Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan. And I'm a song by Paul McCartney
and Stevie Wonder. What's the song by Palm Garden?
Stevie Winter. Ebony ivory, which it's perfect
for what we're about to talk about.
Oh, because it's like I'm wow, you went levels with that one.
I'm always, I don't think you guys listen if you're listening
to this, I think sometimes you guys don't appreciate the names
that I use that are like several levels deep of a joke.
You know what? We need to do is get famous and
get famous enough that someone puts out a wiki with an
explanation of every name you use.
But we're never gonna get famous enough because we swear too
much, our episodes are too long, and we don't promote ourselves
at all. Are we supposed to be doing
that? I mean, I don't know.
This is a hobby, and This is why we're not.
We do this for the love, and today for the love.
We are gonna be going over Macchiato monsters.
Macchiato Monster. A game that deserves a better
title. Oh my God, I don't disagree with
you. This is from Eric.
I'm going to say Newton printed from Lost pages.
Big Lost Pages lovers here on the show wanted to show off some
of the Lost Pages stuff that I have, including some new stuff
that literally just arrived. You just got new stuff.
I just got new stuff, first one Beyond the Pale from you I go.
This book is absolutely stunning great book I'm going to let's
turn off the blur for you guys in podcast line.
You don't give a shit about the blur, but for those on YouTube,
they. Might they might care.
Beyond the pale beautiful looking book.
Really, absolutely stunningly gorgeous.
It came with the patch the Zena of Jewish monsters magic and
mayhem as well and a whole bag of Jewish folklore magic bits
like nails and rocks and it smells delicious.
I it's been a long time since I had a box that smelled as good
as this one did before I opened it.
It's a lot of cinnamon. It's really good.
The other thing that just arrived as well is Wolf Wald.
Very excited for this. This is the Kickstarter that was
out actually before be on the pail.
I've been waiting for this for a while.
It's really fantastic. It's like 5 zines inside this
gorgeous box. One of my favorite things about
this box and for all those making boxes out there, see see
the front, see how it's beautiful for those in podcast
land, it's got this like 3 headed wolf situation on it,
some runic, you know, some Nordic rune riding on the top,
but on every edge it also has the logo.
Which means. However, I decide to put it on
my shelf, left, right, flat, whatever.
I get to see the logo. Diagonal.
Love that theoretically you can see it like twice if you
diagonal it. Hey, wow.
Hey, so this is how I'm going to start putting all my books so I
can see them twice. Other stuff from lost pages real
quick, a gift from Paolo was something I ordered before.
This is beautiful, yet lost. I got a couple more POD things
here. We got the the wonder and
wickedness. This you can actually get on
drop there. It's really fantastic.
And then also the Marvels and Malaysons, Malaysons.
But a book that's very reminiscent of Beyond the Pale
was the the book of Gob. Beautiful, stunning book.
Same style, same kind of like it's fabric, but not.
I really love this. Whatever it is I need to talk to
I need to talk to lost pages about this because my I love
fabric, but like I feel like as soon as I touch it on my I've
like I'm leave. I leave finger stuff on fabric.
Yeah, oily finger stuff. But you don't own this.
It it it feels really nice. I really like this.
I love that cover. Oh, the with the with the with
the six fingers. And it's like it's actually
embossed too. It's like deep in.
Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the Return the Slab guy from
Courage to Cowardly Dog return. The slab.
Yeah, I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then the last thing I have to show off from lost pages, we
got Cathonic Codex. This is dope box.
I spent too much to get one of these but I like lost pages so.
Money isn't real. Only the tabletop RPGs are real.
So. You, you don't listen.
You can't get married with money, but you can't get married
with a TT RPG collection. That's true.
Married. Married.
What did I say? Married doesn't matter with AB.
Yeah, anyway, Lost Pages made macchiato monsters.
We are going to be going over macchiato monsters.
One of the reasons we chose to go over macchiato monsters.
Well, actually the reason we chose to go over Whitehack, the
reason I made us go through Whitehack is so that we can do
macchiato monsters because I love this game.
I this is honestly, you know, we'll get into we'll, we'll,
we'll get into my feelings about it, But I really, really enjoyed
this game a lot. And, and it is called, it is
called, it's called Macchiato monsters.
It is so it is actually, it's, it's a mix of the black hack and
the white hack. And we'll get into what's called
macchiato monsters because they talked about it in the book.
What's interesting is now we'll get it when we get in there.
What what's your what's your what's your quick take on this
before we really do this? Game.
Good. Right, it's a lot.
The magic is good. I mean, you know, I'm I'm like,
I'm such a one trick pony, dude. Like I I'm so like single
minded. Like if you have good magic in a
game and it's also a D20 roll under, like I'm probably going
to like your game. And that's, that's, that's all
it takes for me. Also, like this brings back risk
dice, which are usage dice, which I always love.
And I love them implemented into a game as like a decision maker
for different things. I, I think it's cool, a way to
track stuff and the great utility.
But yeah, I think it, I think this is very cool.
Yeah. I also like the very open
endedness of like how like have like character concepts, which
Whitehack does really well, as much as I don't like reading
Whitehack, but I do like that it really holds on to that very
open-ended like character concept that you can build
yourself, you know? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I I I really love Macchiato monsters because we
talked about it on the end of the White Hack episode.
The only reason we you know, we primarily do NDTTRPGS, not that
like White Hack and Black Hack and and Apocalypse role aren't
like Indian theoretically. I mean outside of like 4
publishers, everything's indie if you go by money.
But like that's not what we're really talking about right?
But like a lot of the older games that we look at, we are
only looking at because so many of the games that are coming out
now are hacked from them. Like the PBTA is from Apocalypse
World and the forwards and the dark and blades and the dark and
stuff like that. We said that we are O and four
on reading the origin games of games we like because most of
them are written terribly. Horrendously.
Horrendously and it's not even that black hack is that bad,
it's that God I wish I had looked at black hack before 2 E
because I've said it over and over again like everyone tell
like 1 E if it was just a Zeem with the rules I would love the
shit out of the rule system. The the trying to make the a
solid rule system into a whole game failed in my opinion.
It didn't do well, yeah, but but Macchiato Monsters takes all the
best parts in my opinion of Black Hack and all the best
parts in my opinion of Whitehack and makes a really fantastic
game that is communicated extremely well and it's just
good. And we're going to go over it.
Prior to that, though, everyone out there, you got to get out
and vote, right? Get out and vote.
We got, we got we got to wreck the vote.
What did What did What did? Was it?
Was it P?
Diddy P?
And vote or die. Voter die vote like P Diddy but
not really anything else. Don't do anything else like P
Diddy. Yeah, but we're, we're, we're
talking about the innies. We're actually talking about the
innies, so. You thought we were talking
about politics. We're not.
We don't really talk about it on the show.
Yeah. We make we all make offhanded
commentary in there. Yeah, a cap.
But if there's any question on who we're not voting for, you
don't listen very well. But the innies.
The innies are happening. The voting opened last night.
We talked about it on the beginning of our White Hack
episode. A bunch of our friends and
previous guests we've had on the show are nominated Space
Penguin, Colin Lassoor Games, Omnivorous, The Luminal Horror
Crew, Black Oath. I mean, even like what?
And then like small publisher and stuff.
Like everyone we fucking know is on there, like me Castle and
everybody Tubes. So I encourage all of you to
vote. Even if you vote, don't vote for
the people that we suggest, even though you absolutely should.
Should listen to us. We're right, so.
Yeah, we are. We are correct.
But regardless, go vote. You know, awards are what you
make of them. So if you like something, go
vote so that bad things don't get a lot of votes and win
usually. Yeah, vote, vote.
We should, we should get a we should do a whole like rock the
vote. But like for TTRPGS thing with
like the sticker rolls and everything.
That'd be funny. Anyway, we're going to we're not
going to do that. We don't, we don't.
We're too lazy to even edit the podcast.
You think we're actually going to put effort into a fucking
bit? No, let's read this game.
Macchiato Monsters rules for adventurers in a dungeon verse
you build together a lost pages book.
Extra numero issue. So one thing about the lost
pages is they number all their stuff and I don't have some of
them. So I I need to figure out how to
find the ones that I don't have. But like Beyond the Pail, it
says issue 14. So this was an extra numero
issue from the lost Pages, which is the publisher.
They put out awesome stuff again, Chief Hackarista, so they
really OK, so all right, macchiato monsters.
Let's get it out of the way early.
This I. Listen, I love this game so
much, Eric, Eric Newton. I love it so much.
It's a terrible name. I just.
Have a really bad name? It's awful.
I was telling a friend. I'm not going to say who they
are, but this is like the second thing that I'm stealing from
them. With credit to Anonymous, I was
talking about how much I love this game and I said it was
called Macchiato Monsters and they said I want to I want to
make sure I quote this correctly that just sounds like some
monster fucker ROM com novel. And then sent me this picture.
And for those on the podcast land, just Google legends and
lattes from Travis Balder and you will see exactly what I
think when I think of macchiato monsters.
Yeah, very interesting choice in the name.
I mean, this is a really good game too.
It's a good game. Why don't we actually just
scroll? Well, let's scroll ahead real
quick, get this out of the way, and then we'll go back to the
beginning. There's some stuff, there's some
stuff, there's some stuff, whatever.
But then we're going to skip to what inspired Macchiato
monsters, as the name suggests. Parentheses.
Perhaps too subtly, Yes. Not perhaps very much too
subtly. Macchiato Monsters was
originally cobbled together in 2015 as an adaptation of The
Black Hack, with classes and magic system from White Hack,
both inspired by the original fantasy game, The Indie.
In the years of follow up, Macchiato Monsters became its
own thing through play, testing, experimenting.
Along the way, they drew from BX box sets Mold, Bay Marsh and
Cook into the odd Nanochrome. I don't know Nanochrome.
I want to read it though it sounds if it's if it's inspired
this game then I want to read it.
Maze Rats, obviously I love Maze Rats and Don Jon and K which is
another game I really want to check out and it does use the
LGL or the OGL which is the back of the book.
So I had I still didn't understand what this meant so I
talked to coffee people. Apparently a macchiato is just
like coffee and like cream or milk.
Yeah, milk. Yeah, so, so it's like, so it's
black and white. A macchiato is black and white
and coffee. Is brown, but whatever.
Yeah, well, I mean, I take, I mean coffee's, I mean, I guess I
mean it's black when I look, when I don't get.
But but that is that is what Macchiato Monsters means.
I guess Macchiato is supposed to be a mix of black and white.
What's interesting is actually in the original version of this
game, in the Macchiato Monsters 0 version, the beginning of the
game is actually different. I'll throw that up here real
quick and you'll see what I mean.
Like it said this for those in podcast land, get out of here.
Oh, there was like comments on the side of that.
Interesting. It says Macchiato Monsters.
The Black and White Hack, 0 edition Acrobat found comments
in the PDF open in the comments pane.
Do you wish to retain this behavior?
Yes. I gotta read those comments
later. Apparently I didn't even.
I didn't even know I've been reading some Dropbox.
You were just like, they're not mine.
They're the creator's comments. Yeah, no.
Anyway, so back then they did call it the Black and White
hack. My God, I wish it was just
called the Gray Hack. I'm gonna be honest.
Like the thing, my response to that was like, yeah, it should
be called the Gray Hack. Like the Gray Album.
And it was like a picture of Jay-Z with The Beatles.
It's like, this would be great. This could just be called the
Gray Hack, but it's not. There's a lot.
Of things are called. It could be called several other
things. But here's the thing, you know
what they did after they committed to this name is they
really committed throughout the rest of the book, Because
throughout the rest of the book, all almost all of the pictures
of like the monsters stuff are all coffee themed.
So there's like a lich drinking cup of coffee.
There's like coffee stains, like drips and like where you put
like your your mug down all. It is pretty funny, I just like
to say. Fungus people with a with a
French press or something at one point, yes, yes.
So if, if, if, if, if, you know, they stuck with this name,
that's a choice. But you know, they stuck with it
and they ran with it. And I can respect the hell out
of that. And I love that they just said
fuck it and really dug in and made all the graphic design
coffee based all all that's that's that's great.
That's great. So anyway, chief and then chief
hackerista Eric Newton layout, espresso lasagna printer
whispering Palo Greco. I just recently learned about
the lasagna. If you know, you know, if you
don't, you know, editing for Moonrat conspiracy.
Fiona may have Geist Moonrat is Fiona and dirt.
You know that and then some people, including Eric Newton,
Russ Nicholson, some other people, Luca Rejic and some
stuff. 0 edition 2016, First edition, 2018, Glasgow,
Scotland. So I'll say off the bat, no
digital tools, nothing's hyperlinked.
I don't think there are any bookmarks.
Nope, nothing. I will say the original Zero.
I didn't. Notice that.
Yeah, the original 0 PDF is hyperlinked though on the table
of contents, which is interesting because it came out
like three years before this, but so that kind of sucks.
I mean, it is it you can get it right now POD.
So I do have a copy POD. It is perfect bound.
You know, it could it could be a Zine.
It tops out at just ignore it. I just fucked that up.
It tops out at 58 pages. So it absolutely could just be a
Zine, but it's it's it's it's drive through.
So it's it's I don't think I don't know if drive through even
does Zine. So they just do everything
perfect bound. Oh, that's a really good
question that I don't know the answer to.
I know it. Doesn't matter, but I would
love, I would love a real print of this.
I'll tell you what. Yeah, that'd be really cool.
Not POD, but regardless, table of contents, welcome to the
dungeon verse core mechanics, making a character, gear, gold,
blah, blah. This stuff, all the stuff we're
going to go up for it. It's a relatively short book.
A lot of it, I would say probably 1/3 of it is like
tables and, and, and stuff, you know, so really it comes down to
maybe like 35 ish pages of like tables, maybe this one.
They're great, they're great. And that's the thing all the way
through. They're really great.
And this this is this is the example of like making a game
out of a system that 2E should have followed as opposed to or
I'm sorry, that black act should have followed.
Yeah, because this one actually does it well, which which which
they don't. So anyway, getting into this
welcome to the dungeon verse. This is a game where adventures.
In the. Dungeon you play the dungeon
verse which you build around the game.
This game is is one of the other reasons I love this game is
because it does kind of lean into that old school gaming
style in a very like emergent narrative kind of way.
Like there's no storyteller like the the world is built as you
play, kind of, which I think White Hack wants, I think White
Hack wants to do. I don't know, I'm sure and told
me. I could tell you like about the
game. Obtuse.
Obtuse way, but it says old school gaming.
What WT That's the other thing I like about the suit there.
There are a couple of times where they just like say some
shit where there's like talking like a person.
And I'm like, thank you for just talking like a human being and
talking to me like a human being, not like a fucking
computer in. What though though?
Yeah, but like, it's like what? -5 points because that's not how
you spell what. Anyway, so in tipple top OPG,
old school isn't about nostalgia, it's about game play.
What does that mean? Rulings over rules, player
intelligence, resource management, deadly fights and
embrace randomness. It's it's it's the classic kind
of like Principia Apocrypha or whatever.
You know what I'm talking about that like bit Milton, etcetera,
etcetera thing that came out. It's it's it's what O what OSR
thinks that old school gaming played like, don't forget, oh,
sorry, it's dead. But those are the like 5
concepts for it. And I love that I do love that
style play rulings of a rules basically says like the rule set
is small. It's not going to hit every
single outcome. So if that comes up, just make a
decision and stick with it. That's that's the only thing
that matters is make a ruling and then just be consistent with
it. Player intelligence means that
you don't worry about what's up I.
Was like, hey no, I'm sorry it doesn't mark for me.
I need a whole other $60.00 hardback that's all full of
specific rules and potentially optional rules and we'll call it
like the Game Masters guide. Yeah, something like that.
Actually. I think one of the biggest
problems with 5th edition, I'll throw this out, is that most
people don't read the GM guide because there's actually a good
game if you read the GM guide, but most people don't fucking
read it. The optional rules actually make
the game better. Even though it still sucks.
Advanced macchiato monsters yeah, we need we need that for
all of the to hit every single option.
Player intelligence you don't worry about you know, you can
play dumb and not have that effect like your ability to
understand the intelligence of like actually playing the game.
Resource management actually matters.
You don't just get a bag of holding on session 2 for the
rest of the campaign and not worry about stuff.
Deadly fights. Everything is low HP and then
embracing randomness should happen to have fun with it.
You know, I do like this text convention section here.
So for those that can't see again the podcast, there are it
says in this book U is addressed to the player and then box text
like this. It's a Gray box.
Look at the formatting. Look at look at how it breaks up
the solid whiteness of that page.
Really beautiful. It's really great.
Yeah, the those Gray boxes are addressed to the referee.
Love that some boxes are marked with a dice blotch to denote
optional rule. So there's like a little,
there's a little blotch of ink on the paper, and then there's
two dice inside one of the blotches.
So if it's marked with that, it's talking about optional
rules. Another is marked with a chat
block, a chat blotch to indicate a shared narration rule.
So it literally looks like a little text message with like an
ellipse in it. And then it says optional, also
optional. These lighten the referee's
effort by giving the players a little bit of control over the
setting. And then the last one, the
coffee beans blotch. So it's three coffee beans in a
little ink blotch. This is to remind you of some of
the important rules. I love that.
I love these little indicators. Works really well, very clean.
I also like that there's just like a little explaining our
friends. She's like, hey, when you see
these spots, look at them. This is what they're for.
I'm like, oh, OK, cool. Thanks for not making me guess.
I you know. Giving me a giving me a little
thing that says like this is how you read the book.
I made it easier for you here. Oh my God, who would have
thought? I had?
I, I went off about this to somebody the other day and I
don't, well, I was talking to Marco the other day and I
basically said like, are when you're writing a rules text,
when you're going to write a, are you doing like a rules text,
like a data set? Or is it an instruction manual,
right? Is it a data set or is it an
instruction manual, right? Whitehack was not an instruction
manual. It was a data set.
It was just the rules stuck in a book with no intent to actually
teach you how to use the game. Right.
If you're making a new job and the person training you is not a
good trainer, they're just saying stuff to you and you're
like, OK, I guess I'll put these pieces together.
Thanks. Yeah, if you're, if you're, if
you're going to write a game that you want people to play,
your game should be a big chunk of it should be an instruction
manual on how to play the game. Because once someone's finished
reading it, they should be a note, they should know how to
play the game. I think this game does that
incredibly well. I really enjoy the way that
they, yeah, I agree, give you these tokens, give you these
little splotches that they do examples of play really, really
well. They specifically, anytime I had
a question, it was less than a page later than I would get an
example of play or like a clarification.
And when we'll see that as we come up.
What inspired Mark Adamantche is we talked about that already.
So jumping straight into the core mechanics, the stat check
D20 roll under or equal to one of your stats chosen by the
referee. Perfect.
There are there are crits and there are fumbles ones and 20s
and they double the effect or bring a consequence or side
effect into play. Boom, that's a game.
The 20 equal or all under Great great.
Amazingly concise. It's almost like you know.
Yeah, it's almost like it's so easy.
Advantage and disadvantage. Guess what, you roll twice and
you take the best or worst result.
Not highest or lowest because it depends on what you're doing.
It's just the best or worst result for you.
There's already a little. Spot positive double s and
negative double s better, you know.
Also, I swear I'll stop going on my white hack eventually.
No, that's fine. I mean we still go in on fucking
blades of the Dark and shit so I don't give a fuck.
That's call back for forever. We'll just bitch about shit
enough that people actually go back and watch those episodes
just so they know what we're talking about.
For me is that if someone was like, hey, do you want to play
white hack? I'd be like, yeah, I'll play
white hack. It sounds like, hey, do you want
to play Blades in the Dark? I'm like, Nah, I think.
Absolutely not. That's I completely agree with
that 100%. We actually had a comment on
YouTube where someone was like oh man, like I wish you would
have played this one first. And I was like, honestly, if I
know anyone that would actually run this, I would love to play
it. Totally, yeah, I would play it.
Yeah, but I in the episode we stated multiple times that I
will not put in the work required to run that game
because I would have to rewrite the entire thing just so I could
understand it. And I'm not going to.
Yeah, but if anyone out there that is mutual wants to run a
game of White Hack I, I did. I did.
I did talk to somebody who is a big Blades fan and told them
that we, we we should play Blades at least once.
Who? Yeah.
Yeah, Michael Elliott. Michael Elliott's a huge.
Oh. Oh, cool.
Yeah, I definitely play with Michael Elliott.
That'd be. Cool.
Here's the thing. Even if I hate Blaze of the
Dark, which I I don't, I just don't enjoy the way that it's
written. Yeah, I would.
I'm saying if I did, if I hit it with my whole being, I would
still play it. If Michael Elliott was going to
GM was in it. Absolutely.
Yeah, oh, the quick side note, Michael Elliott has a Cyborg
project up on Kickstarter right now.
Go check it out it's it's called the 55 seems great back anything
from Michael Elliott can't wait to get fealty in hand anyway so
already. Mechanics.
Yeah, so we're already hidden a a a text bubble here says free
advantage once per session. If a player can describe a
place, an NPC, or a setting element, that would explain why
they have a better chance of doing something.
They can roll with advantage on any check.
Great rule. I like the moment I read this
was like, that's a fun, that's a fun narrative.
I I, I like the, you know, it's, it's like, like collaboratively,
collaboratively constructing like a game world.
And I've thought about that before.
I'm like how to incentivize that.
And this is a great little one. It's like, yeah, just one state.
You can just get advantage. Just tell me about a detail
about you, someone you know that gives you advantage.
Super clean. This is I mean, so this pulls
from Whitehack still too, like, you know, because it it it's
kind of like an extremely simplified version of like
taking like one of your groups, like your your association or
something and putting it next to your stat.
And you get that all the time. But this is kind of like a very
narrative way of just getting it once, which I think is dope.
But like you said, the collaborative storytelling, if
you go back again, it literally says right at the top, what is
this game? It's a game where you building
the dungeon verse like as you play.
So having this collaborative thing be like, oh, let me just
let me let me throw that in. That's great.
I love that, like you said, getting to the risk dice.
So this is definitely black hack coming in.
I love this page that is very clearly white hack and black
hack like on one page, which is fun.
So wrist dice are usage dye. That's that's that's what.
Usage dye. These are interesting.
Though you do. So you know, regular usage dye,
right? You, you, it is a way to like
count down a like dwindle a threat, I think is what they or
dwindling resources represents a threat.
And basically if you start with a die size for this game, it'll
be, you know, 121086 or four. You roll the dice and every time
you hit a 12 or. Three.
The die size goes down to the next size down, representing the
threat dwindling or your resources running out.
It's a great way to track different things.
I use it for like fire damage a lot in my games because fire
slowly goes out. But the interesting thing here,
and this is only interesting to me because I like usage die.
Maybe to you listener, but most usage die go down a size on A1
or A2. This one goes down a size on a
1-2 or three. And let me tell you, when you
were rolling AD 6 usage die, you were going to hit A1A2 or a
three at least 50% of the time. I wonder why they added the one
extra one. I guess maybe in play testing
the just one and two wasn't enough.
Oh, I don't know, I I roll crap on my usage.
I feel like every time. So I feel like I'm always every
other step, like turn going down a step.
Yeah, I'm curious. I'm curious too.
I don't know if I think in a lot of games, a lot of usage, I
really lean on to sixes that like sometimes you'll get an 8
maybe like you'll peak at 10. But I feel like in this game, as
we go through, a lot of stuff is at like 10s and twelves.
It's a bigger, Yeah, I did notice that.
It's like, yeah, there are a couple twelves in the couple of
the examples. Yeah, I think you're right.
I think in like a lot of them too.
And I've read like 12 isn't even offered as an option.
It is like 10864. I love usage so.
Yeah, here's the thing. It's one of those things where I
really love it theoretically and it's different than like the
stack and Troika where I think that's a genius mechanic in
theory. But like, I don't want to
fucking play that. I just don't really ever find
myself in a situation where like I needed to, I felt like I
needed to use usage in a way like that.
But I recently did start start thinking about maybe this game
made me think again about like maybe I do want to just use
usage type for arrows. I don't know.
It's just an easy thing to throw in and not think about, you
know, like, like, oh, someone like that was the really.
I fire damage is always the one I use because it was the first
time I ever, like, we were in an adventure.
We were playing like bastards or something.
And there is no rule for fire damage, obviously, because
there's almost no rules of bastards.
And I was like, yeah, you hear D6 usage die.
You know, you're like on fire right now.
You need to put that shit out. Yeah, but.
Yeah, that's great. I mean, anytime I think of
usage, I like just having the inventory system for a thing
that, like, doesn't really like. To me, the perfect type of usage
dye is arrows. Yeah, I think there's nothing
counting. What's up?
I fucking hate counting. You don't.
Want count all your arrows? It depends.
I mean, The thing is, it depends, right?
Like, like it depends. That's a problem too.
Like if you're deep down in a dungeon, right?
And you only win in with five arrows, yeah, I'd make you count
every fucking one and I every. If you want to retrieve them,
I'd make you roll for everyone to see if it breaks, because
that's matters, right? But when you have something that
like kind of matters, like it does, it does matter.
You don't have 800 arrows, right?
But do I care whether you have 20 or 30I fucking don't.
So if you have the usage die like it doesn't like, you'll get
somewhere between 20 and 30, right?
So who cares? Unless I unless I'm rolling your
usage die because I never get there's one game has like a
table that says like I can't remember which game it was, but
so it's how much each like level of dye should give you and I
never I never fucked. That, but I, I mathed it out
once and I think if you started at D20 you end up with like and
it's like 30 something potential like on average or something
like that so it it gets up there anyway so that's usage dye.
There's a little coffee bean bubble here.
I can't, I can't remember what the coffee mean.
Coffee bean meant again. Yeah, it actually.
Explains earlier, so I let me scroll up and.
See. Scroll it back.
Yeah. Oh, remind you of the rules.
OK, Yeah. So this is a little reminder
about the risk. It basically says that using a
one to three means usually one to three means an escalation of
the risk and the maximum number is a lucky break.
So you can assume a three is better than two, etcetera,
etcetera. Anyway, Yeah, so.
But then again, again, on one page, there's two referee
instruction parts on here, which is two more than the entirety of
white deck anyway. So making a character we we love
a numbered list. We.
Love a numbered list? You know, numbered.
List So there's seven numbers here.
First, roll 3V6 in order and normal stats.
Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dex, Con, Christmas Standard.
Swatch to find all those stats to listen to your standard.
Oh, well, there's a whole page on that, but we're not going to.
Well, we'll get there. I didn't read that page #2 Of
course you didn't, because you know what strength means.
Invent a trait, for example, a race, occupation, background or
faction. I I like that.
I will say in with all of the like in like references to other
pages on this page where it talks about go to page 7, go to
page 31, go to pages, whatever. There is a page that talks about
traits, but it's not listed here, but there is one.
What page is it? Yeah, I know, I know there is
one. Well well well well.
Oh, literally page 6. So it's already like 2 pages
away from this. So that's the only thing I
notice that there is a page but like it doesn't say like
parentheses paychecks. No, it's not doing it anyway, so
yeah. But there is a there is, and
that's one thing that's it says invent a trait.
And the thing that I like about this is it it, it gives you
focus without giving you the answers.
You know what I mean? Like it, it tells you how to
build a trait, but it doesn't give you a list of a list of
traits. Like for example, like I find
with white hacking, you have to pick a vocation or an
association or this you get one of these three.
This one lets you do whatever you want, but narrows it down to
to give you an idea of what they should be, which I really enjoy.
We'll get to that. That's number two.
Number three, record your hit dice.
It's AD six. You will roll it for hit points
and all. And it also has, and it also
limits Marshall prowess. We'll get to that.
Choose two below or the same entry twice as a part of
characterization. There's 12345.
There's six options. You can add AD 6 to a step that
is less than 10. That's 10 or less.
You can write down a second trait.
You can gain a hit die of the same type you already have, so
you can start with two hit dice instead of one.
You can take Marshall Training, which means you step up your hit
die or dice, which means you don't start with the D6 or the
D8. You have specialistic training,
which means you come up with the daily ability, which it does
explain that to. And then there's magic training
where you come up with two spells.
Also has pages listed where you'll find that.
Wish it was hyperlinked. That'll that'll be effective in
this course #5 you roll your hip down, your dice for your current
HP. You can decide to permanently
spend one point of time to roll again, and you can add one of
your HP if you don't roll better so you still get something for
sacking a point of time. I love that.
It's all so easy, you know? And then number six, roll for
your own languages, blah blah blah, it's on there #7 roll for
your equipment. We'll get to that.
And then there's another dice thing here, another blotch.
You can always let players have no idea for their character.
Roll equipment first so that then they'll get an inspiration.
Love that Good. I think it's a really good idea.
Yeah. And then if you want to play
zero level characters, you skip step four and only rule D4D6 or
D8 on the equipment table. So basically you don't get any
of the advancement stuff. And then you can just start at
zero level, which again, a very clean, easy way to alter the
game in the way you want to. Make every character I I think
one thing that stood out to me about your the choose two below.
Add AD 6 to a stat that's less than 10.
I don't know the time I've seen that rule and I'm like, oh,
that's a good idea, you know? Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it's
somewhere. I'm sure.
I mean of. Course it's somewhere.
I mean the list. Of all those six and maybe even
from like the old BX stuff. That's the thing with old BX
stuff is like there's like three different versions of it and I
never remember which one's in which, you know what I mean?
Like mold, Is it moldy? Is it like blue home?
Like what? Like homes, Like what illegal
are you doing here? There's a cool picture here.
I will say this, this this game is not hurting for art.
I I do really. Enjoy the big fill, looks good.
Yeah, there's a Griffin that is sipping coffee out of a what is?
What is that? I think that's something that's
much more popular in Europe. It's isn't that.
Like a percolator or? Is it?
Is it time for that? What?
Stop. It's time for that.
Anyway, so anyone listening, I I don't know what that thing is
called it it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a metal thing, The top,
the smaller. The.
Bottom I I, I, I, I know a lot of I, I don't want to stereotype
people, but I, I know a lot of people that are Italian that use
that specific type of coffee maker, but I don't know what's
called anyway, so your stats in hand of fate random stats or
staple of old school gaming, etcetera, etcetera.
You don't dream up the perfect hero or work at the best combo.
That's why it's random. You take what fate gives you and
you come up with a character who has a long way to go in order to
become a hero. If they survive, you get the six
historic stats right? You know what you know All these
are strength and Wiz dexcon. Prisma.
You, you know what these are. There's nothing crazy or
different about these at all. But I do like the way that they
explain it because they they tell you about it.
They tell you what a low is like, they tell you what a high
is like, and then give you a list of examples of the kind of
characters that you'd play, like priest, cleric, shaman, scout.
Love that. That's a really good way of
explaining it. We're not gonna read it, but
they're really good. Hit points are your primary
resource of a character losing the means, being in danger of
dying, which would get to with wounds and stuff like that.
Your hit points represent your character's health, endurance
and ability to avoid getting seriously hurt.
So this is a a, a style of game or HP your hit points, and most
games are like this, but people don't take this this way.
It doesn't mean you have an open wounds.
It's an abstraction of your overall general health and
endurance. And I like that.
And then here are the fungus people You talked about drinking
out of the oh, it's so good drinking out of French press.
Like the. Yeah, the little grumpy guy is
holding the French press and the bigger guy is smiling, holding
this fancy mug. It's.
Yeah, it's a great piece. I pictured this as like the
husband and wife and this is her dress.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, little Grumpy.
Husband yeah, as one would be so traits and your character this
is what I talked about before traits form the concept of your
character origins, factions, occupations, et cetera there's
four kind of bullet points here and I like.
How these are divided up, Yeah, a lot.
I love them so much. So it's what your character is,
what your character does, what your character belongs to or
where your character comes from. So like, that is what your
character is like. Maybe like a species or race.
What your character does is like a job, occupation or trade.
Where your character belong to is like a group or organization,
and where your character comes from is obviously like the city,
forest, the mountain, home. And these help form your like.
It's a really great way to divide up the mentality of what
the trait is and what it kind of does for.
You. Yeah, I, I mean, obviously this
is pulled from Whitehack, but I like this even because this is
obviously a part of Whitehack that I do that I did understand
and I did like and was good. I think I like this even more.
Like I just think that allowing a little bit of an abstraction
to it and setting it more into like a kind of a normal
language, I think really helps kind of like both open and focus
it a little bit in a way that I, I, I find like very enjoyable.
Yeah. And I think there's there's
some, I think there is a more linear nature to how this is
explained and and not even in like the yeah, I think that's.
How you see those? Did you see those bullet points?
I mean, that's enough right there to to get you over.
Yeah, no, they're great. I love these as traits.
They're fantastic. And it makes it so easy 'cause
even just listed here, even if you just go with the first ones
listed here. So you're a dwarf traitor in,
you know, the, the, the, in a Guild in the city.
Boom boom. But you just pick one and then
you can get more traits later. And what I.
Think is also what works better for me for this is that like in
Whitehack, there's so many different things that you're
picking as you make your character.
You're attaching 2 stats and this is like, no, you're going
to start with one thing. Right now I'm like perfect.
Well, the the thing that I really love about this too, is
that like narratively, again, this is still going back to the
core concept of the game, which is like you're building the
dungeon versus you go you're and and specifically when it talks
about the character stats and we kind of jumped over it a little
bit, but it specifically says you are the the reason we make
you roll stats in order is to challenge the way that you are
playing the game. You don't get to min match your
character. You see what your stats are and
make a character using those stats, which is like a great way
to to do it. I I know it's not like the five
EOC generator style that a lot of people fucking love, but you
play the random game and you as you get new traits.
So you say your first trait is dwarf, you're just a dwarf, but
your next trait might be traitor.
Explain to me narratively how you suddenly have a job.
You know what I mean? Yeah.
And you have to build in how that happened.
So like it might be like after downtime, you're like, well, I
spent my downtime like working in this place.
I learned how to do this. This is my job now.
I love that there's a built in narrative every time I take a
new trait because say your next trait, you pick an association
and you pick a traitors Guild. That makes fucking perfect sense
because like you are a traitor. So picking the next trait is
great. Love it.
OK, so referee will have questions about your traits.
Make sure everyone's on the same page.
I love that whenever you make a check where one of your traits
is relevant, you get advantage. Boom, easy fucking peasy.
A trait can also allow you to roll for actions and another
character wouldn't be able to attempt, such as climbing
vertical walls and stuff if if you're whatever verticals.
But note that they're never useful in combat.
This is really important. I wish this was bolded.
They're never useful in combat. Traits are specifically a non
combat thing and they're all because there are things that do
help you in combat. And then I do also love where it
says sometimes the referee may give you disadvantage because of
a trait. So it says if you're a known
thief negotiating with the brotherhood of written law, for
instance, or a half ogre trying to disappear into a crowd, how
that paragraph is the same thing as that like color paragraph
with like the double edged thing in white hack written in two
sentences in a way that's 10 times easier to understand.
We're going to be shit on a white hack for a while.
Like anyway, not shitting on it. It's, it's the way that it's
written. OK, so Marshall is training and
specialist training. These are the the things you can
get in the beginning that actually can help you in combat.
And that's why your traits don't.
It's to really separate the narrative aspects of play versus
like the combat aspects of play, which obviously still obviously
still have narrative elements, But like, it allows you to build
a character that's not necessarily just built to murder
shit, you know, which I love, obviously I love murdering shit
too. But like, yeah.
So Marshall training, yeah, each time you take combat training,
which is the thing that you give like advancement, stuff like
that, you step up all of your hip dice.
So you go from like AD 6 to AD 8 to a maximum of AD 10.
And then you re roll all your hit points with those new dice.
And comma training also gives your character the ability to
wield better weapons and more efficient armor.
So whenever you have like a weapon or an armor, that is if
it's a risk die higher than your hit die, you get disadvantage on
using it which is so clean. Very clean way to like track
that, like, you know, instead of I'm thinking of more track games
like, Oh yeah, you're proficient and swapping this is like a way
cleaner way. You almost don't even have to
think about it, you know? Yeah, well, the thing with the
Marshall, too, is like, you are like in a very, very clean way.
You are the fighter. You're getting more HP because
you're gonna be on the front line, while at the same time
having a wider array of weapons to use and heavier or more
complex armor that you can use all within one thing.
That is just increasing a dive from AD 6 to AD eight.
It's so clean, and narratively it makes sense.
So I really enjoy that. And then specialist training is
a thing where you can pick a specialist ability.
So a specialist ability reflects a character's unique trait.
It works once a day at level one, but you'll have the option
to get more uses as you level up, right?
Unless it's really impressive feat, like something that
mortals can't do. An ability does not require a
check. So like if you have this, you
just get to do it. So you talk with the referee to
establish what it does, especially if there's a
mechanical advantage or if it breaks a rule in some way.
So some ideas as having a faithful pet, resisting pain,
dual wielding, detecting a lie, stuff like that.
So it's like, it's basically like you pick a feat is what
this is or like, or like a pet or something like that.
That's about it. And it specifically says like
you can theoretically do a spell like ability, but you could also
just take magic training which was another option.
So just do that. Magic training an.
Ability is the only Safeway to get advantage on combat checks
and it has to reflect one of your character traits that you
can't just randomly pick some shit.
So the example is an assassin with blade in the liver can
backstab a guard if undetected, or doulas can faint and can
trick a sentient adversary when crossing swords.
Great examples. There is a here.
Yeah, it's just like you can allow a character with the
specialist training to instead of doing advantage, you can do
double damage, which I feel like in some situations I'd be like,
yeah, I got just hits like a fucking freight train.
Well, that's white. Heck, that's the that's the base
deft. One of the base deft abilities
where you could always change your double positive role for
double damage. Oh yeah, don't positive.
Right, right, right, right. That's that's why.
Or positive double roll, whatever the fuck it's called.
You could. Change your advantage.
I think it was double positive. I'm just, I'm just like still
like, yeah, I couldn't think. I get they didn't want to use
advantage but come on. Yeah, but this is this is this
is this, these are the kind of things that like make a good
hack, right? Like they they took a mechanic
that they enjoyed, inserted it back into a different way to
give you relative basically the same result, but in a way
specific to this game and the stuff that they wanted to use.
Like such a good hack. This is one of my favorite
hacks. It's right up there with I'm I'm
like, I don't know what my my brain is breaking.
What was the what was that Fallout, that Fallout hack that
we did Newt such a good game, such a that's.
Actually a really good one. Yeah, you're right.
It's. Such a good game the like it's
just the way in which they hack it to make it their own thing as
opposed to just like copy pasting the mechanic.
And that's the thing I love most about hacks is when you can
really take a thing, make it your own thing, but still know
where it came from anyway. So magic training spells
described in a few words, you come up with them as you go.
We'll get to that on magic stuff later.
But you can, you can change that languages.
Your character speaks some, boom, you get it.
Sometimes you get more whatever random starting equipment.
So a character starts the random stuff, including armor and
weapons. You roll AD20AD12AD, ten, 8886
and 84 the entire festival on the following nine tables.
You have to decide a table and a die before you roll, but you can
ignore tables or roll several dice on the same 1.
The referee might decide the magical trinkets, heirlooms, or
faith tables are not available, and beginning adventures often
have to make do with the equipment they could gather from
a former life, making up a reason for stuff, blah blah blah
blah blah. So basically you get one of all
your fucking dice and there's nine tables, and before you roll
them you have to assign which dice to what table you want.
It doesn't matter. You don't have to roll on every
table. You can roll all of your dice on
one table if you want, but assign them, roll them, and
that's what you get. Great.
And using that as the start of your character creation would be
fucking hysterical. In a good way.
I love character creation by way of equipment picking.
So or this one equipment generation.
Yeah, love it. It's great.
So why don't you bring up a dice roller?
Oh, I'd like. To and and roll all of them.
I can use my dice roller. Oh wow, you're so cool.
I'm. Cool.
This is this is great. You know, that's awesome.
OK so I need to roll a 468101220.
Yep. And then roll yeah.
And then you as you pick a result, just pick a table or
just go all the tables straight down.
Yeah, let's just we'll start with equipment and so you'll.
Skip three. You're allowed to skip 3.
There's three that we're not gonna do.
Yeah. So we'll do equipment, food.
I'll say I rolled a three. I have a jar.
Snail soup. That is a risk.
Risk die of six or used. Die.
An old ox, a rolled up carpet, two snacks and a crowbar.
There's a body in that. Carpet always is, yeah.
The food sounds pretty good on some of these that I was reading
and I was like I'm kind of hungry.
I liked 19 sealed meats, scroll maker's tool tools, a wizard
hat, spyglass, and magic reagents.
Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
You liked the one that specifically is designed for a.
Wizard. I did.
I listen. If you're listening to this and
you don't realize, like I love being a little wizard or listen,
street boy, Yeah, suck you. You're the wizard boy, I'm the
edge Lord douchebag, and that's us.
Yeah, magic is cool. If you're if anyone out there
ever does ever does like fan art of us, just think that right?
Yeah, you're you're wizard boy and I'm I'm edge Lord douchebag.
So what's next? What are you doing next?
We're going to we're going to skip well, valuable, valuable
starting the ones. Just like real life.
So there's a nice coffee stain on the bottom of this one.
Which I really. Love keeping keeping your cups
sitting down, yeah? All.
Right. What's next?
And we'll do melee weapons and we'll say that was the D12 and I
rolled in 11, which is a Dane axe or a flail that is D8/D8.
It's a two handed weapon, grants the wielder advantage to damage
which is pretty cool. Oh dude, Dane axes are dope.
Mm hmm, that's cool. All right, all right armor,
let's do use my D6I rolled 3. I have hide tunic and fur hat.
Just like in real life. You're not you're.
Really. You're really picking out a
character here with the Dane axe and then like the fur hat.
And stuff. Full Viking?
Yeah. And you have an ox or are there?
Oxes and Ox. Alright, what's next?
We're going. I wanna, I wanna do the last
three tables 'cause I think they're some of the best.
So we're gonna skip missile weapons?
My guy's not much of A missile weapon person.
Magic trinkets, let's say. Oh, I'm looking, I'm cheating.
Look at all the SI have, which I'm not supposed to do, but I'm
not doing it anyway. Oh well.
We're going to go ahead and use the what is that D8I rolled A7?
I have a pouch of the oracles incense, you know like.
That's an apostrophe S like a Reese's piece.
Oh. Yeah.
The Oracles. Yeah, it's the Oracle's incense,
just like it's Reese's piece. They.
Gave it to me. Yeah.
OK, moving on to Heirlooms and heritage.
I will go ahead and use my D10 for this one.
I you. I rolled A6 Mom's sword.
It has a name, a story, and maybe a minor magic power.
That's a really cool one, you know.
Well, 'cause is it your mom or is it somebody else's mom?
I think it's mine. I I always think like a a great
minor magic effect that we all know from the most popular
fantasy novel in the world is is from Lord of the Rings.
Sting glows blue went around the orcs, which is a minor magic
effect. That's a really great example of
how to do minor magic very, very well.
So it's Mom's. Sword so it glows when you're
trying to sneak into the kitchen late at night.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm trying to steal in the
cookie jar and I believe this is our last table which is faith
and I rolled A-15. I say the high one for this, the
faith. The material plane is a mere
illusion. Sinners embrace the void.
Vibrant. Sounds pretty cool.
Oh, I know some dope. I know some dope.
There's a blotch here. Random availability you can
equip in PCs and stock and stock shops at these random tables.
The richer the person in area, the higher the die.
You roll dope, Great. That's the thing.
That's the thing about all of these tables is it's they're all
D 20s. There's nine of them.
And anything that you need, like you have an NBC and they happen
to be religious. What kind of religion?
Who knows? Real D20.
They're they believe in Mother Nature, man.
Yeah, that's what it says. I also, I also, I don't know if
you notice this, but like as we get closer to magic and stuff
like that, there's these random little word like chaos written
just like randomly all through the book.
Love that on the chaos page it just says chaos chaos chaos
chaos. Well this is right next to the
one that says I believe in chaos chaos, chaos, chaos chaos but
like half of them are upside. Down and they're really small
like. Yeah, so that's great.
So gear and gold, it exists their tables.
So you'll get like melee weapons, it might say like
dagger, knife, blackjack, and then there's missile weapons and
then there's a damage. So it's like they're kind of
paired off with what the damage is comparatively.
So like a dagger and a dart have the same damage and then that
great sword and a muscular heavy crossbow have the same damage,
which is like AD 10. And then there's the thing here,
2 handed meal weapons give advantage to damage.
There's armor listed, there's D4D68D10 which is just like a
helmet, gamisan, Heidel there, etcetera, etcetera.
Goes all up to full plate. Sometimes they can be combined
with different armor, which is stepped up one category to a
maximum of of delta 10. And that's specifically the
leather. And then there's a bunch of just
random items, arrows, coffee beans, of course, Bala, booze
powder. And then there's a usage eye
that goes with with each one wealth and coin bags.
We're not going to go over this. It's fine.
It exists. I I think this is OK though.
I think that like wealth is risked eye based and like what
like level of coin that you have, it says what kind of goods
you can buy with it. And I think it's a very clean
and easy way to like deal with money.
Well, because you don't have to actually keep, you don't have to
actually keep anything like a number, right?
So like, yeah, so we'll go over it.
So wealth, wealth and coin bags and then splitting, merging and
explaining bags and buying, selling.
So basically as what Hunter said, if you have if something
cost gold, you can just hand in right a D4 of gold and you'll
get gold or whatever and but if you have two if you have a D4
gold and a D4 gold right? I'm just going to read this
because the math broke my brain. You are limited in the number of
items you can carry, so combining bags is often a good
idea. You can merge 2 bags of the same
metal and value to get a bag of the next type.
So for example, two purses of gold D4 become a pouch of gold
D6. Similarly, split a bag in two by
stepping down the dye. A chest of silver D12 becomes 2
bags of silver D10. Right, so if you're combining
the same type you up the dice, you can merge 2 bags the same
metal to get a bag of the new type.
I don't see I that's but the the sentence above I think is a
mistake. Merging 2 bags the same metal
and value get a bag of the next type and then it tells you that
you're just upping the dice. So I think that's specific.
I think that is supposed to say UPS your dice.
Yes, I agree. I see where you're.
Yeah, yeah, I agree. Yeah, that's my Brainbird.
With that, a bag of coin D12 can be exchanged for D for D4 of the
next higher coin. So character can also buy a bag
of a lower Dom denomination. This is you.
So basically what they're saying is that like if you if you have
AD 4 gold and AD 4 gold, you can put them together, you get AD 6
gold. And then if you have AD 6 gold,
AD 6 gold, you put that together to do D8.
And then you can do that to AD 10.
You can do that to AD 12. But if you have a bag of D12
gold, you can bump that up to AD four up next after gold, and
that's platinum. So goes copper, silver,
electron, gold, platinum, mythium, right?
So if you're at the highest die of of a coin type, you can trade
that in for the lowest type of the next coin type up.
And why would you do that? Because you might have D12 gold,
but you might, there might be a plate of armor or there might be
armor plate that you want. That's electrum.
So you're trading up for whatever.
You know what I mean? Electrum to gold.
Gold for whatever, because you don't.
Really have that level of coin and then you roll your risk die
essentially to buy it. Yes, roll 1-2 or three.
It goes down a size. Yeah, So that's how you can,
that's how you track all your stuff is basically you don't
have to. It's interesting.
Yeah, it's definitely interesting.
I don't know if it really, I don't know.
I think it's interesting in a way that's mechanically
interesting. But yes, I I don't know if it
helps simplify anything because if something costs 50 gold and I
have 50 gold, I can just give them 50 gold and.
But the union roll dice, we're only here for rolling dice.
Yeah, right. That's the whole point of the
the thing. So buying and selling you do it.
Encumbrance is the thing that happens.
You're here can carry one item per point of con whatever the
size and weight of the item. And it said it literally says
don't start arguing with the referee about this.
You might end up losing all your equipment in a swamp.
I love the little sides about that.
Armor doesn't count. If you're rolling encumbered you
can carry a number of items equal to your strength plus your
con, but when you're in cumbered you get disadvantage on anything
that wouldn't matter when you're in Cumber.
It's a running and shit cool page here of a sphinx drinking a
coffee with their name spelled wrong on it.
Did you notice? That I didn't even.
Yeah, so they're drinking coffee and they're speaking in
hieroglyphics and then the name is written on the cup, but it's,
it's Sphinx, but it's spelled PHSFINX.
That's hysterical to me. I I love that.
That's hysterical. There's a whole nother list
here. This is like lodging, like
weapon, armor, equipment, lodging, all sorts of stuff like
based on like basically like what you can get for the
different things. So at CP level, weapon armor,
it's like peasant weapons and leather armor equipment is like
consumables and D4 reagents, things like that.
But all the way down to Mythium. You can get unique artifacts and
just stay in a palace for a week and like, you know, everything
has a price and you can pay it. So like I really like this kind
of like if you're not going to give exact numbers, you can just
give like this is kind of what CP will buy you.
This is kind of what GP will buy you.
I think this is a great table experience and goals.
I love this. It's it's it's it's I really
enjoy this. So basically, yeah.
You level up when you reach a number of goals.
Each goal is defined by players and referee together, such as
like clearing a goblin nest or rescuing the last night.
So like when you start an adventure, you set goals and you
have to complete a number of goals equal to the level you
want to get to. So if you're at Level 3 and you
want to get to level 4, you have to complete four goals and then
you level up to four. Then you have to complete five
goals to level up to five. It's basically like a way to do
level stone miling in a like kind of non level Stony way.
Like you're there's a specific number for it, but you're not
counting XP. I guess it's like one XP point.
Like it's kind of like an abstract way to just count XP
points. What kind of leveling?
Milestone. That's not what you've been
saying. What did I say?
I said that. Word one time.
No, you said I said it. Oh, regardless, milestone.
So I do like the character goal thing.
It says you can allow players to pick their own goal, but only
one at a time, and only one of those can be Only one goal can
be reached during a given session.
So if you're going for a character goal, you're all going
for a character goal, but that will like help your define your
character a little bit more. So basically if you want to take
a side quest for one of your characters, you'll all get a
goal, but it will be specifically to that character
to increase to further their narrative and and character
about the stuff, which I think is really neat.
I think it's really cool. It almost a little bit in a way,
and I might be reaching, but this is just how it tickles my
brain. It kind of reminds me of
boasting in wolves upon the coast.
You know, you like boast that you're going to do a thing,
especially you do set a goal and you do get like to increase your
health or attack bonus based on that.
I really like that kind of thing.
You know, it's very narrative. It gives you a tangible benefit.
It feels cool. Yeah.
Yeah, I, I completely agree. I I like how all of this gives
you like, kind of like a, a concrete format in an abstract
way. Yeah, like do a goal like it's
whatever, but like you need to do four of them.
And I like, I like that as opposed to being like you need
600,000 XP. Yeah, yeah.
And I don't. I just hate counting.
XP anyway, so leveling. Leveling up you every time you
level up, you choose two of these, and unlike a character
creation, you can only pick each one once, and there's five of
them. So you can add one point to a
stat of your choice to a Max of 18.
You can gain one hit die and then you roll your hit dice and
record your new total. If the new role doesn't improve
your hit points, you just add 1 to the total.
I like the consistency. It's the same as when you did
CON before. You can spin a con point to roll
again keeping the best result. Same as before.
Or you can research a new spell. If you have magic training, you
can gain 1 melee attack or missile attack, but you must
have Marshall training and you can gain a new ability once a
day and an extra daily use for an existing one, which is your
specialist training. So basically it's ways to make
your HP or stats better. And then one way to do magic
training, Marshall training or specialist training.
So it's it's very similar to character Christian, but you get
to do a little bit more at levels 47 and 10.
You can also take another trait or choose a new training.
So that's how if you don't start with something like magic
training, once you hit 4, you could take magic training.
Well, no, well, that's just that's not that's that's that's
like picking like The Who, what where you were and stuff like
that. So Next up is another picture of
that coffee maker thing that I don't remember what it's called,
but it's like a it's like a Mecca like Gollum kind of
version one on like. It's a percolator.
I told you what it's called. Is it?
It's a percolator? I don't.
Google it, look up images right now.
Tell me I'm fucking wrong. Percolator, you're fucking
wrong. I don't see anything that looks
like that. I'm just saying I don't see
anything look like that. I see a lot of kettle looking
things. I think you're wrong.
Get in the comments guys. Get in the comments.
All right, Brennan. So anyway, this thing's got
legs. It's like a mech coffee maker.
I love it. It's great.
So monsters and followers. This is interesting.
So creatures and other hostels. Everything in the game is a
monster. It doesn't matter if it's a if
it's a good guy or a bad guy. It's fine if it's if it ain't
you, it's a monster. Great.
Easy peasy. It's called a mocha pot.
Thank you. Boom.
Not a percolator. Thank you, Christian.
Mocha pot. I knew it was something like
that. Go into the Google images.
Yep, there it is. Mocha pot.
So for all you that have been listening, it's a it's a mech
mocha pot. It's a, it's a it's a mecha
mocha. It's used on a stove top like a
percolator though. So he sees you.
There you go. You were partially right.
We'll give you partial credit. You got a partial success mix
successful Even so. So it talked about monsters.
If converting from other games, hit dice or D8, they have an
armor class, there's damage just ported over.
If the monsters have magic, just use it.
It's fine. It works, it's not hard, the
game is still designed in a way that allows BX and stuff to use
it. There's a reaction table.
Monsters should always be doing something.
If you want, there is a an encounter, goal or activity
table. Why don't you roll me AD 12 real
quick so you can check CHA to decide if a monster is
immediately aggressive, cautious, or open to the parlay.
What'd you get? I rolled sorry it froze, so I
rolled 3 *. I rolled A4 so it's raiding
settlements or amb ambushing a traveler.
Boom, there you go, I can read and there's a there's you do.
There's a cute little coffee colored dragon and drinking
coffee as they do. I do like the theme is so
consistent in this like that they really do lean into the,
you know. They really, they really said I
went with Macchiato, so I'm fucking going with Macchiato.
I will say, like when we started reading this or when I started
reading this last night, I liked the name more the more of the
art that I saw, 'cause I'm like, OK, at least they carried the
theme all the way through, you know?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I, I agree.
That's what I'm saying. I think I, I would prefer a
different name, but as we said in the beginning, they went with
it and they went with it hard and I can respect that.
So still with the monsters, there's a section on like, what
do they want? There's motivation for NPCS and
stuff. We don't need to go through all
this. There's morale, there's a, and
there's AD 12D12 table for NPC motivation, AD 12 table for
morale. There's a section here on giving
chase and running away, which is interesting.
It's basically like Dex checks and whatnot.
Sometimes you might like drop weapons or loot and stuff like
that or roll with disadvantage to get away.
Very interesting. I really love all that.
We don't need to go through all of it specifically to you if
you've, if you, if you've chased before, it's basically that
followers or hirelings the same name for the same thing.
You can have them, which is really interesting and they
really can come into combat because of the way the
disadvantage and stuff work with a risk dye.
So a follower can carry 5 items, 10 if they're willing to be
encumbered. A hireling has a risk dye that
represents their skill and loyalty.
Villagers or D sixes but professionals can be 810 or 12.
Double payment or strong incentives can increase the die
type which is great. You can pay them to be better
with your job. Which pay me and I'll better my
fucking job. I know I'm talking about that
every day. And he's like, I'll fire you.
Yeah, I get paid enough to do what I do.
Whenever a hiring is hurt, does something dangerous, or is
otherwise in grave danger, you roll or die.
If it if it it's a fail. They run and shit.
There you go. There are there are D12.
There are 12 different types of hirelings.
D12 is in a city, D4 is in the middle of nowhere.
I think that's really interesting because D4 one
through 4 is torch bearer, Harbordier scout, and hedge.
Hedge wizard. We don't need to go what they
are, you get that. But each one also has an
ability. So torch bearer, the number of
item, extra items they carry, they can carry and then the
halberdier additional damage. So you're that's what their
wrist dies for. So but beyond that you have
halfling, Chaplin, elf, bodyguard, dwarf, surgeon,
burglar and Bard, each one with different abilities and stuff.
Really interesting, really fun. Again, they all get their own
wrist dye. It's a good time hireling who
dies, fizzles, quits or flees anyway.
So hiring followers. Follower wages range from daily
pay to equipment to lump sums, but you can get a free follower
if it's your first session and politics aren't going to be very
improminent. Every character who chooses an
organization or faction as a trait gets a follower to start
the game. Maybe any type you want, or even
a pet. I love that.
I think that's so fun. Like if you're the one trait you
want to start with is an organization, like I'm going to
be a Mason, Great. You get a cultist.
You know what I mean? Like, go.
I think that's really interesting.
That's really neat. Yeah, absolutely.
Exploring the world. This is a weird spot to put
this. I'll say this is my only real
big critique of the entire game is we go through the entire
multi page exploring the world section as we're getting through
like character creation and stuff like that and then you hit
combat. Yeah, combat's next, and then
after that is like magic and stuff.
It does feel like this is ours, wounds and death and magic, but
it does feel like this is like 10, 15 pages too early, you
know? And I get it because it is still
mechanics, because it's the it's the way that you are
adventuring, right? But if there's like tables at
the end on how to like build an adventure and stuff like that, I
would rather the the rules. It is still a dungeon game.
You're still going to murder shit.
So give me murder sooner, you know?
Yeah, I think combat and death and stuff like that should be
above this. And then exploring the world
should happen. And then you'll move into like
all of the tables for building worlds and stuff like that.
It's the only big critique I have.
I think it's it's fine technically where it's at.
I would prefer it later anyway. So in the following pages,
you're interacting with the setting.
How does Referee make it a living place?
So there's a whole section on delving into dark places.
There's there's mechanics associated with this.
We don't need to read every single part of this game.
They'll buy the fucking game. Buy the PDF, we'll give you how
to do that a little bit later. But delving into dark places,
there is AD 12 table for dungeon exploration and you rolled
encounter risk, die. And then there are encounters,
resources and fines, which I do really like this.
So it's listed encounter resources, encounter resources,
fine, fine. Encounter is rolled or chosen by
the ref. A resource result means the
party has to roll a wrist die for their for their resources,
for your light source, for your food, whatever.
And then a fine die is a lucky break.
You actually find shit. I love that.
I think that's such an interesting way to do the table
because you literally can come to this table with no prep
whatsoever. And you can literally roll on
building a dungeon as you go and what's in each room as you go.
And even if it's just an encounter, you can just roll on
encounter table as you go. And that's so fun and
interesting to, like, build it without having to do a lot of
prep because you are a referee, not a storyteller.
You're not telling a story. The story is told through the
narrative of the story of intelligence.
Yeah, yeah. Simple encounter roll.
It basically says roll, and on a, the party comes in contact
with something on a one to three, boom, there you go.
Player rumors. You don't have to know
everything. Let the players fill in the
blanks. Have your character who might
know about something by a trait check something.
On a success, the player gets to say something.
On a failure, someone else can say something that is not
entirely true. So there's a section here on
crossing the wilderness that gives you like the number of
hexes you can travel on a day based on like where you're at
and stuff like that. There's a section on weather,
wilderness exploration, hunting, and foraging.
There's a section on camp events.
It says there's no such thing as a quiet day at the camp.
Love that, it reminds me of the The Village expansion we talked
about with Max Moon which you can buy pre-order to maximum
games.com. Go check that out.
We're not sponsored by anyone, these are just our friends.
There's some These look like Knowles to me, with axes and
Spears drinking little espressos.
I would take that. Yeah.
I love it. Yeah.
It's like literally just two finger in them.
Yeah, just two finger in them. So the first shortcut is Fast
forward travel. You can Fast forward travel.
I I actually really like this. So we're going to talk about
this real quick. So if the referee wants to get
to the meat of an adventure without getting bogged down in
details, you can roll on this table to gloss over a couple of
days. And so with this is Fast forward
to traveling. So let's say that you roll A7,
right? You made a discovery at a cost.
So you get to say what you did and what you lost, right?
You might get pushed back. You pushed back an ambush, roll
your hit dice for your current HP.
You know you got lost. Your name took D4 extra day.
Step down your rations. So it gives you a narrative for
the journey you went on where you can fill in what happened
without after actually having to do it, but without like nothing
happening. And I really enjoy that.
And then the second shortcut is catching up with the party.
If someone joins the middle of an adventure, you can roll on
this D12 table to stay what they were doing before they caught up
to you, like nonviolent contact with a monster or faction.
Or you fell down a hole and lost a random weapon.
And then boom, like, you're just there.
And they're like, where have you been?
Oh, I got stalked by somebody. They're still following.
Yeah. Little side that you can talk
about. Yeah.
And then there's a Stories on the Road section.
Once per trip, each player can describe a situation or problem
that the character is involved in It might be as simple as
saying I repair a broken wheel or as dangerous as what if a
bear allow what of a bear owl a bear owl not an owl bear
because. Not an owl bear.
I visited our camp in the dead of night and I shot it with one
well placed arrow. You the ref gets the final say
More narrative stuff. I enjoy it.
Good good good good fights and how to avoid them.
We start getting into combat now after the all of the world
exploration stuff. So time, distance and action.
It's more concerned with creative script of fun, not
tactical mini game. Great so your turns are fast and
loose, each player's character gets a turn until everyone has
had one. Every hero still standing it's
another turn and so on. Turn order depends on who's
going doing what, etcetera. So be clear, establish order,
stick with it. That's fine.
Initiative, some initiative. That's what it says in the book.
I like it. Use common sense.
If you have a ready crossbow, you shoot before something hits
you. Boom, there you go.
There you don't roll for initiative, just whoever it
makes sense to go in the narrative.
Just fucking go. You don't need square grids
because who gives a shit? You can move around doing the
thing that you're going to do. Be reasonable, fighting for your
life. So each turn, you roll your D20
once. Your whole turn, no matter what
you're doing is one check right? It's all or nothing.
You strengthen melee decks when melee weapons and if it calls
for something else like in to hide whiz for for calling aid,
con to run, etcetera, said the referee picks.
If you succeed and you are attacking, royer damage for your
attack. If you fail, you're hit by
whoever was attacking you and you take damage.
Boom, that's combat baby. Easy.
Yeah, that's it. Damage dealt is always
subtracted from your victims hit points unless they're wearing
armor. If you're attacking with a
weapon with damage higher than your hit die, you have
disadvantage on the damage roll right?
So if your if your hit die is AD 6 and your Dane acts is AD
eight, you have disadvantage, advantage and disadvantage in
combat. Remember traits do not grant
advantage disadvantage. Those really common.
Basically it reflects a monstrous combat skill to roll
and for you to roll the disadvantage.
So if you're ever fighting something with a hit dice higher
than you, you're at disadvantage.
But it's not just you, it's everyone fighting on it on like
that turn. Specifically, it's talking about
like your followers, right? So say that I love the example
here. Grim is a level 2 Shield Maiden
with three hit dice, wants to charge A4 HD Ogre, ignoring his
three goblin retainers. OK, they all have three hit dice
in total, so that's a total of seven hit dice.
The referee says she'll get disadvantage subjected to a lot
of damage. She could attack with her two
Spearman with two HD, but the goblins would still tip the
scale. So with her three HD and her
Spearman total of 2 HD, they have 5 HD versus the Ogre and
the goblins, which is a total of 7.
Even if they all attack together, everything is a
disadvantage. So if your whole party equals
six hit dice and you're fighting something with eight, everyone's
a disadvantage all the time. I love that.
I think it's really interesting. It's a way that you can use the
same monster against different levels of party and still make
it kind of like, I'm not going to use the word balanced, but
like fit the combat right. Balance combat.
I think it's always the goal you.
Know so a low level fighting an owl bear the owl bear stays the
same, but you have disadvantage against it.
But once you level up high enough you lose a disadvantage.
The owl bear stays the same, but it's still easy for you to beat
because you're higher. I love the abstraction of that
It's really great armor. So it's not just the only thing
I don't like armor I don't understand I get it I don't
under I don't I understand it, but I don't get it so basically
each type of armor is a wrist eye.
We talked about this before. Leather armor is like AD 4,
right? It absorbs damage like hit
points. You roll that die the first time
you're hit, as you never know in advance whether your next
opponent will be able to find the fault in your armor or not.
The result of that wrist die is how much damage your armor can
soak during this fight. You roll again for your next
fight. So let's say your armor is AD 8,
right? And you roll A4.
OK, that means this fight you can soak 4 points, correct?
Yes, Yeah, that's all I got. Yeah.
OK, so as usual with the risk dice, if you roll A1 to a three,
your armor die is stepped down. This means it has been damaged
and needs to be attended to by a Smith unless magical, blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah there's a repair cost blah blah.
The referee can give you disadvantage when sending
certain things in armor, blah blah blah.
Anyway, so. So here's my problem, right?
OK. For your armor die to step down,
you have to roll A1 to a three. Your armor soak is the risk
roll. You actually roll that dice and
that's the soak you get for that combat.
And the game literally designed around like building a narrative
and like all the rest of this stuff, right?
What happens if you use all of your soak like your armor's only
quote UN quote damaged if you step it down so your armor just
becomes somehow ineffective but not broken like the first time
you get. Hit, how do you deal with that
narratively? You're just like, well, I have
no more. So I I think I may have read
this wrong for somebody because I read soak as in like, oh, you
just have you, you like, yeah, you have 4 armor every time you
get hit. I didn't realize it was like a
point spin that like every point you lose that right?
So if I have four overall, that means after I like soak four, I
have no more armor, right. OK, yeah.
I don't know how you deal with that narratively.
I originally like thought there was saying the oh like your
armor soaks for like from every hit, you know?
But yeah, I mean, that's that's that's like this is this is what
I'm talking about specifically for this and the, and the risk
and the usage dye and and having like, I love the way that the
wrist dyes are used and everything except for this,
because it doesn't make sense that your armor soaks a
different amount every single fight, but only gets damaged if
you roll A1 to a three. Yeah, there is a little
incongruity with like logic and the actuality of the rule set.
Yes, yeah, I, I, I don't know if I, I definitely feel the, like,
snag there. And I don't know, like care too
much about that, but it does like kind of mess up how
logically you feel like armor works.
But like, say, say that that's the thing though, right?
Like say you're say we're say we're fighting, right?
Like and you roll your D8 and you get a four.
So now you have 4 soak something hits you for four.
And now the next time something hits you, it's just going to hit
you. But your armor is not broken.
But your armor's not broken though, so I mean, I would, I
honestly do play this the way that I explained it, which is
like, Oh no, you just have 4 armor for this fight.
Like every time you get hit, someone does 6 damage to you.
Your armor soaks 4, You want to take two damage next time you
get hit for five, you're almost soaks 4, you take one damage.
That's how I in my brain would run this.
Yeah, and so Christian Sorrell make House a game where go buy a
shit. Go vote for them in the innies
is saying that they think it's so per turn, but I'm pretty
sure, as I read later in the game in the combat section,
we'll get to it. It talks about it just not being
that way. So we'll we'll get to it.
But anyway, so like, that's weird to me and I I honestly
would just give armor a, a, a value, yeah, and just give it a
soak value. Another thing about this game is
like stuff like this, you can just slot something else into
this rule space like it's be effortless.
Here, here's what I would do. You're the soak is half of
whatever the dice is, and if you get hit during combat after
combat you need to roll your wrist dye to see if your armor
is broken during combat. Very.
Clean way to deal with this? Yeah, so like if you have AD 10,
you have 5 soak, you know what I mean?
So that's it. Shields will be splintered.
Shields are handy, Referee should give you advantage when
using yours. Shields can are splintered by
axes and burnt by dragon fire, and you can sacrifice your
Shields and negate damage from anyone attack.
Boom. But there is a stunning blow
thing which I think is neat. This is an optional rule when
armor or Shields protect armor. When armor Shields protect
characters from damage that would have brought them to 0 HP,
you make a contract to avoid being knocked out.
Check your CON again after a few turns.
This is his own opportunity. So you don't take any damage
because the, the, the, your armor soaked it, but if that
damage would have hit you to zero, that you can get knocked
out by it. So the armor protected you from
dying, but not from getting knocked on your fucking ass.
So that literally says that is the basics.
That's combat. That's how combat works.
And then there's other other stuff underneath it.
So tactical risks if you're willing to put yourself in
harm's way. In harm's way, Yep, charging,
attacking recklessly. The referee can give you some
options. If you if your combat check is
successful, you are an ally, get advantage on your next turn.
If it's a failure, you'd get disadvantage your next turn.
So you can, you can say I want to take a tactical risk and then
potentially get advantage disadvantage.
There's a whole section on complex turns where that is when
you can have like a multi role turn and the the example is a
thief wants to like jump on a table, slide down, breakthrough
the window and shoot out of the bar.
But someone's like trying to stab them as a slide down the
table and stuff like that. And they have to roll to like
slide across the table, avoid the daggers and break the window
and that's three rolls. Love that great shooting in
melee is a thing. You can hit people.
That's the thing. Running combat in six steps.
I like this. We're going to go through it
real quick, so. They'll have a number list.
Yo it's so great. One check a turn.
I mean a flow chart would be nice, but I love this list, it's
great. The one check and turn mechanic
may feel weird but here you go. So you started the turn the you
describe the location, the threats, the monsters and what
they do, especially who they target.
The general situation is clear to everyone, that is to the gym
#2 the first character gets to act, ask the player what they
would like to do. So who acts first depends on the
situation before he dies. Role the character circumstances
are made super clear and the character's turn is resolved
with the check done. Damage is dealt, consequences,
you move on #3 the next character acts.
This should happen in order of fictional importance.
Describe the character's circumstances exactly like
before #4 repeat Step 3 #5 Have all the NPCS done something?
If not, describe what they do and give who is affected a
chance to react. So if so, again, the bad guys
only hit if you fuck up and they hit you.
Except if at the end of everything there's some bad guys
that didn't get to go. They get to go, but they put
themselves in a situation that the player then reacts to and
gets a chance to roll and then you go on.
I love that. I love that.
That's so fun and interesting. It might steal the shit out of
that for something and that's it.
It's super easy. One of the important things and
one of the other things that lends itself to a lot of like
these OSR style OSR style games, because OSR is dead, is that
since everything is based on like characters, like the
narrative is, again, it's an emergent narrative.
It's not a story. You're not a storyteller.
You're just adjudicating situations.
Before a player makes a decision, they should know all
things. Like the referee is never like a
trickster, like hiding shit from them or whatever.
There's no gotchas. So before the the player does
something, they should know all of the situation and then get to
do that stealth and surprise, it's a thing.
What do you think it it's that wounds and death.
And there's this really cool person with like, chainmail
that's coffee colored. Like sipping on a coffee.
Yeah. Blowing.
He's cooling it.
Down blowing, yeah. So at 0 HP AT0HP HPHP, you're
unconscious and bleeding, you make a contract to determine if
you're still breathing. If it's a failure, make a new
character while your friends split your gear amongst
themselves. I love that.
It's a really good part. Yeah, if you succeed, you go
back to one HP and then there's other stuff you got to do.
You've sustained a grievous wound though, so you lose a
level to represent the loss and abilities and then all the stuff
that comes with it. So like when you lose the level,
you have to like take away like the stuff you would have got
from a level. So if you get 2 when you level
up, you have to take two away when you level down.
So if it was HD, if it was like a mat, if it was a, a, a stepped
up dice, whatever, boom, it's gone.
Cool. I mean, you know, like it's a
good way to represent lasting injury.
Yep, Yep. How do you get it back?
Do it again. There's no way to get back what
you lost resting and eating. Guess what?
You can you can do those things. There's there are optional rules
for stamina and sanity, which are risk die related.
So that's fine Magic healing it exists.
It's fine. We're going to get a magic here
soon. You can heal with it long rest
and referee turns basically just as like during long rest and
stuff like that. If you choose to take a long
rest, that is the referee's turn to advance the world.
You know, again, you're not telling a story, but you are
building the world and like the moving parts in it so that the
players action. So the so that the world is not,
you know, the, the, the world is not like the, the pre Galilean
concept of the universe, right? They are not the sun with
everything revolving around them.
The players exist within a moving world, and when you take
a long rest, the referee goes, who?
Who? This faction does this and this
lich does that, and they're trying to go over here.
Well, they're not there anymore. And then there you go, spells
and chaos. Do you want to do magic?
Yeah. Yeah.
So hey, listen, magic cost HP, it starts at one, and as you add
effects, we'll just do the thing.
Yeah. So, Oh yeah, that's you in the
chat now. Magic cost HP.
The cost is figured by all basic spells cost one.
You can never spend more than you have HP.
And as you increase the effects of a spell, the range of the
spell, the targets of the spell, you add on to the cost.
It's got a nice little bullet list here if you know where to
add cost. I'm fucking stumbling today.
But yeah, you roll. And on a successful roll magic
works as discussed on a discussed, and on a failure it
doesn't work unless unless you let chaos come into play, which
comes in next. And on critical rules you have
additional consequences. A natural 20 day referee decides
what goes wrong or picks a mishap and like one you don't
lose HP. And I I did skip this for the
roles. It can be intelligent, wisdom
and sometimes charisma. It's it's fairly traditional,
kind of like the magic stats you know.
A little blurb here. Specialist magic.
You can allow characters of the treat, such as Illusionist or
pyromancer to avoid rolling with disadvantage when casting a
spell with a cost higher than their level.
However, being specialized means lacking certain knowledge.
Pyromancer. Pyromancer wouldn't know water
magic very well and probably couldn't do ice magic at all.
Fairies stuff. And like I said, spell cost one.
It's instantaneous, it affects creatures of the short range by
default, and it deals or kills one damage by default and has an
inconsequential yet possible entertaining effect, increasing
the cost by 1 to five points for each.
And that is generic wording. For example, if you use
something generic like necromancy is the example of a
generic raised dead. Or it would be more specified,
but a more generic brother would increase the cost.
Instant casting time would increase the cost, increase the
range targets, things like that. It raises the cost of the spell.
And this is how magic is. It's not quite triangulated like
it is in white hack, but it is like, yeah, it's just added up.
You are building. It literally says like, start at
1:00 and then every one of these that you added to it, you can
just be like, all right, it's a long range with an extra target,
and the HD is higher and I want it to last a minute and it's
going to be a big fucking thing. Well, it went from one and now
it costs like 6. And that's your HP, buddy.
Yeah. And you can lower the effects by
like having an arcane focus, having magical reagents, like
being in a place of power, narrative stuff will help you,
you know, lower the cost of these spells.
Yeah, I do like what it specifically says there the one
of that, the the bullet points there like do not waste
everyone's time counting beans. Like like don't fuck around and
argue and like do whatever. Like kind of know what you want
to do when the referee tells you how much HP unless it seems
fucking crazy, just say OK and roll with it, you know?
Absolutely. Love it.
Did you see how the chaos is Chaos, Chaos, chaos, chaos?
Chaos. Chaos.
Yeah, I was. Saying earlier it was like,
that's the next page. Chaos, Chaos, chaos.
And it comes back up. Yeah, yeah.
And then we have we have some art of a creature that is
legally distinct from a beholder for sure.
Yeah, holding a holding a coffee cup with his mind's eye.
Oh, I just thought he was first thing.
I thought he was thinking about coffee cup.
But I do see now it's like psychic energy, you know?
Yeah, yeah, because thinking would just be a bubble.
This is like a little you're. Right.
Yeah, it's a little BLOB. Yeah.
So moving on. Chaos, you know, chaos risk die.
Yeah. The chaos for die represents the
stability of magic in the area. It starts at 12, but awesome,
given narrative situations, it might start lower.
And this is our spell mishap table, which you can pick from
as the referee or you can roll on Ryan.
Why don't you roll? 8 at. 12.
Oh, I rolled A4. Four.
What's that one? Erasure.
The magic works, but you forget the spell until you sleep a full
night. What I love about the chaos
table is that obviously you roll on this if you roll like if you
mishap your spell, but you can also if if any time you fail a
spell check, you can just roll on this anyway just because you
want something fun to happen. And there's a couple really good
ones I think. One is like you get back all the
HP loss from spell because even if you fail on the spell you do,
it does still cost HP to do it. The mutation one's cool too.
You're still actually ends up working.
But you have you're, you're all weird now, you know?
Yep. Yep, I like this.
I like I like a lot of like they're all really good.
Like there's a weak spell, lack of control, erasure, delayed
action, like all the stuff. I it's it's a really cool spell.
Miss up table but also just like again the chaos table where
you're like Oh I failed that role.
Yeah, let's see what. Happens.
You know, and it is a wrist die. So the moment your wrist die
goes down and fizzles out essentially like they're just,
it doesn't, the chaos just doesn't work anymore.
Like when you fail, you just fail, and that's the end of that
for then, yeah. Yeah, it's neat.
That's really cool. Finding spells section literally
says like, great, you can learn spells, whatever, but you can
just go find spells too, which is dope.
OK, Foci, reagents, matching materials, they exist.
You can have that. They help, they risk die based
and they help make things easier.
The cast. Yeah, it reduces your HP cost.
So when you, you can actually roll your reagents to get a
number and that if if the, if the GM says it's going to cost
you 6 and you say, all right, I got D4 reagents.
I rolled a three, it only cost me three.
My reagents are gone, but I reduce the cost of that boom,
because it cost you HP for everything.
So anything you can use to buffer that HP, a focus reagents
like, you know, items and stuff that have you do that, it's
great. Faith is a thing.
You can use your, your, your, you know, faith and price.
Magic. Yeah, so you actually get a a
faith like like a faith dice to do that with the same thing.
So you're spending faith instead of like HP and stuff like that
or like to offset the costs. Magic items exist.
You can create them. There's a section here about it.
There's a whole table here for like drugs and intoxication.
Guess guess what they use? You just die and they're cool.
There's a dragon drinking some coffee.
There's an example of magic at play, and it's an can.
We just read the first sentence. Go.
For it, it was just. The Edith is refereeing,
refereeing for opto, the psionic L spot.
Just that that was all I needed from that.
Yeah, that's dope. These are great.
It's great. It's an entire page on how it
works, what the referee is doing, like how to cast spells,
everything. It's a great example of play.
It is very long, but it's very. Yeah, it is long.
It's but it but it tells you exactly how it works and like
when things fail and everything. So like it's a really this
exactly what you want is to be able to have a narrative example
play that teach you how to do stuff.
There's 3 sample spells here. We're not going to go through
them basically. But one of the things I did like
about the first one, the Thuvia's Reign of Blades, is
once someone does come up with something that they're using the
spells to do, just write it down and the cost that you're given
and you can use that as the general cost maximum.
So you don't have to calculate. Every time, like maybe you're
like, well, it was 6 HP last time.
It's a little bit easier this time.
So it's five or it's a little bit harder this time.
So it's 7:00, but you can start, you know, five steps in just by
writing it down. And that's, that's great
downtime in domains. It's, it exists.
There's fine. You can have domains like
entertainment, highway robbery, manual labor.
They, they're, they're fine. There exist.
Oh, you, you can also do a job during your downtime to make
money. And whenever you do, you roll.
And if you fail, there's a consequence while you were doing
your job, so you could hurt yourself on downtime or get
arrested or go into debt or something while working your job
between adventures. And I just love the idea of
someone like waiting table or like, you know, a barista at a
cafe between. Shoulders, waiting tables and
now you can't go on your next adventure and you.
Can't go on an adventure, right? Or you get an argument and
someone kidnaps you and takes you away because that's in here.
That's great. Off screen expeditions, you can
roll for it and that's great carousing and nights out again,
reminds me of the the village. It's great.
A carousing table D12 and you roll it it's it's a it's a coin.
It's a coin die. So like you know and more yes,
yes, yes, domains and traditional campaigns.
The ventures end up managing domains.
It's here your finances, mass combat, feuding factions,
stability and trouble. There's a stability of dice.
There's like trouble happening. So a a bandit's coming in, a
disaster coming in, an assassination attempt.
That's here. 50 Shades of macchiato monster.
So there's fifty monsters here, including a dope graphic of a
wolf howling in front of a moon, but the moon is the bottom
coffee cup circle stain. It's such a great piece, but
there's fifty monsters here. For example, let's go with #27
Mantis Mercenary D6 comes with pre installed plates and blades,
HD3 Armor D8, Razor Claws D6D6 Morale D8.
That's a monster and they there's fifty of them.
They're interesting, they're neat.
There's a lot of like iron pumpkin leotard and serpent
sorcerer, but like it's super easy to reskin.
The serpent sorcerer can easily be something else.
You just like reskin stuff, so that's great.
It's great. There's fifty of them.
It's interesting that like in like nave, there's like 50
spells and this there's already 50 monsters and more chaos
scales, scales, scales, scales. And then there's a bunch of
sideways tables. These are drop tables.
We're not going to go over all of them, but we are going to
look at one and I'm actually going to rotate this,
OK? I rotated the whole document, so
now we can look at it this way. So perfect.
So these are drop tables. So we're going to look at 1:00
and then just tell you what the rest of them are.
So you drop AD 6 and AD 8 on the next page.
So when you go to the next page, there are 20 blocks on this page
and in each block there is a one through 8 list.
OK, so you would take AD 6 and AD 8 and you would drop them on
the table. OK If necessary, read D6 to D8
on the table below to get an occupation.
Add both results if you need a morale or morale dice or wants
to know what the character is currently doing.
OK, so there's a thing on the side that says D6 after your D6
is less than your D8 and they're self-serving or neutral.
If the D6 is greater than the D8, they're altruistic good or
lawful. And if it's equal to they're
dishonest, evil or chaotic, right?
And then there is just a whole fucking thing.
So if you drop it and you land on number 9 and it's AD 6,
they're compulsive liar, right? And if you drop the other one
and it lands in box 12 and it was AD 8 or, and they got an 8,
they are actually dead or won't blow that they feed pigeons raw
meat, right? But above that there's these
other lists. So like the 11 to 48 here.
The, the, the table of like doing both and you add them
together is 11 to 68. So if you do that and you get
like a, the 24, there are Watchmen or tax collector,
right? That is compulsive liar and
feeds meat to pigeons. That's what you get.
So that's your NPC. And it also automatically tells
you what their what their demeanor is.
It tells you what their dice is, what the NPC like Delta dice is,
and it gives you what they're currently doing.
So if you had got like a A9 by adding the two together, they're
sleeping or resting. So it gives you all of those
things just by dropping two dice on a table on a on a on a piece
of paper. It gives you everything you know
about NBCI love these these drop tables are fucking amazing.
So there's one for townspeople. There's one for plots, whole
plots to your to to fact, the factions of doing, including
when wheels are in motion, when everything's in flames, like
it's great. There's a whole one for
factions, for adventure locales, for creatures, items, and
treasure. I will use this for every game.
I think they're amazing. I should use draw tables more.
I like the idea of them, I just never actually used them.
You. Know, but I love this one
specifically because of the way that it gives you like like 5
things with like advertised together which one's greater
which one's less than what did they land on like it's so great
you just drop 2 and you get like 10 things there's a map
generator that tells you like literally like what's coming up
next So again, you can build out a whole hex without having to
build a hex first it's great there's a a forest exploration
table so you literally drop onto this table and where it lands
and then and whatever you rolled it'll tell you what's going on
there. It's a it'll tell you it's a
trap. It's a monster in which what
kind it is Great. And then that's the game.
The drop tables at the end are are are are worth the price of
admission alone. Very amazing.
Yeah. OK, so that's it.
That's us. We're going to head over.
We're going to head over to the review scores.
So this is obviously a full book.
It's like almost 60 pages. For those that don't know and
can't see the screen, we actually quantify our terrible
opinions into 5. Categories.
With a Max potential of 10, so from 1:00 to 10:00, possibility
of 50 points. Those categories are art and
layout, which is the art in the book and the layout visually,
the usability of the book, which is a lot of times it's the
digital tools, bookmarking, stuff like that, Things in the
right order, like how well you can use the information that's
given to you. The rule set.
If it's a unique rule set, do we like it?
If it's a hacked rule set, how, how well does it achieved?
Was trying to hack Originality can be any originality in
anything, whether it's art, like rules, whatever value is bang
for your buckets. It's not just the cost of the
game itself, but all of the ancillary stuff you could
potentially get with it, like third party licensing and extra
adventures and all sorts of shit.
So art and layout. Mm hmm.
I think, I mean, I, I think the layout's about a million times
better than white hack, Yeah. Yeah.
Well, that bar is on the floor. Yeah, I think it's look, it's a
good looking like black and white book.
Well, it's more than black and white.
It's coffee color in as well. The art's good.
The it's Gray too. It's incredibly readable.
I don't have any major like bashes on the layout.
I mean, I don't think it's not like it's not like high art or
anything, but like I think it looks good and it's incredibly
usable and it's a shorter book, so.
Yeah, for black and white layout, that's just trying to
impart information in an instructional way.
It's great. It's great.
The headers are and there's nothing about it.
Like in in for example, like Black Hack, there's a, there's
every, every other fucking word is bolded because they didn't
just bold the first time they told you something.
They bolded for the entire book. Like there were whole there were
whole pages that were taking up almost by just the headers for
stuff that they had already explained or you didn't need a
header for because it's like 2 lines.
Long, I guess. It's just like on its own, like
none of the headers were a problem or anything, but there's
just too many of them. Too many things were bolded, too
many things were italicized. Like the layout was just like.
That's what we mean by like if it's a black and white book,
like you would think it's it. It's just fucking layout.
It's not like this is it's simple, but there's bullet
points we need to bullet points. There's numbered lists.
When you need numbered lists, well, that's usability.
The layout's fine. I like the art.
Again, there's never there's no big empty spaces.
Again, like the, the, the macchiato thing, really digging
into the art, I think is hysterical.
It cracks me up. The Sphinx is great.
It's not an art book by any stretch, but I think it's a it's
a well laid out book with some good art.
Great spot art. Couple of new pieces I'm healing
solid 7 on this. Seven is where I was going with
it too. Yeah, yeah.
Like this is like a very this is how you how a simple, how a
simple layout with some some good art gets a good score by
just doing it. Well, you know, you don't have
to reinvent the wheel. You don't have to be Mark Borg.
Absolutely usability. Listen, I'm gonna tell you right
now, this is AI think this is five for me on usability. 5 Yep,
Yep, I agree. I think, I think, I think that
it if it had digital tools, obviously it would go up.
So there are no usability. It's like there's inline
references to other pages frequently, but no, like at
least on the PDF. Nothing there.
And again, it it's kind of crazy that the previous version of
this did have at least a hyperlink table of contents, and
that's interesting. Not even any bookmarks built
into the PDF, which is weird. But.
Almost the one that gets me the most that there's not even
bookmarks in the PDF. I'm like, oh, this is actually
kind of crazy. Yeah, because like if you do a
Google Doc, it like builds the outline of bookmarks for you
already. You know, it is like it's weird,
but like it's so there's none of those things.
And I think there's just like the one section I I personally
feel could be in a better place. I get why it's there.
I don't have a necessarily a problem with it.
I wish it was lower though. Like I would put the whole
exploring the wildlife section right before all of the stuff
that we did kind of at the end where it's a lot like this is a.
Perfectly serviceable game book. Like it's fine.
Like it's like usability tools are not stellar, but it's not
bad though. I think it's a perfect five.
It's like, honestly. Yeah, this is when you have zero
digital tools. The vast 90% of the game is put
together really well in a way that, like, it tells you where
all the pages are. How do you get a bad score on
this? Because we rarely give out.
I don't know if we've ever given less than a four in any of the
scores. But like, how would you get a
bad usability if, say, this game, you strip out all the
references to where pages are, right?
You you mix up all of the stuff in like a weird order, right.
That makes it all like unusable, like those are ways where this
would be dropping to like lower and lower lower.
But like this is just well done in a in it's just it's just it's
just done like so it's a 5. It's it's bang average and
that's fine. Rule set.
OK, I love. I like this.
Rule set. I love it so much.
This is like outside of armor as far as like the rule set itself
goes. I can't think of a way that I
would really change too much of this.
No, I think this is really good. And I once again, as a person
who loves usage diet, like it's cool to see them implemented
throughout an entire rule set. And I think in most places
except armor implemented really well in a way that follows like
a single train of kind of like logic on it.
And you're like, cool, I know what to do with these things.
I love the way that they give you a lot of depth to extremely
simple mechanics, both like narratively, mechanically, to
abstract a thing into a way that makes it like really like
intuitive to understand. And one of the things we always
say when we bring up a rule set is if it's a hacked rule set,
how well is it hacked? And and when you're hacking
something like why are you doing it and what is the goal?
And did you accomplish it right? They're mixing black and white
hack up to build a game of emergent narrative role play in
a in a old school style where you build the world and the
situations as you go. Does this game do that?
Yeah. Yeah.
I think it fucking does stellar. I think it fucking does stellar.
And not only that, I mean the fucking the the all of the drop
tables at the end. Amazing.
I'm gonna use those for like every game.
What are your thoughts? I'm at I'm at like an 8 for this
honestly. Yeah, I'm in an 8 two.
I'm, I'm in an 8 two. Yeah, I I'm closer to, not in
the name of seven, but I think I'm still out of eight.
I don't know what I would do to bump it up.
I don't know. I don't know what would make
it's. Such an abstract score in my
mind, you know, I really am just like throwing darts at the
board. But what's funny is how often
that we are thinking of almost the exact same number, and I
don't know if we're ever more than one point off of each other
because it's always about just. Feel it just.
Feels like an 8. It feels like an 8, you know?
Well, there's only one game that's ever gotten A10.
Did we? Did we?
Monopoly. Yeah, Monopoly got it.
But Kingdoms did. Did we bump Necronalis up too or
did we keep that one on 9? Oh well, I thought we were going
to bump Necronalis up. We should I.
Don't know. I don't know, no.
I never that's not that's not a discussion for today.
Originality So for our monster fucker ROM com book here.
Yeah, I mean, it's fun. I mean, is it original in any
way? I mean, it's a dungeon game.
So, you know, I mean, it's not really the focus of this.
I think it's a hack of another game and it's done well.
Well, I think that's important to hack of two games done well.
I think that risk dire implemented in the way that I
think there aren't always in a lot of other games and it's cool
to see that here. And I feel like that's fairly
original, maybe not the content itself, but its application in
this this game. Yeah.
I mean, I, I don't think it's going to strike very high for me
originally because it's, it's not really original in those
ways. But that's the thing too is,
yeah, it's not the the thing of this is it wasn't like
originality was not the goal of this.
Like they combine two things to literally make something you can
do BX with. So like you're the the point of
was to not necessarily be like super original.
The point was to just do a thing that a lot of other things do,
just in a different way. And I love the way they did to
do it. You know, you don't.
Yeah, I but yeah, what are you thinking?
6. Like a six.
That's exactly what I was thinking.
And this is also why when we give scores, you should look at
the individual score and ask the story, the overall, and pick the
one that matters to you, right? If rule set's really important,
I can show you rule sets. I got eights on rule set and
four on layout. You know, and value.
Value The PDF is 7 lbs, so that's 8:00-ish.
Where? Where are you getting the PDF
from? That 7 lbs.
Shop.lostpages.co.uk. Oh, you didn't just go to drive
through RPG? No, I'm a freak.
I'm a freaky little guy. I went directly to Lost Pages
website. OK, So if you want it on drive
through, it's $6, it's what, 6 dollars?
Oh. That's that's crazy.
That's crazy. I mean, for a game, it's like,
oh, it's mostly randomly generated and you generate
things as you go. I'm like, well that's just
endless game. Play for like it's 6 bucks so
watermark PDF $6. I stop DRM ING your shit drive
through. Yeah, please stop doing that.
Fuck, come on. Soft cover, black white book.
The thing that I have in my hand right now, a 5 perfect bound
$12.00. Oh, super reasonable. $12.00 to
get this POD black and white, and same cost to get obviously
the PDF with it. So $12.00 for PDF and this book
normally 18 marked down to 12. I don't know if it's normally
marked down to 12. I know, yeah, $12.00 and then
the PDF is off together. It's 12.
It might be one of the things where it's 18, but it's always
12. It's always 12, yeah.
That's very fucking he never does that.
That's a great deal. I mean, again, it's it's 60
pages. It's 60 pages even as a POD,
$12.00, honestly $12.00 is not even enough for the for the PDF
of this. The PDF of this should be like
12 to $15. Because the PDF should be more
the more expensive it it just should be.
It's not that's affordable. It's nice that the doors it's
easy that I open to get to this game.
I'm giving us a strong, strong eight. 8.
I guess 9. No, no.
So I guess my only problem, I guess for a high score on value,
right, is like this is a. So again, value is not cost,
Value is bang for your buck, right?
So like the cost of this is relatively inexpensive, but
outside of the fact that like with everything that's
technically OSR, you can technically run all OSR, there's
not a bunch of other macchiato monster stuff, There's not a
tree, there's no but you. Can run everything pretty
easily. There is a lot of generators in
there, you know, There's a lot of, yeah.
But here's here's another here's another problem that I have with
the current take on this right is Macchiato Monster 0 edition
right came with character creation examples separate die
drop tables, character sheets, a city crawl like all sorts like
all of these extras came with zero right, right.
But none of them came with this right.
Those are the, this is what I'm talking about for as far as
value, right? Like that's, that's what, that's
what we that's what we mean is like value, right?
The cost of this is inexpensive. But like no digital character
sheets, No, none of the stuff that you got from zero, none of
the to the dot, none of the drop tables is like a separate PDF,
like no extra resources whatsoever.
That's the thing that knocks it down for me because those are
easy because like they already exist, you know, to get to throw
that into the folder with the PDFs.
Yeah, so. What do you think?
I'm I'm down to lower my score then what are you thinking?
I'm somewhere routine, like, I mean, it's only $6, so you gotta
give us a that's. The thing is that that really
knocks stuff, so I think I'm still at A7. 7 easy, yeah.
OK, cool. So 7 + 5 + 8 + 6 + 7 = 33.
Is that it? 33 respectable.
Yep, you're correct. Seven plus, well, I think it's
that five on the usability thing that like really, yeah, 33 if
they here's The thing is that would easily be closer to like a
36 or a 37 if they bookmarked and hyperlinked the PDF and
threw in some character sheets and and separate drop table
stuff into the PDF stuff. And it would be it would easily
be like a, a mid to high 30s instead of a low 30s.
But anyway, so that is the game that is Macchiato monsters.
It's a great game. I really love it, super
enjoyable, relatively inexpensive from Lost pages,
Definitely go check out everything that lost pages does.
They're a fantastic publisher. And at some point maybe we'll
we'll hear from lost pages. Go vote for the innies.
If anyone's ever been on a show, vote for them because they're
cool. And that's it.
That's our episode. We will see you next week.
I don't know what we're doing is jerk back next week.
Oh, is that next week? That might be next week,
actually, yeah. But also on Monday, a little
preview for what's coming up. We are going to be having
Prismatic Wastelands on to chat once again.
Second time that they are going to be coming back.
So we're going to be talking to them on Monday.
And I think Jert is actually coming on the same week.
So we're not reviewing a game next week, I guess, because we
got an interview on Monday and Friday.
So we'll see what interview we're doing in two weeks and
maybe we'll stick to more in reviews that interviews.
Have a good day everybody. Bye bye.