Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll podcast.
My name is Ryan. And I'm 2D6 Dyer pythons.
There you go. That's quiet.
It's a lot of fucking dire pythons.
I know. Isn't that terrifying?
Like a dire Python, you know? Yeah, I think one would be
plenty, but that's minimum too. Yeah.
Today in this bright early morning episode for those
watching, we're listening later. That doesn't matter to you, but
for us it does. We are going to be reviewing the
black hack from David Black. This is 2 E.
The second E, you know, the second, the second E, because
the first one was not called 0 E It was in fact called 1E.
Some of you will get that. Yeah.
So this is a game, kind of. It's not.
Yeah. Yeah, it is.
It exists. It's out there, yeah.
There's a lot of really great hacks of this game.
You know what? My first thought, or my my my
initial two cents here is exactly what you just said.
I all I hear a ton of people inspired by this game and I've
never heard anyone play this game.
And now that I've read it, I'm like, yeah, OK, Yep, Yep.
Yeah. I mean, we'll get into it, but
yeah. I mean, we're not going to get
into it. That's the end of the episode.
So we're out, we're out, fam. We haven't done this 10 times.
But but yeah, you know what? I let's just fucking get into it
because I have a lot to say and we're doing our darndest for you
out there. And and then listening to Do As
Aaron King Says and keep it to a tight 90 for most of our
episodes from now on, and maybe the long ones to two hours,
we've even been taking a bunch of notes and shit.
So you'll see that as we go through the PDF, you'll see some
parts that are highlighted. That's me taking notes.
So my. Notes are all just question
marks. It's just like a big.
It's multiple paragraphs of just question marks.
Oh, there's a lot of times where I literally go brah, What?
Again? Really.
Yeah, we'll get to those. So.
So yeah, let's hop in. Let's do this thing.
Boom, black ack. First off, I I love the cover.
Oh, the cover's great. Actually, the cover is
fantastic. More stuff has fallen out of the
book. I open it up and more fell out.
Yeah. I like, I like the kind of like
smattering of like magic occults and mundane items.
I think it's cool. So I like there's a lot of
really good spot art in this. You know, I completely agree.
I completely agree, actually. Let's pop back to this page real
quick. I do have the physical, so let's
just look at it real quick. This is the book.
Oh yeah. I don't have the physical of
this actually. So it's it's nice.
It's Matt I you know I didn't really know the black hack that
well when this kick started and they had a big fat box set.
I'm kind of sad I didn't get the box set and then I read it.
I'm. Surprised you didn't get the box
set just by being by way of being you.
I think it was one of those things where I was like, I need
to save money a little bit, so I didn't go for the full box set.
Before I read this, I was sad I didn't have it.
Now that I've read it, I'm fine. Yeah, but the book is nice.
It does have a ribbon. It's well printed.
I did back at a tier where I got some of the extras.
I got a little notebook for locales and it's got like a lot
of note sections with some hexes and stuff like that.
There is a little lore, yeah, there's a lore book.
It's got some basic rules here on the front, which is nice to
have. Like it's basically just
attributes and then just a bunch of blank pages.
And on the back cover there's like some the usages advantage,
disadvantage, some of the rules, not all of them.
All of the arcane and divine prayers and spells and stuff are
in like even little tinier books because for some reason we
needed two sizes. And then I listen.
I wish they'd make all books like little tiny ones, you know?
Yeah. And then there is some other
different rules, but also not all the basic rules you need on
separate cards. So if I didn't want the book, I
could just have two books and two cards with me and that would
be enough. But if you had got the full, you
know, big old box set, you would actually get things like the GM
screen and and the resources that I found would have been
helpful throughout the course of the book.
But. That is, there's a PDF version
of the of the GM screen, and it's it's, you know, it seems
fine. Seems like a GM screen.
I do I have that? I think so.
I mean, if you saw it, it's probably my Dropbox.
Yeah, I don't think it was in mine.
So I wonder. I don't know.
It wasn't someone's. We have linked dropboxes, so
it's hard to tell sometimes, you know, yeah, so, so going back in
real quick, now that you saw the physical of it, it is a physical
book and it exists. This is a cover.
It's great. Like you said, they use this
style. For those in podcast land, it is
a black cover and everything on the front is like white line
art. It says the black hack in the
middle. It kind of like in a circle of
just stuff around it. There's like a flail head.
There's like a a a burlap sack mask, there's a bucket, a
shovel. It's dungeon.
Shape brush. You know, there's a there's a
book with a ghost coming out. Yeah, I think it works, you
know? No, Yeah, I think it's great.
That's one of the highlights of this.
Absolutely is the art, because as soon as you get to the next
page, you know it says comprehensive rules Light old
school fantasy role-playing developed by David Black,
featuring ADIY homebrew of original era fantasy gaming and
modern game design editing by Pookie.
Cover art by Carl Sternberg. Good fucking job, man.
Great job. Interior art by Carl Starberg,
David Black, Sean Pope, Jeff call a bunch of people that they
say thanks to and that's it. And then you'll notice
throughout, especially on the index page, more of that cover
spot art of like fish and buckets and stuff like that.
But now it's black on white paper through the index, and
occasionally as spot art throughout the book Looks great.
Yeah. So first, because yeah,
obviously the index. Yeah, no hyperlinks.
Yeah, there's none. And there's like a single one.
There's page references in line a bunch.
We're going to get to it. But eventually there's like a
tool tip kind of area that is like almost like another index
essentially at the back of the book.
But it's just like, well, it does nothing for but we'll get,
we'll get there. But yeah, there's no so.
So there are bookmarks, but I will say not a ton.
I mean like. Yeah, I mean, I think they're
fine. A couple of them.
I feel like the bookmarks are in like, a weird order.
Like, I remember like. Finding new spells is like way
later in the book than like the other two under like magic and
spells. Yeah, yeah, they're they're
bookmarks. Yeah.
The other, the other. The other thing is, I don't
think so. So when you go through the
index, right, it starts with playing the black Lack.
Let's count the rules for everyone moving a distance,
attacking, defending and damage levels and experience rules for
the players. Magic and spells which are in
three different spots, creating a character rules for the GM,
random encounters, Equipment and economy.
Harlings and Retainers, Panic and light, Diseases and
narcotics and poisons Tools, Quick reference Npc's Tricks
Traps and secret doors. Monsters, Matic Adams and
Treasures and sample dungeon. I think there's like 16 or 18
different headers here. One I don't think you need that
many headers. The argument could be, oh, we
want people to be able to to find them quickly than harp like
the PD. F Yeah, so yeah, so that's what
this red this red thing here at the top it says no hyperlinks in
that the like you said, there are so many inline hyperlinks
and references to other pages in this the the PDF was complete.
Like it was completely forgotten as far As for usability.
So. Yeah, I thought that was really
interesting. Like to have so many page
references and be like hey well well and then the book itself.
I mean it does come in the ribbon thank goodness one.
But honestly for the amount of work that I would want in this,
like I want like 3 ribbons give me like a white, a black and a
Gray or something like that, then it'd be a little bit more
helpful. But anyway.
I feel like I really very rarely see more than 1/2 maximum.
You know what book do I have that has three?
It might be cult. Like the Bible version of cult.
I think right there has three. Listen, if I ever put a book
out, ribbons. Maybe.
So let's get into it. So, playing the black hack, what
is this game? The black hack, TBH, is the
tabletop, a role-playing game played with pencils, paper and
dice. TBH looks back at the dungeondom
and games of the 1970s, rebooting those experiences with
modern rules for another generation of gamers for ease.
Oh, this is a great one too. First of all, I do like that.
Here's the thing, we're gonna I'm gonna bash on this a lot.
But the the core rules of the game I really enjoy.
Actually, I really, really do. I think it's just everything
else that could have been done much better.
Yeah, but it says 4 Ease of play.
Anything styled in bold italics is in the appendix on page 122
for quick reference during play. You know, it would have been
even nicer is if that appendix was hyperlinked, and if the bold
italics went to hyperlinks. And I'll say this right off the
bat, like too much fucking bold italics.
Bold italicize the first time you see it.
Not every time throughout the entire book.
It makes it. I love bolding things for like
my ADHD brain to catch, but when there's so much of it, it look
it feels like it's punching me in the face.
There is a good amount of it. It's like half the fucking word.
Sometimes. Like I get, I get it.
But if I see monsters once, I don't need it bolded every time
throughout the rest of the book, You know, So good idea, bad
execution in my opinion, right off the bat.
Then there's a whole section here.
Notice there's not a lot of highlights on it because we
don't need to go over it. How does it work?
It's a game. Why should what should the
players do? Play the game?
Rolling the dice. There are dice that exist.
It's a full set of polyhedral. What should game masters do?
Run the game. There's a thing here about
playing the game. It's literally says players make
characters, GM's run the game. That's all you need to know
about that. But I do like this last part
here, the spirit of DIY tabletop Rpg's.
This is both good and a little bit annoying.
The thing TBH encourages above all is the freedom to mold the
rules, customizing them to both suit the preferences and meet
the needs of everyone playing. In other words, change the
rules, hack it, and make it yours.
Except I feel like the whole spirit, um, it's kind of taken
away a little bit because you notice a lot of the black X's in
the bottom left corners of. This is because the PDF is sold
with DRM, which is Digital Rights Management, which makes
it a restricted secured PDF. So you can't ask your.
Ryan's name was on every page of this, and so he had to add it
off so we could go over it in the podcast.
Like my name, like an order number, like all of that shit.
And plus like social. Security blood type.
You can't. You can't export.
You can't export certain parts of it look, so the whole it's a
locked thing here. So there's oh you can't see the
pop up. I have so it allows you to print
it, but you can't do any changing.
You can't do any assembly. You can't do any page
extraction. You can't do like a bunch of
stuff which the. Spirit of DIY.
Like, you know, except don't do it.
Don't do that. The freedom to do all the stuff
you do, but just not with the PDF that you paid the money for.
Right. So I I, I think in the, in the,
within the context of the book itself, the spirit of DO I I
love that. Hack it, make it yours.
A million people have in a really, really good, positive
way. But again, when you say freedom
and hack it and make it yours and then DRM your shit, it kind
of ruins it for you. Yeah, kind of.
I mean, it sucks too. Especially if you're like, you
know, you're one of those people who wants to make their own
custom version for their table. You know, it's like.
Yeah, well, even if you even for page extraction, we're going to
get to parts later where I'm like, why is this in the middle
of the book? And I can't even extract that
page out because it's locked. So I can't just print the
reference page that I want kind of obnoxious.
We had an example of play, a full page example of play right
off the bat before we see any rules.
And honestly, I fucking love that.
I think it's a great allegation. Totally, Yeah.
Yeah. It's a good pace.
Like you get set up for like, okay Cool.
This is how this person plays this game that they made.
Yeah, amazing. Immediate understanding of the
creator's intent for how the game is being played right off
the bat. Love it.
Yeah, so that's what that note was.
Moving right along. We're getting into rules for
everyone. One of the many, many, many,
many, many, many, many, like headings of this.
So all right, I'm going to, I'm going to do my best to not get
annoyed and bang on this a lot of the time.
But there are two I'm. I'm torn between readability
because a lot of these there's a big headers and then there's a
shit load of like also very big headers.
But sometimes like 11 sentence will get its own header, like
within the context of like a whole paragraph broken into a
separate paragraph with a giant size like 20 font like like like
header on it will literally be one maybe two sentences.
And I'm like, you easily could have made this whole thing like
one thing, but you broke it across like you added like 30
pages to this so you didn't need to just by breaking stuff into
every paragraph being like a different header and rule and
thing like that. Like did you find that to be
consistent? Yeah, I do stuff like that.
Doesn't really like bother me quite as much, but I did notice
there were there's a lot of headings.
There are a lot of headings. It gets a little bit.
Better, I think, in character creation.
And I think there's a little bit more like wall of text in one
area. Maybe.
Maybe it's just one area, No, maybe it's just as bad.
Actually, I don't you were saying that, but it's also
because you're just talking about like the character where
this is like here's a rule, here's or here's a rule, yeah.
But I think there are multiple times where it's just like all
those rules could just be under one, like you, like you could
just do that. Or the rules are repeated in
numerous different areas or in weird spots, so.
I don't know. I don't know them as bothered by
it. But you, I think.
I think I noticed it, but I don't think it gets me quite as
bad. I mean, what what bothers me
more is how many bolded words there are that that one bothers
me more than the fact that everything's broke.
I actually some most of the time, like subheadings are fine
for me, but like there's so many bold words all over the page
that I look at the page and I'm like, it's a little like it kind
of goes back and forth. We're going to flip through
pages and if you're listening, you're just going to hear us
complain about. But if you're watching, you'll
see some of the pages. Have bolded.
I mean, all of them have bolded words under every subsection,
and some of them have like, way more.
And you're just like, that's that's too many.
That's too many. Yeah.
Again, like, I know they're. All that important.
I don't need every time you see the word minutes to be bolded.
Like if you want to keep it caps as a keyword, that's fine.
But like every I don't need it every single time.
So get into it. This is rules for everyone,
characters and Npc's. The rules define creatures,
which is bolded and italicized as being one of the two
following types which would The one of the other things that
I'll point out pretty frequently is how many times something is
stated, and then either within that same paragraph or within a
paragraph or two later, it's immediately contradicted.
We'll get to that a couple of times, but so creatures are
either characters controlled by players or non player characters
and monsters that are created controlled by the GM.
Almost how those words are bolded.
So taking turns and time, I actually really love this
section. Every future has a turn with how
time is managed in this. So yeah, every future has a turn
they can move and take an action.
It's it's the normal move, take an action, you get a turn, it's
normal right? But the way time is broken down
is by moments and by minutes and I love this.
I think the comment I left is like I don't understand why this
exact style isn't used more. I think a lot more of like the
OSRA stuff really wants to stick to combat rounds, exploration,
turns, and like watches. But moments and minutes as this
kind of abstracted periods of time.
So moments are used during combat and represent split
seconds when everyone is attempting to act at once off
and against one another, and minutes are used when exploring
and adventuring. They represent a dozen or so
real minutes when time is not of the essence, but that is an
abstract measurement that can be used more so.
So like minutes could actually be hours or days.
It's just the concept of non combat period of time and I love
that the only app that means you're there.
And like it was the GM rules. It's like it makes it easier to
track. Like there's a lot of usage
dice, and so there's moments. Play like helps track usage dice
more conveniently for the GM. As time moves so minutes called
turns, it talks. About subscription Melee.
Oh yeah, thanks Melee 33 months. That's crazy.
I I just like that and that. But here's The thing is, like
you said, everything you need to say, there's like 3 paragraphs
for time, right? These abstract measures of times
are written to be conversational in tone.
Minutes called turns. But then there's immediately
another like headed section called relative time.
We're still talking about time, there's no reason to give it
it's whole another paragraph. But then it talks about time can
scale up during periods of narrative play.
Instead of minutes the gym can use hours.
No reason for another header there, Absolutely not.
It's still time makes sense. And then there is a a quick
examples which is still talking about time, but it also has its
own paragraph and its own header.
If the character search for a hidden door, it could take
minutes, blah blah blah like unnecessary amount of time.
Like you see, you see where I'm going with this?
We're in one section that talks about time.
We have 123, like at least three if not four different headed
paragraphs. Still talking about time.
It's just unnecessary. And here's the thing.
If these were numbered in a Troika style, I would understand
why it makes sense to me, because it's like, OK, well,
reference the quick example. There's 22232425 exactly.
It's not though, it's not. So you're just creating this for
for, yeah? I think maybe quick examples
could probably just not be a headed section.
Relative time is what I mean. I personally I'm always the one
who's like. I don't like walls of text.
I want things more broken up, so this kind of fits into that.
Maybe it's too broken up, but honestly I would almost prefer
it be too broken up to be like. A wall of text.
Like, yeah, there's too many headers, probably, especially
examples of new bits on Heather. It's just EX at the bottom of
the section. But like I would rather have it
more broken up, you know? See, I I completely agree with
that. And when I first started I was
like, oh this is, this is kind of nice whatever.
But like it's you get to a point where it's too much.
And to me, it hit that point about 30 pages into the book
where I was just like, I like it's just too much, you know?
Well, let's. So, yeah, gosh.
Quick examples. There's a GM's term Resolve, so
resolving actions, we're continuing in the rules.
Simple actions are automatically successful, and the GM just
narrates what happens. In reaction, the GM will ask the
involved player to roll an attribute test to determine the
outcome of the action. That's how you resolve actions.
You roll. That's it.
Pretty straightforward. Character Actions and Attribute
Tests. So there are 6 attributes which
we'll get to later. Give me one second, but this is
one of the best parts. In order for their characters to
succeed in an action, a player must roll below the attribute on
a D20. The best ice mechanic The best
D20 dice mechanic I agree. Notice that it is rolled below.
It is not rolled equal to or below.
You must roll below a D20. So what that is saying is that
this is a D20 roll under system. A lot of systems after this.
I think it originally came out in 2016 and the 2 E came out.
I believe it was like in 2018 the a lot of systems that are
D20 roll under reference. Black hack.
I'm sure it existed part of that.
I don't know, maybe David if David Black came up for it on
his own, he's a fucking genius. But I think it was definitely
more popularized after this. So there's a paragraph here
referencing what that means. Rolling on or above doesn't
matter, but one of the more important parts later.
It says the GM never rolls to resolve NPC or monster actions
or negative elements of the environment such as traps.
If they involve a character, the player will roll, so the player
suffers the consequences of their own actions and you remove
the entire concept of an adversarial GM.
Well, not the entire concept, A big chunk of it, which is that
the GM is not rolling against the players, ever.
I love. I do love that.
It's great, you know? Yeah, I mean, Merck board does
the same thing. So you roll to attack, and then
when a monster is going to attack you, you roll to defend.
Yeah. And it takes a lot of like, I
don't know, like I don't have a lot of problem with this.
There's a lot of goodwill at most the tables that I play
with. But like I have been at tables
where the GM is either on purpose is purposely like
adversarial or it's just that they're perceived like that
because they are rolling against you.
So I love that. Like with the system, like
systems like this, like the onus is on the player character.
It's like, well, whether you pass or fail is you, it's you.
So yeah, well, not only that, it automatically takes out that
whole There's a whole school of thought, especially within 5 E
because it's 5E that like, fudging rolls is okay as long as
it pushes your story forward. Notice I said your story is in
the GM story because basically you're just playing out their
story and that this automatically kind of removes
that, You know what I mean? Like you, all roles are out on
the table because the players are making our roles.
So there isn't a way for the GM to be like Oh yeah, that one hit
this time or Oh no it didn't. I / I unbalanced.
Things I learned GMA5E as I was talking to that one, that one
guy that we used to know and he was like, it doesn't.
It just, it doesn't matter. The rules don't matter.
Like you're behind the GM screen.
Just do it. You know, like, it's terrible
advice, But okay, Then what's? What's the?
Here's the that's the that's oh that is OK advice for that style
of game. But at the end of the day, then
you have to like you're not the players at your table aren't
playing a game like. They're just playing the game,
yeah. And you're just using these
people around you to act out the story that you wrote.
You know what you. Listen, if you know who I'm
talking about, you're like, yeah, that makes sense.
So you use the people around you crazy.
There's one person in the entire world that could possibly hear
this and get that. But if you do, there you go.
Let's see if they're even in here.
Not today. So anyway, so yeah, players make
all the roles love that. It's fantastic.
D20 roll under players make all the roles getting into advantage
and disadvantage. Guess how that works?
You just roll 2 dice, you take the highest or you take the
lowest but but but there is more to it and I don't like it.
So advantage and disadvantage means a role is being made.
It should be made twice as follows.
With the advantage a player chooses which result to use.
With disadvantage, the GM chooses the result to use.
We really choose this like that. Why do you not like that?
Because it's. It's an unnecessary extra step,
right? So the next line is.
I'll just get through it so I can get back to what I'm saying.
It says. Don't forget this could apply to
any dice roll such as damage items used to die, a random
counter roll, right? If a like.
If a player's rolling to accomplish something, they're
always rolling to accomplish that thing right?
Even if it's to not do something, they're they are
still rolling to do it or not do it right.
So getting advantage in that system, when is a player going
to be like, I want to roll this and take the worst result like
ever in any like not even just to be like sometimes I like
flaws that's just not how it I. Think we've done it.
And we've read this in other systems that have more variable
dice mechanics. So I guess like or like more
interactivity with like outcomes.
So yeah, I guess for this one it's like, yeah, you're always
going to take the best one. Like, oh, I'm trying to fail
this one on purpose. That's, that's my point, right?
There's never really going to be a time where you're like, I'm
going to roll these two and but I so the only thing that
disadvantage as the GM chooses the result to use.
This is another instance where I said like there's times where
it'll it'll say something and then immediately contradict
itself, right? The only time the GM gets to
choose, that means that the player rolled something and then
the GM gets to determine the outcome.
But didn't we just talk up here where it says the GM never rolls
dice to resolve actions or anything like that?
Right. Right.
But then you and then immediately, right in a way for
the GM to choose which die roll resolves the action.
Okay, I see what you're saying. So it's just a weird.
It's a weird. I just feel like it's like
extremely weird unnecessary thing to put in there.
Yeah, there's like a dichotomy in the belief system of like
what the GM is supposed to do in this almost immediately.
You know the number of times that that's going to pop up
around, like see, it says this, but then like 2 paragraphs
letters says this is there's too many of that too, and they come
through anyway. So Hit Dice and hit points,
pretty classic, pretty standard, but we'll go through it.
So hit dice is a number will always be after it says HD3 or
3HD is 3 hit dice, right? So for example, a level, and
it's always the level of whatever has a hit dice, right?
So for example, a level 6 ogre has 6HD and a character has 3HD
at Level 3. That's it.
So HD also indicates how many dice to roll to determine the
number of hit points or HP a creature begins the game with.
Npc's and monsters roll D eights for HP and characters roll the
dice given in their character class for HP could be 468
whatever it is, you just you have a dice based on your class
that's always your hit dice. But everything else in the game
is D eights right? So when a GMR player first, this
is this is a fun one. When a GMR player first rolls to
determine a creature's starting hit points, that is the maximum
they can ever have right? No amount of healing spells or
effects can take them beyond this amount.
The only way for a creature to increase their Max HP is to gain
a level. When they do, a single hit die
is rolled and the result is added to the maximum HP.
So let me say 2 paragraphs out loud, or two lines.
When a GM player first rolls to determine a creature's starting
hit points, that is the maximum they can ever have.
The only way for a creature to increase their Max HP is to gain
a level. So it's not the maximum they can
ever have. It's their current health
maximum and their health can increase by.
Right. And that's there's so many times
and I know I harped on that hard, but that comes up a lot.
Like there's immediate contradictions.
There's two just on this page. Instant there's on this page
alone. So next we're getting into.
Yeah, we're getting into, yeah, Movement and distances.
Abstract distances. Thank God.
So aside from the anyway. So there's not gritted in this.
There's close, nearby, far away and distant.
There's range bands. I love it.
I fucking love the shit are range bands in zones and
anything that's not great at combat.
It really helps with theater, the mind play.
I used to be a big grid person. I got literally like 5000
miniatures that are just sitting in boxes.
I still enjoy some grids sometimes and things get
complicated, but having range bands reduces so much time and
prep and set up and everything like that, it's fantastic.
There's no reason to go into like the three paragraphs to
talk about that. That is the distance.
But I will say let's let's look at this one.
So the ranges that are designed to support the narrative theater
of the mind style of play where a map of miniatures aren't being
used. Therefore it is useful if
everything in the world is tracked by its relative distance
from various points of interest around it.
Okay, remember that. Remember that people, there's a
section here about creature movement.
It doesn't matter, they move the same way.
Then we get to a thing. A whole paragraph called tokens
are useful. Whilst a full range of
miniatures isn't necessary to play the black hack, tokens such
as coins or chess pieces may be extremely useful for tracking
relative positions such as who is behind or in front of
someone, or other complex situations like comment
encounters. SO2 paragraphs above that it
says this whole range system is designed to not use miniatures
and then two paragraphs later it says oh maybe not miniatures,
but tokens that are the exact same thing as miniatures are
really helpful. Okay, make up your fucking mind
like there's no reason how these two completely contradictory
appears. Like you could have just put
this right underneath it and said if you want to use more
gritted combat, tokens could be useful.
There's no differentiation, it literally says use theatre to
the mind. But then also tokens are good,
which is not miniatures but is the exact same concept.
Yeah, it's pretty close. So it's I mean it's they are
miniatures. So, so all right.
Exploring distance and action. So I wrote and this is my note
before I get into unnecessary and is easily implied and
deduced from other rules. There is a difference between
writing for someone that hasn't played games before and writing
as if the reader is dumb. So exploring distances and
actions, various interactions with the environment and the
things in it, will require characters to be certain
distances from the target. For example, to attack someone
with a sword, a character would need to be close to them.
To shoot them with a bow, a character would need to be far
away. That's such an extremely
unnecessary paragraph, like, and it even has its own header like.
It's almost like like what? It's like 1/4 of a column for
like 2 lines that mean fucking nothing.
And I felt like there's so much of that throughout the entire
book where it's like there is a huge difference between writing
for people that have never played the game before, which I
feel like a lot of this is written for, and writing as if
the person's a fucking idiot. And like that.
I feel like a lot of this book is written as if the person has
like just taking their first steps.
It's like it's a little too spoon fed, you know like anyway,
so relative distances. My comment on this as I scroll
over it just says redundant. It literally just talks about
the range bands again, references relative time right?
And then talks about moments and close and nearby and far away,
and how minutes can be used for other things.
If nearby for a relative distance is 250 feet away
instead of like 10 feet away, every aspect of that is
redundant in the creature move section or in the relative time
section, like there's just no reason for it to be there at
all. Okay.
And then it talks about converting measurements.
This is fine if you want to use grids.
It gives you a rough draft of what grids are. close.
Five feet, one square nearby, 30 feet, 6 squares.
Standard standard, right? And then we get to my first,
most hated thing. It is the mini battle map.
It is a full page battle map grid and at the bottom is it
says marching order and it has 123-4567 blocks with rear on one
side, front on the other. And it says useful for tracking
the order of the characters in corridors or in traveling on
roads. It's page nine in the book.
That's my biggest thing is why is it page 9 and why is it not
in the back? Why is it in the back of the
fucking book? What's the fucking point of it
being on like page 9? And we're but it's going to be
like, there's going to be like ten of these throughout the book
where I'm like, this is something that you add into like
a folder that you can like give to people as like handouts and
stuff. And if you get the full giant
box set, there are handouts of these things, right?
That's fine. But then at least put this in
the back of the PDF. Because you can.
You can. You can print it later or send
APDF. That's just all of these.
Because unless I'm mistaken and I completely don't know what's
on my freaking Dropbox, there's not a PDF that's literally just
bad on my character sheet. All the rest of that stuff,
like, that's just a folder of all of the stuff that you can
just print out for use at your table, What they do is they
stick it on page 9. You know what I mean?
So I'm supposed to go to page 9. In the folder there's not there
is not a I know so I get a page nine in the book and it gives me
a great like battle map to use in.
Like I'm just going to pull the book out and be like, alright
guys let's play on this battle map.
The squares are like a centimeter by a centimeter.
You know what I mean? Like it's just it's it's one of
those things where it's just like I think there was thought
put towards trying to be. I don't, I don't even know why
some of the stuff is the way it is.
Like, again, like, this is such an unhelpful location for this.
It makes no sense for it to just be slapped in here.
OK? Anyway, so attacking, defending
and damage. So once we get to the rules that
are actually the rules again, that's where the shines.
The core rules of the game, which could take up like one
page, are fucking fantastic. I really love it.
Again, there's a reason why there's a million games that are
inspired by this game, right? I just think that the way that
this book was put together reminds me a little bit of the
way that Blades in the Dark was put together, in that the way
the book is presented to you diminishes the quality of the
rules within the book itself. OK, I get you know what I mean.
So, like, reading this book to me was annoying when I love the
rules. It's never annoyed, though.
You're so you're so hard to annoy.
I'm just a super laid back children all the time.
I know, I know. So attacking.
Defending a damage initiative in the order of combat.
So at the start of every OK, I feel like I'm just sounding like
a douchey fucking asshole, this entire thing.
But so much of this is so anyway, so combat breaks out.
Everyone has to be sorted in order, right?
Initiative. That's the thing.
So explain how initiative works to me, right.
So let me explain to you. At the start of every moment,
each player rolls a Dex test for their character.
Those that succeed take their turn before the MPC opponents.
They then must discuss as a group to decide their own order
for individual character actions.
Those that failed the decks act after their opponents, so this
does not tell you how to do initiative, Alertity says.
Roll the decks to see if you go before the bad guys, but then
figure out the rest of it on your own right.
Shuffle yourself into an order that's not initiative or that's
not. That's not to hand wave, to give
rules for like all the rest of it, and to just be like, well,
you go before the bad guys, but if there's six of you, you guys
figure it out, Come on, like even just say like go on order
of your next test, like anything.
Yeah. I mean, I don't know that I
necessarily care about that. So I care.
That doesn't bother me as much as I think about those you like.
It's just a non. Rule.
What I don't like is that at the start of every moment, Yes.
So yeah, that. That part of my dude, Honestly,
I never do that. Like, no, it's dumb.
I hate. It it's like.
Roll Dexterity every, like round.
Like, bro, I'm going to tell you right now, we're not doing that
on my table. The thing is ioffer that every
time it's a rule in the game, Ioffer it to my table.
I'm like, hey, so we can roll this every time and it'll change
combat up, or we can roll at the beginning and we'll just hold
that in all every single time. You're like original role is
once and we'll just move there. Yeah, yeah.
But here's the thing. Think about think about the way
this works every if you if you play it raw, right?
Say you have five people at your table.
So at the start of every round of combat, roll a deck stack
just to decide if you go before or after the bad guys.
And then you all decide in what order you go.
Decide real quick. All right.
That round is over, everyone. Roll another dex tax and now all
of you once again decide in what order you want to go.
Like again, if it just said roll a dex check at the start of
every turn and just go in that order.
If you're before the bad guy, you see what I'm saying?
Like there it's a non. Roll.
That's probably more what I would do, having them discuss
every single time without a lot of time to combat, which is
traditionally already a longer process anyway.
Like I think like as a GM, like when you're tracking what
everyone's doing, if they if it's like a if it's that mixed
up every single round, I'm like, OK, where are we?
And they lose it too. So and the thing too is if
you're playing with great players that are just like,
well, I'm closer, I'll go like, that's fine, right?
Yeah. Do you always play with great
players? No.
And we're not always sober, frankly, so rarely so so like I
said, it's it's not that, it's just that it's a non rule, it's
just it's just a nothing. It's a nothing.
Like roll a deck check, but then figure it out.
Like that's not a rule. They give me a rule then you
know okay. So good stuff here.
Attacking and defending. As an action, a character might
choose to deal damage to an opponent with an attack.
They probably must exceed an attribute test before they roll
before they can roll their attack damage die and subtract
the result from their opponent's HP.
Classic Standard. It's a way games work.
It's it's good. So to defend and avoid damage a
character must succeed in an attribute test.
So again, you roll to defend. When you're attacking and
defending there is melee attacks which you strength attribute
test for attacking and defending with swords and axes, and then
there's a ranged or decks attribute test for attacking and
defending with bows and thrown weapons.
That's pretty much that. There you go.
Straightforward. You have armor.
Wanted to see here that this is a really interesting way to do
armor. I don't have an opinion on this
surprisingly, because I really want to play with it to see what
it is, right? I feel like I feel like we ran
into this in Durf. I feel like Durf used this in a
similar way each piece of armor. Was it Durf?
I don't remember. Something else does, but yeah,
keep going. Maybe it was, maybe it was 17th
century minimalist it was on the episode 100, but so each piece
of armor a character wears gives the player a pool quote UN
quote, of armored dice. Each armored dye is a D6 and the
number of D sixes in the pool is equal to the armor value of the
armor worn. For example, a leather armor
which is marked as a V2, so it's got an armor value of two, gives
a player 2 armored dice in their pool.
If a character fails to defend or would take damage, they can
take one armored die out of the pool, put it to one side, and
declare it broken in return. This allows all damage from the
attacker effect to be ignored. Armored dice that have been
broken and put to one side cannot be used to ignore any
further damage. I'm going to finish this whole
section and then we'll talk about this a little more.
After arrest, any players with broken armor dice can try to fix
them by rolling them. If they roll above the armor's
armor value, the dye is no longer broken.
So if you had broken your two armor value for your leather
armor, you roll both D sixes. If it's higher than two, you get
it back. If it's lower, it is just
broken. On or below, yeah, I I just said
the next paragraph. So armor values do not stack,
only the armor with the highest AV counts.
Shields and helmets add +1 to the pool size and they do not
modify the armor's armor value in any way.
And there's a list here of armor values.
Cloth or improvises. One leather 2.
Chain mail, three plate mail, four.
Shield and helmet are different, they just each add a dye.
So if you have leather armor, a shield, and a helmet, you would
have two AV. Plus 1A, V first shield plus or
one die first shield plus one die for helmet.
So you had a four a V1 for the shield born with the helmet, 2
for the leather. So here's the thing I I think I
like it. I think I do too.
Yeah, but it's interesting to try it, yeah.
What I find interesting is that it's a D6 but the the dye which
is a combat thing taking damage in combat.
When you roll it, it has nothing to do with combat.
It has to do with repair. That's the only part where I'm
like what is like, what is armor when you're actually trying to
do a little bit of simulationist or rules wise, like what is
armor? Armor stops you from taking
damage, right. So it's interesting to me again
interesting without, without without like it, huh.
Interesting like head tilt kind of, you know, millennial way we
say it that you basically just have a pool of all or nothings
for damage. Yeah, right.
So if you have four of them, you can just say, well, I just don't
take that damage regardless of what it is, I just don't take
it. I move this dye to the side.
But then later when I'm repairing, it's just interesting
that the dye the the the like, the critical like role involved
with the armor at all has to do with downtime repair as opposed
to in combat. In its use is almost just like a
token. You know it's it.
And the only reason that you need it to be a die is to roll
later, yeah. Right.
So it's it's it's interesting to me.
I feel like. I mean it's more convenient than
the token because you definitely have D sixes with you.
Right, right. I just.
I just feel like I do like it. I think.
I just feel like if you're going to have to roll an armor die, I
feel like it should be rolled in the sense of like using the
armor, right? But I don't know how you would
tweak it and I do like this because it's clean.
So I don't know. I don't know.
I want to play with it, yeah. All right, damage and hit
points. If an NPC or monster takes
damage from an attack or character fails to defend, they
subtract the damage from their HP total.
So you have HP. It is reduced.
There's a thing here. When a character or NPC is
reduced TO0HP, they're unconscious and taken out of
action. And then there's a parentheses
00 F 00 oof my. My note says really unnecessary
abbreviation and I think it's used like twice through the rest
of the book. Unnecessary abbreviated sections
I read to Oh my God, I I immediately knew what it was
that was like OOFAH. That's just it's.
It's completely unnecessary like.
Even UFA just just right out of just right 008 like just I don't
know anyway. So large weapons.
I do like the thing here for large weapons.
So when a character wins a large or two handed weapon such as the
pole armor have your crossbow A1D4 should be rolled and added
to the attribute test to attack, defend and to any attack damage
roles. That's really interesting
because your attack roles count up, but that the hit roles and
defend roles are rolled under. So by adding a D4 you're saying
that you're making attribute attack and defend harder, but
making the attack damage roles more.
It is like one of the cleanest fucking rule.
It's so it's like one of ours. So clean.
Yeah yeah I I love it. Critical hits exist.
Obviously one is better. 20 is bad.
It when the when the result of a D22 attack is a natural one.
Or a role to defend is in actual 20, the damage dealt is doubled.
That's it. Crits are doubled.
Damage. Boom, you got it.
Hindrances, which are often called conditions or sad
effects, and other games. They're all related to stats, so
you can be weakened, distracted, stuck, or paralyzed.
Weekend All attribute tests are rolled to a disadvantage, but
then after a weekend they're pretty much specific, so a
character cannot perform any actions but may still move
normally. For distracted, a stuck
character cannot move, but they can make actions, and a
paralyzed character cannot move or take actions.
So your options are basically disadvantage on everything and
then you can either move but not act, you can act but not move or
you can do neither. So if I call it distracted, I
would I would pick a different. Yeah, cannot perform any
actions, but may still move normally.
Yeah. I mean, I guess if you're
distracted, you can. Yeah.
Dazed is better. Dazed is perfect, I think.
Yeah, distracted. So yeah, it's like, well,
they're on their phone, so they're unable to do.
It right? So, so everything is is based
around literally just those four things, and that's fine.
The other thing about this is like, I love mechanics, but
everything in this is mechanics, like it's an SRD.
Like that's what this is. There's no flavor at all through
like a ton of this. And the flavor we do get is like
blackluster, sure light ongoing damage.
I do enjoy this. When a creature takes ongoing
damage, it loses HP equal to its level at the start of every
turn. And an attribute test on the of
the G m's choosing should be made by the player at the end of
the turn to see if ongoing damage continues.
I like that really clean. It is what it is.
It is interesting that I know that they use usage ties in this
and ongoing damage isn't a place where they use it, you know, And
I I think this is very clean to do it, but I love some UD
ongoing damage, you know? Yeah, yeah.
I mean I would almost rather, I think it would depend.
I would almost rather just like countdown damage where it's like
you take, you take 5 damage and then the next turn you take four
and the next turn you take 3. Like if it's going to disappear
over time, but if it's just going to be like your arm is cut
off and you're bleeding, yeah, I think uses I would be
interesting but when we get to the table of like how much a
usage I usually give you, that seems like a lot without having
to do the save. I don't mind the level thing,
but I do think it's interesting like.
It's it's own level, so the higher level you are, the more
ongoing damage you take. Where I would probably instead
say you say you're ongoing damage equal to the enemy they
hit you. Yeah, so, but again, for a rule
for what it's supposed to be, which is just continued damage,
it's clean, it does work really well, yeah.
Yeah, OOFAH. What is OOFAH?
Yeah, when you're out of action. So there's no way where the
first. I know other people have said
that about this. Oh, I said it easily.
I was like, was it like when a characters taken out of action
they can no longer take actions or move when they receive aid or
the danger they were in passes. The character must roll on the
table below. If they survive, they roll a D6.
If they get a one through 5, they regain 1D4HP.
Counting up from zero and are no longer OOFAH.
If the character side loses the fight or unable to recover the
body, the character is lost forever and presumed dead.
So the OOFAH table, the Out of Action table.
On A1 you're just knocked out you're KO, and on A2 Fathead you
have disadvantage on all tests for the next half hour of play.
I don't get why it's called Fathead #3.
Cracked bones, disadvantage on all strength X and contest for
the remainder of the session. Disfigured.
Your CHA is reduced by 1D four. Badly maimed, either strength or
decks is permanently reduced by two or six.
You're dead. So I mean basically there's
scars for the most part sometimes.
Obviously the lower the the number the less damaging it is,
but like a 5 it's a permanent reduction and a two it's like
half hour of play, but again it's a non weighted table so
it's it's random anyway. And then there's a whole huge
there's a damage location drop table.
Here's another one that's even worse to the grid than me.
So it is a great piece of art. I love this of like a a beat up
Rogi person with like a shave tag, except for bangs.
They look cool. I really dig it.
And then there's a drop table, which doesn't make sense to me
because it's it's a list of 4D twelves.
There's an arms, a head, a leg and a body one.
So my assumption is because there's a big picture of a
person. You drop a D12.
What does it say at the bottom? Should you need to know where
could you just been hurt? Roll the attack damage by
dropping the dice on this page. Okay.
So you drop it on the picture of the person and whichever part of
the person it is. You would then, I assumed, roll
another D12 so it's like so throw your damaged dice on this
okay. But it's like again it's page 12
in the below so unless there's a print out.
For you to do this, I'm going to open the book and say throw your
damaged. I saw my book here.
What? Just put it in the back of the
book. Couple things to be moved to
back of the book in this SO. Yeah, there's like 18 more pages
of that okay. So levels and experience gaining
experience, you can gain experience.
That's all thing. You get it.
There's different ways to get it here.
So unlike many other games, characters don't earn points
incrementally. You earn points by doing cool
stuff basically. So defeat a powerful named
enemy, discover the entrance or newer level of a deeper dungeon,
rediscover a magical artifact, complete a quest.
So like when you do cool stuff. Basically when Skyrim would give
you like a prize, you get a point of XP.
There you go. And like in the background, you
know? There you go, using experience
to gain levels and power. Once a character has acquired a
number of experiences equal to their current level, they may
share them to gain a level. So I don't like any of this
coming up. It's such an unnecessary
arbitrary, like I don't like it at all.
So basically you need to share your experience.
So if you're level three, once you get 3X P, you can share the
experience that you've gained with your comrades and gain
another level. So each class gains levels
differently. None of that matters.
So sharing experiences. So I wrote interesting.
I get what this is going for, but I find it superfluous and
it's too cute. So basically you are cute.
Like it's cutey. It's just like it's trying too
hard to be cute. You know what I mean?
Like it's just like, whatever. In order for the character to
share their experiences, they must go carousing and regale
their companions and revelry with stories of their exploits
and growing renowned. A player who wishes the
character to share experience must do these things.
You must literally as a group, go to a bar and get drunk and
caroused and. Whatever.
That limits the scope of this game narratively to such a
small, narrow window of fantasy instantly.
And there is no alternative listed here.
You have to tell the other players one very short story
from their characters past over a round of drinks and toasts for
each experience they would for each experience it was to share.
So we get together, you have 3X P to level up and you need to
tell me. You need to write and tell me 3
short stories. Perfect.
Yeah. Come the fuck on, the player
should or the player should roll 1D6 for no.
Then the player should roll 1D6 for each story told.
This is the cost and coins that must be paid for the
incompanying, drinks and feasting.
If they don't have the coin, the GM will determine the amount of
debt they owe into whom, and then you find the highest result
rolled on any of the D6 and consult the carousing table
below. This reminds me of UVG, except
it's done better there. So yeah, and it's setting
specific. They also give you a whole
setting book with that. No.
So it makes sense if you're there's a setting for this, but
this adds up right now. I know what talked about later,
and let me tell you what I'm going to rant about what it says
later. There's no setting to this.
It is classic sword and sword. It's classic.
I'm not even say sorcery. It's classic sword and Wizardry.
Like it's it's this kind of reminds me of going through
Shadow Dark. Oh, yeah.
It's just generic as hell, but tries to happen.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, So that is the whole thing. So let's say that you're we, we
have the Level 3 that you want to go to.
So let's talk about the process of just leveling up.
Because honestly, if a whole group of people need to level
up, this is like 1:00 to 2:00. Downtime sessions by itself just
to do this, because I would immediately just like, cross
this out with a marker in the fucking book and move on.
Like this is this is stupid, So. But you you're sharing your
three experiences, so you have to come up with three short
stories about your experience and tell me all three.
Roll a D6 for each. Pay that amount worth of drinks
and feasting to your fellow people.
Right. Or owed debt because of it.
And then all those three take the highest one.
Let's say the highest one was a four.
Then you have to roll on the krowsing table and say revelry
roll a D20 if it's higher than Cha, gain one point of cha.
So, like, I guess, yeah. It's like one of them is real
story. You get to alter your
background, gain another entirely new background, lose a
number of Max HP equal to the character's level, regain the
next session. Explain to me why the fuck
that's a thing. One of them is Drunken Brawl.
Lose a number of Max HP equal to the character's level and regain
them next session because I wanted to level up my character
for the shit I've already done. Like, Oh my God, if there's
anything in the scene that's going for, and I like the
concept, I don't like the execution of it, you know?
That's how I feel about the entire book.
But yes, that that, that exemplifies it all.
So my gosh, all right, let's keep Pearson here.
So rules for the players. Every character normally gets to
do 2 things. On their turn, move somewhere
nearby and take an action. They can alternatively forego
their action to make an extra move instead.
That totally works. There's some other stuff that
doesn't matter. Limited resources and the usage
die. So when an item described has a
usage die and then a number after its name, it is considered
to be a consumable limited item. It is a usage die.
Anyone that knows this, that's listened to us.
For those that don't know what a usage die is, when an item is
used as a usage die, it needs to be rolled if they're sold as A1
or A2. Then the usage die is downgraded
to the next smallest die in the following change.
So if you have a AUD20, let's say bag of arrows, like quiver
of arrows, right. Every time you use that item you
roll a D20. If it lands on A1 or A2, it then
downgrades to a D12. Same thing, you keep firing away
your arrows every time you fire an arrow.
It goes if you roll, you roll the D12.
If it lands on a one or two, it becomes a D10D8D64, etcetera.
Usage are great. Fallen uses them extremely well.
Yeah, it's a cool mechanic that I love theoretically, but don't
really use in person. I've said that many times
before. It's great they use it in this a
lot. It's cool.
I like it. The way that they use it is
really well done in here. Usage.
You don't use usage dice a lot. I totally do at my table now.
Either either just completely abstracted away into nothing or
keep track of it like it. To me it feels like in play it
feels a little fence city, because when you actually look
at how many points you would get for a U D20, it's basically
endless in the context of gameplay.
Oh yeah, I don't ever go higher. I almost never go higher than
like a six, so. Then just give them like 20 and
don't worry about it. You know what I mean?
Like that's how I feel about the, you know what I mean?
Like it ain't fallen is different because it uses size
are used for like. Player health and stats and like
all sorts of stuff, so it makes sense.
But in the context of just like having an item, I'm just like we
can look at the chart later and I'm like okay, I would just give
them ten of that thing, you know, or or ammo, for example.
I think Frontier scum uses it like you have ammo every time
and if you ever roll A1 on your damage, you like your arm, your
ammo's gone and you got one shot left or something like that.
Like that's how I would abstract it so.
Armor proficiency, so I don't know why this isn't lifted
earlier with armor, so it's between usage.
Dye of Ammo and Resting talks about armor proficiency.
Why isn't listed with armor earlier?
If a character is armor that is not listed in their class, they
should add its armor value to the D20 result when making an
attribute test. There's no reason for this to be
here when armor and all of the associated things with armor is
listed higher, and it's one sentence that gets its own
header. Resting.
When a character takes an hour to rest, they may roll any
broken armor die to see if it's broken.
It's redundant. We've already talked about
broken armor die. Come on.
Healing characters can recover hit points from potion, spells,
etcetera, etcetera. If a character is out of action
and recovers HP but hasn't rolled on the OOFAH table yet,
start at zero and count up on the OOFAH table.
Using backgrounds to gain advantage actually like this,
this is really fun. Your character, yeah your
character gets a background and once per session the player can.
Basically they can tell the GM. Hey like this is actually part
of my background, and you can get aid when making an attribute
test once per session using your background.
So the player should give a convincing narrative explanation
as to how their character's background relates to the
current action, and provide some kind of useful exposition about
the character story this. Is what I think the carousing
stuff is supposed to do earlier, which is I.
So I was just thinking the exact same thing just now I was like,
it's so close. Like, I get it, it's funny
there. It's a mechanics driven like
game that we're going through really.
But there's like the hints of like, oh, I want this to be more
narrative. Yeah, the carousing failed.
Yeah, you need a little bit more commitment to it, you know?
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, either don't or
do, you know? But I do enjoy this a lot.
What's the point of a background?
It's not gonna help you. So once per session, you can
basically say, now wait a second, like, I learned how to
drive motorcycles for my stepdad so I can drive, You know what I
mean? Like, yeah, then you can just
use that for the attribute. I love that.
I think it's great. And I do enjoy when mechanics.
Really like I don't want to say force you to but encourage you
to narrate more because it can really open people up that
otherwise like might just sit back a little bit.
I I do enjoy it but so that's cool.
I like that inventory. A character may happily can I?
What if I want to sadly carry? I don't understand use of that.
There carry a number of items up to or equal to their strength,
but carrying more items in their strength makes them encumbered.
Which means all attribute tests are a disadvantage and
characters cannot can simply cannot carry no over items more
than double their strength. Banishing undead.
Don't understand why it's here. It's a rules specifically to
clerics and it's talked about how to banish undead makes no
sense. There's a whole section for
clerics later. I do have a note here.
Oh, this is this. This is the exact moment on page
15 where I got annoyed with the bolded text because I wrote a
highlighted line here. This is way too much use of bold
text. This is the exact moment, 15
pages in at level in moments. At the bottom of that.
And that's that's my section. So, Hunter, you were taking #4
magic and spells, yeah? I should have taken over
earlier. I mean, I should have to ask for
more sections, magic and spell. So I'm OK with how magic works
in this. I'm fine with it.
So this is a a game where once a day, which I like, it's not
after a long rest, it's once a day.
A, you know, cleric or wizard or a a spell caster can memorize a
number of spells equal to their level.
They cannot memorize spells or prayers from above, like
whatever level your character is currently at.
So it's cool. It's not quite spell slots, you
know, like have like a Level 3 solid sports you.
You can cast as much as you want.
You can only learn so many and they have to be at your level.
That makes that makes sense. That's in the, in the, in the.
Like, if I'm a mechanic and I've only learned motorcycles and not
race cars, it makes sense that I can do all motorcycles but not
race cars yet. You know what I mean?
Like that makes sense. Like you just at the level that
you are. That makes total sense.
Yeah, I think my 1 complaint with this one is probably that
there's not really that many spells or prayers overall.
There's a fairly limited number per level.
There's I think there's like an average of like 4 per level,
which maybe that's enough. They give you the means to like
write your own in the little prayer book and spell book.
But like, I always find that's that could cause trouble because
players write spells. I'm just like, holy shit man, if
it goes anything by like what's in this book, it literally is
just four per level. But I mean, at the same time, I
will say that like, there are about 1,000,000 spells in the
context of like D&D&DCC that you like.
Clearly they just hacked those in, you know.
What I mean so casting spells. So this is an interesting one.
So a spell. A spell caster can spend an
action on their turn to cast a spell or prayer from memory.
That's it. There's no rolling immediately,
right? That spell just resolves.
After the spell is resolved, the spell caster makes an attribute
test, adding the spell or prayers level to the roll.
If the attributes test is made. Sorry if the actual test fails
you forget the spell for the day you unmemorize it, and if you
succeed, you keep it in your head if you've already made this
test. Today you do so at disadvantage,
so there's no rolling the cast, You just cast and then
afterwards you decide whether or not you've forgotten the spell.
I I don't know about that because like, you know, I think
a lot of times, like Wizards, I'm always the magic caster.
And it's either one thing or the other.
It's like you're either like totally unbalanced from the rest
of the game because nothing else works how you do, or you're
super underpowered because nothing else in the game works
like you. You know, like you're able to
lose stuff or gain stuff that like maybe a warrior, like a
warrior's not going to lose their sword every time they
roll, but they also roll the hit.
I don't love that. I don't.
I I would need to play it, but I don't like the things.
Like spells instantly hit? That feels incredibly powerful.
But then you can immediately forget them and not use them
again, so maybe that's the balance.
How do you feel about it? I dislike this for a different
reason. I I'm totally fine with majors
instantly losing their spells, like when we played Victory
Basic. Remember when you like burn like
burned out all your spells and you're basically like, well, I'm
going to plug with a dagger. I'm totally fine with that.
I love that. Because yeah, as majors
inevitably level up to a point where they're gods like, it's
impossible not to, right? My problem is, mechanically, why
do you cast it without a role and then roll to see if you
forgot it instead of just instead of just cast it with a
role, and if you fail, you forgot it, but like, you cast it
regardless, You know what I mean?
Like that just it seems like too like I'm going to, I'm going to
cast fireball and then we're going to talk about how the
fireball works out and then I'm going to go okay, now that
you've rolled fireball, tell me if you forgot or not or versus I
could just be like I'm going to roll for fireball.
I cast fireball regardless, but then I go oh, but I failed my
role. I think I get it.
That too. It's everything else rolls
before attacking. Everything.
Yeah, yeah. There's just no reason to do it
after when the exact same number of roles can be done.
What do you like about this is it does take us away from spell
slots you don't have like a like?
You know, you're not burning a spell slot, and I appreciate
that. Yeah.
So I I like I said I like the way it works as in like you can
whatever for levels, you got whatever, and it's just when you
cast, there's a risk that you could lose it.
I love that. I just again, like I said, I
hate that It's not as you're casting the spell, you roll your
forget roll, you cast the spell and then you roll your forget
roll. It's just an unnecessary step in
there. But I personally, I personally
do like how this works. But I see what you're saying.
Why you're like, man, you know? Yeah.
OK, moving forward, when turns are being tracked using minutes
instead, a spell caster may spend an action to attempt to
cast a spell or prayer by reading it from a book or
scroll. To do so, they must make an
attribute test, adding the spell or prayers level to the role if
they succeed, the cast if they fail at misfires.
The player should roll on the magical side effects table, not
hyperlinked. Yeah, so outside of combat, you
can read off books and scrolls, but there's a chance to fail
because you don't have it internally memorized, which I
like the logic behind that. I'm like, okay, cool, that's
that tracks me. Yeah, it says here.
Once again, a spell caster can only cast spells up to and equal
to their level. Arcane spells use Intelligence,
Prayers use Wisdom for all attribute tests.
Probably would put that a little higher.
But yeah, that's that's the basic casting spells.
I'm, I'm mostly okay with it. You know, I'm.
I'm mostly fine with it. Yeah, I agree.
It's definitely not one of the magic systems where I read it,
where I'm like, I hate this because that happens because I'm
a very picky mage. But it's also not one of the
ones where you go, Oh my God, I just got like, I'm going to make
a whole game. Well, yeah, it's not acid
majors. This is not.
Yeah, the guy who always reads the wizard part and then decides
whether or not I want to play this game like this.
I mean, I'll play this game. Someone runs it.
Yeah. OK, Moving on to creating a
character, rolling dice and finding a character concept.
So pretty much come up with a character concept.
Think of a character that's engaging, that you like to play.
You know, I am a person who sometimes will roll stats 1st
and then come up with the concept, especially in a game
like this where you're rolling, I think in a line, right?
So it's split up in a section, section a rolling dice for the
attributes. Characters have 6 attributes.
They're they're listed. Yeah, they defined everything
about the character. Very basic stuff.
So pretty much, you're going to roll 3D6.
For each attribute, assigning them to each attribute in order.
If you roll A14 or up on an attribute, the next one is
automatically A7, which I thought was interesting
balancing method if you're going to get penalized for rolling
high. I would give them smaller dice,
or I would give me, I guess 2D6 plus three or five or whatever.
You know, I would, I don't know if I want to be like it will.
You owe you rolled really, really well on one stat.
Well, the next one, that one's going to suck because fuck you.
I hate it. I don't like it.
I think it's terrible. Yeah.
I'm not my notice like 14 plus then seven question mark,
question mark, question mark. I roll Why?
Question mark. Going back to something you said
at the beginning though, like the the one of the very first
things you said is the first step.
Creating a memorable character is coming up with an engaging
concept. Never see that again.
Concept never comes back into play.
Oh yeah, you're right. That's so funny.
I didn't even notice that. Yeah, it says that and then it
never. Yeah.
Yeah, so swap 2 abilities. You can swap 2 abilities when
you're rolling because you roll these in in order.
This is a six stat system, so it is.
Strength decks con Wisdom, Intelligence, Charisma.
I'm not defining those. They exist.
Yeah, they you. You might know, if you don't
read almost any tabletop book. Yeah, And then choosing a class.
This is kind of the semi classic where there's four classes,
right? There's warrior, Thief, Cleric,
Wizard. Each class determines
everything. Hit points?
Yeah, everything totally fine until we do all that, yeah.
Yeah, you're going to make a background which is mostly
narrative and is used narratively, and I appreciate
that. Instead of being like a list of
backgrounds, I think they have some suggested backgrounds.
Oh, it's coming up next, actually.
How to use a character's background, which we just
previously went over maybe 2 pages ago?
And then how to make a good background decide on a short
sentence that encapsulates an interesting time in the
character's past. Considering following
backgrounds should ideally contain one piece of world
building fiction, allowing the player to craft a narrative to
tie into the game world a story element unique to their
character. Really like that.
Like the push for some narrative, it should also reveal
one specific skill or narrow field of proficiency or
knowledge that they learned or relied upon during this time.
There are several examples here and a lot of them are really
good and I think it sets you up for building like.
There's a Here's a good sentence.
You know, I'm a Lore Master of the Magistrate of Bulgarat
Kraxis, and the only thing I don't know is why the Council
wants me dead. Cool people want you dead.
You. You're a Lore Master.
Great one. One thing I really like about
that, did we? We've talked about daggers.
Have we ever played with daggers?
No, but we've talked about. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That reminds me of a quick dagger thrown in where there's a
background where it's like the only the council wants me dead.
There's no like, that's all you get.
And the gym can be like, oh, dope.
All right. I got a million ideas for the
council. I I I really like.
I love this part. Background might be the best
part of character creation. Even the inspiration table.
Even the inspiration. Table The inspiration table is
really cool. It's a D12 inspiration table you
can roll on to like you know you can get lost air to an old
throne raised as a poor St. child.
All of the All your favorite cliches #6 sold to a wizard as a
child. That was a really good one.
Such a good one. A lot of these are really good
because in literally like 5 words, you've read that book.
You know what I mean? Like escaping held prisoner,
reputation ruined by vices. I mean that's honestly that is
all you need for whole background that before I've I've
been handed 8 pages before and I've been handed one paragraph
before and I can tell you the one paragraph was way better
than the 8. One paragraph is always better.
The 8 pages is all. I'm always like, dude, you've
this is too much. You know, you've written your
whole story like we're about to go do that.
Yeah, like you. You've already lived your entire
life, like, at one point, or like, where does the adventure
come in, you know? Cool.
And then we have. They're like, what?
No, go, go, go. I'm just.
Being the the character sections I I quite like.
It's like a little character sheet with a solid piece of art.
Very straightforward, very clean.
You know? I love them.
I think it looks fucking fantastic.
Why is it? Why is it what I would like to
know on like what? Page 20 something?
Why is so? The character sheets could
definitely also be in the back of the book.
What would be ideal here? What would be ideal?
My notes for this was give me an example character sheet, fill
one out. Oh wait, why are you taking
notes on my sections? Huh?
Like get your own sections. I read the whole book.
I know. I'm just kidding.
So that I just didn't take notes in your parts.
Cool. I don't really want to go every
every class. Let's just let's just pick one.
Yeah. Which one's your favorite thief?
Oh. It is by far the best thief
ever, and I will tell you exactly why when we get there.
Tell me why. So starting stats, it has it's
very traditional layout for what you get when you're starting the
character. I don't really need.
To read all through it like it gives you everything you need to
know. You start with a lucky charm,
which I really like. A little bit of flavor roll on
D6 table and maybe you'll get an eye patch even though both eyes
are fine. Or a bag of knuckle bones, which
is great if you want to play knuckle bones.
Yeah, And in the equipment we get two to choose from.
Very thief, but roguish talents. It's the best thing ever because
every time I want plays a thief. I want to play as a thief.
Like especially I'm 32. I don't want to play as a 14
year old thief. I doesn't know what they're
doing. I'd be like yeah, like I'm a 32
year old, like mediocre thief that was trained to the good
school but really hasn't made very much.
But they have all these talents, and like I always feel like you,
I never feel as talented as a thief as I want to.
You know, if you've ever read The Black Tongue Thief by
Christopher Buehlmann, it's my favorite.
It's my favorite, like Thief ever, and he is very much like
a, you know, late 20s, early 30s, like Thief.
It's like incredible amount of debt that has a great training,
It's he's good, a lot of stuff, but he's just in other ways very
mediocre. But you know, if it's delicate
tasks or climbing or listening to eavesdropping, moving
silently or, you know, finding secret things, he's good at it,
you know, I mean, I feel like for this, just let's really take
ownership of, like, what my ideal, like, thief fantasy
character is. So you get all of those things,
you just get. Into all of those.
So it's just like if you're doing Thief, you shit roll with
advantage. Yes, love it.
I mean, yeah, that's totally, that's that's what you should
think you should get, yeah. Yeah, and and I don't think it's
out of, I think the only people who really get screwed in the
characters on this are the casters, because they don't
pretty much don't get anything other than casting, which I
guess balances out because everything instantly hits here.
So do they really even need more talent, you know?
But yeah. Other than that, you get Nimble
Expertise. Roll with advantage when testing
Dexterity to avoid damage or effects from traps or magical
devices. Sneak attack, which you if
they're unaware you can do 2D6 plus your thief level and
damage. Deep and Murky Pass is an
amazing one, which is that at the start of a gaming session
roll 1D10. If the result is below your
current level, you can just change your background.
Great. It's really very good.
A dagger for every occasion, regardless what the thief is
carrying, they can produce a small throwing knife from
somewhere. There's just like, it's such a
great example of a thief. I'm just like, this is the best
thief I think I've ever read. But yeah, and then getting a new
level, which is on each and every one.
It just tells you what happens when you level up.
Which is? You know roll D20 once for each
attribute. If you roll over you can
increase by one point and you can make an extra roll for
dexterity, wisdom. I think each of them has like 2
stats. That's those characters stats,
that class you can roll twice on and then you gain one hit dice.
You roll 1D6, which is the hit dice for this character.
I mean, this, this is, this is all pure mechanics, right?
Without even needing to really write it Because none of this is
really like text, right? And this is what I'm saying is,
if you strip out everything from this game except what would be
like an SRD, it's so fucking good.
Like as a game. Again, there's a reason so many
games are based on this, because the game is so good.
The presentation of the game, just it's frustrating.
It's frustrating, you know, because so much of it is so
good. And then I'm just like, why
what? So we're at the cleric is.
Really interesting art piece too.
I love that one. It's a very really great.
Yeah, but here's the thing too. Well, it's got two hands stapled
to It's like that piece. But here's the thing.
We're at the cleric here. Remember that section earlier
where there was a talking about banishing undead?
Why? Why?
Like I here's the thing. The only reason is because it
didn't fit on the character sheet.
Yeah, because there's a section here that says banished undead.
A clerk may spend an action to banish all that day nearby for
the full banished undead rule. See page 15.
It's not even on the character sheet.
Like everything that every player gets is on the character
sheet except for like, the clerk.
It couldn't quite fit that one in there.
You know what I mean? Like, come on.
Oh, and Wizard's got her boobies out.
Yeah, Teddy wizard. Very normal, yeah.
Yeah, the, the, the. Barbarian.
Wizard. You know well all of the art
pieces is paint a very different picture than the book presents
itself up to this point. Yeah, you know what I mean?
Like even even the warrior is like got like a Viking helmet.
And stuff like brutalist, like berserker, like Barbarianesque
character art right here especially especially the cleric
and the wizard. Cleric's got the cleric and the
wizard look like the most. There's not a thief in the
warrior, the cleric, the the warrior honestly looks kind of
Humpty Dumpty. He's like but like the thief and
or the. I'm sorry, the cleric and the
wizard look like fucking like. Yeah, like that's got to be on
his face if. You go to battle and you see
them. You leave, you know.
Yeah, you see the guard. These hands, like, nailed to the
wheel around his head. You're.
I'm. I'm leaving.
Yep. All right.
You win by like, yeah, all right.
And then so under wizard there are spells and prayers.
They're very standard. My note is just the word
generic. Yes, they're I'm, they're
they're very standard. There's nothing I think that
made me go, oh that. You know what I mean?
There's nothing like, there's nothing weird.
Like nothing. Weird at all.
Yeah. And I really want.
I don't know. But two pages earlier, 2 pages
earlier, you look at the wizard, the wizard who's got like horns
and claws and goblin heads strapped to their belt, and then
they're going to go, oh, I cast light.
Like, yeah, it's just there's a disconnect between the art,
which is super cool, and and like the spells, which is very
much like the standard European fantasy spells.
They're literally just D&D spells.
They're the most hard, just D&D. Standard.
It's literally like create food, purify water, light, detect
evil, teleport. Like the most classic generic
standard spells ever, with no attempt whatsoever to to put any
spin on them whatsoever. Which is fine.
Whatever, it's fine. And then a blank character sheet
for there is a, like a blank character sheet, you know, on
page 28 instead of in the back of the book, which is
unfortunate because it's a good page.
I like the maps and notes section.
I like that's just opened but squared, like like gridded,
yeah. And then you have the players
turned back, which I kind of like, you know?
I love that. I I like.
I like this. I think it's great.
This is, I think my note says, interesting.
I like how this is broken up. Blades in the dark could have
benefited greatly from this approach.
Absolutely, to have a. Full section, Yeah, yeah, it's a
great R piece. But if everything that the
players need is from page like 20 up, you don't need anything
else in the book. Perfect.
There you go. Yeah, moving on to rules for the
GM, playing a game step by step. I do like that there are steps.
I don't know that I found them incredibly helpful or necessary,
but I'm not a new GM, so maybe, you know, for a new GM, this is
great. We're like. 85% the same person.
My note literally says, okay for beginner GM's.
Yeah. So I think this is really great
for delineating that like difference between the moments
to minutes play. And I think there's a lot of
value in that. And it kind of tells you when
you should be spending your usage just if you have them when
you transition into that minutes play.
Yeah, I I think this is a fine section.
It gives you the basics on the attribute test and like what
each attribute really goes with and what you should be having
them roll for like that a lot. There is like a creature
reaction table. Oh the dealing damage to the
character. It gives you just a little kind
of grid based on hit die. It's like what kind of damage
should be, you know, done. This is a great section for
beginners you know. I couldn't agree more.
I think is if this is the thing that I kept trying to tell
myself over and over and over again, right?
No one is going to pick up Kingdoms and run that as their
first game. Many people could pick this up
and it could be the first game that they ran.
So do we need this section in here?
Absolutely. And I think the for what it is
for people that haven't really done a whole lot of gyming
before, I think it's fantastic. Yeah, yeah, I super agree.
Yeah, there's a random encounter table.
Random encounters are great and you should use them.
It tells you kind of how to make a random encounter.
It's just like pretty much every 15 minutes of like real time
play in a dangerous environment. Or if the character lingers in
one place too long or makes actions that would reveal
themselves. Very cool.
Yeah, you make your encounter role and yeah, it's good.
I I It's great. So it's fine.
The note that I have for this is that this is the beginning of
the toolkit section and is pretty generic overall totally
and and some people, you know, some people need that.
That's fine. That's fine, yeah.
There are a lot of roll tables and they're they're very usable.
They're very OK. They're very OK, Yeah, I agree.
Oh, is this me now? Am I equipment in economy?
I really think you have got equipment in economy.
Yeah. So equipment in economy, yeah,
this again this continues a big chunk that is just what I what I
considered in this book, the toolkit section.
And I will say one thing about this whole kind of big chunk
before we keep going is it's fine, it's.
Adequate at best, but almost all of it can be found better in
other places and I felt like the whole book could have stopped at
like page 25 and wouldn't have been any worse for it could have
been the Z and I've been fine with it.
So equipment, economy, coins and money, they exist like that is
all it is. Economy is based on rarity and
value. My note here for common and
cheap. Is just OMG dot dot dot Because
the only thing I hate more than anything, the thing I hate most
is lists of the costs of stuff. And this isn't even just a list
of the cost of stuff. This is so much worse in the
list because it sucks to read SO.
It's and God, the layout of it is terrible.
It's literally like so it's like a big black square and then it
says arrow slash ammunition and then ud 8:00 and then a black
square then backpack sacks. And then a black square and then
candles. And it's just in rows of it.
Like it's really obnoxious to read this part.
And again like if you're going to use use this eye cool,
whatever. But like like dry food rations
is a UD8 okay. Like half of this, use this, use
this eye and half dozen. I would just separate it like
that. Just the shit that needs a usage
eye and the shit that doesn't. And it's got common, rare and
exotic and the coins associated with them, whatever the usage.
I didn't read any of these lists because I saw how they were laid
out and I'm like, I'm not fucking reading that.
That's. Literally, exactly like that's I
it. Yes.
I could not agree more. The the exotic one is the only
one that's even, like, relatively reasonable.
And it's just because they're so long that they each have their
own line that they're not their whole line.
I will say the best thing on this page is this usage die
tracker here. These are the average roles for
uses of a usage die before it is consumed.
So my assumption is that D20 is 30 uses, which means if you
start with the D20, you would get 30 + 20 + 14 + 9 + 5 + 2
because you would have to like it's a D20 before the average
number before it drops down to a D12 or the average number if you
stop at a D20, right. Wow.
I mean that'd be I've. I've never give usage out that
they're that big. I think I've given the eight
once, but I think it was on like an item and not on like damage,
you know? But here's the thing.
The average usage are for D6 is a 5.
So just give them six and have them count down.
Like, what's the difference? You know what I mean?
Yeah, it likes the element of randomness that I think fire
damage over time might have to. Move around.
Here's the thing. I love the idea of usage.
I I think if people want to use him, I think it's a great thing
for me personally. This is not like an objective,
like knock on usage time in any way shape or form.
I think it's cool. I like it.
I personally just don't find it useful for the way my brain
works. But this is one of those things
where I'm like, I totally get it and I dig it.
I just use it. Your opinion is wrong.
So, but I do really like this. So usage dye D4 standard use is
2D6 is 5D8IS9D10 is 14, D12 is 20D20 is 30.
That's a super useful table to have for anyone that he wants to
use any usage dye at all. There's a haggling thing, you
can do it and we don't need to talk about that.
There's a whole page here. It's an equipment list.
Why is not in the back of the book or again in its own folder
of extra stuff? If you had got the full box set,
you do get a folder of all of these pages separate.
Make it a separate useful pages PDF and send it to the people
that bought your book so that they can actually print this out
and use it at your table. I think you have hire links.
So we're on hire links for hire links.
I took hirelings because I love hirelings and no one ever uses
them in any game except in my games, because I always harp on
how much I love hiring hirelings.
There are hirelings. What did I put here in my notes?
Excuse me. Yeah.
So the mechanics for hirelings are simplified down to basically
they have their one unique skill or talent, providing the
characters an advantage on attribute tests or enabling them
to do something useful under specific circumstances.
The howling must be nearby to the character in order to do so.
Duh, you're hireling? That's at your camp is not going
to help you in the dungeon or whatever.
You have to pay them wages pretty much as soon as you take
them on. Their rarity is going to
determine what their wages are. Yeah, and then if you put them
in riskful situations, risky situations they might have to
have, they might get advantage or disadvantage on certain roles
that they make. Who controls them?
The GM controls them. Except that my fucking games
were I'm not doing that. You hire them, you controlled.
Yeah, sometimes the GM here, as if it was normal.
MPC's players were often asked that a hireling to perform an
unforeseen or risky action? Okay.
Cool. It's ultimate up to the GM to
determine. And they can choose to make or
let their players make a Charisma test to convince their
hireling. Which I will always do because I
love watching the lamp bear get convinced to fight a goblin and
then get slaughtered fighting a goblin.
And let me tell you never get it never gets old like it's never
gotten old. My players always feel bad,
yeah. If the needed hirelings have a
number of hit dice of 1, and they're all subject to normal
NPC relay rules such as morale, which have we done morale yet?
We might have breezed over morale.
It's morale. It's morale.
There's a morale role. So cool.
You have your very standard hire links.
Nothing, nothing bad. They all they the they'll give
you a dance on a certain thing when you bring them around with
you. They're great.
Yeah, they're non combat hirelings.
Yep, I actually really like this.
Of all the hireling rules I've seen before, I feel like this
one is super clean. And I really actually like the
number of what is it like 10 or 12 maybe?
I think there's twelve different hirelings and giving them all
like 1 little thing that they basically just get advantage to
help the party on. I think it's super clever and I
feel like they're all different enough.
Like like normally light. I think I don't think we even
got some light yet or we're fixing it gets a light but like
all you like a torch is just close light and that's it.
But like the torch bearer gives lights for close and nearby
like, that's huge in the context of like, the rule that we're
fixing to go over, but it's small in the context of like.
Anything else? So it's it's it's a cool.
I really, really like the way the hire links are done.
Yeah, Yeah. And it also makes it super easy
to make your own if you're just like, oh, like they hunt, so
give them advantage on hunting like that.
It's really clean. Did I have panic in light?
Yeah, I think it did. I think a lot of notes on this
one, so I probably had it. So panic and light ending up in
the pitch black. This is another piece that feels
shadow darky and just like fine, but like I would almost put this
in as like an optional rule when a character is explored deep
subterranean places with unknown horrors lurking behind every
shadow. Light is vital, so if a
character ends their turn in a place without a source of light,
they must immediately make a wisdom test.
If they succeed, they may continue to act as normal, but
if they fail, they panic. My note was, this is fine.
Interesting that there's no track for this or either
panicked or not, there's not like a like there.
It's instantly like, oh it's dark, I immediately panic.
It doesn't matter what level you are, it doesn't matter anything.
You know what I mean? Like I would almost make it
where like obviously you gain more experience.
So I would say almost like subtract your level from the
role, yeah? That would be a super clean way
to be like I've done this enough I don't panic as easy.
You know, there's a madness and horror part GM might make.
A player might ask a player to pass an attribute test, or else
panic if they see something crazy.
If they're confronted with something so horrific it has
potential to damage their mind, that's fine.
Tracking daylight I failed to be a completely redundant and
unnecessary rule. It basically just says you can
track the passage of. Daylight with the usage die.
I don't understand why you would do that.
It feels like a really. You know how daylight slightly
randomized every day. What?
What?
Let's unstream line a completely streamlined process.
You know how streamlined it is. It's light out now.
It's not like that's how you can track day, but this literally
says when using minutes, the usage die should be rolled once
all the players have done what they want to do with their turn.
Start with one D 10 in the morning, 1D8 for the afternoon,
1D6 for the evening, and 1D four for dusk.
I honestly read that once. It was like I don't even want to
reread that to figure out what the fuck it says because it's so
unnecessary. There is a panic table here,
which is interesting, but again, almost entirely.
Mechanic without narrative whatsoever.
So gritted teeth. You make a free wisdom test in
order to end the panic. That's a one.
On 1/6 it's a heart attack and you're instantly out of action,
but there's like life before the eyes fumble shock.
It's just a D6 table for panicking, and you roll a wisdom
test every time you go Into Darkness.
That's it. And if the GM says OOP, that's
super horrifying. Roll another one.
That's all you do. Ranges of light, typical light
sources such as laingers and torches provide enough
illumination for all creatures that are nearby to see.
Should the GM need to make a ruling, it's fair to call any
source of light, blah blah blah. Oh, never mind.
So all torches can go out to nearby.
Your torch bearer is just holding it for you, Damon.
Low light. Basically, you can just hold a
candle, which only basically keeps you out of panicking, but
doesn't really give you any light whatsoever.
That's what it says. That's it.
Disease in narcotics and poisons, did you?
Yeah. So diseases, narcotics and
poisons. Yeah.
Well, drug is taken, poison administered, or disease is
caught. The character should immediately
test their con. The drug, poison, disease usage.
Dice should be rolled at the same time and added to the
contest. Each drug, poison, disease,
indicates the penalty for failing a contest.
So listen, if I take a drug, I have to roll a contest.
I can't just I'm taking, you know, diseases.
They're they're diseases. They're walks through how you
would catch a disease if you already have one.
Like when you use the usage size for that disease.
And then yeah, if the use of dice controls the life of the IT
controls life of the disease essentially.
Disease examples are like creeping basilism, which is you
slowly turn the stone if you fail the contest.
All dex tests are made with disadvantage until cure is found
or contest is passed. It has UD6 usages.
I like this for use of dice for diseases.
Is cool. Makes sense.
It'd be really cool if at the end if you there were certain
conditions that were fatal. And I'm turning stone slowly,
which I I feel like it's kind of missing that punch from it on
diseases. Did you read the disease that
stood out to you? I think that was like the one
that I liked. Oh, I like the black lung
because it's definitely like a Zoolander reference, you know?
The black lung pop. There you go.
I really like slothing dread. That was my favorite lumps of
flesh, like, lumps of flesh just fall off you.
Yeah, that was my favorite. Yeah, I just love the word sloth
because I actually did with it at work.
So like, if you've never seen slothing flesh, I have.
Yeah. So there's a cool D12 table I
like. This one's actually like caught
from can be cured by. I don't know that would use
specifically never instance, but a little bit of inspiration, I
think it's always good. Yeah.
And then it gives you a like ingredient doses filled contest.
It's kind of like a poison table, but it's right before the
start of poison. So I wasn't really sure what it
was immediately I had the look. I was like, oh, poison is about
to start. So this is the poison table
poisons. They're poisons.
They it gives you a table, kind of give you some examples, and
it gives you some like name prefixes, suffixes and
preparation. It's not a roll table.
It's just like a list and the same kind of list as like item
prices before where it's just like not a list.
It's just a bunch of stuff together with some points in
between. Yeah, D12 table for anecdotes,
which is, you know, it's there. I like being magically frozen.
Yeah, that's the cure. It's like, yeah, yeah.
Or the healing tears of the Sphinx.
It's like, good fucking luck, buddy.
Yeah. And then drugs.
There are drugs. When a dose of drugs is taken,
failing a contest means the character has overdosed.
Oh, yeah. I guess that was the difference
with this one. Yeah.
So you can OD in this game. It's just like real life.
When you take a dose, when you take a dose of drugs, kind of
sounds like when you like, like, try to like what?
Like huff a joint or something like old people say when it's
like, that's not how you do drugs.
Yeah, right. Pardon me.
Sorry. The use of drugs also works
normally. When it runs out, the drug has
been used up and is gone. Can I take a note on which ones
I liked specifically? Well, I didn't.
Because they're fine. Go ahead.
What I find interesting is you can OD, but there's no addiction
at all. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know how you know how easy it would have been to do a usage
dye for addiction? Oh, that's a really great point.
I didn't even think about that. Yeah.
So there the, you know, there's one of these is reminding me of
of coffee or cat coffee from ultraviolet grasslands.
I can't remember. Maybe it was the Violet wine.
Or maybe not black, lowest powder.
Definitely a Conan the barbarian reference.
Everything blow the sea to me now is like that's that's Conan,
you know? What I find interesting is the
really solid benefits you get from doing drugs.
Yeah, totally. I mean you could die though, you
could OD. So you have black lowest powder,
fine shimmering black powder. Int and wisdom test have
advantage for a number of turns equal to the usage diet.
Violet wine gives you all of your HP back.
I think one of them ignores pain, there is a GAT, ignores
the effects of panic. Yeah, it's like, yeah, drugs are
really good in this game. You know you should.
You should definitely do them in this game.
In this game, Yeah, in this game.
In this game, will you I'm gonna who terms Service.
Yeah. New spells.
I feel like the only the the table is the best part of this.
This is not where you would find spells out in the wild.
If you need some inspiration, I think this table is great.
You know, tattooed on a prisoner in the possession of like a star
cult of Ohm. You know, like in a psychic
labyrinth in the possession of, like, the mad monks of Dar Dole,
ROM. Like, I think it's a good
inspiration table for rolling, like, oh, they're looking for a
new spell or looking for a specific spell.
It's like, cool, yeah, here it is.
This is one of the most you. Have Sorry, this is one of the
most evocative. Like writing in the Yeah, it's a
it's a good table. You want to roll twice.
Let's see where you're where the great spell you're looking for
is at. So I got a 2.
Yeah, I got two and eight. So it's in a psychic labyrinth
that is in the possession of a champion of of the war God,
Corpus Coster, So and the strange interdimensional
labyrinth that they possess. So good luck getting it because
you have to get through that champion and then through the
labyrinth. That's a whole adventure.
Yeah, under that they have kind of inspiration for wizard names
and titles, and then familiars their earthly appearance and
their peculiar talent. This feels like a weird thought
for this. Yeah, the familiars and the
Wizards. You mean nice.
Not with the Wizards section, yeah.
Or if it's like an NPC thing, it's not with the Npc's, and
then the familiar thing is weird because I don't remember them
referring to familiars at all at all.
I think actually it might be in the character creation section
is that the wizard gets familiar.
Let's look real quick. But like, why is the magic
broken apart? Three separate tables plus the
character Christian for Wizard. I do not know.
I was honestly very confused with that.
When I was. I did my initial scroll through
this. I was like the.
Other thing too is like, this is all GM none of this is player
information. Yeah, yeah.
But OK, the next page is going to be the magical side effects
table, which I do think is kind of fun.
So let's go ahead and roll on it while we're here.
Somewhere. OK, Yeah, we'll do it.
D100. I got a 23.
I got. I hear faint music constantly.
Cool. I got grows 2D6 inches.
Yeah, 9 inches. So.
It doesn't. It doesn't say where you grow 2
inches, right? Yeah, Inner org has become
clockwork. Was really cool and then I
rolled. Swap 2 abilities is a really
terrible one and I love that. And yeah, there's some fun stuff
on here after that. Oh yeah, this is.
I have opinions. I have opinions.
OK, yeah. Is it?
Was this your section or my section?
I don't know. So I'll look at this.
So starting the first game gaming in the old school
fashioned. Yeah.
So basically the whole idea of this is like the first session
is different than the rest of it and builds off the first
session. But this line coming up, really
I gave like the hardest like what?
To this specific line, the Black Hat's focus is weird fantasy
swords and sorcery. If you're playing and it's
assumed old school pulp fantasy setting, keep the following in
mind. What assumed setting?
And what aspect? Of the only part that I would
say even lends itself to any level, I would say two things.
Lend itself a little bit to Source and sorcery, and that is
the character art of the cleric and the wizard and maybe and
maybe that that that spell table we just talked about.
With like the psychic labyrinth and like the only two parts, I'm
like, oh that's weird. Every other part like to me, and
maybe I'm completely wrong, but this is how I view a lot of
fantasy. There's there's a lot of like
there's pre toking and pulse toking, right?
And you get swords and sorcery and you have swords and
wizardry. OK, swords and sorcery is weird
shit. A lot of like.
It's elrich, like sentient swords and portals to other
dimensions, and share like you're you're gaining magic
from, like, the weird outer realm of shadow monsters that is
outside the Earth's sphere. Like Yep.
Yeah, that is, that is sword in sorcery, and then you have sword
in wizardry, which to me is castles, swords, Shields,
Wizards, Knights, orcs. The classic D&D Forgotten Realms
Tolkien setting, right? Right.
Not, not weird Western Europe, right?
I mean this. This book's one of the least
weird games we've ever read. And suddenly it's like.
It's a weird sword and sorcery. The the, the assumed old school
pulp fantasy setting. I'm like just because you need
one point after a Conan reference does not make this
sword and sorcery like I literally like triple taked on
this. I'm like, what was weird?
When did it get weird? Anyway, so starting the first
game, there's some stuff here about adventure.
The adventure must be found. The world is cruel.
The world is persistent the very first session.
Like generate an inciting incident to resolve and then an
urban environment, dungeon, or wilderness to start the
characters in. In the line I just said there's
three inline references to other pages that are also not
hyperlinked. And then we get to the tools
quick reference page. This is.
So this was actually my section to go through.
This part was my section. And dude, I mean, what's the
point of putting on the page numbers?
They're not high for that. Yeah, it's literally a list.
It's literally a list of commonly used rules and tables,
like dotted list with bolded page numbers that don't link to
anywhere. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty much
my whole opinion about this page actually.
Is that like, I didn't even bother after that because I was
like, oh, I mean, it's the index, you know?
It's. Yeah.
And here's The thing is it's a good index.
If it were hyperlinked, yeah. It would be fantastic.
Everything that you need for running the adventure
hyperlinked on one, like on one page with references out to
everything you could possibly want.
Dope. Just yeah, Hyperlink it so I
could. You know how easy to be to
navigate the entire PDF using this?
Oh, I know it'd be crazy. This is like a great
conceptually is an amazing page. The execution, though, leaves a
lot to be desired. You know, physically though,
even having the book in hand, how much of a pain in the ass
would be to like flip back and forth and back and forth and
back and forth to this? Yeah, this is another
potentially further back in the book page after that, that
section that has a lot of stuff that you need on pages you have
to fish through. We have the NPC concept
generator. It's here.
Yep, once again. Actually, now that I'm looking
back on that because I did not read that part where it said
this is weird fantasy, I because I and I did roll a couple of MP
C's. None of them were weird.
Yeah, even a little bit. They're all very normal, you
know. The the social positions are low
born, working merchant and high. And our heritages are young and
old. Male females or dwarf or elf?
Yep. Dwarfs and elfs don't scream.
Weird sword and sorcery To me, there's really nothing weird
than this. I mean even we're going to get
to magic items here pretty soon, which is no one of my sections.
And it was like I wrote down to that I thought were good.
And there's a several, there's a list, so.
Yeah, but we we just hit the section that's just like it's
just tables. Like I I literally went OK, OK,
OK and the scroll. Yes, there's something that just
tables what's on the corpse. I think is a fairly usable
concept, although I don't really love this page.
Yeah, the way it's a drop table. Well, it's a drop table.
Oh, it's a drop table. Well, that'll help with my
computer screen, yeah. So it says yeah, what's on the
corpse drop 1D6 if it's A5 or A6 you pick whatever it drop on.
But once again it's in the middle of the book.
If you if you bought the full box that you'll get it as a page
later, but just. Make a PDF of all of these
unnecessary in book pages of useful tools like.
Yeah, it's frustrating how good these pages are and how poorly
they're presented. Yeah.
And then there's there's, I mean the rest of it's kind of
generator stuff. There's some over the adventure
stuff and then there's going to be hex to range generator.
It gives you a little example hex map, which I think's a I
think it's actually kind of a nice map.
I like. I like what it looks like
visually. But what's on the next page?
And then a blank hex map which is good on page.
What is this like 55 out of 120 something?
Yeah, the more drop tables of. I think there's there's decent
stuff here. If this is your first game,
especially, you know it's. It's a lot of useful.
Unevocative tools? Yes, totally.
If you're trying to make like a fairly standard fantasy fair,
they gotcha with this one, you know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it me now?
I don't know. It's not me.
It's I mean it's just so it's just it's again, there's all
generators we got, we got a Tavern generator, we got quest
Look generator, we got Rival Hero generator, we got a drop
table of like fantastic. I love this style.
It's definitely not it's it's very cartoony, but I love how
fucking cool these pictures are here.
The one dude literally has half a head like and it's an empty
half a head like yeah these are are really fantastic.
Very. This shit's weird.
Like, the artist knew that someone said draw weird and they
drew weird and I love it. They're great.
Like, I would love this is just an NPC drop table to be like,
oh, you get the guy with two horns.
Like that's your guy, That's your torch bearer.
There's a whole thing. This is another table that
really annoyed me. Underworld adventures, and
another whole table. A whole page of page numbers to
other places for the stuff that you need.
It's not hyperlinks at all. There's a dungeon generator.
There's inhabitants generator, entrance generator, room and
area generator, empty room, generator.
You know where I think this the book starts to shine again and
frankly, we can just get, we can just skip.
There I was. Going to say, yeah, the best
theory. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's a trap section. Yeah.
Oh, keep going. I'm sorry, no, no, you're do the
trap section. Oh yeah, no, there's the trap
section. Exactly what you were saying is
like the beast area. There's like secret doors.
There's a again a note page. For.
For taking notes on a map. For why is it in the book?
Like, I know we've said that a million times already, but it's
like no one's going to write in the book.
The one time that they play this game, it's like it's just on
next year I'd have a blank dungeon in the book instead of
as like with notes with a blank notes page.
I've never seen so many blank tools in the actual it's such a
waste of page numbers. There's literally like 15 pages
already that could have been completely taken out of the
book. Because they're not helpful in
the book. Random map generator.
And then we got to monsters and opponents and the every monster.
So this is the section we can talk about a little bit.
And then we hit the beast here that that hunter was just about
to talk about. So talk about monsters real
quick. Monsters and opponents.
A guide to creatures and monsters.
This is another part that really drove me up the fucking wall,
right? So there's a big section here
that says don't worry about balance.
What I also find interesting is the how we've gotten to a new
style of header. I don't remember seeing this a
lot before, but like normally, like it's all been these like
capital letters with kind of like a distressed thing to it.
And now we get to another section here where the the same
height but it's a different font.
And they're not all caps, but it's still a header.
But talking about the monsters section, it says don't worry
about balance except that some creatures encountered are too
powerful. And then you go down 123
sections and it says using an HD budget, total the characters HD
and use this as a budget spent on creatures.
Why is that the balance to balance the encounters?
I don't understand why it says don't balance.
But then here's a way to balance like instantly, not like an or
do this. It literally is just Here's two
completely contradictory things. The creatures standard stat
block I actually really enjoyed. There's a lot of redundant
discussion about it, but basically you get the creatures,
name, their HD, the name of the creatures attack, the stat that
it uses, what it targets, how much damages it does, and a
special power and that's it. So attacking and actions is
listed, creating monster selection.
There's an every Monster tab, yeah, which is just
redundancies. And then there's a list of,
like, cool special abilities and that's it.
And that's creating a monster. There's a there's a couple
listed here, banished elves, which is the most blatant rip
off of drought I've ever heard. No, it couldn't be that.
Except they're not. Except they're boneless somehow.
But it's a subterranean spider spider worshiping elves.
And the name of the eight eyed God is I think the exes are Z,
so it's Zizzit. By saying like Drizzet like I
just I it couldn't have been more the black magic Wizards,
black magic insane Wizards pulling from the void and then
every spell is most generic. Should ever magic missile sleep
to spell magic like like that they give you like info on them,
the creatures as like types you know and not like this specific
one. I feel like I read were they're
not vampires. Was that a different book I was
reading? I think there might have been Is
this the B series section? You're talking about it.
And we're not going to the base B series.
No, this is the part I was talking about.
I like, like, I I think the one that stuffs me was vampires.
Maybe it wasn't. It wasn't a different one.
How about reading this week? Oh, is it just further down?
There's a lot. Yeah, so there's the demons,
which are standard demons. It even uses like rocks and
stuff. The Dyer wildlife is a cool
table drag. There's a whole page, yeah, it
it, it's fine. We can just, we can just cruise.
I like that. It's like they gave you info on
it. They gave you some tables to
like create your own individual ones, the kind of that told you
how they acted. I mean, there's nothing here
that like breaks the mold, but. Yeah, but like you said, it is
interesting that. You don't just get a single step
lock, you get tools to build out the Super basic step lock they
give you. I do think that the monsters,
it's a really clean step lock that I think a lot like 5 you
could benefit from chopping down to this much and it'd be just as
impactful. Demons, Dragons, dwarves,
apparently elementals, Elvin kind are apparently their own
thing, Floating Oculus, which is literally just a beholder giant
kind. We don't even.
It's it's a lot knolls and shit. It's.
I mean, I think if we. It's all Cap, it's all oh, here
you go. There's vampires for you.
Yeah, that's fine. Did you want to talk about how
cool they are? No, I just liked it so oh, like
the art piece and you know. Oh yeah, Well, I do like that
the vampires do not look like just hot dudes.
Nope, they don't. They're they're pretty.
They're monstrous blood drinking creatures.
So yeah, dig that, I think. Treasures and magic items.
That was you, right? Or you have to that you actually
are some of the the more boring magic items that I've I've ever
had to read. I think the my favorite one of
my favorites was and this is very much who I am as like a
caster and magic person is 10 the wax seal of holding.
It's like a wax seal and you can seal something with wax, like
even the window or door and it holds it as if you use the lock
spell. And I just think there's
something really evocative in like like that tactile magic
thing where you have like components and shit that I
really liked about that. And then the other one I really
liked was the Phantom Limb. Spectral glowing appendage
replaces a lost limb and allows the wielder to reroll 1
attribute test every session. If the Phantom Limb is involved
in performing it somehow, which I'm like, oh, very cool, you
lose an arm, right? You go to, you go to the the
dark wizard guy at the end of the street in that weird corner
shop and you get a Phantom Limb. But yeah, so.
I do. That one's I really.
A couple of these are OK like you just said and then I'll rest
more super generic. What what really got me on this
page was then it talks about vanilla magic items.
If you are looking for a boilerplate magic items, here's
some base mechanics like advantage on a die roll and all
the rest. And then it's got a section here
called Better Magic Items. The best magic items don't
provide flat bonuses or improved character abilities.
Instead, they offer the players new and interesting ways to
interact. Weird and unusual options ensure
that the item can be used again. My note on this was might have
wanted to use this for their own items because that's all they
did was like, oh, here's advantage, here's this, here's
that. That's literally all they did
was what they got. For the vanilla stuff.
There's a treasure horror drop table.
Like I'm I think, I think we all know how I feel about the drop
table that's in the middle of the fucking book instead of in
the back or any useful place close to the end.
So. It's close, yeah.
And then we get to a sample dungeon.
I started it and then just gave up by.
At this point in the book I was just annoyed and didn't read it.
I usually going to be honest, I didn't even bother reading it.
So usually I at least read it, but we don't read it out on
thing because just by the book. But whether you do or not,
that's fine. There's the appendix, which is
where all of those bold pages came, The bold italics came, the
dye, They're actually hyperlinked back to where you
can find them. I think the first time, I'm
sorry, not hyperlinked. They're listed and they should
be hyperlinked, but they're not. It's basically an appendix as in
just like all the definitions of the stuff and that's it.
And then there's the OGL, which I mean this came out in 2018.
So OGL was not contentious at the time.
So it's what I write, but that's that's the whole, that's all
book, that's all book. So let's do the review real
quick and get out of here because we already hit two
hours, which is where we wanted to be.
So we'll do this kind of quick, I mean quick for us.
So like 45 minutes. So this is the black hack from
David Black as anyone knows, we do five different ratings.
They're worth 10 points inch. We'll save them as we go.
So art and layout. I think this is the shining
point of this actually. Interesting Okay.
There. I mean, there is a lot of spot
art. I do like the character art.
I think I usually say this and I'm going to say it again.
There could be more, you know. But I like what's in here.
Yeah. I mean, I think it's.
I think it's fine. I don't.
I don't yearn for more art.
I think the layout is fine. I think it's super readable.
I think the desire for readability made it annoying.
I think they. Overdid it.
I mean it is black and white, 2 columns, you know?
I mean, like, yeah, but I mean if we're going by layout,
because layout now in the art section, the bold fucking
terrible decision. Bold the first time you see a
word and then don't do it again and then the appendix can
reference to that one single time.
That as far as the layout goes, drove me nuts.
The insane number of headers, unnecessary headers drove me
nuts. I mean the art that's in the
book, Fantastic. I love the cover.
I love the character art. There's a single piece of art
where I'm like they're all fucking great.
All the artists did really great job.
I don't. I'm fine with the amount of spot
art and stuff, but layout wise it's super basic.
Which is fine because it's really readable, but to me the
bolds and the insane number of headers and the weird jump to a
new font like 3/4 of the way through annoyed me.
To me this is maybe one point up above, like just standard.
I agree. I think the art takes it up and
then everything else kind of takes it back down for me.
So I'm actually about 6 on this one, so I'm a hard 6:00 on that.
Yeah. The next one is a usability
score, bro. Yeah, this is good.
Yeah, I mean, OK, so let's see, let's, let's talk about what's
bad about it. There's no PDF, There's no
hyperlinks in the entire book. And the number?
I don't know if I've ever seen more references to other pages
in a book that we've ever read. Crazy amount, but to not have
hyperlinks for how many times it references other pages.
Like like, you know, sometimes there are books that have
hyperlinks at the beginning and then they don't have inline
hyperlinks and well, it would be cool if they do.
It usually doesn't matter all that much because there's not
that many inline references. But this would have like inline
references on every single page. It's crazy.
It's all it does is talk about itself on somewhere else.
I will say physically, because that matters.
It does have a ribbon, so good job.
I like that. But let's talk about the other
part of the usability stuff that drives me insane is the complete
waste of pages in the book. Yeah, to have blank usable pages
and tables and character sheets and drop tables and shit in the
book instead of. Here's the other thing, even if
you just put it at the end with like dot dot dot dot dot, you
can have people just like cut it out and and then and do that.
But the fact that they're randomly interspersed and most
like all throughout the book, for some God forsaken fucking
reason, I don't need a a a dungeon drop table like or the
ones that drove me most are the notes pages.
Like here's a whole page on notes for your dungeon in the
middle of the week. Again, if you got the full box
set, apparently those came separate as like hand like just
sheets. One sheet that you got.
But like I didn't but I got enough of the tier to get like
all of this stuff and the fact that they didn't even allow me
to PDF link or or or to have just like 1 folder of like
here's the 15 pages in the book that are useful for you at your
table. Nothing really annoys me, so
honestly like. What are your thoughts?
I mean, it's it's a black and white book that you can read,
you know? I mean why I wouldn't pass this
above A5? So yeah, well I mean this is for
usability, not. I mean this is like how useful
would this be at the? Time, I know and like.
I think the basics of usability is that I can read it, you know,
I guess. I mean I think I I guess I was
throwing that into layout. Like for me usability is like
there is no no hyperlinks and there's way too many fucking
page references and other things.
So that's super not usable. There's a bunch of of of pages
of of stuff that they gave me to use that I can't use because
it's in the book and I didn't get a reference page for it.
And it's DRM, so I'd have to print the entire thing just to
get the one page in the middle if I wanted it.
I mean, it's DRM, which is also pain in the Dick.
Like I'm not going to sell your shit on the Trove or whatever.
And guess what? Someone will just upload it with
their name on it. No one gives a shit.
The. Trove, You know, like I'm A5 at
best on usability. I don't know if I've been more
annoyed with something that I like.
So much I wouldn't pass it above A5 at all, so I'm I'm very
tempted to go forward on just how annoyed I am with.
Like I am not super. The thing is that I you can you
can like I I feel like the bare minimum for how usable book is.
Like, can I go through it and read it?
Yeah, that's true, you know. So I think this is a five.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, I mean, here's the thing too though, is like, there's a
bunch of things in the book that are in the wrong spot.
Like why is armor way down somewhere else?
Like the cleric thing, Why is that not even right after the
cleric? So as far as usability goes,
it's like I'm I can't even get the like, I can't even get to
the parts that I want to get to because like even the familiar
thing, if that's on the character sheet, why is it in
the GM section finding new? It's like finding new spells is
like divided up after everything else.
It's really yeah, it's very weird.
I mean, I'm listen, I'm fine with giving this 1/4 usability,
so I don't know. I feel like.
I feel like you know what? Yeah, I feel like I'm doing it
because to me, the basics of A5 is I can read it to beginning to
end and at least understand it, even if it doesn't have
bookmarks, hyperlinks, whatever. But like the things should at
least be in the places that they should be in to me.
I should, I should be. I should be able to go okay.
Yeah, that's fine. And not not give a critique.
On the care of your plans, Cleric, and you want to learn
about banishing undead? Why don't you go back up in the
book to page 15? From the character sheet, that's
what I'm saying. Like a standard 5 for me.
She'd be like, I have nothing good or bad to say about it,
it's fine. And to me, I got a bunch of bad
stuff to say about this and nothing else usability wise
raises it back up for me especially.
I mean, and we're not even talking about this random
different parts of the the tools that are just like in the
beginning of like 3 different cards and cheats and stuff.
It's like I didn't even get a book that just had all of it in
one. Yeah, that's annoying to me.
Rule set. All right.
Well, I love it. I don't know what to say about
it. Yeah.
I think it's a perfectly fine rule.
So I think it works really well. And I think there's stuff in
here that I like and the stuff that I'm like not in love with.
I'm still like okay, cool, That's so cool.
Like armor. Like I'm not like in love with
it, but I I definitely don't hate it.
I'm really interested to try it out and like, I think there's
some value to that, that me being interested to try a rule
itself. I like the minutes to moments
game play. And like how it uses usage dice
for like light or usable things within that kind of sear of that
like 2 tier and time. Yeah, I think it's a pretty
solid rule set. Yeah.
I mean, as far as like just the rules, if I take out all of the
like explanation of how they work, I there's very little
critique I have on it. I mean, again, there is a reason
that so many games reference a black hack because of just how
clean so much of it is and how good so much of it is just
looking at the rules alone. I mean, I really like this like
I'm I'm like 7 or 8 easy on the rules.
Why not that high? So where are you at for.
For. I mean, I'm at 6-7, yeah.
All right. Split the difference and go 7 on
it. Yeah.
I mean the the reason it is higher in my head is just like,
honestly, I know we're judging this game, but the number of
games we love, that only exists because this game exists.
If we had never read any of those and read this first, I
think it would like it would be like Oh my God, D20 roll under.
That's so crazy. But like.
Yeah, I think there's two features elsewhere that are
missing or could be changed that would bump it up for me that I
do see in some hats. So it's cool.
It's. I think it's.
Not that it's like standard, but I don't think it's like bust out
the seams with new stuff, you know?
Yeah, I don't disagree with you. I mean the other thing too is
most of the games that we have read exist from 2:20, like 2020
beyond. And this originally came out
like 2016. So like at the time it was
probably fucking crazy. But we're looking at it now.
I think 7 feels good for this. I don't like.
I think it right there seems that I think it tried to add and
didn't do as well as it could have originality.
I mean it literally says it's just a streamlined version of
that that already exists and there the quote UN quote setting
inside of it doesn't exist. I like, I mean, I don't know,
like I'm Where are you at with it?
You know, I just there's it's. I mean, so the rules are like
good, but they're not even, they're really original within
themselves, right? Like into the odd.
The original scene came out in like 2015, 2014 and like I think
Chris Mcdowell's even thanked in the beginning of this.
And so it's like the D20 roll under is like not even like a
concept of this. I think it uses it well within
like the 6th stat thing. I I, I I'm bogged down by the
fact that there's nothing else original in here.
Like, really? Genuinely at all.
I meant like A5, honestly. So I think I'm at A5 too,
because this is one of the things where I'm like, I have
nothing good to say and I have nothing bad to say.
It's fine. Yeah.
Value. I don't even know.
I guess I can go off the Kickstarter.
If you want to get it, which you can't, by the way, physically
you can't physically get it. But let's say you wanted to and
it was in stock. I'm exalted.
It is. Is it really only $25?
I guess it's only $25. I can't be right?
That's crazy for the hardback and everything.
Or just the PDF? Or what?
Well, it doesn't give me multiple options.
I'm exalted. It just says $25.00.
So let's see, you know, I get through drive through.
It's $6 for the PDF for the Black Hack Second Edition
through Drive Through RPG, I mean $6.
That's crazy. Yeah.
So you can't get the physical,
but you can get the PDF for $6.00.
So I mean that's that's pretty high value to me, man.
You know, decent value. I mean, here's the thing, if you
want to get the box set, you can go to eBay and get it for like
60 or 70 bucks. Oh.
Really. Yeah, I.
Trust me, I mean, that's still not even that bad, you know?
No, it's not. I looked at it and then I read
the book and said, no, I'm good because I don't need.
I'm never going to play this. I mean, I'll tell you right now,
like if someone was like, I'll run Black Hack for you, I would
be like, okay. I would.
I would happily play that if you ran.
It, yeah, I mean, really, if you wanted the box at me, it really
is. It's like 6263 bucks.
It's really not bad at all, you know, I think that.
This is an incredibly affordable game to get into and if you want
to jump off into it like this is a very box standard, very easy
to understand, and for six bucks for a PDF, or if you're like I'm
really into this one, spend 60 bucks to get the box set.
I'm I think that that's great, honestly.
Honestly, I think the best thing to do is to get the PDF for 6
bucks and hack it for parts. Yeah, I I would super agree,
which I think a million people have done and made better games
than this. I would have to say, look,
that's probably like an 8IN value, you know?
I mean, yeah, but like, here's the thing, like if I if I gave
you a big pile of shit and said it's $2.00.
But I don't think, I don't think that this is a big pile of shit.
I just think that it's not great.
So, right. So that's what I'm saying.
It's like, I don't think it's a pile of shit either.
I really enjoy the rule set. I once again, I just hate the
way it's presented. But it's just like if a game we
thought was bad was free, like, I probably still wouldn't
download it just because it's free.
You know what I mean? Like.
I think it's like just because I'm not inspired by this and
you're not inspired by this does not mean that someone else would
spend $6 and not find some inspiration for several games
with their party. You know, I completely hear, I'm
just saying, like I don't personally find it was in the
context of our show, the fact that it's cheap and maybe could
inspire somebody to be like that high in value, like, you know
what I mean? Like, I don't know.
Yeah, I guess. I mean, since it's $6 for the
PDF, yeah, I'm between like a seven and eight for.
A PDF. I mean that's like there's
there's something to be said about that, you know.
Yeah, but you know, other ones we've given eights on have like
online generators and like like a million things like the $30.
Yeah, that's true. I mean, yeah, I'm between like a
seven and eight. If you want to go 8, I'm fine
with that. I'm.
Actually the seven, I think 7 the value is appropriate.
There's not a lot of stuff that comes with it, but you do get
the, I mean, $6 PDF. Yeah, 888 makes me feel some
kind of way. Seven makes me feel better.
Cool. Like 8 I'd have been like, OK,
fine, but like 7, I'm like, all right, that one I I can sleep.
I can sleep tonight. 28 Right. I don't know.
I just did my head. So I got 29, so maybe I'm dumb
and can't count on your. I don't know.
Who knows? It's a 29.
OK, so. I'm bad at math.
I mean, that's one of the lowest scores we've ever given to a
game. Because here's the thing,
honestly, this should have just been a Zine SRD, and the attempt
to make it a full game with like generators and like some type of
quasi implied setting really brought the entire thing down.
Like this could have been like a 30 page Zine and could have been
one of like, my favorite things on the shelf.
Because mechanically, I really dig it.
But the urge to make it a full book full of just generic stuff
made it just math at best. Like math at best.
Like again, like I read it, I'm probably never going to read it
again, and it's fine. Like, that's it.
So this is the black hack. It is a D20.
It is a D20 roll under system. You know in the context of our
review score here for Art and layout, we give it a six because
although the art is really enjoyable in it, the layout is
has obnoxious amount of bold and could use a little bit more spot
art for usability. There's 0 Pdf's, way too many
page references and and stuff is in the wrong place all over the
place and there's a. Bunch of hybrid links, right and
and and things in the book. Like a number of pages, like
blank pages that would be better used as just like a notebook or
a tool outside of the book. The rule set is good, we both
enjoy it, but there's nothing crazy about it.
It is clean. There's some parts that I really
do like because it shines in its streamline this, but that's
about it. Originality.
I don't even think it even strives for any level of
originality in any part of it. It's pretty standard and
straightforward. So it gets A5, which is the
standard straightforward part. And for value it got a 7 because
the PDF is $6. Other than that you really don't
get a whole lot with this. So the total score for the black
hack was 29. Again, it is a good game that
has, in my opinion, poor presentation and would have been
better served is just being a Zine.
Yep, right. That is the black hack.
And that is us on a weird Friday morning tuning into us very
soon, actually this coming Sunday.
And we're going to be doing something a little bit
different. We are going to be going over a
bunch of games, but we're not reviewing any of them.
We are just appreciating how fucking cool they are.
We're going to have a whole Highland Paranormal Society day.
We're going to have a Nate dream.
Just enjoyment. We're going to be going through
The Haunted Almanac, which is put out by one of our favorite
or our favorite publishers, which is games omnivorous.
It is a whole chunk of neat dreams, game design, career,
both adventures and games. And we're going to be going
through those, going through the one page ones, going through
maybe a game or two that's not in The Haunted Almanac.
Again, not giving them reviews, not giving them any scores, just
appreciating how great Nate thinks about game design and a
lot of the cool stuff that that he does.
So really excited for that. That's going to be this coming
Sunday. You can find all of our stuff on
our link tree at the weekly scroll.
We recently hit 1000 Subs on YouTube.
Thank you all so much. We really, really appreciate
that TuneIn on Tuesdays for our continuing Dragon Bane campaign.
And that is all I got for the day.
Hunter. All right, look at that pretty
face. We are out.
You all have a wonderful day. Bye.