'd be like an I'd be like
an easy 9 for this. This is one of my favorite games
in a long time. Yeah.
That I think is, is is fucking amazing.
But just, I mean, if it's your core mechanic and I'm not a fan
like, you know it, it definitely drops some points, vibes.
Oh my God. Oh, through the roof.
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean this.
Is definitely where this is going to shine score wise
because like, I mean everything feeds into the vibe and not even
just that. It's like it opens up
everything, opens up these great moments for like role-playing or
like experiencing like this really fucked up terrible world.
And even to the point like like were the weapon abilities too.
Like add the other layer of like how active combat can be, how
flavorful combat can be. I think I'm at like a an 8 or 9
for vibes, so. Oh God, yeah, dude.
I'm at like a nine or 10 for vibes.
So I think let's do it. Yeah.
What are your thoughts? Like an easy 9.
Oh, I'm an easy 9. If you said 10, I would not
argue. So I'm gonna go 10.
I'm gonna go 10. Yeah.
For me personally, like there are very few games I've read
that I've wanted to play more. Like this is these are my vibes
all day. These are my vibes all day.
And again like outside of the the core dice mechanic if my
brain kicked that over and I thought about it that way.
And again like if they if they even put some color on the
inside like God if they if they did the entire Russ already at
40 pages and then the two expansions and then came out
with a hardcover book for this that's full of Charlie's insane
art. This and this would be one of my
favorite books that I own. I can just I can already imagine
it based on all the the scenes I have from Ferrell Indy for based
on based on set the Citadel based on weird and wild like it
this this this has. And again, here's the other
thing. He created the system, dropped
the scene, and immediately dropped expand like SRDS.
So this this was definitely like AI think it even says it on it
too. Somewhere like this is
definitely like a work in progress.
It's going like this is not. Leaving.
It's a living project. And I I I cannot wait to see how
it is at the end. And I love that this is the way
that they're doing it. They gave you AZ and right off
the bat to have something physical that is gorgeous.
And then there's these updates and after the current project,
there'd be more updates. I I'm so excited for the future
of this. So what is?
What is that like a 24? Yes.
Yeah, look at that. Easy math.
Still a good score. Yeah.
Again, like it's it's it's great.
I love this game. I love this game so much.
I just. I would really love, hey, I just
really think about. I think the two biggest things
is the gain. First, strain.
I think there's some consistency with spend and just that cord
ice mechanic. I would really just reconsider.
I would reconsider 2D6 with the difficulty of nine instead of
3D6 cuz it muddies everything up.
That's it for scenequest. Except for Scenequest Farewell
Scenequest 2024. You were.
You were? You were, listen, we were super
happy to be able to spot. I think we talked to like 11 or
12 different. Well more.
Sometimes there are more than we had 11 or 12 different episodes
with interviews. We talked about like I think 25
or 30 projects we did. I think five or seven APS.
We did a fucking lot for Zenquest.
Listen, if you're thinking about doing Zenquest next year when we
talk in December about reaching out to us, reach out to us in
December. Don't wait till the middle of
fucking February like we would love to have it on the show.
Yeah. If we could schedule the whole
month early, that would help our brains.
But we're literally getting messages like a week into
people's projects. We're here, We exist.
Hit us up. We'll let you know again next
year. Zenquest.
I spent too much money. Once again, Goodbye.
I don't know what we're doing in March.
We have thoughts. We'll let you know.
Oh yeah. Couldn't tell you.
We'll figure it out. All right.
Bye. Bye.