Hello and welcome to the weekly Squirrel podcast.
My name is Ryan. And I'm a giant gold chalice
full of skulls. That's my body.
He's been. Back I've returned.
That's right. They tried to kill me and they
weren't successful. Listen, if you come for the
king, you best not miss. But they went for Hunter and
they were close. You know you come you.
Come for the king, you get the, the, the horns.
Yeah. There you go.
Here we're back. This is the Weekly Scroll
podcast. This is we're continuing with
our month of horror. I realize, I think I said this
to Josh, that I picked extremely obscure indie games about demons
for the entire month of horror and not really horror games.
More like dark fantasy leaning into like, demons and stuff.
Yeah. I think next year, I think next
year we really need to do things like slasher Dread, I think.
Next year for Halloween, we should only do like games with
like religious overtones. Interesting.
Yeah? Which ones do I have?
I'm sure we have some. So yeah, I've like, I mean, you
know, I have not been here for almost this entire month,
actually. So yeah, well, you did the very
you did the very first one of the episode of the month, didn't
you? No, you didn't.
No, I am here because that was what I think.
I. Was that was a wonderful meat
Castle in chat on the very first we did Dark Grail.
Meat and chat. Got some big meat and chip meat
meat meat. Yeah, The Dark Grill.
Great episode, I I watched that great game.
So I want to play the shit out of that game, and I want to make
that a full scene and blow it out a couple more pages.
There's some art in it, Scott. Let's make it happen, yeah?
I mean, I liked all the guests you had on while I was gone
because it's fun to create. Other people do it.
And I was like, oh, those are really good, like statements and
like, people that know what they're doing.
Yeah, not like, yeah, that was like, all you.
Look great at this. What am I doing here man?
We had Christian Sorrell, Newcastle, right?
We had James Cranes for marching order.
We had an enthuser, Josh Demansky, who is basically a
part of the show now. They are gonna be our regular
side quest GM if I'm missing somebody, but I think we just
have three weeks of guests. I think we just have three weeks
and then I'm. In my I'm in my new domicile.
The lighting is not set up on the way yet, but you know, we're
here. We're working with them.
Yeah, that's good. You're looking good.
You got a blur background. You know, we still gotta get the
the fancy stuff gone. But but yeah, not much has
changed here. I got a new shirt.
Excellent breast, baby. Very cool.
Definitely check out if you're not reading Exhume's Sub Stack.
Awesome, awesome game mechanic discussions.
Really really good. Skeleton Code Machine?
Really great. And yeah, how sick is this logo?
Yeah, that's pretty cool. Really dope.
So anyway, tonight we are looking at another game that
isn't in print. I don't think any of the ones
we've looked at so far this month.
No, they feed on Fear was but Dark Gray wasn't.
This isn't it's a it's it's an it's an indie game put out by a
great designer. It is a quick start game.
It's it's Demon Kraw Gothic. That's what we're looking at
Demon Kraw Gothic by Sandro AD. Great game.
Really enjoy it. It is an incomplete game.
It is the quick start edition with maybe plans to go back and
finish it later and I I hope they do.
But one thing that Josh Demanski made me feel terrible about
myself for and now that we're like 110 episodes in is Josh
definitely did about, I don't know a million times more prep
for his guest episode than we've ever done for any episode ever.
I had like a like a five page doc of like write up with like
intro and stuff on it and I was like man, should we do that?
And then I didn't. So I guess not.
Yeah. But I I feel like Josh is just
one of people who does an excellent job at everything, You
know, like 100%. Yeah.
And if you I, I, I do.
I did show it off. For those that don't know, Space
Penguin Inc now has the full reel, the Bloom God.
And it comes with a chair and a bookmark and everything.
So definitely go check out the Bloom from Josh Spansky for a
little horror. Oh man, I have a little horror
shirt too. Friday anyway.
ADHD and know Adderall. We're kicking here Sandro AD
great designer you can find him on.
Anyway one thing Josh did was intro the designer in the game a
little bit better than we do which is like at all.
So we're gonna we're gonna start doing that.
So Sandro AD is the designer of Demon Craw Gothic, which is a
we'll get into it a very grim dark Tactical definitely you can
tell is very inspired by Dumon, Diablo.
It's got a lot of the kind of like a video gaming tactical
mechanics which which we'll discuss and I enjoyed and and
we'll discuss but on top of Demon Crawl Gothic one thing
they're working on a lot is Steel Hearts it is it's NEC
mobile engagement chassis Colon Steel Hearts which is a tactical
mech game which looks really interesting.
You can find Sandro AD on Twitter under Sandro May Cry.
You can check their dev card there for a list of it's based
like a link tree I guess the card is so you can find all
their games or YouTube their itch.
Definitely check out their YouTube for some interesting
stuff. But one of the things that they
put out I believe it was in 2020 is this game Demon Crawled
Gothic which as I said is a very tactics inspired very dark edge.
Lord is fuck setting which I love you know that's my bag.
I know right. But but yeah, so definitely
check out all of their stuff. Definitely check out Steel
Hearts I I sent it to Hunter. I definitely think that's way up
your alley. But and and that's where we're
at. So I think we're just gonna I
think we're just gonna hop straight into I think we're
hopping in yeah let's do it first time.
Yeah. How do we do this again?
I've forgotten how we do this. You know, I think I hit, I think
I hit this button. Boom, we're there.
And it was off. Just like I thought it was.
OK, so this is perfect. Demon Crawl.
Gothic. First off.
Damn, look at that cover. It's a really good cover, and
it's damn near the only art piece.
That you're going to see. Yeah.
Like like I said we're we're we're going to this is an
incomplete game that we are going to review anyway because
it's out there for the world. But know that going in that half
of our review is going to be based on the fact that it's not
a complete game. Did we do that with something
else recently where we were like, I don't remember.
You know, we record an episode and then it flies out of my
brain and then later on someone references it.
I'm like. Oh yeah.
Wait, holy shit. I was in that episode, yeah, you
do that all the time. I'm like, remember this game?
And you're like, no, I was like, we didn't like.
We're like, no, I don't. Yeah, but demon girl Gothic for
those in, for those in the other thing.
I also realized that I do a lot that I would love to not do.
I sit way back from my mic and scream, Oh, and I would like to
not do that. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to,
I'm gonna try to pull the mic in a little closer.
I'm gonna try to sit a little. Closer to it.
I don't know if me being closer to my mic is a good idea.
I'm. I'm just gonna my.
Girlfriend is actually in the room with me right now, and she
just really, really, really quietly was like, it's not Mike.
Yeah. Yeah.
So we're gonna keep the mic. The mic's actually currently
across the room. I'm just that loud.
Yeah, well, we got Gates on. We're good.
So I'm just gonna try to keep it down a little bit.
Here we go. So Demon Crawl Gothic for those
in podcast Land. The cover that we are talking
about is amazing. And it is.
It's got like a almost like a banner across the top, says
Steven Crawl, Gothic. And then there is a giant
Reacher. It looks almost like his body is
made of like thread. It's like spider, right?
It's a spider. Yeah, totally.
It's a spider with like but his things have like but it's fangs
have are literally like giant banner Shields and it's arm yeah
it's arms are holding giant lances and it's got like 5 or 6
skulls for a head dope in front of it.
There are two figures, one straight up night full plate
shield sword, one very roguish with a crossbow and the only
color on it is the end of the lances.
Right behind them are all blood soaked.
It's dam. It's a word of speech.
There's also blood soaked, and there's like True Blood and The
Shield and stuff as well. So yeah, spottings across
characters. Great piece of art.
Really, really love it. Yeah, yeah.
So demon girl Gothic. I love that there's some some
cool setting lore stuff here I'll get into.
Our world is rotting. The countryside is littered with
festering corpses and unholy abominations.
Our moon glows a Crimson red. Our church has all but abandoned
us. That's where they got me.
I was like, all right, I like this game.
While the angels bring forth the final woe in their Immaculate
choir, there's still those who stand in the face of the
apocalypse. Brave warriors from kingdoms
across the land, slayers who, through the bravery or
foolishness, stand against the endless spawn of hell itself.
Yeah, it was written for me. Yeah, this is a very U coded
game you know. Yeah, so this is called a
fast-paced game of blood and skulls.
For two to six players this is the Quick Start edition.
It aims to give overlords and slayers all they need to begin
experiencing the game as well as generating their own content for
the Demon cross system. The system may still undergo
some changes and Gothic will likely be supported with
additional pre written content in the future.
Both me, Alessandro Sandroidi and the Demon Cross Systems Co
Designer Duffy sincerely hope you enjoy their Grizzly game and
make it your own. I believe through this they were
talking about the Co designer eventually doing a space version
of it, but I don't think it ever happened and I think that would
be dope, but we'll see. I mean, so it'd be cool if they
finished this version before they start working on like
another version. Very true, very true.
I will say it's only 16 pages. I'm not worried that there's not
a lot of bookmarks over. It is interesting that the the
names in the yeah. Right.
They're they're underlined like they'd be linked, but not
hyperlinked. Yeah.
They're not hyperlinked, yeah, but on the first page this is
called the first hymn. I assume there will be other
hymns later, but this is the the page of like he's the writers,
he's the artist, everything like that.
I will say that the the quick start cover and sketch artist
Rioto Kajiki Awesome, the Slayer portraits, ZAP Fantastic and the
campaign book cover, it says campaign book coming soon.
I don't think there everyone was from SAPRO artist excited to see
that. But yeah so this is the
manuscript edition 1st 10 contents we'll just get into.
It's 16, it's not even 16 pages so we're just going to skip
that. But there is a nice table of
contents here. It's not hyperlink, but again
the 16 pages I'm not that worried.
About 16 pages is fine. Yeah, yeah.
So Demon Crawl Gothic. This basically is a rundown.
It says, this is the introduction.
It basically says in 2022 people got together, but this is in
very flowery language. But two people got together and
wrote this game inspired by the visceral combat of Diablo in
Doom, And this is the gothic version.
And that's why it has this like kind of dark, not kind of this
very dark fantasy overlay to it. There's a big section of what is
required of you. It's a table top role-playing
game. You need people and dice.
This is a little. Bit more and a chess board.
So basically, yeah, I mean, I was interesting slate.
She's really a grid. And like and I'm like, OK, cool,
cuz I mean I have like 10 different grid like dry erase
things and I'm like, yeah, it's a chess board.
And I was like, that's actually like a really nice thing
because. Probably have one of those
somewhere. You know chess boards have more
than 8 squares, don't they? The Royal game of chess is in
fact quite ideal for the use with for use with Demon Crawl I
I'm. Sure that they checked on this.
I mean, is the chess board really only 8 squares?
Oh fuck. I don't know why my brain
thought there was a way more than 8 by 8 on a chess board,
but a chess board is 8 by 8. That's perfect.
All right, well, look at look at that.
It's not like I'd ate. I was just played chess a ton.
I was in chess club and shit. That's fine.
Were you really? Yeah, I wasn't.
So anyway, you need all of that and then Slayer and Room Sheets,
which we will get to. So it's a table up game that you
need a lot of stuff for and I have opinions on that.
We both do, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah.
So let's just let's just jump into this.
I'll go through the let's go through the core of slaying.
The crux of demon cryographic is divided into two phases,
exploration and rooms. Heavy, heavy, heavy emphasis on
rooms in this document and maybe like one page of exploration,
but we'll get to that. During exploration, the Overlord
will narrate to various ruins, mes, traps.
During exploration you will play a normal table dot role play
game. Yeah.
It has like, yeah, it won't get to dice mechanics, which I think
are too low in this book. But like, yeah, it is
interesting. Like there's almost like a two
section part of this game where it's like the exploration, which
is just you playing like a regular, like like rules, like
tabletop game. And then there's like the grid
combat. Mm hmm, yeah.
And I guess the campaign stuff, when you read the author's note,
is where a lot more of that exploration stuff would come in.
But we'll get to that. I'm in Pinion, I'm saving it.
Cool. But when we do get to those
mechanics, and we'll get to it later, but we'll reference it
now, the mechanics for doing checks and stuff in the room are
different than those outside of the room.
So it's basically like playing two games.
Yeah, it reminded me of Have you ever read Icon by Massive Press?
No, but I have it. I think it's AI Think it's a
Lancer problem of being too fucking long.
Yeah, and my brain says no because man, we did Lancer on
what? Episode 3 at your behest and
fuck if I'm ever going to read that book again.
God damn, I think it's cool. I5 E Met combat is interesting,
you know, AKA Lancer And the app is gorgeous.
Anyway, combat in the room. So to begin, So OK so here's the
thing. Rooms are a big deal and and the
crux of the game realistically is horde spawn combat and we'll
get to that more in depth. But basically, you go into an 8
by 8 room, there are spawn locations, and there's an exit,
and things will spawn in hordes and you murder them, and
eventually you either escape the room through the exit or you
kill a boss and you you defeat the room.
That's that's the game is what it comes out to.
And that's cool. I I do dig that.
It's interesting. So here we go.
To begin a room. Slayers arrange themselves
around or on the exit token on the room.
Similarly, Overlords should spawn unholy creatures in
accordance with that room's spawn tracker.
We'll get to that on room sheets.
Once all the units have been placed in spawn combat begins.
When battling through a room, combat will happen in two
alternating turns, Slayer and enemy turns.
Together these two terms form one complete turn cycle, and the
Overdlord should determine whether the slayers or enemies
should have the first turn based off which faction likely had the
element of surprise alternative. Alternatively, flip a coin
anyway so the actions that a Slayer can take in a room during
the Slayer turn. Slayers take collective actions
in whatever order they place. So basically when it's a Slayer
term, just go whenever you feel like.
And AOE can affect not just bad guys, but slayers as well.
So the three things that you can really do in the game are slay,
stride, and unleash, which basically means hit something,
move, or use a power. OK?
So when you slay, you automatically just deal D6
damage. That's it.
That's just to a unit in range as specified.
You add any damage to stat modifiers specified by the
damage stat, and then you add any bonuses from items and
things like that. So very kind of like RPG, add
stats, add bonuses, add whatever do you decent damage and go with
it. And then, once the final damage
has been totaled, the overload reduces HP from the unit that
was targeted. When the Slayer rolls A6 on a
slay action, they're listed Critical Passive is triggered.
One of the very numerous tactical things that happens.
There is a lot going on, yeah. When if you stride the Slayer
may move a number of spaces on the ABA grid up to the current
speed, speed business that you have.
This movement may be may not be split.
It is pivotal to understand that while there is no consequence to
moving past opponents, you cannot move through enemy or
allied unit to have to move around.
There's also walls and things like that that you have to move
around as well and you can use 2 dashes to cross pits.
Lastly, while units can attack diagonally, units block corners
and diagonal movement. So you can't be in front of
someone and move like diagonally across the face of that unit.
You have to like go left and up. So technically not make sense
through them, but you're kind of still are Yeah, 'cause you still
cross the corner. Do you want to do blood and
skulls? Do you want me to just keep
going for a while? Blood and Skulls.
As slayers hack their way through enemy units and clear
rooms, they generate blood and skulls 2 Actually, I think, I
think this is maybe one of my more favorite parts of this
game. I really liked this concept a
lot. I mean you and I have talked
about like blood. It's like it's almost like a
push forward mechanic. It is essentially, right.
So let's see this one, this one is, yeah, let's talk about it
and then we'll talk about push forward.
So Blood measures the thrill of combat, searching through the
Slayer's nerve as the copper spray of Blood fills their
senses. Is a currency for Slayers to
heal, move, unleash devastating abilities, and more.
Slayers can hold a maximum of 18 blood at a time and generate it
in the following ways. So.
Each hit point the Slayer loses adds one blood.
Each individual creep in the unit slain adds one blood.
Each sole unit grants a random just one D6 blood to the Slayer,
and then each boss unit slain grants a random plus 2D6 blood
to the Slayer. Consuming certain items such as
blood talks or intentionally sacrificing HP will also rack
you up blood. So I guess maybe not push
forward mechanic because it doesn't.
It doesn't heal you. Well, so healing doesn't
necessarily dictate push forward.
This does have some push forward mechanics in that like you gain
a resource by killing, but the other that's that's kind of half
a push forward, the other half a push forward that makes it a
push forward mechanic is that. You only gain resources by
killing everything that you. Need comes from pushing forward,
and there's actually detriment to not pushing forward.
So like if you get weak or low on anything, retreating is the
worst thing you can do. But in this game, although there
are bonuses for like killing things, there is no detriment to
escaping. That's actually an option.
There's ways to heal. That don't come from killing
like you just said, like there's tonic stuff, push forward
mechanic, but still it's. It's it's part.
It's partially in the way more like, more like the way that,
like, old Diablo did it instead of the way that, like, new Doom
does it, right? Yeah, still still very cool.
I still like. The, like, trade-offs Love it.
Yeah, of course you love it because you're a weird edge word
freak. I also found this game while
researching pull forward mechanics.
So it it did, it did have some good stuff in it.
Yeah. Also, I will agree with Chad, 18
is a weird number. Everything is D sixes.
The whole team is built on D sixes.
SO3D6. Yeah, sure, skulls.
So skulls are generated anytime a unit is successfully slain.
They're Broken Bones, a trophy of the Slayer's narrow victory.
These trophies are represented by D sixes that should be placed
in the chalice or similarly extravagant receptacle.
We got a red solo cup, my table, baby.
At the end of the room, all these D sixes are rolled, and
the total amount is the amount of gold each Slayer individually
gains. Skulls generated follow each
full creep unit slaying grant skull sole units grant two boss
units. You're into a unique amount of
skulls, and each Slayer that dies permanently adds plus 6
skulls to the pile. Yeah.
The blood of skulls isn't my favorite part of the game, dude.
It's the best part of this. I mean, I like for like a very
dungeony game like this, like skulls as like a metric for
gold. I'm like, that's amazing, but
that's great. Yeah, and the fact that, like, I
really enjoy the physical aspect of being like.
Take a take a dice and stick it in a cup and watch your chalice
of of skulls increase and stuff like that.
I love that And when you die you throw 66 dice into the fucking
cup. Yeah I I love that.
I love that. It's a very what's the word I'm
looking like tactic like tactile.
Yeah tactile that. Yeah, yeah thing to it.
And the blood. I really love the blood like you
know you you gain you gain like a resource to.
From killing to use to kill more stuff, I obviously I love that.
Easily, easily my favorite part of the game.
I would take this system and throw it to me.
This is my favorite part. But yeah, very cool.
And then? Then we got the to the free.
Free actions? Yeah, odd.
I don't know how I feel. Not bad.
OK, well, if you don't know how you feel, let me read it so you
could hear me talk about it. Well, OK, cool.
Go for it. Yeah, sure.
Why not? Unless you really want to.
No, go for it. I love the sound of your voice,
so go for. It regardless of whether it is
an image turn or Slayer turn, slayers may use free actions at
any time. So these are the free actions.
You can use a consumable item OK you can trade items with an
adjacent Slayer or conversely freely from across the room, and
you can make any number of purchases from the blood shop at
any time. This is really kind of lost me a
bit heal. You can do heal, dash surge or
rage. So if you heal you, slay Slayers
may heal one HP perp 2 blood spent as they turn their pain
into power. Dash Slayers may dash 1 space
per three blood surge. When making a sleigh roll for
damage, either by taking a Sleigh action or using a talent,
Slayers may add plus D6 damage in exchange for six blood, so I
guess you can do that three times if you're at Max.
And then Rage Slayers can exchange 9 blood to make an
immediate sleigh action during the enemy turn.
While this sleigh can be surged, it cannot be a talent.
So I don't mind this, except I think it's really interesting
that like so. I think the guidance on the next
part is the part that I'm not as big a fan of.
And I don't know if this is where it was for you too.
So free actions require mutual trust between the Overlord and
Slayers. Generally, slayers are free to
heal and dash without the need to inform the overlord until the
overlord has called an action. For example, if the overlord
calls that a Slayer is about to be attacked, that Slayer is free
to use items or heal, but they may not use a dash or rage that
would prevent the attack from happening.
Similarly, if the overlord calls damage dealt to an experienced
Slayer, they will take that damage immediately before being
able to heal. The flow of free actions may
take some adjusting to, and overlords should be first most
considerate of their slayers and their experience level when
determining if a free action can be considered appropriate.
And if comment needs to slow down, yeah, that.
Yeah. Well, you go go ahead.
I did not mind the top, that part where I was like, OK, now
you lost me. Yeah, it's a little murky.
Yeah. I mean, especially, yeah.
So sometimes it's like, well, in this kind of situation, like you
kind of want to do it like this, But in this other situation,
it's like you kind of want to do it like this.
It's like, yeah, I don't know that.
I like how that's laid out. So I think the issue is like
when I'm imagining actually running this, and I think one of
the critiques, and we'll get to it later, is I think that the
creator could run the fuck out of this game.
And I think it would be really difficult for anybody else to
run it based on what's given here.
I think it puts a ton of impetus and knowledge onto the creator
and just on this document alone doesn't give the creator enough
tools or doesn't give a different person enough tools to
run it as effectively as the person who wrote it could,
because they know all the insurance and outs.
I mean, I also just like personally, I didn't intake
almost any of that. And I would say that free
actions cannot, cannot affect other actions that are already
resolved. Like, that's just why I put.
I wouldn't put anything else on that.
I mean like if the actions already resolved, the free
action can do nothing about it, you know, like you can't dash
all the way after I've already ruled damage.
Like you can dash all the way before, you know.
Yeah, but I. Think I think.
I think that even in and of itself is where it loses me in
that you have actions that are like an action economy.
Outside of the action economy and you and it basically tells
you do whatever you want. You don't even need to tell the
Overlord. Just have the Overlord trust
that you're going to do it right.
I don't like that part either at all.
And I'm like no, why would we not tell?
Yeah, you're just going to be moving around the the and
spinning blood and I'm just going to be and now no one's
tracking. Not that I don't trust my
players, but I don't trust their math all the time.
You know, like and it's not malicious, Like frankly they've
there are a few beers in, if not something else, you know, So
they're like, yeah, 4-5. I'm like no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, Yeah, I don't. I you're also right.
Like it's weird. It's a it's a second action
economy, but it's not really an action economy in the same way
of like there's not structure to it.
Yeah. So as in like I imagine like
you're doing your actual turn and I think how I think how it's
designed to work is like you're doing your actual turn.
And I can do these things just on my own without having to tell
you because I'll just be like, OK, well, he's doing his turn.
I'm going to hear real quick, you know what I mean?
And that way, like, the game can go without having to come back
to my turn and go, OK, well, I'm going to hear real quick and
then I'll do my real turn. I think that's.
I think that's what's supposed to be is these are like almost
like minor actions that you can do without the GM's permission.
Just on the side while other stuff is happening so that when
it is your turn, you've done all like this minor stuff out of the
way, it's going to be like, OK, well, I surged, this is my turn.
I'll do this now. Or like I healed and then I'll
do this. It's already done.
You've already rolled. You've already done everything
before it comes back to you. So it's almost like a set of
minor actions to happen when it's not your turn, so that when
it is your turn, you can keep going.
I just don't think that they're not.
Enough that you couldn't just do it on your turn and keep going,
you know? Yeah, I don't know if even with
that in mind, I don't know if I like it anymore.
Yeah. No, I don't.
Like, that's the thing that's like, I don't, it's fine.
I just think it could easily just be part of the action
economy or even just be like I declare this or I declare that
And then like you said, like I don't even understand the
question of like, well, I already rode damaged.
Like you can't you can't heal before like that's not it's a
weird thing to even bring up like who would assume that like,
oh. Like you rolled.
You hit me. You rolled damage on me.
But before you do that stop, I'm gonna heal.
Like you would think that that would be a thing that you could
do. Yeah.
I wanna be gonna question that. I don't know.
So yeah, I think somebody said that feels like house really.
As opposed to a rule that really I think goes well in the system,
I think. Like writing it to not do this
and maybe have a side that says at some tables they might do
this on the side. Would be better to say like
here's the way you could house reload if you want, but like not
as like the core mechanic. But yeah, anyway, anyway, yeah
so spawning enemies the enemy turn.
Spawning enemies. With the exception of the first
enemy turn, new enemies will spawn at the start of each enemy
turn. These new enemies are placed
near one of the rooms marked spawn locations.
Often flavored is like great for the floor, holes in the wall,
whatever the magic portals that lead to hell have the wrong
windows open. Yeah, Overlords are free to
creatively place these new enemies with gusto.
Newly spawned enemies suffer no consequences, are free to take
actions on the turn they are spawned, with the first turns
spawn taking place before turn order is decided.
So yeah, you spawn Emmys in like it's a hordebabbler, right?
So. You you spawn in the first round
before turn orders decided, which I don't know if I would
even care about that rule, but after that it's like you just
keep spawning in enemies. Yeah, you spawn them in.
It reminds me of there's a game called The Last Spell and it's
pretty much exactly this. It is a grid based battler where
you're fighting a horde and every turn more come on to the
screen. I've been sitting here this
whole time trying to think of like what the name of that game
is, and it just popped my brain. Oh, interesting.
I'll have to take a rogue like tactical RPG, yeah?
Nothing's dope. I'll have to check it out.
Dark fantasy? Post apocalyptic, the one
section goes a little long in that game, so.
Interesting. It doesn't bother me though.
I'll have to check it out. I'll like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
So yeah, Amy turns, Amy turns. Go for it.
Enemy unit types. Enemies are divided into units,
usually taking up a 1 by 1 space on the room's grid, again 8 by 8
chess board size, each with their own unique styles and
purpose To smooth out the process of spawning units.
It is advised that Overlords roll all the spawns for a given
type CM, scream, and given type of unit at the same time.
Units come in three denominations.
There's Creeps, Solo's, and Bosses.
Creeps are your your, your basic.
And you're basic little guy, it's the it's the horde or
whatever. So this is interesting.
I do like the way that this works.
It kind of reminds me of the following mechanic in the way
that you flip dice. So creeps represent a massive
swarm occupying a single space. They're best represented with a
token and AD 612 millimeter regular D6 denoting the number
of creeps within the unit. So if you have AD six, that's
like 4. The swarm has four creeps in it.
And each creep in the unit only has one HP, which makes it
really easy. So if it had, if there's four
dots, there's four creeps. Each pip is a creep.
If you hit for three, three creeps are dead and you have one
pip left. Which I really, I think that's
really interesting. Yeah, each creep, yeah, when
attacking the overloaded world. D6 damage equal to the number of
creeps. For each D6 that hits the attack
threshold, example 4 + 1 damage is dealt to the Slayer.
So I don't know if we said it before.
I think we've been talking on the Overlord.
I don't know if that ever distinctly says but like GMs are
the Overlord. It does.
It's in that list of things required for the game that we
didn't really, Actually, yeah, that's fine.
So so basically like I said, if you if you creep, the number of
creeps are denoted by the pips on the dice that are up.
And then the Overlord rolls AD 6 based on that too.
So it six pips up means they're six creeps, each with one HP,
and then they would roll 66 at U for those peeps.
So they go down quick, but they hit fucking hard.
You know, if they're one HP each, but everyone rolls D6 for
damage, yeah, that's quite a bit.
Yeah, yeah. Which is, I mean, I'm cool with
that. That's fine.
Shake. It's hard.
I'm scrolling the wrong thing. Solos provide more genuine
threat to slayers. They have a single help pool
represented by the D6, meaning their deadliness is unaffected
over time. As in like they keep doing the
same amount of damage each time. It's not the number of D sixes
per creep leg goes down and they deal.
Yeah, and then bosses the penultimate antagonist of the
room that it's not how penultimate is used.
Penultimate means the one before the last one.
But it is a cooler word. So the the final antagonist of
the room. They operate similarly to Solos,
with far more HP and a full gallery of special abilities.
Their death marks the end of additional enemy spawns, which
is an interesting way to say if you kill the boss, you still
have to kill everything else in the room.
The room's not over. Sorry.
I'm looking at penultimate. I think I tweeted about that
recently and I don't remember why.
I was just like, hey, just a friendly reminder, penultimate
does not mean the last one, it means the one before the last
one. And like, it's such a cooler
word, though it is a much cooler word.
I mean, you think that'd be the ultimate, the penultimate, but
no, the next one. So yeah.
So enemy turn the onslaught. So basically this is just their
attacking phase right? So every enemy can move up to
their speed and make a single attack action which is either
the default attack or some of them will have listed
alternative attacks. And it here kind of just lays
out like, hey, kind of spread the bloodshed around, you know,
like don't just hammer in on one person.
And after reading damage and stuff, it really does make sense
because like you could really just beat the shit out of
somebody if you targeted them. Overloads may also use bonus
actions if they're listed on the room sheet, because the rooms
will have bonus actions to the room.
Once each unit has been activated, the turn moves back
to the slayers. This waltz repeats until
basically this is just like the regular enemy turn and how it
works. They move, they attack.
You might use a bonus action, which is almost like a layer
action. Yeah, feels very layer actually,
yeah, which I think is really cool.
I like stuff that like brings this like the room, the setting
a little bit more alive, you know?
Yeah, layer actions are like the best part of 5E boss combat.
Yeah, I would. I would super agree.
Actually, it's the most interesting part by far.
The next section is they next to Blood and Skulls, possibly my
favorite set, the Corpse Beast. Also sound?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so the hitting zero HP and
the Corpse Beast Slayers are as fragile as they are fierce and
may end up at 0 HP and fall unconscious.
If that happens, you make no more actions until the end of
the room or until the Slayer uses an item to heal or
something like that, right? But while unconscious, laying on
the ground in a room, the dungeon All dungeons have a
Corpse Beast. All dungeons.
Yeah, that will immediately spawn opposite the room's exit.
But but at least five to six spaces away from the unconscious
layer, the corpses operates like a mini boss.
However, it is uninterested in fighting the slayers.
Its main priority is to use its free action to consume the
unconscious body of the downed Slayer and return it to the
location where the beast initially spawned.
If successful, the beast will escape, thus healing to full.
Until another Slayer falls unconscious and the Slayer who
was captured permanently dies. Upon this death, 6 skulls are
added to the skull pile, dude. Literally.
Like, as soon as you hit unconscious, something in the
dungeon is coming from your body, dude.
Some little creepy dude with a bag.
Not. Even like, a little creepy dude.
It's not even the the one in the one in the dungeon down there is
literally like. Is it a creepy dude?
But it's riding like a mech wolf or something, and it has like a
full bag of corpses. Let me tell you in mine if I
like if I ran this game, I'm interested to see when it comes
out full what the campaign stuff is.
Because if I ran this game for a while, it would be the same
exact creepy little dude with a burlap sack.
Over and over and over again. Yeah, Just every everywhere they
go. Different color hat in each
dungeon though. Like fucking not Papa Smurf.
What was the other one? David the Gnome.
Dude, Can you imagine Evil Dave the Gnome coming through your
corpse? I you're right.
Yeah. Blood skulls on the corpse beast
are fucking genius. I love them.
Very, very, very funny. Death and escape.
So yeah, if you're attempting to escape the room, the Slayer can
make one escape, roll her turn, and basically I think you're
you're rolling equal to or greater than the room's depth,
which is 1-2 or three. Does it go up to 4?
The one the example one has, it's not.
I don't think it's necessarily an order because the example one
given has like 246. OK cool.
So just you're trying to roll over the depth.
So if there is a a depth 6 room, that means you can't escape it.
Oh, if you roll A roll equal to so you can roll AD six.
Yeah. Interesting.
Yeah. On success, any slayers next to
the exit survive the escape while the rest die permanently.
Adding six goals eats. Yeah.
So if you try to run, you all, whoever, whoever succeeds lives
and whoever doesn't, doesn't. If a Slayer, if all slayers fall
unconscious at the same time, the room is failed.
Straws are drawn between the remaining unconscious slayers.
The longest straw drawn is chosen as the Sole survivor,
while the other slayers die permanently.
The Sole Survivor has their insight increased by one and
must either explain how this loss impacts their character or
role on the Resolve table. They gain 1/4 of the gold each
dead Slayer was holding, and they select one item per dead
Slayer to take with them, not including slayers taken by the
corpse piece, by the way. Cuz they're gone.
No. The result table is dope though.
Yeah, I will. That's pretty cool.
Let's do you have a dice roller up?
Can in about one second, maybe more than one.
All right, I have it up. Call that 2 seconds.
I'll roll 10. I got a six.
Driven if you had only if you'd only been stronger.
If you had only been through been more than you are only
constant. Never ending training will bring
you peace. You get a + 1 to a stat of your
choice. Nice.
Very cool. So you actually, by being the
last one, Yeah, right. By being the last one living,
you get a bonus and and I guess you can.
Explain to your next party of slayers like why you have that
bonus. They all fucking died.
So now I'm sorry. Paranoid.
Yeah. Or I'm furious or I'm shattered.
I do like this. I think this is a really
interesting mechanic, that if you're the last one, you get a
bonus that. But it's like haunted, paranoid.
Love those. So in the room, loot and feet.
So if it's if you successfully slay all enemy units, it's over
first in the unconscious layers regain their senses next to
Slayer should roll all of the skull dye about that red solo
cup you know, right? Each layer will gain the amount
of gold for their during exploits and trophy collecting.
Lastly, each layer rolls AD 6 to collect A to collect boost.
Boss loot. I was a boot loss, boss loot,
and another D6 to collect room loot.
Loot that is marked with an asterisk is unique and cannot be
rolled twice. That's requiring A reroll.
However, slayers who must reroll will be given 30 gold for the
trouble. So in a campaign, if you get a
reroll just 'cause, you get 30 goals.
There you go, Boom you survived. Good job in a campaign which
doesn't exist yet. Each cleared room will unlock
another room at the dungeons next depth level Sliders will
also gain the rights to certain feats on clearing the room under
specific criteria. Refer to each dungeon specific
feats For more information. This is one of those things.
I think we ran into the same thing with squishy that I would
recommend for. I guess it's hard, right?
So like, if you reference a part of a game that's not written, it
makes it difficult when you're reading it because you're gonna
try to find that. But also like, until you write
it, it's kind of like, well, I have every intention of writing
it, so I'm gonna write it that way.
But if you never get to it. If you do get to it and you
don't write it that way, you have to go backwards.
I think it'd be better to go back and retcon saying now
references in the future than to put it in and then never
potentially have the thing come out later.
You know what I mean? Yeah.
Because if I didn't know this, I'd be like, well, where's the
campaign book? Like, he keeps referencing the
campaign book. Like, who do I talk to about the
campaign book? You know, like squishy.
Oh, that's another one you weren't on.
They kept referencing another game that was going to be coming
out. Even there were some, like feats
and stuff wrapped up in like what you could do in this other
game. But that other game doesn't
exist. So it's just like, well, they
keep referencing this thing and I can't find it anywhere.
So it's interesting because you don't want to rewrite stuff more
than once, especially if you put it in the layout.
But you know, it's kind of difficult if it doesn't exist,
if people are trying to. On it.
Yeah, yeah, I I I agree. I mean, this is, it's what
happens when you go through an incomplete game.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Advanced Advanced Rules.
Respite, Rest. Pit rest.
Pity. After each room, regardless of
success, Slayers will get to use their unique rest action as well
as any blood they have remaining.
If they exit the dungeon, the remaining blood will be lost.
You just drop all your blood in the ground when you walk out of
the dungeon, but their progress will remain.
Upon exiting the dungeon, slayers can seek medical
treatment to recover all their lost HP.
However, the process will cost 30 gold.
That 30 gold you got for re rolling that boss loot and
require the player to sit out for the next room.
Participants are encouraged to use this as an opportunity to
experiment with other Slayer classes.
I just saw Chad. Yeah, that's interesting.
I like it. Like basically it says like your
character has to sit out, but you don't just pick something
else and run something else. I think that's cool.
Yeah, I think that that's OK. Yeah, that's fine.
It's fine. I don't know that I'd be holding
my players to that rule. They're already giving up their
gold. Like, if they don't keep playing
their player, they can keep playing their character.
I mean, I'm thinking of Darkest Dungeon when you have to have a
character sit out because they're too fucked up for a
little while and I'm like, oh man, I want to bring them back
in. You know, I got to get it.
It's yeah, it's. I mean.
Yeah, I mean, that's The thing is, I get it.
I get why you would want to. But I also get where it does
make sense. But here's the thing, Since it's
not a video game, you can just be like math like that and you
just bring them back. So yeah.
I would rather have it written like this and then someone go,
Nah never mind then written in this basically as a house rule
in game like the free action thing.
I'd rather be written and then have the ability to go
throughouts. So items, equipment and
consumables of each layer actually really has a four by
three grade of inventory spaces representing the Max number of
items they can carry. I dig this, there's a lot of
here's the thing, I'm not a big, I'm not a big video game guy,
I've played like 6 video games ever, but I'll play each one for
1000 hours. But the ones that I have seen.
That do this are a lot of especially like shooters where
you have like a backpack thing and it's a grid and you have to
fit all of your shit well. Diablo does that.
I never actually played Diablo Wow, so it makes sense now that
it's a four by three. You like start now.
But I think that's really interesting and I like it in the
same way that I like Master Inventory System, like I can
imagine actually having tokens for stuff and actually having to
fit it. Into your grid be like once
again my sword tactile like yeah, engaged part of the
experience. I really enjoy this and I I like
watching people organize their inventory on this in like such a
like, yeah, it'll. Turn my sword to hold my canopy
guy. But like, I know there are
people who are like, Oh no, it's all fitting in here, Don't
worry. Yeah, yeah, I like that.
It feels like those games that are just like like.
One MD square and you have to like make a puzzle by shuffling
like one square. So anyway, yes, you do something
similar to that, but yeah. So each layer has a four by
three grid. Larger items will mark out
specific number of grid spaces like a great sort occupies one
by two space. Love that Tower shield is 2 by
two. Consumable items can be used at
any time to grant effect. Equippable items can be slotted
into their designated equipped item space.
To gain the Animus bonus, These items will also mark which
specific type of slot they need to be in.
Sliders can change their equipped items, excuse me, in
lieu of a Stride action or Dash action.
So here's no Dash. So here's the thing, A Stride
action is your actual Turns action, and a Dash action is
your free action. They don't feel the same to me,
but I could be wrong. I think you're I think you're
correct. Yeah, so, like, Dash is a it.
It costs blood. Yeah, well then I guess that's
fine because straight you do get for free, but Dash is on your
off turn. So yeah, that's whatever I
think. No, I don't.
I I don't mind how those interact, actually.
In that case, actually, I actually kind of like it.
It's like, yeah, if it's your turn, you can just not move and
use it. Or like, if you're like, fuck, I
need to change my next turn, then in your free action, you
can still pay the blood to move like you would, which is just
dashing. It's just it.
Don't just. You just don't.
Yeah, I actually like that. You're right.
It's clean. I like it.
Some items will be neither equivable or consumable, and you
can sell those etcetera, etcetera.
Additionally, Slayers have satchels for their basic
consumables separate from their inventory spaces.
Healing Bread Heals, D6 and Blood Tonics grant D6 blood.
Unlike that Bread and Tonic, pretty kind of salty.
Slayers can hold a maximum of six of each of these basic
consumables. Outside their item inventory, So
Delicious Healing Bread. You get your four by three grid
of inventory and you get a satchel slung over your
shoulder. Bread is like red colored like a
a. 100% Oh, I imagined there was actually like blood in the
bread, and that's what was healing you.
So inventory, spells and talents.
Some consumables grant a single use of a specific forgotten
spell or talent. Using these one time spells does
not count as an action. Likewise, some equippables
unlock the use of a new talent at the cost of blood.
Using these talents require that the item is equipped.
Makes sense if it's an item, your style you're getting from
an item or talent you get from an item gotta be wearing it.
That the Slayer takes an unleashed action and the
required amount of blood is expended and so references in
the Blood section your it. It's a paid like activation cost
and very straightforward. You should be wearing the thing
that has the ability to grant the ability, like like how
everything has ever worked at any point in time.
But yeah, good distinction to make, you know.
This is. I don't know, I don't think this
is that way. But it also brings up a point
like not everything is for everybody and this will never be
somebody's first tabletop game. You know what I mean?
So explaining stuff to people that clearly already know, I
definitely prefer when, like, not everything is for everybody
and like needing to like. That's the whole reason that I
genuinely fucking hate most. Like, what is it?
TTRPG? It's like, and it's the most
obscure niche game that like 100 people ever going to be.
Like, yeah, I'm going to play that.
And it's like this will never be someone's first.
Like, you don't have to explain what it is.
They know. No way, man.
In Inversely, there's some games we go over where we're like, Oh
yeah, this is great to have here because this could definitely be
someone's first game. That's right.
But you know, when you're making a game, do you know that?
You know, oh, A. 100%, OK, well. Yeah, you don't.
You don't think you're writing your game for a specific set of
people, not for everybody. Yeah, you're right.
OK, You're right. I retract that statement.
You do know that? Absolutely.
You could literally put a hat like if you're making like a
space game, it could be like as per Star Wars, and then just
take out whole paragraphs. You know what I mean?
Not you, but I'm saying just in general.
So where were we? Combat passives and bloodlust.
So each layer is equipped with a Grizzly Combat passive.
That is active at all times during the room.
It defines normal rules and your critical passive triggers
anytime you roll A6 on a sleigh or a talent sleigh.
I just realized however, this passive will automatically
trigger during such roles if the Slayer is at 18 blood.
This bonus comes from a Slayer sensation, Well, blood lust.
So I guess we'll get to combat passive later.
Oh, I should download A character?
A Slayer sheet character? Yeah, yeah yeah 'cause they're
all on there and they're a blast to look at.
Yeah, So status effects and elements.
Basically, there are 6 distinctive status effects, each
with an associated primordial element.
Excuse me, These satisfacts will only last for one turn.
Cycle units can only be affected by one set at a time, and if a
unit is given a new status effect, they will lose the old
one and take an immediate 2 damage upon switching.
Which I'm like, oh that fucking sucks.
Not just like stacking effects on somebody.
Well, you've just been two damaged each time if you're if
you're stuck in effect, so it's interesting, yeah.
Additionally, certain elemental damage types can cause unique
reactions with certain enemies. The status effects are as
followed, so the element divine. The status act is fury, which is
a very like a divine angelic rage, and you must take a sleigh
action on your turn. The sleigh action must be
directed at a random unit, including friendly units you go
into. You know you're so fuelled by
your love of God that you strike down your best friend with a
sword. Very biblical.
Very biblical, I was going to say.
Yeah, IRL is. You fucking get it.
Really. It really is.
It's a little on the nose. Can we hear my son?
God's like, no, I was kidding. I was just testing you.
OK? Arcane is another element to
satisfy this. Hex the heck unit is bound by
arcane sorceries. That ribbon pulled the fabrics
of their being. The unit takes one damage per
space moved, and that includes if they're moved against their
will and the next element is bolt.
The SAS effect is vitalized. This is like the opposite of
hex. It's every time you move a
space, you gain one HP, which that's a pretty good
satisfaction, and you have frost.
The effect is stasis. You can't move right.
However, you're free to take Dash or take action that moves
them, which is interesting. So you can't stride,
essentially. But yeah, it says can't stride,
but you can't dash, you can't pay for.
Movement. I like that.
I don't hate it.
Yeah, I think I like. Being forced to use a resource
again, anytime there's a choice mechanic that goes in and
resource management falls into that.
I don't mind that. Yeah, because that's effect.
Yeah, it shouldn't necessarily. I mean, you get like, plus one
thing or you get plus one damage.
Being able to be like you have to use your fucking blood to
even just move around. I really enjoy that actually.
Yeah, I think giving them the choice.
I think I do like that. Yeah.
Next one is the elements of the chronic and the status is
rotting. You'll take two damage +2 damage
whenever you lose HP. So it's like whenever you hurt,
you hurt more. I love that the last one is
going to be infernal and infernal.
It's going to be burning. You take 3 damage every time you
deal or deal or attempt to deal damage to another unit.
Yeah, that. Those are the the LD 6
distinctive status effects and their associated elements.
I do. I'd like them a lot.
I do really enjoy. I do like it, I actually it's a
probably more solid part. I'd like to see something
elements expanded in use a little bit more, but something.
So next we get to outside the room exploration.
This is interesting. And again, we have opinions.
So outside the room exploration, there's a paragraph here that
says you're outside the room and you explore.
So I'm gonna skip that. So stat checks the basics,
right? So we still haven't got to any
type of like character creation thing which is like at the very
end which solidifies my preferred thing which is run
down to the basics, character creation and then full
mechanics. For this one, I'm definitely OK
with it, so. They have the characterization
all the way at the end, yes, I guess.
I don't know as I am told all the things I could possibly do
in a room. I guess I'd like to know my
stats that I could do them with, yeah, but.
I guess it doesn't matter that much anyway, though, so this
doesn't. None of that matters for in the
room, because expiration outside the room is completely
different. So outside the room, challenging
tasks are resolved using stat checks.
Stat. Check.
Works the way all stat checks in every game fucking do if there's
no interest and consequence don't roll.
So you have 4 stats. You have strength, decks,
vitality, and magic. It's exactly what you think they
all are. And then slayers are rolled 2D6
and the total has to be two D6 plus stat.
If the total meets or exceeds the task difficulty, it is a
success. If not, the slayers failed.
So it's not a make success, it's just 2D6 with set difficulties.
Double sixes demonized as a crit and 11 snake eyes is a fail.
There are edge and threats Slayers can leverage Experience
in the characters, history, items, allies, simple narrative
stuff to get an edge which gives him plus one per edge per roll.
Likewise, the Overlord can do a threat which is a -, 1 per roll,
and then there is a partial success.
Partial failure rolling success part, which is interesting.
So whenever Slayer rolls only one or two below the task
difficulty, they will only receive a partial failure.
I love that it's partial failure not partial success because I
think it's very specifically partial failure.
Partial failures can either provide success with
consequence, example a door's unlocked but the door has been
loudly broken, or a failure without consequence.
As in a magical trap is left intact, but it's not triggered.
I see that as like you either like stepped on the track but
like the magic had dissipated or something like that.
But it's it's interesting. I do like the idea of like a
failure without consequence, like I was trying to do
something. You didn't do it but batshit
didn't happen. Is a really interesting way to
look at like the make success part.
I think it's interesting. And then for every two points
that a Slayer rolls above the difficulty, you get a rolling
success, which adds an additional bonus.
So this provides Overlords with the opportunity to drop
additional rewards. So while translating an ancient
text, they gain a consumable spell or they aid the other
Slayers. So you succeeded by more than
two getting through a booby trapped hallway so you can guide
your allies through it Again, Interesting.
I like it. I dig it.
There are difficulties at the top.
It's a one through 12 table. I don't know why it would be a
roll table for difficulties. I feel like you would just pick
it. There's too many on here for me,
you know. Oh.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's too many, there's. 123 is inconsequential, 4 to 5
inconsequential. We're not wrong.
Like if it does, if there the consequence does not matter to a
thing, then. Yeah, it's.
It literally says overlords should avoid having Slayer's
roll for such checks. My issue with this is not the
table or that there's too many, it's just that just take off the
word roll. It's that you pick the I guess
you know. What I mean like you pick the
difficulty as the Overlord, this is.
I don't mind these examples. I think there's a great list of
examples slowly through. But you don't have to roll for
the difficulty. You just pick the difficulty and
they roll against it. So there's inconsequential,
simple, challenging, daunting, insane, and hellish.
So again, like, I don't mind the list, it's just, it doesn't, you
know, well, why would you ever roll on the list to choose the
difficulty in someone's rolling against?
I think it's just I think it is defaulted as probably like a
like a let me drop this thing in here and the role does happen to
stay on it, you know? Yeah, I like, listen, I the more
games we go through the less I like targeted like DCS you know?
Yes, so hate them when I do like them.
I like them when there's like 3 that they're like here are the
three, you know, Tom Goons does that.
What was I just reading? Ultraviolet Grasslands.
The system in Ultra light grasslands does the same thing.
It's like there's there's three difficulties, like one of these
three. Here's The thing is, I, I I just
prefer a game that if you're gonna have a set difficulty,
obviously you know me, I like mixed success, but if you're
gonna pick a difficulty, I prefer games that just.
Pick one and then the mechanics are built around trying to get
to that number. So for example like Merck Borg
12 everything is a fucking 12 and if you want to modify that
you give advantage or disadvantage Boons Baines like
you can tweak it still but the you take the average plus a
little bit and just go with that like best left buried or like
over the Blues. All that it's 2:00 to 6:00, but
I think it's like I think it's a nine that you have to hit to a
nine on on all of the things so. The thing I like about it most
is that it takes away the sometimes possibly adversarial
nature of the DM choosing what they're picking.
And I do enjoy this. It has like a +, 2, -, 2 system.
Because there's so many times where I'm I was DM 5E and I'm
like, I'm going to pick 15 and they're all 14 and RAW.
You just go fail, you know? And I'm like, well, fuck like
that. I do like this guy.
There, you know or or go himbo style, you know.
Yeah, yeah, like, I like going to obviously, I just moved.
We're at tangent. But I'm going to this like like
little queer comic book and tabletop game store.
And I'm like, hey, because they just have like advanced lovers
and lesbians, except the 30 store lesbians, the new one, the
the advanced. They had both.
And I was like, hey, have you ever thought about getting
Hambos of Miss and Nebel by Max Leather?
And they're like, no, that sounds awesome.
I'm like, yeah, you should, you should, you should get it.
It's like, it totally fits this space.
So. Yeah, represent birthing, giving
birth to a Slayer to come. Right out of your uterus.
The first bit just says that slayers can be.
It can be all different types of people from anywhere at.
Any point in time. Perfect.
Who gives a fuck? Listen, if your game has racial
bonuses, fuck right off. Like, yeah.
So you. Might let me change it.
You change it real quick. Anyone that gets mad about how
other people play their, like bourgeois race war game from the
70s can fuck right off, you know, You know?
Oh God, that's so dark. You're so.
Excited. You should.
You should go get fantastic Mutable Campaigns for Marsha B
Traverse Fantasy. Definitely check this out.
I actually haven't gone through that, so.
It's so good. I just got mine today
physically. But if you're in chat, check it
out. It is literally free on the
Traverse Fantasy It's page and at Costa Lulu.
Buy it. Read the last page.
Have fun. That's an incredibly funny take.
But yeah, yeah, I don't know how to bounce back from that.
Yeah, rolling stat bonuses. So this is a stat bonus game.
You roll 4D6, that's one for each stat, and you assign the
whatever the stat bonuses. So if you roll A2, the stat
bonuses 0. If you roll A5 or 6 + 2 to each
individual stat. The stats obviously are not
listed here. They're actually listed the page
above, which I guess if you're. It's still the same.
Yeah, it's still the same page. Yeah, I did the same thing where
I was like, man, I wish the stats were out here.
I was like, it's literally the thing right above this.
Yeah, whatever. I still think put them next to
the rolling stats part, but whatever.
Yeah, I agree. Yeah, so I yeah, ensure that the
Slayers are aware of the importance of their damaged
stat, and that each Slayer has at least 1 + 2 stat.
I'm not, I'm not making sure they have 1 + 2 stat.
Listen, if you roll a piece of shit who's got a bunch of
negative ones and zeros, you're playing them.
I actually really like the way that these stat bonuses are
determined. Is there another way you have to
like this? The roll.
So, like, maybe maybe I'm just making it more complicated in my
head, 'cause it's. Because they suck at Matt.
Oh sorry, took out the sneeze out for those in the podcast in
video broadcast for the win. So like you're not rolling 3D6
per stat and then like getting a bonus, you're rolling 1D stat
and whatever you roll determines directly the bonus.
I guess it's the same you just rolling last die.
But for some reason on my head I'm like, I really liked that
you like. You go Strength, you go 1D6.
OK, I rolled A3. All right, that's a plus one for
some reason, I don't know, Calendar point.
If you're going to put in here, make sure each Slayer has at
least 1 + 2 stat. Don't make them roll.
Give them a spread. Yeah, you gotta agree with that
completely. A plus 2A1 and two zeros or
whatever, yeah. I completely agree with that.
I would definitely be like, no, you get what you get.
That sucks for you. Yeah, totally.
I mean, that's how you know making characters like death in
space, like where you have to do the mechanic where you like.
Like before, when is D4? Yeah, you're gonna get I.
Love it. I love it too.
I'm gonna see shit hole characters and but like
personally, whenever I play someone who's a total piece of
shit that's gonna die, I'm like, this is a blast for me.
You know, I think it's different too though.
Death in Space versus just like Tactical War horde comic.
You kind of need stats. And I think an array would
actually probably like just I I wouldn't mind just being like,
OK, let me take off the left side of that rule table again.
OK, you get a -, 1, a 0 + 1 and a + 2.
Exactly like you said, just have that as an array and then just
go with that. Yeah, yeah or whatever like.
But I yeah, I definitely think a salary for this.
It would be beneficial, especially if you're really it.
Like it says like make sure that they have at least 1 + 2.
It's like well then just give it.
Give them that. Yeah, there are some other stats
as well. There is Insight.
So this world holds many ancient unseen things.
Mysterious horrors and truths that are unfathomable to
comprehend and may even break the mind.
A Slayer's Insight reflects their awareness of the truths
and may only be raised or lowered by the Overlord.
Interesting stat speed, which is your movement.
Basically it's it's three plus your decks.
Your dexterity stat. Makes sense to me.
Max HP, which Slayers cannot normally overheal.
He'll pass this Max Max HP. Max HP is equal to 12 plus AD 6
plus players. Vitality stat bonus, which I
don't know, that's another one to me it's like so your stat,
but vitality bonus is either. It just seems like such a
negligible number. We're talking about like 12 plus
D6 plus maybe like A1 or A0 or A2.
You know what I mean? Like it doesn't seem like.
What do I what do I get from adding that Vitality stat bonus?
I mean, the difference between a -, 1 and a + 2 could be death.
You know, that's a three-point. Yeah, that is, that is fair.
I mean just next to like a 12 plus D6, it seems like very
minor. I think it's just interesting
that becau it's not like if it's 12 plus.
Your vitality stat, that makes sense to me because you could
either be 11 or 14, but because you have a random number in
there, it almost takes away. Because you could like roll low
and have high or roll high and have low and it really like
equals itself out a little bit. I mean, I don't mind it.
I mean it could be a little bonus for you or you could just
go, damn, that's one less, you know but you know at the same
time, you're right. But like it it it, it does have
like a fiddliness. But I also think it could be
like trying to give every stat A derive stat.
That's kind of where I where I was at with that.
But I will also say that Insight is not is not like a like is not
derived from anything you know. And then there's sin, which is
just calculates the weight of the Slayer's soul and the eyes
of the church, the holy hymn, which just cool to read out
loud. Yeah, it is the omnipresent
guilt that weighs even on non believers and can be weaponized
and certain by certain enemies. So sin is equal to two plus D6
plus your magic bonus stat. I will say that hit me as
blasphemous. So fucking hard.
And I love it so much. Yeah, yeah, another weird like
A2 plus AD six. I mean, at least this time I'm
like, OK, well, if you have a + 1 and you have a two and AD 6
like another plus one's great, you know, yeah, sin can be
increased at the old Lord's discretion.
Whenever slayers are found to be at odds with the church's
doctrine, each Slayer begins their journey with two D 6 * 10
gold worth. Sorry, gold worth of all gotten
gains for the purpose of a shorter game of demon crawl.
This is all that's required. You're done.
And this is the shortest game it's going to be.
Because this is the quick start, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so for the for the purposes of the quick start guide, they
do not have motives or feats or like I think there was like a
it's a background equipment or something like that.
Yeah, next is bearing the burden of the Overlord.
A lot of this is the room sheet stuff.
So basically. Stay on the burn of the Overlord
is to bring an untold suffering and joy upon their slayers.
I love the way this is all written.
It's great. It's in like an Infel font,
which is very, you know, thematically edgy.
It's great, but basically you're you're the Overlord.
You know the lore is out there, there's some names and stuff.
I think in the campaign there will be more, which I think is
interesting. There's a whole thing for
performing towns where towns are similar to dungeons, which I you
know could like or not like. There's a little blurb here on
the side about exploration is intentionally structured to
allow for overlords to cater their Crips to their Slayers
interests. OK, there's the room sheet,
which we'll go over in just a second and then there.
OK, so this, this is where I'm I'm scrolling for those that
can't see me scrolling. This next two or three pages is
the part where it gets very, very finicky and tactical.
And I think puts a lot of burden on to the Overlord in a way that
I have an opinion on at the end. So going over the room sheet,
basically for those that can't see it, it's it's a, it's a,
it's a sheet of paper. Imagine 8 1/2 by 11 paper turn
sideways, split it in half and there's eight parts to this,
right? So section one, Name, Depth, and
Lore. Section 2 is creep spawn table.
Section 3 is the solo spawn table.
Section 4 is the boss stat block.
Section 5 is a boss and room table loot.
Section 6 is the room loot. Section 7 is the spawn tracker.
Section 8 is the extra room rule.
So it does look as complicated as it sounds.
For those listening, I will say I really loved this game.
But it took me like 3-4 tries to actually be able to sit down and
parse this room sheet because as soon as my little, my little
ADHD brain saw this sheet, I closed the dock and said not
today I did pretty much. I'm gonna be honest with you, I
I, like, got through one of the sections of it and I was like,
I'm good. I'm, I'm fine.
We'll talk about this on the show.
It's it's it's not just that there's a lot on there.
It is the layout itself. It is unkind to read.
It reminds me of like a classic RPG, like stat, like info, you
know? And yeah, not like like.
Strokemaster. Yeah, like actual hold games.
How they're reading. You're just reading.
You're like, what the fuck? So here's The thing is, it's
very dense. I will say that.
But once you do read it, it's definitely not as bad as it
looks. No, it's the layout though, it's
the layout of it. I just don't know what you would
do. How would you lay out this
amount of information differently?
Besides making 2 pages? I would do something I don't
know I. Don't know, I don't mind it, but
honestly, like you could probably make the room layout
part smaller. You're not playing on this
sheet, It's just a reference. Yeah.
Anyway, so let's run through this real quick.
So section One name Death and Lore.
It's really interesting. It is the name of the dungeon,
and it is a cool little blurb about the dungeon.
We'll go over a room sheet later where we actually like look at
the room sheet. Section 2 is a creep spawn
table, so they deduce the result of each creep spawn roll as well
as the stats for each unit type. The mob name is italicized.
Actually. Do I have this specific sheet?
I'm looking at the Garrison right now.
Oh, this is depth level one. And yeah, I downloaded depth
level 2, so it's still the same thing on the top.
So basically, yeah, Section 2 is the creep spawn table, so
there's a list of D6 creeps and all of their stats, like
everything. It's got the name, it's got the
stats, it's got the the like the abilities, like the status
effects, like all that for each of the creeps.
And in Section 3. Like special rules, everything
like that. Special Section 3 is the solo
spawn table. Same thing, size, damage,
everything. Section 4 is the boss stat
block. It's exactly what you think.
It is already said that part. Section 5, the boss and room
loot table is another for room loot or the boss loot table.
There's AD 6 and then for the room loot table.
What does that say? It says D6 as well.
Oh, it's just a series. It's just a series of roles.
So instead of like 6 different things, it's three different
things and it's like 123-4345 and six.
So the room loot is a smaller list.
The spawn tracker is one I didn't really quite understand.
The spawn tracker simply tracks how many units of each kind are
spawned on each consecutive enemy turn.
Remember the first pawn, blah blah blah.
For the purpose of the quick start guide, difficulty is
simple. Is simply equal to the number of
slayers in a room, so I guess that makes sense.
Unit spawn for difficulty. Yeah, so it it.
So that's just a change potentially.
That's your modifiers for spawn and stuff.
OK, And then the extra room rule, if there are any
additional rules. And on this one, the additional
rule. Let's look at the Garrison here
it says the dead are pot. No, that's just a quote.
Anyway, maybe it's maybe it's a rule written in like a a A.
Oh yeah, Are you? Which part of the Garrison are
you looking at? I'm on depth two.
I don't have on that one you're looking at.
Depth two as well, yeah. Yeah.
So maybe it's just a quote. Yeah.
Yeah, I I didn't see depth one in mind.
So yeah, here's the thing, it's it's a lot to parse.
It's a shit load to parse. And then there are stat saves
which are different. Which I don't understand why a
variety of Demonic Abominations and Horrific Machinations
require Slayers to make a stat save.
It is important to know that stat saves are different than
out of room stat checks. When rolling a stat save,
Slayers will only roll a single D6 and then add their stat
bonus. The Slayers total must equal or
be greater than the stat saves requirement, otherwise they
suffer the failure penalty. I mean, it's 2% save, right?
But. Not a fan.
Don't let two separate mechanics for the same shit it.
It's just hard. I mean, so I was reading this
and, you know, I'm in Oregon, which is a legal state now.
And so I might have been, you know, partaking as I was reading
this. And I got to this part and I was
like, Oh my God, it's one more thing.
It's a different thing. It's just no.
There's just no reason. And the other thing too that's
really not. And also, this is such a weird
place to put it, like we already went over all the combat actions
and stuff that you do in a room. So put this up in the room, like
in that section. You know what I mean?
I guess it's part of a room, but it's also not like it's not part
of the room. It's the mechanic of actually
being in the fight. So put it up there.
Gosh, common room. There's terrain, there's walls,
there's pits, there's doors, there's rubble, there's chests,
there's mimic chests, all of which have different mechanics
for like breaking them down or crossing and stuff like that.
I'm not going to go over all of that right now.
This is where it starts to get like the nitty, the real nitty
gritty bit of like how much HPA door has and stuff like that.
Fine. Necessary for this thing.
Not necessary for this game. Totally OK for that rule to
exist in my opinion. There's a Hell Forge hacking
demon cross section, which realistically is not so much
like. It's a little bit of guidance on
how like how to make your spawns in a.
Mostly non mechanic way, which I think you need some much more
mechanic help, but it's just like one of your creep types
should be a blood generator that deals little damage and spawns
large crowds. That to me isn't helpful at all
because I got that from saying what the creep was, you know
what I mean? So, like, this is, I think this
is the thing that maybe like in a campaign thing makes sense,
putting it into like a big GM section and having a little bit
of like GM guidance, whatever. But yeah.
I don't think that there's enough enough here.
Like I would not sit down and make a room with the amount of
information I have here. Yeah, yeah, the future of Demon.
Karl Gothic basically says Eventually they would like it to
be fleshed out into a full hex crawl with unlockable slayers,
diverse of cows. Rules for progression, building
a town, fishing basically make the rest of the game.
And I would love to see that. And maybe there would be Demon
Cross 6666, which is a future hellish technology full of rip
gates and stuff. I don't know if that's ever
going to become a thing. Apparently.
I was chatting with Sandra a little bit and we'll see.
I would love to see future hell. Here's the thing about tech.
You know I don't love tech. If I'm if I'm going to do tech,
I want it to be far space and the best far space.
Tech is like hell. Tech what?
What? What's the movie?
Where the Ship Goes through Hell.
Event Horizon. Love it.
Greatest Thing ever. Best sci-fi like give me hell if
you're going to give me space. So there is a the final Woe with
Intro to Waleria, which I really love.
Read it. It's 3 paragraphs I couldn't
read right now. Or am I going to?
It's a really cool, fun little intro into the world of Waleria,
which is where all of this stuff happens and where the Church of
the Holy Hymn prepares the final woe before like, all hell breaks
loose. Basically.
I love it. It's fantastic.
The Lord is dope. I would love to see a whole
campaign with more of this stuff in it.
It's really good. I really dig it.
I really like that part. There's an author's note here
that I'm also not going to read, where it talks about a lot of
stuff which is interesting to read.
And then that's it. That is.
Do you? Want to look at a Slayer sheet
before we really wrap it up? Because we didn't look at a
Slayer sheet. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,
yes, yes, yes. So so this is the dungeon guide
sheet. So I guess when you get a dunge,
so I got this. So basically you have a dungeon
guide and you have the number of depths in it.
So on top of the very convoluted, in my opinion, room
sheet, this guide sheet goes to your like, town, town, ambience.
Some major characters in town, merchants like rumors that
you'll find. I really like this.
I don't see any reason this has to be on one sheet.
I don't see any reason why this can't be.
It's very dense. My, my take, my take away from
this is the layout is a nightmare for me.
Like all the little boxes, I'm just like with a little bit of
with a with a little bit of like the the, the, the, like the the
blurb pops in the corner. You know, like my brain shuts
the fuck right off. That's what I'm saying.
Like pages, pages have both front and back.
Can you please just put half this information on the back?
I will say I do love this. The the corpse starved wolf dog
writer, a singed husk of metal and machinery, sits atop the
rotting reanimated corpse of an armored wolf dog.
She bears the Crest of Sandberg's chief physician and
carries a sack full of corpses, some regal, others pedestrian.
She can be heard in Sandberg's halls raving about a cure to a
plague and cheating death itself if discovered.
Her lab is full of grotesque experiments, filled with
forbidden tones on Soul binding and demon summoning.
Another corpse. Another corpse.
The cure. The cure, my king.
I shall finally, finally find the cure.
This is the corpse beast. So fucking cool there's.
Definitely some really great lore in this, you know?
Yeah, really, really good. And then, like you said, let's
look at a Slayer sheet. Oh, which one did I download?
I downloaded the Ragged Warrior 'cause I always find Warrior
Human Fighter to be the easiest stat block to go through, and if
you thought it was gonna be just as convoluted as all the rest it
is. It is like you still.
It's not actually like like everything else.
It's not even really that crazy when you read it.
It's really just how it's laid out, you know?
Yeah, it makes it super. It's just like everything with
fucking ADHD. Like it makes my laundry pile
look really big, but I realize when I get to the laundry room,
it's all just one load anyway. You know what I mean?
Like, it's not that bad once you get in there, but looking at it
from the outside, it's so it's so much.
This is also a lot of information for.
Players and a lot of the rules are restated here, which I kind
of like sometimes, but like. On this one, I mean, I think
maybe my biggest take away for this one is like current hit
points and current blood. Like, I don't need a list for
that. Just make a blank open spot and
they can fill it in as they go. Yes, that's So what Hunter
saying for those in podcast land is it goes to 30 and there's
actually listed boxes, numbers one all the way to 30 as if
you're going to like put a token on it when you could literally
just have one box that's empty and you just write what you have
in it and do the same thing for your blood too.
I don't mind the blood is much because you can kind of like use
a slider or whatever for it. But like, you don't need it
though. Current blood versus Max blood,
current HP versus Max HP can fit in one little box just like
healing bread and just like blood tonic and stuff like that.
Like you don't need that and it it really muddies up the layout
a lot. I do like all of the art that
are on all of the slur sheets, so I think they're fantastic.
Yes, but on each sheet you have name and trait.
You have all your stats, you have a section of what you look
like, you have feats. Here's The thing is it gives you
your look and act and and stuff like that already.
OK, It gives you some background like quotes and bonus bio stuff
already. The stuff that you carry, like
gear that doesn't count towards you.
You get your inventory grid. At the bottom there's the rule
for death. At the bottom you get your
class. There's all of your rest
actions, your combat passives, your talents.
All of the Slayer actions are The elemental status effects are
listed on here too. The Blood Shop is listed on here
too. I again, I feel like half the
sheet doesn't need to be here because the entire right?
Well no, it literally doesn't. That's the thing.
This is a spread. There's a black bar down the
middle. Everything on the right outside
of your current and Max hit points is just reiterated rules.
I'm realizing that right now. So only, yes, this mass effects
everything. Yeah, yeah, it's.
The actual character sheet is literally just half, which makes
my brain parsed this much easier.
But I'll tell you what, if you had given me this in two pages
versus one giant page with the line down the middle, I could
approach this a lot more easily. I still think the like hit
points, blood healing bread and blood tonic I need over on the
first page. Yes, I agree.
I agree 100%. If you put that on the other
page and then just had the entire Backpage be a quick rules
reference, I love it. I think that's great.
So it's not as bad as it's not as bad.
Like I said, it's not as bad as it looks, but I will say
straight up, a lot of the way that all of the information is
laid out on the on the, the sheets, room sheets, like all
those things, fuck it makes your brain, it makes my brain hurt,
OK? And that's, I think that's it.
I think that's the game, right? That's the game.
OK, so we're gonna kick over to the review scores.
We are gonna review this. But here's here's the thing,
Here's my opinion before we even review this.
Or do you want me to give it to you after?
No, I want it now. OK, so this is 2 games.
OK, and I think both of them are good and should be split apart
into two games. Yeah, there we go.
I was going to say they're actually, I I think it's two
games and they're both OK and would thrive if they were split
into two different games. But here's the thing, here's the
thing, here's the thing. If you take out, if you take out
exploration completely, status effects, blood skulls, all of
that stuff, and make a game and then you just turn combat into
regular combat, like bad guys come out, you kill them, things
like that. I think that would be a dope
fucking awesome Grim dark, really fun game with some
interesting, cool mechanics to it, right?
Yeah. The other game, The Room Game,
is a tabletop game. Have you ever played Escape the
Dark Castle? No, This.
And here's the every anything could be a TTRPG.
You just role play with it, right?
Right. I think when I read through the
combat rules. The board game.
The Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But like the escape that our castle is like an adventure game
where like it kind of reminds me a little bit of, like marching
order. But marching order definitely
lets you like RP a lot more. But like, right, you, you know
how it like you like, you don't really play marching order.
You don't make your own marching order.
You wait for more marching order because the way it's written,
like it's designed for you to play like solo, but you can play
with other people, right? I think this is the same thing.
I think that as a tabletop game, not a tabletop role-playing
game, it's a tabletop game. You go OK, like all you have to
do is not roll for stats, have the stat array on your your
ragged warrior, because it's literally the only thing that's
not already listed there. You pick a card, a big card that
has all of your This is my Slayer card.
And then the Overlord goes, OK, we're playing Fugue Dungeon, and
the Fugue Dungeon comes with five big cards that they turn
over right? And then they set out their
chess board and go, OK, I put my exit token down, I put my wall
tokens down. I'd lay it out like like kind of
in the way, you know how you do. Like, what's that Spy versus spy
game where you try to, like, figure out each other's words or
whatever, and it gives you like a little card that has like the
layout of which ones are the blue ones and which ones are the
red ones. Fuck, what is that game called?
It doesn't matter. Code names.
I've heard of that. You know how there's like oh OK
well anyway so anyone in podcast land code names gives you a
little card and then that card tells you what the grid is
actually on the grid. That's literally all you would
have to do is like the room sheet goes to the overlord and
it just comes pre made like that.
Because I can't imagine making a whole dungeon, putting this much
into it, Like making 6-7 room sheets for the entire dungeon.
And until there's way more campaign information, I think
there's really it's. It'd be really difficult to
parse this in a way that's intended by the creator.
But if you made the whole grid combat a tabletop game where
it's all just handed to you as cards and stuff like that, yeah,
and tokens. And then you pulled out like
make a different combat system, but pull out everything else
into a standard TTRPG. Both games, in my opinion, would
be sick as fuck, but together. Would much prefer this like the
room game as like a tabletop non role-playing game.
Like, I think I really would prefer that.
Like when you get a box set and you set stuff out and you have
like little figurines for all your dudes and just like that's
the game. It feels much more like a
skirmish game or a tabletop game to me.
Yeah, like an almost like a more of a forbidden Psalm.
Because forbidden Psalm. You can totally run as a TTRBG,
but it doesn't pretend it's not a scrimmage game.
No, it doesn't. And and that's why it is
continues to be amazing. So fucking good.
Yeah. And it's just it just, I don't
know, I think it could be an amazing dungeon delving tabletop
adventure game. Also go look at Escape the Dark
Castle. I have everything they've ever
made for it. It's fucking amazing and I think
you'd love it. There's the sci-fi version too,
but as soon as I read through that comment section, I was
like, man, this would be a fucking sick companion game to
like Escape the Dark Castle. Not that it'd be like that it
would go together, but that it would they would sit on the same
shelf side by side and be fucking amazing again.
I love tactical TTRPGSI think this one crosses the line to me
from TRPG into combat. Being like pure tactics, I don't
see where I'm going to role play at all, especially considering
half my actions are free actions I don't even talk to the GM
about. Yeah, you know what I mean.
So I I super agree that's my opinion.
This feels like 2 games, one of which is the tabletop adventure
game and one of which is the tabletop role-playing game, and
both would be sick to get their all the exploration stuff feels
tacked on. All right.
I, I my opinion coming out of this was that all the
exploration stuff feels tacked on.
So we're very much on the same page, so.
Review scores for Demon Crawl Gothic visuals How are you
feeling about visuals in this one?
Buddy and I have a question. Actually I have AI have a
identical question. Do the Slayer sheets and room
sheets count towards this? Yeah, I'm going to say.
I'm going to say all of that shit counts as the game.
Yeah, so visuals in the car. So for those that are also
listening, we're reviewing this like a scene.
So it's only three scores with Max of 10 points each.
So it's a Max of 30 instead of normal Max of 50.
So visuals is all of it visually, which means layout and
what it looks like and everything.
So the problem is the art that is here, which is the cover
which is stunning, the there's a lot of, we didn't go over how
much there is here, but there's like like 8 Slayer sheets.
There's a lot. There's several different.
Players like players. She'd think there's there's more
character classes in this that you than you would get normally.
I mean any I I expect a three and I really think there are
like 7 or 8 of them. There are, Yeah.
You were correct. Yeah.
So the art on that is great. The one piece, Yeah, yeah.
The one piece on each one, yeah, Yeah.
So there's not a ton of art through the entire thing, which
is fine. It's an unfinished quick start.
It's basically an ash can. If this is just called an ash
can, I'd feel very differently about it I.
I I, you know, it's so funny. It's like I would, I was
thinking that at some point yesterday and I was like, yeah,
this is this, this is an ash can.
They just don't call it that. So I think there's a lot of
pluses and I think the art is cool.
I think the layout through the normal document is fine.
There's nothing on it that really bothers me.
I don't feel like it's a lot of walls of text even, and it's not
gridded and stuff. It's Infel.
It's not Cambria or Ariel or or something like that.
I think it's it's fine. I think the art is good and I
think that the room sheet layouts and all all of that
stuff hurts hurts my brain, yeah.
They're they're like, God, why don't they make some little
fucking boxes? It's too dense.
It is like I said, if it was
just a table top game and that was just the Overlords.
Like there's like I even imagine the box being able to like flip
over and have a grid on the back of the box.
Yeah, totally something. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I totally did. Like it is definitely more that
game than you know role-playing, but having like a little stand
for the Overlord to have that sheet in front of them and then
have everything run off that sheet.
I I'm fine with the information being that dense as a temple top
role-playing game that could easily split into like 2 plus
pages because you don't need all of it that small on one single
individual page, you know what I mean?
So the layout hurts my face. Yeah.
All right. So what do you thinking for?
I think there's pluses and minus.
What do you think for visuals? I think in visuals, for me, man,
plus and minus, it's a 5. Yeah, I agree.
I think. I think any pluses are kind of
like outweighed by minuses. Yeah, but again, you know, if
this was a full thing, I'm sure there'd be more art.
And the artists that they did choose are fantastic, Totally
rule set. This is hard because which one
are we reviewing? Then I mean, I think that in and
of itself is a detracting factor.
Like which one are we reviewing? I think that there's two really
good games in here somewhere. And I think that they're
stepping on each other's toes to get out.
You know, I like a lot of the mechanics and I like the choice
mechanic. I like how blood is used and how
later on it's referenced. Like, even like the status
ailments where it's like, oh, you can't move unless you spend
that spendable resource to move. My God, that's good.
That's good. So I mean, I'm I'm.
I think I'm out of five. I think I'm way higher than A5.
And here's why. Because, because I think.
Here's how I feel. Tell me how you feel.
There's not really a mechanic in here at all.
Beginning to end mechanics, not game, but just like mechanics
where I'm like, I don't, I don't like that there's very few, you
know, like stat saves versus stat checks.
But again, that's two different games.
You know what I mean? Like, so I love.
I love blood and skulls. I love the corpse beast.
I love the status of a skull is really good Of the lore maybe.
I'm a lore, actually. I love all of that.
The part I don't like, I love all of all of that.
The part I'm not as big a fan of is the room combat.
And it's mostly just because like there's this.
It's just it's a different. Like it's a different.
It's just. A different game?
Yeah, I don't know. I think individually, if I were
to look at this as two different games like this would easily be
like a seven or eight for me because I think one or the other
is really, really fantastic. It's not two different games
though, and I think I think I I've changed to a six.
Like, I think here's I think it's an amazing set of mechanics
that makes a convoluted game. Yeah.
Yeah.
So, yeah. I mean, yeah, I think, I think 6
is harsh, but I think it's where it's at.
Like, I don't think I think that the sum is less than its parts.
You know what I mean? Yes, absolutely.
Versus versus saying that the sum is greater than its parts.
I think the sum is less. Than its parts, I think.
Yeah, I got you. I did, actually.
Yeah. This is for Podcast Line.
Yeah, I think. I think individually.
I think I love so much of this game, but actually sitting down
and and and imagining playing it as written, my brain would not
work like I did, like it literally would not function and
I feel like I would have to be flipping two different switches
for two different parts of the game.
When does this rule come in? Like are we stats checks?
Are we saves right now Like the room is done?
There's it's just. It's just, I just can't get over
the fact that like once I told my brain that was two different
games. I just did this.
Two different games, but both of which are great.
But together it just, I don't know, vibes.
For me, vibes are fucking high as fuck on this.
Vibes are pretty good, you know, I think the lore that's in here
is good. I'd like to see it expansion
upon, but there's some good little nugs in there.
You know, I I'm vibes for me, I'm sitting at.
I mean, there's not a lot of art to vibe with, but like the
little, yeah, but that's that's that's mostly individuals.
I know it helps. But here's the thing.
Here's the thing. I'm I'm higher than that because
we can go back and look at what your face looked like when blood
and skulls popped up. Yeah, we can go back and look at
what your face looked like when we described the corpse beast.
You know, we can look like even the elemental effects where
we're like, yes, stasis, using blood for dash, the blood.
Like, to me, as far as like, just pure vibes.
Like, I know that, like, it's hard to go, OK, it's two games,
and that part annoys me. But if I just go, damn, look at
that cover. Fucking blood skulls.
That's one of the coolest thing ever.
Course piece. One of the coolest things ever.
Like I want to sit down and play this game.
I think it would break my brain, but like I want to sit down and
play this game hard. And Waleria, I know I'm more of
an edge lower than you. So like the actual lore part of
it, like the the the Church of the Holy Hymn and the final wool
and all this stuff for me and we can meet in the middle if we
need. I'm at least an aid on vibes
just because of how. Vibey the game is and and the
way the rules are written reinforce it and blood and
skulls being mechanic share the. 7 on this one, I'm down for that
at least. Yeah, I think that's at least a
seven. I do think the other thing to do
bring down the vibes, because it really comes down to like how
bad you want to play the game. And I don't want to play this
that bad. Actually, I want to.
I want to play either or both of these games.
Yeah, I think if divided out, I would actually enjoy both of
these a lot more. But like it's current saying I'm
like I'm I. I'm probably not gonna read this
again unless they release another version and I'll go
through it. All right, so we are at an 18th.
Which it to me this I don't know.
I personally love this game. I want to see it finished so I
can see. Because maybe we're maybe we're
missing parts that aren't there, you know what I mean?
Maybe there's so much more that really brings the two together
more. That's my hope.
You know maybe. But I genuinely, I I genuinely
think if you kept everything, took out the horde combat part
and and took like half of it into one game and parts of the
same half moved it into another game, you'd have two fucking
amazing games that I would play the shit out of.
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that's our opinion.
This is also one of the ones I wanted to talk about
specifically because of that thought in my head where I was
like damn, I would play this as a tabletop adventure game.
I can't believe you don't know Escape the Dark Castle because
this gives me so much vibe. For Escape the Dark Castle.
You'll definitely have to check it out and.
Escape the Dark Sector, the space version.
Get it pulled up right now. So it's good.
They're both really, really sick.
I would be like no one might be like I might just buy it right
now but I don't have a job so and it's expensive so so yeah so
that is the that is even Growl Gothic.
Again, I I love so much of this and and that's that's what I
want to say about it. I think this is fantastically
written. I think the mechanics are
ingenious and extremely well done.
I just think it kind of needs to figure out what it really wants
to be. I agree.
I like a lot about it. A lot.
It's not maybe quite as much my thing as it is yours, but I
still really like a lot of things about it.
I and I I think it needs some clarifying and dividing.
Yeah, cool. So that's it.
Definitely go check it out regardless.
Again, extraordinarily interesting mechanics, great to
read through Demon Crawl, Gothic, Sandro, ad dot, H dot
IO. Check them out also on Twitch at
Sandra May Cry. And you definitely, if you
really like the tactical aspects of this, you super, super, super
Want to check out Steel Hearts. I think one of the reasons Demon
Crawl Gothic is kind of on the back burner for the foreseeable
future is because of the amount of work that's being put in
Steel Hearts. And it's.
Really. That makes sense.
Fucking cool. So that's definitely a game that
we'll probably talk about at some point here on the stream.
Really, really fun. Interesting if you like mech
combat again, I think it's interesting mechanically.
Matt comment isn't my favorite thing with this definitely would
be like this as Hunters wheelhouse version.
This is my wheelhouse version. So when we get to that, we'll
we'll check it out. Maybe we'll see Sandro here on
the stream in the future going over Steel Hearts.
So find us at all of our stuff link tree at the weekly scroll.
Check out the rest of everything.
If you're listening right now and I actually get the episode
out by tomorrow, you definitely want to be here on Friday
because Adam Vasse will be rejoining us to play the game of
plunk death where we're going to die like crazy.
It's called no future. You can get it right now on the
Trick or Treat suite at worldchamp dot IO.
You absolutely want to because you get that sweet.
Let me just go to the full screen here.
This sweet trick or Treat grab bag with the World Champ logo on
it, a bunch of dope stickers. You even get little vampire
teeth and witch fingers and stuff with it, which is just
cute as fuck. But it's 5.
Full games of spooky horror goodness from World Champ.
They're amazing, and you'll see Adam running it for myself and
Hunter No Future on Friday here on the stream, and on Sunday
we'll be going over Hell Night. You may remember the creator
from War Plant, which is it actually won, I think like one
or not one. It was one of our top five games
visually and some other stuff in our first year interview.
So fun, interesting. We're gonna be going over with
hell night. Have a wonderful evening, you
all, because I'm rambling now and we'll see you all later.
Bye. Bye.