Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll podcast.
My Name Is Ryan. And I am an escaped man with a
face that other people have as well.
Very nice, very nice living that clone life.
Absolutely. Today we are going to be
reviewing. It's not high magic lowlife from
gym room games. I shouldn't.
Have laughed at that. That was so stupid.
I can't believe I laughed at that.
But I'm so used to you being like any, and we're reviewing
this and having the physical because you're such a physical.
Guy. That was a good bit.
So do. You want me to?
Do you want me to? I got some other gym room games
here. I could pull out some Weaver's
Observatory. What else we got?
Oh, here we go. Now here's a gym room game game.
Boom. There you go.
At least you get one. There's.
Just like a very. Stuff here.
So today we're talking about high magic, low lives by gym
room did. I say that yet.
I don't know. Did you?
I I. Did I did, when I held up the
fake book and you were just so tickled?
Waking up. Yeah, so this is like pretty
early gym room game stuff. Yeah.
So yeah, Yep, We're getting back to.
We're getting back to that. So let me pull this up.
Right. So as far as I can tell, it was
this is gym room games. This is Dan Phillips.
And fuck me because I know Kerry's last name and I totally
blanked on it. So Dan and Kerry, gym room
games. If you listened to us last year,
you know that we did gym room games.
It was 9 Lives to Valhalla, which is one of our, yeah, Kelly
Lowry, thank you so much. Great people, super nice.
Great games. This is one of them.
This. I was actually talking to Dan
about this previously. They put this out where they
were still hobbyists. I believe it dropped in June or
July of 2019, originally July of 2019.
And this is one of the first things that they put out.
Like I said, while they were still hobbyists before, they
were really doing like a lot of games.
So this is a first edition that has a second edition in the long
term plans, which will be really cool, I agree.
Because I'm, I'm. I like this game.
You. You're the one that sent it to
me originally. This is this is a this is a
Hunter episode. Y'all.
But having said that, like I'm excited to see what this their
their second edition looks like, because I think there's a lot of
really good here that could use some cleaning up, but I still
really like this. Yes, So what?
I had this like tagline in my head of like my opinions of the
game and I think that it is, this is a good game.
This is the I would play the shit out of this game.
It is a good game. I think there is a fantastic
game in here that a second edition could be, but this is
such a you game bro. I know, it's a very much.
I mean, I started reading it and I was like, Oh yeah, this.
Is like this is the US. This might be one of the US
games you've ever we've ever talked about.
Magic. It's incredibly modern, you
know, it's low lives, low lives. You're a dropout scumbag who's
trying to rob from the rich. I mean, it really couldn't be a
more you game. I think I can remember how
because I bought this on itch. I think I just saw it and I was
like this looks cool like magic school Dropout looks cool.
And going through them like oh this is like this is so me I
because I've been trying to get us to review this for a couple
months. We've just been busy.
I. Think you you sent it to me in
like December and then I realized I actually had it
already because I backed the TTRPG for trans rights in Texas
bundle and this was. Another.
That's how I got it. I love when I'm like, oh man, I
really want that game and I go to the Edge page and I bought it
in a bundle like two years ago. Love that shit.
Yeah, I. I mean, I've bought some of
those bundles. I have no idea what I own at
this point, but it's always. Good.
But I I generally like to parse, parse them.
You know, everybody in the bundle is doing good work, but
there's maybe like 10 or 12 in a bundle that I'm really, I'm
really in there for. So why?
This is a Hunter episode. A lot of times we pick the games
together, but this is you literally going, we're doing
this fucking game and me going, all right, I'll read it, OK,
let's do the fucking game. Why?
Why?
Yeah.
Why'd you? Want to do this one?
Too bad. Oh.
I mean the fact that it's such a you game.
That I think. That this is like a really good
like PBTA adjacent that pulls in some other influences that I
really enjoy. I love the magic system.
I like the idea of the magic dice, how mana works, your magic
domain. I think it's really very
simplified. And I really like this setting
of like, yeah, you live in like a modern world where the
immortal aristocracy has just they're immortal and they've
just been in power for so long that they have treasure hidden
everywhere because they're immortal than just accrue
wealth. And you know, a certain point
you and your buddies like, wait, why are we working for these
people? We should to hurt other people.
Why should what we should just take from them?
And I believe the impetus for the creation of this game, and I
might be incorrect but I vaguely remember reading this, is that,
you know, gym room games, home game.
You know, they're playing dungeon Dragons where you get
paid by rich people to go attack goblins and shit.
And they're like, plus really making much sense, like make a
lot of sense when we would just rob the rich people.
And so this is that, this is that.
I also really like this setting. For me personally, the internal
setting in my head is very much like a paradigm city, big O
where it's like Dome cities and like you have the ultra, ultra
rich that just live like separately, you know they live
in their own worlds. That's exactly how I would run
this. And if you when we get to tone
that's fine because they do mention Dome cities.
I'm like, yeah, exactly how I would run this.
Yeah, right. You're really?
I mean the. Character classes, too.
It's not characterized. It's your general deal.
Your general deal. We'll talk about the the
language used and because it does it really well, The Pit the
Itch pitch and then we'll hop into the game is hum and Jack
Low Lives is a post dungeon fantasy tabletop RPG.
Love that phrase right there about weird wizard school
dropouts who get into trouble with the immortal aristocracy to
make coin and build their #brand, I mean.
It's great. It's great.
Let's hop into the review. So again, this was, gosh, fuck
me. Almost five years ago, 2019, AKA
yesterday. AKA five years ago.
I. Mean it's only 2020 right now
so. It's insane.
It's insane, dude. On top of just getting older,
The Pandemic just deleted the quarter of my life is what it
feels like. So again, this was while they
were, like I said when they were still hobbyists.
So it's public domain art with pretty much just some bright
colors and an extraordinarily simple layout just in PDF.
So we're really getting into just the meat of the the game
because that's what we have. When we get to the art and and
layout score, it's going to be pretty pretty low just because
because it is powered by the apocalypse, made with the black
hack, high magical lives, Dan Phipps, Kayla Lowry powered by
the apocalypse made using Blackhack and Forged in the
Dark. And we'll get to some of that
stuff here in just a minute. Attribution.
I like this. There's a lot of like shout outs
and inspirations and things. I like Adventure Time with Finn
and Jake. Lots of stuff.
Book of the new song and. Five, I think's a great one.
You know, it's very, Yeah. You ever played Persona?
No, no, I know there's like an anime I'm being mean to watch.
I do see this here Layout and dice convention inspired by
Troika. Definitely got that Troik
inspired layout. Good job.
One of the best. Yeah.
And then they list. I love numbers, numbered
headings on chapters and like, yeah, just go to 1, 1.21.
I'm like, OK, cool. You know.
You know, I thought about that and we'll we'll we'll we'll show
everyone that we're talking about in a minute.
It's it really comes down to usability versus vibes.
And that's what would break me, trying to do a game where I'm
like, fuck, like if I really want a game that's like really
readable, I'm doing it exactly like this.
If I want a game that's like all vibes, like hitting like the
Merc Borg, I want you to feel the game the whole way through.
It'd be hard to do it like this and feel that Troika hit a good
balance, but there's specific reasons why and we'll get to
that too. But I love that there's the
artwork sources. The interesting thing about this
that I feel going all the way through, especially knowing the
rest of gym room game stuff, is that again, this is like one of
the first things they did when they were I I noticed that
hobby, it's like 18 times. It's a good word though but they
did such a good job on such like a first thing as far as the
choosing the Turkey style layout, having the artwork
sources listed here like they're so like you can clearly tell
like if I saw this in 2019 I would have been like these
people are going to make good shit like give them like.
I would say even the way they refer to things through the
text, like the terms and stuff they use, I'm just like, OK, you
get that. You clearly know what you're
doing. Like oh fuck yeah, you know, I
mean, this is the first outing and like their first outings is
for a game especially. I mean, this is, there's a lot
going on here. They shouldn't really be this
good. Not that they shouldn't, but
they very often aren't. True, Yeah.
I will say though that there are a lot of things in here that
kind of show that it is our first outing and we'll get to
that. There's some like some technical
jargon that's that's kind of mix matched.
There's some references that are a little bit off and there's a
little bit of anachronism on that could definitely be cleaned
up. Like I said, this is a great
game. This is a really good game that
could be a fantastic game and I'm excited to see second
edition. So we get to there's 12 chapters
and when we get to the table of contents here for those on
podcast line like we said art is is full page public domain
chapter headers and that's about it.
So we're not really going to get into that.
It's a black and white. It's black text on white layout
and the Trica style like a literally introduction one
setting 1.1 what is a lowlife 1.1.1.
Role-playing games 1.2 So you you get it, you get it.
And what's great is this whole section type linked and that's
great. And it has bookmarks at least to
the main chapter headers which is great.
Couple of things, A lot of references in the book we'll
talk about. None of those are hyperlinked.
Where it says check two point 1.2, that's not hyperlinked.
That would be really nice because they do that a lot,
which I would definitely cut out later.
And I do like that they break the tables down into parts.
If I was going to do this though, one thing in my head is
I would have them in the thing like this and then at the end I
would have another section that was literally just all the
tables by itself. Secondly, that would be super
helpful because there were times where I was like, I just want to
go to chapter 3 and I I know it's it's so easy, you can just
go to three, but it'd be nice. Like Depth in Space has that
where they have all every table in the book as a separate table
of contents, so you can click that too.
And it's really, really nice to see.
But 12 chapters, we're gonna we're gonna go through them and
a lot of it. This is one that we can we can
go through a lot. There's introduction, there's
the rules, There's a setup, there's character creation,
There is combat, health, wounds and death, magic, your phone and
your hashtag brand, inventory, experience and advancement in
PCs and the immortal aristocracy.
So chapter one introduction. Pink piece of public domain art
with some like Dirigible in the sky.
So I'm going to read a bunch of this introduction.
I've already talked about the high magic lowlives with school
dropouts, hashtag brand. But the setting is interesting.
I really I'm going to read it. The immoral aristocracy is an
ocean. From it all wealth comes to it,
all wealth returns. Quick break.
If you haven't listened to the first episode of the relaunch of
the Brain Trust podcast from Adam Bass and Will Yost, one of
the first things, one of the things they talk about in that
episode, they call it I believe it's like the firebrand I think
they called it, where basically it's like your first sentence or
the very initial first reaction you get from a game and like the
writing and they talk about like their first kind of little bit
in in like Torque and little bit in like Sever Metal 2012 that
that those two lines right there for me insanely good two line
opening to a game. I was hooked the second I got
through that. But yeah, the immortal
aristocracy is an ocean from it. All wealth comes to it.
All wealth returns. They watch from their tower
walls as generations of common folk toil, live, toil and die.
Their houses rise and fall. There was bloom and rot.
They are not without kindness, but this kindness stops long
before the gifts of self determination and dignity begin.
The land is peppered with magical colleges bearing the
names of great houses where a commoner can seek to better them
self and have the honor bearing an unpayable debt to a noble
family. Opportunities abound for those
with magical training under the immortal aristocracy.
The immortal aristocracy is an ocean, and the honorable thing
to do is to guide the rain back to the shore.
Coin, health insurance, the title, and perhaps even the
chance to marry into a minor house all the way to those who
serve you and your buddies. Have a better idea though, all
this coin that the aristocracy is amassing by sending dopes to
bully folks who are just minding their own business?
Well, they got to put it all somewhere, right?
So maybe instead of messing with folks just going about their
business to bully them at the last two coin they have to rub
together. Your time would be better spent
waiting into vaults with more coin than you can carry out.
Last you checked the honor of serving a great house?
Done. Put food on your table, put weed
in your pipe, get you laid, or help you sleep at night.
Ideally the work would be good, profitable, and legal.
But hey, two out of three, let's go rob a Duke or whatever.
So good. Yeah, really.
I mean, I think you're immediately like, OK, I'm, I'm
in, I'm into this, you know? Yeah, really well.
Written. Yeah.
It's so good. I will.
I will say a couple of things about this that I found early on
was to me there seems like a little bit of anachronism.
Like to me this feels like maybe like almost that blade to the
dark level of technology, you know what I mean?
Maybe guns and stuff, but like still like magic and fantasy and
stuff. But then so but, and then
there's a later point where suddenly it starts talking about
like your phone, right? And I felt like the mention of
like that level of technology and phone and live streaming and
stuff like that could have been up higher in like the setting
area here. You know, like there might be
like some little mentions. But when it suddenly has a whole
chapter on it, my brain kind of went, wait a second, I have to
retool my entire your understanding of the setting.
I wonder if that's partially also like the art used.
Obviously public domain art and what they, you know, But it
doesn't really give you that whole like, 'cause I'm OK with
like a little anachronism. Actually, I think.
I think that's a like, it can be a strength.
I do, I do understand what you're saying.
It's like when you get to the phone, you're like, Oh yeah,
they're phones. Yeah.
'Cause even in the preview you
talked about live streaming and stuff, but like so but like as
you read it, even to get the next part like 1.1.1, what is
other life? So if you know how to sail or
why are you a pirate instead of a sailor?
Why are you a safecracker instead of a locksmith?
Why are you a private investigator instead of a cop?
Why are you a forger instead of a notary?
I don't know. Like throughout it really feels
like the level of technology is much more into like a fantasy
world. So the phone thing, like, I'm
totally fine with the phones being there.
I think it's great. I just think an earlier mention
of it, to kind of set that level of technology in your mind so it
doesn't feel so anachronistic later would be nice.
So you are an adventurer licensed by the immortal
aristocracy to do their bidding. You could be.
And adventure, but you're not. You're a lowlife instead.
And what does a lowlife do? They mess with the immortal
aristocracy, especially if it helps the locals.
Your your your fucking wizard school.
Drop out Robin Hood with a fucking phone.
Yeah, yeah, you make lots of coin through robbery and high
jinks and then blow it pretty much immediately.
And you brag about it to look cool and take the blame.
So this is the this is this the introduction chapter?
Yeah, yeah, so role-playing. I actually really like this
chapter because I know we we talk shit about like, what is a
role-playing game a lot. I feel like this one does it
really well. High Magic Low Lives is a
role-playing game in the tradition of Midwestern American
folk art of the 1970s. Fuck.
I love that phrasing too. Players take on one of the two
roles, A lowlife or the GM. Lowlifes are the protagonist of
our story and the program means by which the action is driven.
Their players role is to listen to the GM and each other make
choices about how to proceed. They describe their lowlife's
actions and, in situations where success is not assured, roll
dice. GM describes the environments
and supporting cast of the story as well as the villains that get
in the lowlife's way. A good GM drives the story
forward. It listens closer to the
player's actions and asks leading questions.
What does GM stand for Role to find out D66?
T love the role to find out. You know, we're going to do it
right now. Do it also though, the tone
through this entire thing, some people try to write themselves
into the technical language a little bit and don't do it very
well. Oh my God, is it done so well
throughout here. It's a lot of technical language
and suddenly it'll just be like comma like whatever or like
something like this where there's so much tongue in cheek
in a funny like modern way. Like that almost helps the like.
The phone bit even better because like a lot of the lingo
and vernacular used throughout sounds like someone who
definitely has a phone. You know what I mean?
I agree, I rolled. I'm the grand Maniac.
Dope works, yeah. I mean, I really love the, I
don't know, the Goblin manager, but it's great.
So D6 tables. It's also really cool.
You roll AD 6 right off the bat, It's a lot of D sixes.
This feels like a fun intro to the dice mechanic, which is nice
1.2 conversation. The medium of play is words
typically spoken. Again, I love that.
It's just interesting. It's as much as you need.
Yeah, fiction first. The rules are important, but
they flow from the from the fiction.
Make sure you've established the context of the situation and
describe the characters approach before rolling rulings over
rules. You know what that means.
Texas framework. Make good choices.
Player Intelligent. A clever player playing Trump's
number on your character sheet. Embrace randomness and
randomness. You are not always in control.
Resource management. I love the resource management.
Basically it says you don't need to worry about basic food and
water. You are an adult fucking human
being. You have that on you.
Like seriously but higher level stuff.
Valuable shit. You'll keep track of that, fail
forward, nothing happens is a dreadful outcome.
Love that time is interesting too.
When time is discussed and referring to the text, it
basically says that when shit doesn't matter, don't worry
about it. And shit matters, worry about
it. For example, the example that
uses armor like if there's no danger and for you to like put
your armor on in the morning. You don't need to say I took I
put my armor back and take 4 minutes to do it because it
doesn't matter who gives a shit, you have the four minutes.
But if suddenly you're ambushed and four minutes matters in game
time, then it matters. And I love that because too many
people, especially in some of the more tried games, think that
every rule has to be followed at all times when it doesn't
fucking matter, especially like putting the armor back on and
stuff like that, even though I we'll get to the armor thing.
But the other thing too about this interest section, I really
enjoy it. I like it.
I wouldn't mind if it was in more of like a principles, kind
of like player principles, GM principles kind of thing than
just an introduction cuz you go from like setting to player
principles to like being in a mix.
I wouldn't mind if it was laid out a little differently, but I
love all of these. I think it's principles for this
game. It's really fantastic and well
written, like super tight, not a bunch of unnecessary bullshit.
Then we get to the rules which is full of unnecessary bullshit.
So much unnecessary bullshit. It's like every person.
Whoever writes A PBTA game just loses the ability to explain how
dice work. Concisely so.
Well having. Read Having read PBTA, I'm like
that's. It makes sense.
World of dungeons there you go. Dice 2.1 dice are used to
address situations that the game when the outcome is unclear.
Yes, if these situations we give you, we give control of the
narrative to fate and interpret the results.
I love it and it's great dice conventions.
Dice are used in the game, all of them D4 through D12 and maybe
some D 20s and stuff. Sometimes too.
It says you should have them. I don't remember ever needing
one in the entire reading of the game.
I think you get one for rolling inventory.
There you go, there you go. But not in the rules mechanics.
Sometimes you roll multiples. You know how this works.
If it's 2D6, you roll 2D6 and add them together.
If it's D66, you roll 2 sixes. But it's two separate rolls,
D666, all that stuff. You know how that works.
Same thing. You know how to roll hundreds.
You know how to run 12. You know how dice work.
I genuinely don't need an entire
page to tell me how to roll dice.
Risk dice. This is a little different.
It's just usage dye. I I personally really dislike
the phrase risk dice. It makes no sense to me.
It feels like an unnecessary change in verbiage when you only
use it when you use something. I would prefer if it just got
back to usage dye 'cause I guess maybe like you're risking the
thing you're using when you use it.
Usage dive makes more sense. It's it's more to the common
vocabulary used throughout the the thing, and I think even to
explain it to players better. It's a usage dye, so you roll it
when you use stuff would be a lot easier.
I I, I love the use of usage dye in here.
I think it's extremely clever the entire way through.
I just wish that wrist dice was just called usage dice or use
dice or something like that. I do like this is a small thing,
but I do like throughout this thing they have the like
uppercase delta symbol as their as their dye symbol and like
actually that works. That works really well.
Yeah. But just for the risk dice, like
for the quote UN quote risk dice, the usage dice.
Yeah. So anything non usage dice
doesn't have a delta. And I really, you're right, I
really do enjoy that. They have like the the delta
instead to specifically lay that out.
Super clever. Yeah, I'm.
I'll be honest, I while I prefer usage dice as a term whenever I
see UD, whatever written now, I'm like, there's got to be a
better way. Yeah, the Delta's a.
Way. Oh, yeah.
Oh. My God, the Delta's a way better
way when employing an element of the game.
So so for those that don't know what uses die is basically like
you you have a die, let's say you have let's say arrows, and
let's say you have D6 arrows right like after combat or
whatever and you fired arrows. If you need to roll your risk
die, I'm going to say risk die because that's what's in the in
the thing here the whole time. If you roll a one or two, that
die decreases to AD 4. And again if you roll one or two
you are now out of arrows. So use this die.
Basically you have the die when you need to roll it.
If you roll bad it, you have less of that thing, but that is
that is used. That mechanic is used across so
much of the game, again in such a clever, concise, like
consistent way. It's it's it's done so well.
Yeah, so that's how usage side works.
I also, I don't need a whole page on how usage side works
either. I do like that there's an
example of play because I will never not like examples of play.
And it's well written. I'm not going to read it, though
there may be ways to restore dice through effort.
Hirelings can be fed given a chance of rest, batteries can be
recharged, et cetera, et cetera. Another example of play.
That's fine. The bad news is the GM rolled.
I don't need that more example of play stuff.
When you roll one or two on a D4, the die is removed.
That means it's gone. We've talked about this.
I don't need a third level of I do like example supply.
I don't know if I need all three of these.
When you roll a risk dive with advantage, roll 2 and take the
higher result. When you roll this dive with
disadvantage, roll 2 and take the lower result.
That's how that's how it works. So interpreting risk dice, this
is this is parts we need. So risk dice tell you a lot of
things that tell you how long you can expect a thing to last
before your supply runs out. That's how Usuzai works.
They tell you how well built a thing is and how much it can be
used before it breaks. And they tell you the value of a
thing, possibly how effective a piece of armor is.
Everything. Again, it's it's so much and
again, so well done. So there is a Table 2
interpreting risk dice size. Basically it tells you D4
through DD12 how good something is, how much it's worth, like
how much you have. Everything.
Every aspect of a thing that you have is on this table.
So clever, so smart, so clean. I really love it, Yeah.
I mean my only critique on this table.
Is the 10 and 12 that like break into like, yeah.
Fucking. Crazy.
I'm like, oh it. Hurts my soul, that's.
So funny. I mean it is an.
Extraordinarily good table though I will say.
And it's interesting to look at and be like, oh, if you want
something that's like usage 10 or 12, that's like aristocracy
only or the court of the aristocracy only.
Yeah, I think it gives good context for a thing that's used
for pretty much every item. Yeah, well, and the thing too is
like, even when you look at the rarity of it, you can
extrapolate that's like fucking people too.
That's what's crazy, right? So like when there's sections
later we'll get to with the aristocracy where like when you
deal with those people, you are generally rolling a specific
type of die. So if you're talking to like the
head guy of like the head family, you need to be rolling D
twelves. If you don't got D twelves,
you're not even fucking talking to this guy.
And I love how this table can be seen again, like in different
variations throughout all the mechanics of the game.
So fucking clever. I really like we.
Miss the part already where they talk about using wrist tie for
pets? I think we might.
Blown by it but. When it says don't.
Commentary. Oh yeah, the design.
It basically says don't kill your pet, Yeah.
Yeah. I love it.
I love that. Yeah, you can use the usage.
Wrist eye for a pet. But like, we really strongly
encourage you to not kill them when the entire runs out.
I'm like, yeah, that's that's good.
There's a lot of wrist eye. Use a similar structure.
A D6 material cannot produce a glorious result, only a D12 can,
etcetera, etcetera. So when you have to roll the die
because you will roll those die too.
It's they are still die. It basically like you can use
this whole table and it doesn't matter what you roll.
If you're rolling AD 12 right and you roll A1, harm is still
up even though you could get a 12 right?
And it doesn't matter when you go up because if you have AD 4
dice, you can't get to AD 6 anyway, so it doesn't matter.
That's what's so clever about this whole thing too.
Like, I feel like this almost feels like those coin machines
where the pennies only go in one and the Dimes only go in one and
a quarter's only go in one. Like it doesn't make a
difference because like the dice can only be what the dice are
and whether it's a 12 or A or A1, whatever it is on here, it's
all the same. Again, the consistency of on
this mechanic is really fantastic.
Tarot cards are not used in the game at all.
I think you can like draw them at some point for something or
whatever, but it's really more to for like the lore of it like
they described. Like the the higher aristocracy
is like the the. Yeah, you assigned to Arcana.
We'll get to there at the end. And like the character classes
too that. You're generally assigned the
major Arcana. Yeah, that you can deal.
Yeah, you can roll for him too. I mean, but I would definitely.
Can. Oh yeah, exactly.
Yeah, you can, I guess. But I would definitely bring
Tarot cards to the table and be like we're.
Are we gonna play S? Well, what's dope about that too
is that you get like, that tarot card can put so much personality
into your entire character the entire time.
You know what I mean? Like if I roll this character
and we played a campaign, I would get a fucking tarot card,
T-shirt and rock my fucking character.
You know what I mean? Like, yeah, I would do all sorts
of shit. I would, I would have it as like
a fucking dice box. I would get like, the tarot
card, dice box, still going. Attributes.
There's six of them. You can only go from zero to
three. I like it.
It's a small, it's a small window.
You're not, you're not rolling to get fucking 3D sixes and
twelves and stuff. You got strength.
Again, I'm gonna read this because it's written in the way
that they write and I love the way that they write.
So strength, hit things good, carry more stuff, lift things,
be strong. Dexterity.
Shoot things good. Sneaky, deaky, Dodging, Yoga,
yoga, con more HP, Carry more stuff, Survive poison, handle
your booze. Intelligence.
Cast spells. No thanks quote UN quote
actually. Or research Wisdom.
See with your eyes. Read the room.
More MP, Chill with animals. More HP and then Charisma.
Force of personalities. Public, public speaking, more MP
being online just the way. Like I said, well, I know we
read a book and I'm not going to call people out on it.
I'm also not going to remember what it was where someone again
like tries to write the the language of the game kind of in
like. With their personality.
Yeah, either their personality sucks or their writing does, but
these? This is fucking fantastic the
whole way through. It's a funny laugh so often.
Yeah. And again because so much of it
is like technical language, but then like it'll hit you with
something that you just like. You just crack up like in a good
way. And it's really great using your
attributes. So this is basically how to roll
stuff, right. So the lowlifes player states
what they want to do. So we're, I think we're getting
into a part here where I have an issue.
So your attributes come into play.
It's, it's, it's PBTA role 2D6, it's mixed success, right.
So the lowlife states what they want to do.
The GM states how risky and effective that approach will be.
So the other thing too is this section randomly bursts into
blades in the dark language without explaining the blades in
the dark language. They do that a couple of times
through here. Like at one point they talk
about a move but they don't explain moves like there's
there's couple of. Moves in the air.
Yeah, yeah. But The thing is, like, I'm OK
with that. I'm OK with this being like,
this is not your first game. You've played PBTA before.
You know what these words mean? Or write it like it's a like 4
brand new people, right? So if you're gonna have 2 1/2
pages on how dice work, then you should also have how what
approach means what position means.
All this stuff works too. But if you're gonna just put the
words in that we all know because we played these games,
or read these games before, get rid of the two pages on how dice
work. Like pick a level of how dumb
you think the people are that are reading the book.
The lowlife player states what they want to do.
The GM states how risky and effective that approach will be.
The lowlife player rolls 2D6, adds them together with an
attribute in question. One to six, fail with
consequence 7 to 9, success with consequence, 10 to 11, success,
12 plus critical success. That means you don't have to
roll 2D6 is you can roll like an 11 plus modifier and still get a
crit. The table interprets a result in
the context of the situation. I like that it's a table
interprets a result. It's definitely a group
narrative for a lot of the stuff.
The risk determines how bad the consequences are.
Again advantage and disadvantage and then we get into like I said
approach, position and effect, which is blades in the dark
language. Approach is basically how you
want to do the thing and what you're using like your attribute
equipment, all that stuff you're explaining that and then
position and effect. I mean, I did actually go back
and and read some blades in the dark again, which.
Are you mad that he went back in?
A dream. I'm mad.
I'm mad eyed if I can read it. Again, Position and effect are
kind of used loosely here. Basically says based on the
lowlife's approach. The GM then describes the risk
and effectiveness. The table should have a good
sense of the consequence of both failure and success before
rolling. My thing is like there's no real
reason to use quote, UN quote like position and effect to use
the blades that are language in this because it's not the same.
Because if you're going to say position and effect, but then in
the way that you write it, say risk and effectiveness, just
call it risk and effectiveness. You know what I.
Mean. Yeah, I I mean, personally, I'm
never a big fan of position and effect like as like a standout
thing. I I feel like, I don't know,
maybe just because in my table naturally we're going to have
discussions like OK, well like where you're doing things right
now, if you do this and succeed, like it's what's it really going
to give you? You know, maybe not a lot, but I
don't like codifying it as that and making it like a like boxed
parameter. I was actually what's funny on
here and we'll do a quick aside. I solidified or crystallized a
little bit of my feeling about PBTA and and it's it's
derivatives, not derivatives. You know what I mean?
Like it's it's it's children especially.
Also, after listening to to the recent RTFM podcast episodes
with Aaron King and Max Lander, definitely go read RTFM.
They are smarter and better than us at this, but.
That's so true. Right.
And talking in a Discord server, I I realize why I don't like
PBTA games or not in the way that PBTA is written to be
written. And why the people that like it
do and don't like the way that I like PBTA games, which is more
towards World Dungeons and like Victory Basic as opposed to even
like Dungeon World. It's that there's too there's
too much scaffolding and too much vocabulary.
Like I don't need a capital P, capital E position effect for
you to just tell me after they say what they want to do, you
say what the risks are, You know what I mean?
It's the same thing. And I think that when those
style of games came out, having the vocabulary and having that
amount of scaffolding for a new game was important.
I just think that game mechanics and kind of like game language
and stuff has evolved past that, and an understanding of that
style has evolved past that. So for me, one of the reasons I
don't like moves is it's too much scaffolding.
You know what I mean? Like, like I feel like I like
the options for everything and the move literally gives you
like 3 and that's the narrative. So to me, it's just too much
scaffolding and it's too much vocabulary that says like, well,
when you do capital A, you get to capital B, we'll take you to
capital C, which gets you capital D And I'm like that's
four nuvocab words for you to tell me to just do this like
quick thing, you know, I don't need it.
That's just an aside that's not really effective at this.
I just don't think you need to use the the blades in dark
language here because it's not used quite the same and this is
done much more simply anyway. So position and effect basically
approach, you say how you want to do it.
Position effect. The GM tells you the risk and
consequence for it, and then and then there's consequences.
And that aligns to the fiction, aligns to the risk, it aligns to
the narrative that you got. You're doing together.
It talks about grievous volley harm.
Here. We're going to skip that and
talk about that in damage because I have.
I have opinions on that too. Success and critical success,
they exist. It's a happening special
actions. So special actions are quote, UN
quote moves. It's interesting because when
you get to special actions later one of those they start calling
it moves and I think maybe there's just a forget to recall
it special actions, we'll get to that.
But basically they are, they are literally like capital M moves
PBTA style as in like on a one to six you get one on 7 to 9 you
get like 2 on A10 to a like you know etcetera, etcetera you can
get up to all 5 S Special actions are special moves you
get to do. I think I prefer, and maybe just
within the context of this game, I think I prefer special actions
as a title for. Moves.
What's up? I hate the word moves.
Oh yeah, I I genuinely hate it. But I think in this one, special
actions is even better, because most things aren't a special
action. Most things aren't a move, you
know, except a few things that are a special action.
But dude, things not being a move is a move, bro.
The joke that never leaves our podcast.
Everything is a. Move Everything is a move.
This is how I like moves though because I do like PBT style
moves. What I don't like is basic moves
I. Don't.
Want everything that I do broken down?
Like to me, I feel like when you really go hard on PBT style
moves, it's like why do I have AGM?
This could like I could, it could.
Everything is laid out. All the narrative is laid out.
I I could literally sit here and be like, well, I trigger this
move and the move tells me I have three things and then I
trigger the next thing. Like, I feel like you could sit
around doing a PBTA game without any GM because everything is
laid out for you and when you trigger a thing, the thing
happens and we already know this.
You know what I mean? I don't, I personally don't like
that. What I do like those style of
moves for is like powers, spells, special actions, things
where I'm not doing them, my basic shit, I'm doing something
big and important, and the risks and consequences are
specifically laid out in a way that's important to the style
and the fiction. I love moves when it's they done
exactly this way. So when I saw that, my head
immediately said I hate moves, but then I was like, but not
when they're done this way. I really enjoyed them this way
and we'll get to those again a little bit later.
Special action attributes, special actions, commonly used
primary 6 attributes listed, but there are some other ones that
you'll get to. And we'll get to the hashtag
brand discussed in section 8.1. Not hyperlinked.
It'd be nice if it was. But again, this is 2019 is
acquired, brand is acquired for charismatic posting online.
The first time they kind of mentioned that in the game
Hashtag brand and posting online, my brain went, wait, I'm
posting stuff online. Even though, like it's there
before, some outcomes are more concerned with the fiction of
the game. Don't underestimate the
importance of shifting the narrative and success of the
Lowlife's adventure, advantage and disadvantage.
We've talked about that three times already.
It exists. There is a very long.
There's a there's a example of play here and then we get into
setup. Oh, that's me.
I'm set up, so the step's pretty easy.
It's essentially just telling you what you need to play this
game and then discussing with your low lives.
Kind of like the tone and the setting.
Is this going to be like a silly or serious game?
Is this going to be like very dark and heavy a discussion to
have with your player characters.
It's I think it says before the ink dries in.
The character sheet is crucial, and I agree Joe.
Characters in the focus of ancient prophecy can absolutely
roll in the same party so long as everyone knows what to
expect. Great advice, very solid advice.
I skipped over like kind of what you need, but it's a tabletop
game. These the things you need.
Dice shit like, yeah. Content's really interesting.
Like, what does your world look like?
Are the immortal aristocracy, like this one Says vampires.
And I'm thinking like, you know, they they ride necks around or
whatever. Yeah.
Do you live in Dome cities? Like what is in this world?
Like do you want a fun sex romp, which is very 2019, Very rare
that you see that and we'll see more stuff like that coming up.
Yeah. And it kind of just lets the the
will I roll for GM. Grand Maniac.
Yeah, we'll say that. Yeah.
What were the IT gives the grand maniac, like room to like?
Help. Plan and move around.
Then you have safety and curation tools.
Always a great section. Talk about safety tools of your
tea with your table. And then there's a designer
commentary. Try not to worry over much about
withholding information and lobbying for the inclusion of
content that will make your players uncomfortable.
For example, horror content is important to the game that you
want to run. Now is a good time to explore
examples of horror with your table and find effective, sorry
horror your table found effective, enjoyable are there
are many ways to build tension, but the 1st and most important
is a table willing to give themselves fully to the section.
Yeah, basically. Don't try to stuff stuff in the
game we're going to want. Yeah.
I do. I do think that that section's
written incredibly well. I like a lot of this and I I do
think it's important. Yeah, I so this is the first
time I'm going to say this and won't be the last.
I I think this should be in a different spot though and like I
think this should be first. It's weird that we're this far
in when this is generally like the very first like maybe right
after introduction, but generally this should be like
before introduction, like all of this thing basically says.
Like introduction I want to like I want to intro with that that
paragraph I want it to be the first thing to read.
You know, but like a lot of this stuff is more like, I feel like
this is more like inside cover of the book.
Like you're not really in the book part yet.
You know what? I mean, OK, I can see that.
I can see that card safety tools like all to me like what dice
are or like what dice you need stuff like that that that to me
feels like, I mean like Adam puts, you know, out of ass, puts
that either right on the inside cover or even just puts the dice
and stuff that you need like on the back cover.
So it's not even like in there. Anyway.
It is. It is, like you said, great.
Well written though. It's good.
Yeah. Moving on to, that's it.
That's actually by far the shortest section in this entire
thing. Character four or the last
Section 4 is character creation, building your lowlife.
So it's interesting because this has derived stats.
So you roll 2D6 and then you look at this table to get what
that stat is, and then it has you assign those stats in order.
You're rolling like top to bottom like strength first down
to charisma. I am not a massive fan derived
stats. I'm a I'm a stat spread guy.
But like the window here is pretty, is pretty small.
So I think this one's OK You know, it's not like you're
rolling and you're like it goes one to like 9 or whatever, but
yeah. 'Cause you're, you're you're,
you're. I mean your go to is D20 roll
under so like deriving stats for that is weird but as far for
like 2D6 with the numbers and stuff like that like either
either doing like a like a what am I trying to say like a
standard array but I actually really love this like zero to
three because you Max out at it anyway and the numbers aren't
like really that crazy. I think it's interesting and.
The majority of things you're going to get will be one, you
know. Yeah.
Yeah and not only that, like it does at one point in the game,
maybe I breezed over it. It talks about like bringing OSR
into like PBTA and Blackhack and stuff a little bit.
So I don't, I think it's a nice thing to sit around the table
and like roll your 6 stats kind of gives you that little bit of
like dungeon gamey feel. Yeah.
And but then your your margins are like, yeah, you're pretty
much going to get one to zeros for everything I like.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Once you generate your six abilities, you can swap to.
I am also the person who's like, honestly just roll 6 and assign
them how you want for your character, which is like at the
same time, like if there's a game where it's like you have to
roll for stuff and everything's random, like, no, everything has
to be random. It kind of depends on the game,
I guess. There is a example for how stats
work, which is great for somebody.
Yeah. And then now there's your
general deal. So your general deal is who your
character is. You can roll for it.
You can pull a tarot card, which is 100% the correct way to do
it, or you can oh, it doesn't give you the option to pick
good, don't pick. And then, yeah, your general
deal kind of tells you who your character is, what the
background kind of is. It gives you like an ability
that's almost always pretty cool.
Actually, I think all of them. I this might be 1 where I think
almost I think all of them hit. There's basically no class that
I'm going to be like, sure, fuck yeah, let's do it.
I had a hard time because we said we were going to talk about
just two. You pick one and I pick one.
And that's not what's going to happen today.
We're going to talk about a couple.
But yeah, you get 2 leading questions as well.
The answer that kind of like give you a relation to maybe
another lowlife or like somebody in the world in there.
I cannot. I think maybe I'm such a
character creation guy. I think this section is what
really 100% was like, oh, this is this is it, You know, so.
Well, if I rolled for it, If I rolled for it, I rolled the
Rogue Intelligence. But I mean, OK, quick, quick,
quick breeze through on here. If I was going to pick no
knowing what you know about me, which which one or two would I
pick? Oh, maybe the God Hunter or.
That's one of them, yeah, it's one of my top two.
The Blight Warden. You got me.
I'm a fucking open book. Those are my top two if you had.
To pick if you had to pick 2 for me.
Fuck you, but you're you're you're quirky sometimes.
I know, but this it's so funny. This whole game is like, there's
not one, like general deal in this game that I would be upset,
upset about giving. I'd be stoked on any of.
These. Not a single one, I I would
almost say wizard school dropout, but that feels kind of
like the classic one. I and that I think that's why I
like that one though, because it does feel like the like the most
archetype for this. Yeah, I really do like that one.
I also love that it's the fool card that cracks me the fuck up.
And gosh, for your other one. I mean, you would get weird and
be like the escape clone of the astronaut, I feel like.
Yeah I would the escape clone I think let's talk today.
Let's talk about the was just cool drop out.
Let's talk about Dwight Warden. Let's just do the four that we
both. Picked.
That'll be enough. That's cool.
Yeah. I I wouldn't mind like just
touching on the bicycle mechanic too, because I think that's the
sleeper class and the entire thing that I.
Absolutely. OK.
All right. Go for it.
So. I don't want to read them
because they're fun to read. They're well written.
Honestly shout out, this game is is enjoyable to read.
Yeah, so wizard school dropout, the fool.
It was 4:00 AM when you looked up from your mercury fumes of
your overcrowded dormitory to see clearly for the first time
just how many of you had piled in to learn the proper arcane
arts and how few proper wizarding positions were open.
It wasn't a total waste. You know the basics of the
magical arts, how to defend a thesis, and you can hold your
liquor. All things you learn in school
alt metric, which is the ability you may use Intelligence instead
of Charisma when posting if the topic is concerning the
esoteric, arcane, occult, or otherwise.
Magical. I think another thing I like
about these is that when you get your general deal as someone
who's like the Game Master at all times, the ability of the
general deal is will tell the Game Master what's going to be
included in that game. Because some require you to have
like, you know, gods and demons and stuff.
I'm like, OK, great, that's what's going to be in this game
then. Maybe not all the time, but I
know to include it. And I really like the the
implied setting in here is heavy, but not so heavy.
That strangle. Yeah, leading questions for
this. You owe a lowlife a lot of
money. Why are they being chill about
it? And the other one is a fellow
lowlife convinces you to leave your academic life behind.
What were they right about? I like the leading questions.
I think they're interesting. I like that you don't have to
enter both. You can use them to actually ask
a different question if, if, if it doesn't suit you.
It's a really interesting way to to character creation.
One because like you just said you you are bit like when you
have your four characters you can all look at each other and
basically the there's a quote UN quote implied setting.
I think like 80% of it is built. But the 20% personalization that
you can do to it is really fantastic And so much of it is
done in these quote UN quote general deals in the classes.
That extra 20% is that it's just so it's.
It works so well together. Yeah, I was going to say.
I will also say, actually I totally skipped saying this, but
I said it way earlier. But general deal, great.
Just like what's your general deal?
It's like, Oh yeah, I've read that I was like this.
So it it makes a lot of sense for this and also how this is
written with this kind of like tongue in cheek like.
This is perfect. Do you want to read the Blight
Warden? Sure.
All right, this is my favorite. This is for the high priestess.
The planet is a living thing, and it is sick.
But the symptoms are so big that most folks can't see them.
Droughts and hurricanes. Rising seas and foul water and
the blight pools of chromatic acre.
Think there's supposed to be H in there, pooling downstream
from factories and dump sites. It clings tar light to creatures
and trees. Over time, it changes them into
mutated, dangerous things. The immoral aristocracy likes to
keep the blight away from their estates and to a lesser extent,
their taxpayers. You and those like you were sent
to burn the blight away and kill the mutated gross.
You are a wet cloth on the fevered forehead of a dying
world. Love that last bit.
Also, could you just a whole campaign of blight wardens going
out and blast? That's a whole different game.
Absolutely crazy, I think. One that we're not going to talk
about but isn't really good. Good one is.
The next one, the neophyt body mother, which is?
Just like. Yeah, you make Do you care?
Would you? Should we just read it?
Yeah, well, let me finish this one.
Oh, sorry. Sterify is your ability.
When fighting the mutated, corrupted, or otherwise
unnatural, you may add your con to damage all that.
One is one of the ones that's a little bit more specific, I
think. Obviously if you're going to be
this character, the gym would have that shit in your game.
But some of the other ones are kind of like more fitting to
everything. And the leading questions are
you helped a lowlife navigate some dangerous terrain.
What hidden thing did you find there that's cool?
While you were sinking into a hidden pool of blight, fellow
lowlife Kim Crusher plight, how did the quick thinking save you?
The other thing I like about the leading question we didn't
mention yet is this is a relationship building.
Because how I read fellow love life means like you're out on
another one of your partners. Absolutely.
I mean, you are the the only positions in this game to play
are the GM or a lowlife. So it reminds me of and I was
playing. I actually haven't referenced
this game in a really long time since like the first year Monty
Cook games, Cypress system. Whenever you build a character,
they also have these questions. They're like, OK, a like a
person table has to agree to this question, but how did you
do this or that? It's very similar and I think
it's works really well for sure. Yeah, and the neophyte body
model. The mortal aristocracy suffers
the body mother guilds, but they do not do so gladly.
They loathe any institution older than their own, and doubly
so anyone whose services cannot be bound exclusively to them.
You've taken the first steps to being a master body, body
mother, serving the mighty and meek alike to bring them
comfort, independence and dignity.
The limbs you fashion are crude but functional.
The magics that animate the appendages and internal organs
of your creation work well, but you can still see the seams.
Do not worry about the the rumors from those who do not
understand your trade, your charges, not to replace broken
parts with six ones. It is to help those in need to
create a body with which your client will be happy.
So cool. Yeah, one of the things I really
like about about all of this in general too is now listen, we I
do not have a prosthetic so I'm talking like with doing my best
to not sound the ableist as fuck here, right?
Cuz I don't know how people feel about it, but I feel like as
soon as you start talking about prosthetics and things like that
in a game, it's really important to make sure it's one of those
things that like, has to be done with a level of.
I mean, everything should be, but you know what I mean?
Like a level of care, especially if you're not a member of that
community, and without trying to sound ableist, whatever.
I feel like they do it incredibly well through this
entire thing with a lot of respect.
And it. Doesn't get all the way through,
yeah. And it feels not only positive
but like it feels like, it's not saying, like having a prosthetic
is not a bad thing at all in the game.
The the, the base is pretty much, if you have a prosthetic
like, it works like like like normal, like that's fine like or
you know, and can actually be dope because as you increase
your prosthetic you get like special abilities and shit with
it too. Like, it's not like, oh, you
have like, you know, a prosthetic leg and now
everything you roll is a disadvantage.
And I look permanently disadvantaged by your
prosthetic. You're at least having the same
abilities you had before you had the prosthetic or even more so.
And I really like that. I didn't like you said, I feel
like it was really a positive way and then done in a really
respectful way. But again, I'm not a member of
that community. Could be talked to my ass, but
that's how I. Totally.
And I'm, I'm so down to be corrected on this.
But the reason I kind of want to talk about this is because I
thought it was so positive and like, it's not about fixing
what's broken. It's about making somebody happy
and comfortable within their own form.
And I was like, damn, that's pretty good.
Yeah, your ability build a mod. Given a few hours of quiet work,
you can turn most objects into a prosthesis.
The object becomes a prosthetic of equal die size and bearing
some functional or aesthetic hints of its source.
I think Scissors become Scissorhands for instance.
Great. Great reference and then leading
questions. A fellow lowlife never felt
comfortable in their own skin until you gave them counsel with
their permission. Good note, in what way are they
now change. The other one is you were
imprisoned by a puritanical member of the aristocracy for
helping common folk achieve the bodies that they need.
Why did one of your fellow lives break you out?
Great. Nope, Nope.
That is a good one to talk about.
I really enjoyed that because there's like a whole section on
prosthetics later. Yeah, yeah.
There's so many, there's so many good ones.
Rogue. Intelligent Circuit Riders cool
the Tomb Streamer's dope, live streaming your fucking
adventures and shit Pit Baller. What was the other one local?
Champion I think is the next one we're doing, which is 4/2/10,
which also once again, great organization where I'm like, Oh
yeah, it's 4210, like you know exactly where it is.
The the Escape Club, which is also the Hermit card, which I
love. There was a time when you
thought everyone shared your face back in the hidden city
deep below ground where you answered only to older versions
of yourself. Unlike your siblings, you were
never quite unable to let go of a burning question.
Why weren't you allowed to leave?
Now that you've skipped town, you're still getting used to all
the different faces that other people wear, the other genders,
and other creatures. You've also learned that anyone
who bares your face has almost certainly been dispatched to
bring you home against your will.
The ability is another face in the crowd.
You've developed an astounding capacity to blend into a crowd
when trying to shake a pursuer. Very good functional ability.
The leading questions being someone who looks exactly like
you but with Nye Patch tried to take you by force.
How did the fellow lowlife help you shake them off?
The other one is the apparent worldwide conspiracy surrounding
your origin has become a fixation of one of your fellow
lowlifes. What bizarre truths have they
learned about you and your fellow clones?
Right, There's a worldwide conspiracy.
About about this. City of Underground, City of
clones that now is in your world.
Wasn't there a movie that did that?
And I can't remember what it's called.
Yeah, yeah, there is. It's.
It's they're clones. I mean, they're not all the same
clone, but they're clones of other people held in the
facility because they're supposed to be like organ
transplants for rich people. Essentially.
I think it's called you. Remember, Was that that wasn't
Kirsten, Kristen Stewart was it? No, it was Charlize.
Their own, but maybe and. That was like the one of the bad
one of the bad bitches. Oh, it was Scarlett Johansson.
Maybe I'm thinking of something different then.
I mean, obviously there's more than one.
Every time a movie comes out, they make.
That's very true of it that. One's Scarlett Johansson and and
Obi Wan Kenobi, SO. It was that one.
It's a It's a pretty. Good.
Movie, you know. I feel like there was a
different one though that I'm thinking of as I scroll through
these. What was the other with?
The hedge pharmacist is cool. The poacher gatherers doe.
The third eye is there. Private Third Eye is good too.
Oh yeah, that one's sick. The God Hunter.
Yeah, go for it. Yeah, OK, so the God hunter.
Everysolstice new gods. So also the amount of lore in
some of these character classes. Too insane?
Every solstice new gods emerge in odd corners of the world, and
every solstice, the hunt begins anew.
Every God contains the potential for a new minor House of the
immortal aristocracy to arise. Once shackled, they can be
drained of their power to ensure the life and vitality of those
with the means to keep them. If one wishes to truly fight the
immortal aristocracy, they must be prepared to fight gods.
You've been sniffing around the edges of the Great Houses for
some time now, trying to sort out the secret hidden vault in
which their gods are kept, preparing to put them at both
down. The gods are too dangerous to
exist, so your ability to schism when battling the divine,
demonic, or otherwise exoplanar, you may add your wisdom to your
damage roles and their leading questions as one of your fellow
low lives is not yet convinced of the righteousness of your
hunt. What about their disagreement is
charming rather than frustrating?
Or you suspect A fellow lowlife is divine in nature, if only a
distant descendant of a minor godhead.
Why would you never let them come to harm?
So this straight up says gods exist.
The immortal aristocracy is immortal because they literally
capture gods, chain them up, stick them in their basement and
siphon the power off so that their whole family can be
immortal, right? And every solstice new gods pop
up and basically everyone just goes.
Yo, let's go catch a. God and like, hopes to raise
their station by catching a fucking God.
That's so fucking cool. Oh, it's UN like, dude, reading
this the first time. And I skimmed this part and I
got down to the actual moral aristocracy section, which is
the last section reading. I was like, dude, what this is.
I mean, that's so creative, right?
Like, yeah, it's such a good idea.
It's like, yeah, they've enslaved the God to give
themselves immortality, which I actually, you know, I don't know
if you remember this, but I wrote a setting when I lived in
California and like footage. OK.
No, I would say yes, of course. We've talked about like 80
times. Talking about I was like, Oh
yeah, like the current gods are actually stealing their power
from the actual gods. Yeah.
Oh God, what would you what would you what did you call
them? Wasn't it AP Does it with AP?
Like they take them over and then they chain up the gods and
siphon the power from the gods. Yeah, they're like primordials
or something like that. That's what.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, dude, write that more.
Write more of that. I know I should write more of
that. It's so old.
I actually stopped all the documents for it because I did
write a lot of it down. But dude, it's such a cool piece
of like, large piece of war for this game, yeah.
Well, and then some of the other classes like the disgraced Noble
is literally one that like lost their immortality, which is
dope. The strike organized is cool
because that's sick. But then one of the other ones
is, oh, the oathbrook and executioner was another one that
was like high up on my list but the the God on the run.
So there's like three classes where you're either haunting a
God or a God, or used to have the mortality and lost it.
Like so fucking cool. Yeah, I really like the God, The
God on the run. I I definitely created a
character concept for that one. I.
Don't know why Starfire popped in my head and as soon as I read
that. Like the?
Teen Titan. Yeah, 'cause she's like super
powerful but like kind of dumb. And like when they read, when
you read the part it like, I feel like part of it's just
like, what is it? There's one that basically it it
basically says like you like you had to be explained.
Like someone had explained to you that, like being a God is
not normal, you know what I mean?
Like, but yeah. Had a cat crying at the door.
Sorry. Oh yeah.
For a long time you thought your life was perfectly normal.
Which of your fellow low lives had to be the one to explain
that? Most people aren't the product
of celestial intervention, So I don't know why that popped my
head for someone to just be like, wait a minute, you can't
do this magic. You know, like, yeah.
Anyway, yeah, all of them are good.
Like, we can literally sit and read like all fucking 22 of
them. They would all be fucking
bangers. They're.
All bangers, there's like, there's no misses that all the
general deals hit OK, so invent your magic domain and patron.
This is another point in the game that I love.
This is very much of me like so. For your magic domain, you
basically just. Pick.
What kind of magic that you do, and it can be related to your
general deal. It doesn't have to be, but it
will dictate what you can deal with, right?
I like their example a lot. I was just going to say that I
was hoping you were going to read the example.
Yeah, so the nature of your domain may make certain
applications of magic impossible.
Great. You cannot melt a steel door
with the turn of domain, for instance.
On the other hand, a lowlife with the magma domain would
almost certainly have better chance, and I couldn't think of
a better example to give than that one.
It is perfect and I like that taking a domain immediately
limits you because I think like limitations and rules give you
space to be really creative. Oh, how's.
That. What's that?
Nothing but yeah. So that's that's that's your
domain, dude. I I don't know if I've ever
actually tasted turnip. Hmm.
Hmm, yeah. And it kind of gives an example
of like, you know, what is the school dropout?
I may have something that sounds like college magic or like a
college major. And then like, you know, the
oath Broken Executioner, which I'm surprised is not one of the
ones you picked. It would have some.
It was my #3. I just forgot it.
OK. Yeah.
I like it says probably have a kind of gothic word salad.
What's interesting because everybody can have magic, so
like every single one of these can get like the astronaut.
Like there's an example later that has like star magic and
shit, but like even like the bicycle mechanic and like the
Rogue Intelligence, like having first of all being able to do
whatever. Because it's also like, it's
cool if your Rogue intelligence magic has to do with Rogue
Intelligence, but it's also cool if your Rogue intelligence magic
is like pillows, like you know. Absolutely, yeah.
They're starting pillow fights all the time, landing softly out
of any window you jump out of. I can make that work, Yeah.
And. Then like the Like the the, the
fucking when when on community when they wrapped Pierce up in
all those pillows and had like a pillow golem, you know?
I haven't seen that episode, but yeah, listen, I've seen several
episodes patrons, so I read this as this is option, right?
You may choose to begin with a patron and.
Basically because you can find them later if you want like.
Yes. So a patient is represented by a
risk dye usually well here and you can call on them for for aid
essentially. And if you roll a one or two
decide the die size goes down and you can do a mission for
them to increase that die size. And I like that.
I think it's really cool and I think for some of the
personally, well, I think of patrons I think of like warlock
magic that one tried game. And for some of these general
deals I as a player I wouldn't require this as if I'm the GM.
But I as a player will probably be like why does my person have
magic. I'd probably pick a patron to
fill in that like why does my whatever bicycle mechanic or
astronaut have magic or whatever.
But once again, it's not really like you don't have to, but I
think it adds like like a fun like element to like man, I
pissed off my patron or hates help, you know, well.
That's one thing I did like about playing Warlocks in that
other game is kind of it's it's one of the only ways that 5 E
does what this does the entire time, which is to put lore into
the game, give you narrative flavor versus just being like
terrible. But the.
Only good thing about the warlock though.
Yeah. So is that your your patron
gives you so much narrative flavor for you and your GM to
work with that? Like it's it's just fun, you
know? Especially if you're a GM that,
like, bucks with you, with it, it's so much fun.
Which I would totally do. I would absolutely.
You have. To it would.
It would be a double edged sword that yeah, I mean they can help
you, but also they have their own agenda and you're just a
tool in their own larger agenda. But people forget that all the
time. People forget that intelligent
swords have personalities that can fuck with people all the
time, too. You're like 10 episodes later
and just like, oh shit, like, Oh yeah, your guy talks again.
Oh, I guess he's been quiet. You know what?
I mean like, I don't know. There is a section, though, like
the next the very end of that says like they're often more
trouble than they're worth, and that's the reason why it's
because they will they. Never know when a little extra
planar intervention will come in hand.
Yeah, I would absolutely use this.
I would encourage my my table to use this, but once again I would
treat this as an optional thing which I is how it's written.
I would say that I would not do it in the first game.
I would add that in when people are comfortable, which I think
would only take like a session or two.
Yeah, yeah. Record your starting dice and
your brand. Your lowlife begins with a I'm
just going to say brand. I'm not saying hashtag brand,
whatever. What your lowlife begins with
hit die of the D6A, magic die D4 and a Marshall die of D6, and a
phone battery at D8 in the Brand of Zero.
You don't roll these right now, just write them down.
They're basically just the dice you use for those things.
And then just choose two bonuses, which I guess it's just
right as you create your character, right.
I was kind of reading this at one point in time like this is
like leveling up, but this is just right.
When you create your character, you can choose two of these
bonuses. You can't repeat though as be
one like two different bonuses. This upgrading an ash group from
zero to one. I think it's really great.
I think it's like specific to instead of just plus one to an
attribute. It's like know if you have a
zero you can make it a one. Which is I think better because
it keeps somebody from getting like a + 3 right off the bat if
they have don't already have one.
Yeah, write down another magic domain, which is the one I would
take because it gives you another way to problem solve
situations. You can upgrade your hit die to
from D6D8. Upgrade your magic die actually
that one, that'd be the one from D4 to D6.
Or upgrade your Marshall die from D6 to D8.
Next is recording your starting HPMP and load.
Your HP is just the number of sides on your hit die.
So if you have a hit die of AD six, it's six, so.
But you can get you can get more Hit Die.
Totally, yeah. You can increase your hit die.
I mean it just in this, if you take the bonus, you have AD 8.
Yeah. Your MP is equal to Wisdom plus
Charisma. Yeah, your your starting carry
is 10 plus strength plus Con. That's how many items you can
have in your inventory and enroll for starting inventory.
This is great. This is a fantastic part.
Basically, you're given a full spread of of dice, right?
One of each size D4 all the way to D20.
There are several starting inventory tables, all of them go
to 20 and you pick which of those dice you will roll on each
table. I mean, you can only use the D20
ones, you can only use the D12 ones, and the tables are made so
that the lower or the higher than the numerical value on
table the way better the items get.
Yeah, but you're this is another thing that just like, I mean I
know this is how dice work, but my brain went, this is so clever
in the same way that like you don't have to have a bunch of
separate tables for a bunch of different dice, because dice can
only go so high anyway. So you just write the table so
that the D fours get certain shit, the D sixes, the D eights
the D2. But if you have AD 20 you could
still roll A1. So like it's just really, really
clever. Again, the way that that kind of
thought and mechanic goes from the Chronicle wrist dye usage
throughout everything. And I love the way that like,
your little dice are only so big, but your big dice can roll
super bad too and be just as equal.
So, like, I I really enjoy that. The whole there's definitely.
It's funny that we opened this with like, yeah, they made this
when they were like more hobbyists and now it's like a
full thing that they do. But like, it's still there's
like an incredible through line of logic.
Oh, in this that I'm like, oh, this was definitely written
hobbyists or not, at the time that they wrote this, they had a
really good idea what they were doing.
And I mean, there's a through line of logic from almost
everything you know. Fantastic.
Again, we said. This is really good as is and
could be absolutely fantastic. Like the core mechanics, the
core language, like almost everything through.
I just think rearranging, chopping off a bunch of
unnecessary like verbiage, and this is insane.
Put it in a hardback fancy foil. I would love to have this as a
hardback. I'd love to have this
physically. I mean, I I mean, this is
definitely, you know. I mean, listen, I have to have.
No, no more. We'll just have to have.
Gym room on and chat about it until we starts to drop.
I would love that. I mean let's.
Call this 0 E and the next one is 1 E and then I will fight
them physically. So the.
Tables. Right.
The inventory tables are as follows.
There's tools and food, drugs, medical and recreation.
So that. Sorry.
That's by the way. Drugs, comma medical and
recreation, recreational magic, consumables, weapons, armor,
reputations and favor and haunted heirlooms.
And this is these tables hit like there's some really, really
great stuff on all these tables and they're very open-ended.
Maybe not so much like. Tools and food like those are
pretty apparent, right? You you guys kind of know.
Well, you know, a terrarium full of beetles maybe is not as open
or is not as apparent. Great.
Cold brew. Some really funny one.
Her magical sumo's like, you know, 19's a dying star or a
sack of extra planar tentacles. You know I do like.
That. They deal with items in the way
that I prefer items to be dealt with.
There's not this express purpose or an item.
It's like how are you using this in this scenario?
And I'm like, that's great. I I love.
That's so great. Like, greenhorns with Marco did
the same kind of thing where like, there's just cool names
for shit and he's like, I don't know what they fucking are.
You tell me. Yeah, you tell me how you.
So good. Also so I would love I don't
have you gone past weapons yet I haven't been watching you scold
No it's the next 120 gun blade the sword.
That's a gun. I also shot Final Fantasy 8.
But yeah I I mean we don't have to go through all these tables
but like you should get this. You should go to these tables
they're enjoyable to read. I.
Mean The number one on armor is a parasol like, but then you
also have like a beanie knit by a witch and a helmet with a
mustache. I mean, these are so fucking
good. A reputation and favors though
is a really, I mean a really cool table.
Like, yeah, your person exists in this world and you get to
roll on like, OK, you have a reputation or or favors.
Like, I too. I really love, like, half your
family is werewolves, yeah. Like it's not even it doesn't
say have. It says like half your family is
werewolf. Like half your family is
werewolf. One is really funny.
Dared not to do drugs. We're not going to get into DARE
program causes. For kids to do.
Drugs. But what I also think is funny
is Hurricane Jim comes up again later and the for you What's up?
He said he'll fight anyone for you.
You. Know.
And that comes. That comes up later in in the
fucking. I love it in the combat examples
and shit. Hurricane Jim comes back and
they give some examples of bad guys and shit and you see the
dragon punchers again, So I like that.
Yeah, because this dragon puncher, this game is such a
labor of love. Like it is just so enjoyable to
go through. It cracks me up.
Yeah. I think some of the other ones
is like a really great, a really great one's. 15, Sorry, we can
move past the table after this, but 15?
You drank from the goblet of night and live.
Oh my God. What does that mean?
Oh my God, that's so cool. It's so.
Cool. But I I will say the The Haunted
Heirlooms are some of my favorite fucking shit.
Dude, they're really good. Which one kind of stands out to
you? Oh my God, you can't even.
Like, some of them are just like, so like like that goblin,
a knight thing, right. So like a bullet that has fit
and no gun that you can find to me.
Like, like so fucking like, Oh yeah, you got me.
But then, like, you literally can have like or like cuttings
of the ultraviolet rows. Insane.
But cuttings of the ultraviolet rows?
It's so somatic. It just feels like something
important, you know? But then, but then you get a
license to drive in the state of Post Ohio, because apparently
Post Ohio is a thing and we're in the states now in this
fantasy world. But the switchblade that only
opens for the Prince, Prince of thieves whom you are not sad
face is definitely is definitely up there because it definitely
has a Sad Face emoticon. 01. What the doll head did is.
Never where you left it last. Oh my.
God, a creepy doll head Fucking Elf on the Shelf.
Fuck that. I would hunt that thing.
Yeah, it's so funny. Like, I know we we like divided
up this episode to Ryan and I would be like really dialed in
for going through like our parts and it.
But there's just so much that you're just like, but we should
just walk through this real quick, you know?
Yeah. Well, no, because some of the
some of the parts, like these two or three chapters where you
get read a ton and then we can just skim the rest of it like
the fuck. Like I said, like the dice shit,
that's two pages where you're like, no, fuck that.
Yeah. So two things were the goals.
This is great, and I very much agree with this.
It basically says like, listen, you're you're low left should
have a goal and the goal should probably be a little bit more
than, just like the accumulation of wealth.
And achievable. Yeah, and it should be
achievable. And goals can change and add to
it adds depth to your character. I will say that, like, this does
a really good job of, like, by the time you're done making a
character for this game, your character is fairly 3
dimensional, right? More like I and I love games
where you're just like, yeah, you roll a random asshole and
you just die. But.
This is. A very natural and not forced
way makes a well-rounded character.
And and. And like we said, builds your
world around you, into your party.
Absolutely. All pretty simply.
Yeah and yeah, fill out your name looking vibe.
It sounds exactly what it looks like, your character's name,
what they look like in the Journal vibe.
You know. And then, yeah, a lowlife
profile. So this is your like both on and
offline presence, so you you can pick relationships, who likes
you? Who hates you?
You know, the answers of your general dilsing questions should
be answered here. I feel like for me personally,
the leading questions are going to fill out a lot of the
relationships. You know, your alignment,
alignment. So alignment is an access y'all.
Obviously we all know the classic alignment, which is jock
or nerd or and preppy or goth, and this is a graph that you fit
somewhere on. When I first read alignment I
was like OK and then I read that I was like, OK, this is that's
pretty good. Yeah.
So you roll D2D6D66 not 2D6, and then you or choose a point on
the graph. Your first role, you know one is
jock, sakes is nerds or somewhere in that spectrum and
like the second role is prep and goth.
I would love to be a gothy jock, by the way.
Dude, goth jock was the first thing about the matter.
I'm like, what piece of media has a goth jock?
Who? Is who is the?
Who is the starting quarterback that like rocks eyeliner and
listens to MCR after the game Like I can't think of one in in
modern in media. And we even mentioned this, but
this doesn't exist. There is a character pamphlet
like this. There's multiple pamphlets, and
this one's definitely for the Game Master.
And there's a character pamphlet as well that has the graph on
it. Dan's in chat just said yeah,
you can. The Zodiac is you draw cards in
the tarot deck until you have four first a star sign, second
is your sun sign, third is your moon, and last is your void
sign. I don't any of that shit means
that I would skip that entirely. I dude, listen, my characters
are doing it at my table. Yeah, I was reading it.
It is the magic of astrologers that can bring their influence
to bear. Talking about your star signs,
the magic of astrologers. Your blood type.
You can roll your blood type. I love the blood type.
Blood type. Catch me the fuck up.
Yeah, yeah. Be sure to donate when you get
the chance. Hey, the transfusion you receive
when you're limp home, missing an arm Could be your own when
you limp home. I'm I can read?
I will say and the only I love this table.
I love it because it's six options and I don't know if they
had to go with six options and there's not six blood options.
There aren't there's only four. So they added the, the OR the.
I'm sorry, there's five, there's four.
They added X and Omega. Yeah.
And then the modifiers positive, negative but then you have
double, extreme, chimeric and blue.
Give me that Omega. Extreme chimeric is cool.
Like, I'm like, Oh yeah, I have AB chimeric blood, Yeah.
Omega Blue. I mean also our our our blood's
blue in this area. As a person who knows blood and
blood types and shit like that, I wouldn't have minded if this
was a 2D6 table 2:00 to 12:00 with the most common blood in
the middle because that would actually make your like if you
need a blood transfusion even more like fucking random.
Like obviously like a positive is 33% of the entire human
fucking population, the most common blood type out there, but
having it on a 2D6 spectrum where the most Commons in the
middle and like timeric and fucking extreme or on like the
far ends would be really interesting.
Yeah, I could see that being very cool.
That does seem like a like a you thing.
You'd also need like five more blood types, but like, you know,
whatever. You just don't.
Yeah, next is Dating Profile. Dude, fuck yeah, I'm rolling on
this one. Do.
You want to roll real quick? I'll read that.
You roll. Yeah.
So you know, perhaps your
lowlife is looking for someone. Romantic love, deep friendship,
or a worthy opponent in ritual combat.
Your dating profile helps you define what you seek.
You fill this out by rolling D666.
Or you can choose what by what feels right.
Please roll because it's hilarious.
Yeah, and write in an answer if the option presented failed to
capture your desires. Yeah.
Legit. 235 best possible combination of anything you can
get on here. So a soft goth long term
relationship that's real sweet So.
One of those. Those soft.
Really good. I like that trial by combat is.
Is that you're seeking give. You a hard, George.
Drive by combat, Yeah, yeah. I'm looking for an Eldridge nerd
for trial by combat, you know? Yeah, music preference, which
has some, like, fun and weird options.
Your criminal record, we can just kind of like, skim.
There's a lot of good things. And once again, like by the end
of this, I have a really good idea of who my character is.
You know for sure. And then we get to combat.
Then we get to combat. Yeah, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna,
I'm gonna. This is going to be one that we
cruise a little bit quicker. I will say I have notes.
Players familiar with other tabletop RPGs maybe use
mechanics such as an initiative that dictate the flow of a
fight. Hamantic low lives favors a
faster, looser approach. This can be tricky to wrap one
Ted around. So my, my, I think my issue with
combat. I have issues with combat.
So let's go through it and we'll talk about.
It's not how it works, it's just some of the ways that it's
described So broadly, A fight is a series of attribute checks in
a chaotic environment that you share with at least one other
person who is really upset with you for some reason.
I love the way it's written. An example of combat can be
found in section 11/6. It's not hyperlinked, but like
if this is the combat section, put the example of combat right
here. A fight breaks out in the
fiction negotiation. Sour ambushes sprung to fins.
Realize that they are on a bound to fight to death all the good
stuff, etcetera, etcetera. GM creates a hit die pool for
the NPCS. This is discussed in depth in
section 11.1. But broadly, the bigger your
foe, the more dice they get, and the better your foe, the more
sides their dice have. We freeze time, describe the
scene, the GMs, the low lives, what they want to do, and then
one or more low lives. Declare their intent approach
and it's handled an attribute check.
So my issue with this whole section, once that's resolved,
the gene describes the situation and the results you repeat
etcetera etcetera. One of my issues with the with
the this whole section is this is when it really starts being
like but go here, but go here but go here and I'm like that
makes a really incoherent way to do this like.
So it basically says example of the combat can be found in
section 11/6. Just put it here, there's
talking about NPCS in combat. You could also just put this
here and then it says like one of our low lives, declare their
intent and approach which is handled by attribute check which
is on section 2.3 which I it would take very little to just
reiterate that here. And then there's another part on
repeat where it talks about the the morale pool, which is the
section 11 point 5.1, which could just be here.
We do this until low lives or NPCS flee, and then from the NPC
perspective see section 11. This is one of those things
where like I wouldn't mind if some of the language here was
like doubled up here and at the end of the NPC section.
Or like one of the sections had it really well, but then another
section kind of had like the summary of it.
But to just be like this happens, but go over here for
the section for it when I'm like just give me the comment and the
comment I think. There's too much of it.
Personally I think like saying like the the NPC stuff being
like oh if you want to look at that, that's over there and the
rest of this being in here and also like inline hyperlinking
the whatever 11 point 5.1 or whatever it was.
Yeah. But yeah, I think morale pool
and stuff should be it is a little bit like go here, go
there, go here. Yeah, and some of the wording
for some of it when we get to later stuff too.
So this is like a breakdown of how like the general flow of a
thing goes, but like when I read it like I get it but it could be
written in a completely different way they would.
Be thinking you need a flow chart.
Oh dude, a flow chart would be insane for this.
God, it would be so good. I know we do have flow charts
here, but they also like, I keep seeing more flow charts in
games. I'm like, oh, this is really
good. Yes, so good.
It's so good. But like a lot of this is,
there's like 123456, there's seven bullet points to basically
just be like it's an attribute check.
Like people start fighting, people do the attribute check
thing and then you do it again. I just, I feel like there's just
too many words here and too many redirects to other areas.
Cuz this to me, this section here right in me is like,
basically this is how it works. Check these four other spots and
then you'll get it. I just don't like that.
I, I if you're gonna tell me how combat works, tell me how combat
works. Mm hmm.
You know, mm hmm. 5.1 attacking. Attacking with a weapon is made
using an attribute check per 2.3.
Again, I don't mind necessarily saying go back to 2.3, but it
also only takes like four more words to be like 2 to 6 plus
modifier. You know what I mean?
Like I don't. Yeah.
I personally I I would just I would just keep it like this and
put and I would bold attribute check and be like do you want to
learn how attribute check works Like go back.
This one I'm actually OK with because I don't think they need
to write out. Attribute check is laid out
early on, you don't need to be super explained about it again.
Right. But we're. 60 pages later in the
book and it's going to talk about it a lot in this section.
I wouldn't mind even just at the beginning.
Maybe one box that just explained.
Attribute check again at the beginning of the chapter.
So like yeah, link back to 2.3 if you want to read it more
thoroughly. But like when you hit the
section and you're like combat is basically a bunch of
attribute checks. Let me give you a little side
box that says remember this attribute check works.
Then I don't have to like reference it again and again and
again. Especially if I have pocket.
Like a little a side, a little box on the side.
Like just a box. That just explains it again
without having to be like flip back to this other one.
So attacking declare a target and the attribute you're gonna
use. And then there's the make
success level six or less. You do not deal damage.
You suffer consequence 7 to 9. Partial success.
You deal damage, but suffer consequence 10 or more.
Full success. You hit getaway, clean 12 or
more crit. You hit, You gain a benefit as
well. On a success, roll the die
associated with that weapon to see how much damage has been
dealt. We'll get to that too.
Consequences while attacking. Critical successes while
attacking. This is important sections.
I don't know why I feel like again there there's just a lot
of words. The consequences you may suffer
for a miss or partial success should bet the context of the
action. For example, common consequences
might be granting advantage your foe, rolling your weapons, risk
with the disadvantage, or even granting your foe.
Actually, no, it's great. It's sue sentences, it's fine.
I think maybe it's just the way that it's like broken apart.
It makes me feel like it's more success while attacking.
Same thing there's there's there's an example rolling the
weapons at risk, die with advantage, never goes out of
style, but it may be appropriate to grant an advantage to the
next attacker, position the phone in your hazard or open an
opportunity to parlay. So one of the things about this
is it really lends into the PBTA style of combat a little bit.
But I again like I feel like the original, the, the the beginning
exam like talk through combat sounds like OSR combat but then
we get into these other areas where like your consequences and
and successes and things like that you're not really like you
don't really take damage in this area and that's not really
explained super great and we'll get to that in a second.
Improvised weapons, they exist. Improvised weapons are prone to
breaking especially when the die associated with your improvised
weapon comes up as A1 or A2. So basically I would just rock
those as like one hit and it's done.
The uses die is AD 4 to start, basically protection.
I do like this. This is clever.
The piece of gear you are using for protection absorbs damage
equal to half the largest number.
So for example, if you are wearing D4 armor, notice that
that is not a delta. Right.
Because armor, equipment, things like that aren't user die, wrist
eye, wrist eye, user die. For example, if you are wearing
D4 armor and take five points of damage, your armor absorbs 2 and
your HP goes down by three. So if you have D12 armor, you
can absorb 6 points of damage. You get half of what the high
dye is. I like that.
I think it's clever, it's smart. Again, it's consistent.
Yeah, yes. So this is the part that I
really dislike. I was wondering how you would
feel about this? Hate it.
So much so, it's hard to get a
good night's sleep in your armor, even when it's
comfortable clothes or the magical attunement.
To gain the HP and NB benefits of a night's rest, you have to
take your armor off. There's a later part that says
if you sleep in magical armor, it gives you nightmares.
I hate this. And let me explain why I don't.
I don't hate it in like on its own.
In the context of the rest of the game, where a lot of things
are like you don't need to worry about food and water, you're a
grown up human fucking being. Like.
So much stuff is obscured away, like where it's just like it
doesn't really matter. It this feels like such a weird
thing to be like, we're going to be very specific about your HP
and MP games when you're wearing armor.
Not even just armor about magical armor.
It just feels like a thing that it doesn't, It feels out of
place, like it. Like when I read this, I was
like, this is probably the only game in the game that I would
like. And I'm like, it just doesn't
feel like it fits the rest of the five of everything else.
Which is pretty much, let's make this as easy as possible.
Let's abstract a bunch of stuff, but let's get super specific
about how you sleep in armor and I'm like, soldiers fall asleep
standing up in full fucking gear all the time, right?
Like, you know. I was just, it's interesting
when you were going to go through like the five, like
Section 5, like Chapter 5, There's a few things that I'm
wondering in your opinion on and we'll get to them as we keep
going through. Yeah, but I don't like that.
I I wouldn't use it. I like the example earlier where
they talk about like donning and doffing Armor is important when
it's important, but I'm like, I just want to make it important,
like who gives a shit? It just feel, like I said it
feels like a weird thing that so much other stuff is abstracted
in that specific Marshall training, the finest speeder in
the hands of a novice might as well be a stick, etcetera,
etcetera. I love this actually for the
armor. So basically it says you start
with the Marshall training of D6.
No matter what your weapon is, all of your shits based on your
Marshall die. So the largest die size you can
use for a weapon or armor, like that's all it is.
You can actually have AD 12 blade, you can have D12 armor.
Like all that stuff doesn't like it doesn't matter unless you're
training reaches that. You can't peek at it anyway.
You're still just using a six. So if you have AD 12 blade, you
still only roll the D6 dice unless you roll your Marshall to
an 8 and then you roll DA blade. I love that.
I think it's super clever. I was this is one of the
sections I was wondering in your opinion.
Yeah. I like.
Armor. Yeah armor armor is the same
way. Like you can rock super amazing
D10D12 armor, but it's still only going to absorb if you're
Marshall dies D6 it only absorbs 3 basically.
I think this is such a clever way to just be like yes, you can
use it, you're just not as good with it as you could be.
Like, there's a super fancy legendary blade.
You can swing it, but you're not gonna swing it as good as a
super fancy legendary warrior. But if you level up, you could
like you can, yes, you could eventually invest in that.
And I don't know. There's a lot of games that put
parameters around equipment usage, and there's a lot of
saying no. And I always think that's kind
of lame. But I also think it's lame that,
like, somebody who sucks at stuff could just pick up a God
weapon even though they can't. They don't know anything about
weapons. And this is such a great middle
point where it's like, yeah, absolutely, you can use
anything. That's totally okay.
You're just limited by your skill.
Clever, smart. I think like that built in.
Like you get better. Like there's a narrative thing
built into that dice mechanic that I really enjoy.
That's not written here, but it's implied here and that like
that, like you said, like you get better, you get better with
the weapon, like, you know, but and it makes sense because the
dice are getting bigger. Like, it's just really smart.
Also, I'm so happy we're finally going through this game and
you're talking about because I love hearing your opinion on it.
I love this game. Listen, I don't really give a
lot of opinions as a person. That's just.
Not. So so get them while you can.
Health, death and wounds are health, wounds and death.
I feel like I had opinions on this Will get to this.
So hit points represent how far you are from suffering a mortal
blow. Characters with HP are arrested,
lucky and stand with poise. I love this.
Basically HP is abstracted. HP is not a specific number of
wounds you take, it's not a specific number of injuries you
have. It literally is just how rested,
ready, good to go you are, or how tired, unlucky and shitty
you are. It's completely abstracted
number that your general overall mental, physical well-being like
everything about you. I love that idea.
I recently started adapting that and I love that I saw it in
here. HP it doesn't.
It's not a one for one wound situation, it's just your
overall general goodness. Hit dice.
All characters have a pool of hit dice.
Hit dice are used to determine how many hit points a character
has. Low lives begin the game with a
single D6 for the hit dice, but can improve number of sides and
quantity through advancement. I enjoy that C-section 10.2.
So for non player characters, hit dice determine the size and
quality of an individual NPC. Small, half fewer, big half,
larger. We'll get to that in the NPC
section. Damage.
So this is a part that I'm I'm not a fan of the language on at
all. It's.
I get it, but it's confusing. Anything that chips away at your
hit points is considered damaged.
Typically damage takes a form of glancing blows, Fatigue, poisons
Texas. Other circumstances wear down
that can wear down and possibly kill you are also considered
damage, right? The difference between a
glancing blow and a mortal one is a matter of centimeters after
all. Very true, anything that deals
damage should be able to kill you.
If something does not have fatal potential, don't roll damage.
A withering insult may lower your guard, but unless the burn
is so sick as to possibly kill you on the spot, you might not
want to affect the character's HP.
I understand. I don't like the way this is
written at all. I feel like it left a lot of
questions that I've played enough games that I would be
fine. But I feel like people newer to
this thing wouldn't be fine with.
So HP is abstracted. It's just a a scale of how much,
how, how, how, how you are right now, how you doing?
But then yeah, but then there's this part that basically says,
it says specifically, I think there's one line that that one
or two that really bugs me. If something does not have fatal
potential, don't roll damage that it.
That line right there needs to disappear or be rewritten
because my mind immediately went to like, I get it, but a lot of
people will go, well, what's what's fatal potential like if
someone hits me with like a chair leg that couldn't really
kill me. So I do I not do damage for that
like? Does everything have to be a
killing blow? Like if I have D6HP, does that
mean only things that do greater than six damage?
Like, does it have to be like a real killing blow?
You know what I. Mean.
I think that line bothers me less, and it bothers you.
I'm actually pretty unbothered by that.
Like, I understand. Like, yeah, hitting you with a
chair leg could totally not kill you, but if I hit you in the
head with a chair leg or a neck with the chair on the back of
the neck, that could kill you. Like, right?
So if I hit you in the leg, do you mark HP damage?
Well, I would say that was contextual on there.
Like I mean it. It's like combat with anything.
If you roll really high a damage the way that the attack is
described is going to be different.
And if I roll really low, you know.
I know, but this game isn't doesn't OSR.
This game is PBTA, right? So your approach and
consequences and one D6 and and felt like it's not.
It's not a straight amount because you don't take like the
way you are dealt. Damage is different, right?
Then NPCS didn't even receive damage, so I get it.
I understand how it's gonna work.
I don't like that line because I feel like it opens up an
unnecessary question. You could remove that line and
nothing about this is different. But that question of what?
Well, what's fatal damage then disappears.
You know what? I mean, I will say that I don't
think it's a necessary line. Well, I'm on, I'm unbothered by
it. I definitely don't think it's
necessary. And if you feel like it opens
doors that don't need to be open, I feel like that's that's
valid you. Know.
Yeah. I feel like so much of this, The
technical language in this game is is very understandable and
straightforward, and very few times have I been like, well,
that feels ambiguous. That's what I was thinking of.
That to me throws a weird ambiguity that you don't really
need because I can see because you know how hard it is to pick
up PBTA when you first start anyway, if you're picking up
PBTA Reed Patrick World from Aaron King.
But so to have a weird ambiguity to like the damage that you
could have. I just feel it's again it's
unnecessary when like it wouldn't make much difference
without it running out of HP. So again HP is a an abstract
it's basically all the the the ways you get knocked down before
the next blow is potentially the one that kills you.
And I love that that it's it's you getting worn down and then
taking a mortal blow and then there's a mortal blow table AD
66 table and I love this. So it's left leg, right leg,
left arm, right arm, torso, head.
And then you get incapacitated, wounded, maimed, shattered,
lost, and a killing blow. And it actually levels up as you
go. So my only my only thing about
the table has to have the other tables been highest number first
and lowest number last. No.
But and it's there's no every number has the same percentage
of hitting so that makes no difference.
So yeah I never I didn't even notice that because it didn't
make a difference like and that's the other thing too about
this is like it goes incapacitated killing blow
because it doesn't make a difference.
It's it's cool to see the the the the thing down.
But this is another one where I wouldn't necessarily mind a
mixed success table with 11 where in the middle you're most
likely going to get incapacitated and wounded and on
the ends you could potentially get.
So like you could even you could even just roll this table like
just double it in two different ways where 2 and 12 are you know
killing blow and then etcetera etcetera etcetera.
So that the middle one is incapacitated every time.
So you're more likely to get incapacitated or wounded and
then or maimed as opposed to immediate killing blow.
That would be an interesting way to like make the game a little
bit potentially less healthy I think.
I think Helm Helm like John Davis, Helms wounds do that
where they split into two D6 table.
So you're not necessarily gonna die every time, but you
theoretically could on a shit roll.
I love that. Like if you roll a three, two,
or one and head, you're dead. You're just dead, yeah?
So Incapacitated is like rolling with disadvantage.
Wounded you roll to disadvantage and if you let it go too long
you get maimed and then maimed. If you let it load, go too long
and get shattered and then Shattered let you go too long,
it gets lost and then lost. Like if it's your head or your
torso, you're just dead. So I like that the if you don't
get medical attention soon enough like the the wounds will
level up If you do happen to survive, really clever.
Really enjoy it. Like I said, this is fine the
way it is, but I wouldn't mind, like I said, splitting it out
into into a mixed success table with a little lesser wounds in
the middle wounds and lost appendages.
Many of the results on the table gives you wounds or lost
appendages that require medical attention.
These wounds permanently affect your appearance and may result
in disadvantage in certain roles until the appendage is replaced
with a prosthetic wound. Should be recorded on lowlife
character sheet. So you lose an arm, you lose an
arm, But as we said before you get a prosthetic, your arm is
back as good as it was before, potentially better.
Recovering hit points does not negate the effects of a wound,
only time heals scars and only prosthetic restores lost
appendages and functionality. Medical detention is a specific
thing for all of this. The consequences of a mortal
blow will degrade over time. Successfully applying medical
attention usually takes a form of an attribute test with the
intent to stabilize a wound. Attempting to get medical
attention without first aid supplies appropriate to the task
as possible, but should be even riskier.
So attribute tests use the iterative that you have around
you. I love that this is what I'm
talking about. Like that's it's it's very
abstracted and it's cool and it's good.
So get rid of sleeping in armor prosthetics capable of replacing
the full functionality of an appendage or organ or commonly
available in towns. There are the body modders.
So functionality wise you have D4D6D8D12.
There are D10D12. These are delta though, so these
are usage usage. I'm sorry risk dye on the
prosthetics. So D6 is pretty standard across
the board for everything like normal everything is is AD 6
normal, bad guys, normal humans, mostly D sixes.
D4 is still rolling a disadvantage for the
functionality of your prosthetic, but it can keep
going all the way up to D12, which is a vector of destiny.
D10 or the the delta 10 is magically attuned.
D8 is not only is it your appendage, but it could be a
tool or weapon. Love that, I love that you can
upgrade your prosthetic. Da da da da.
We talked about this body modification.
We've already talked about that killing blows and death.
I do like this. Death is inevitable.
It can be delayed. Basically death is one of the
only gods that is too powerful for the immortal aristocracy to
capture and or too important. So if you almost die right or
you do die, you can actually go to death and bargain with death
to not die. Love that you offer a sacrifice,
obligation, service, whatever. You tell it to the table and you
know death should be inscrutable, mercurial, alien,
maybe a cat you know definitely reminds me a bit of nine lives.
And if Death agrees. To It's the cat from 9 lives
with the skull, yeah. Exactly.
That's all it is to me. That's all it will be in my
game. If the bargain's accepted, you
get to re roll your death, but you could then just immediately
die again and then go back to death and be like all right?
And then you just have to keep offering more to potentially
stay alive. More and more in debt to death
to death. You know.
Dope like that's so good. But I also love that.
I feel like the odds of like, quote UN quote dying are are nor
like, you know, OSR ish level. You know what I mean?
It's not 5 E but I do like the idea that you get the option to
potentially not die. You know, like being able to
just be like I will do this thing for you death and now
that's a whole campaign thing that you have to do but you
didn't lose your character and stuff like that.
I I like, I like that the that's the way it's done versus like 5
you where they just give you so many hit points that you're
never going to die anyway and they tell the gym not to kill
you because the story's more important, you know?
Yeah, well, you got to have every encountering has to be
balanced, so. Yeah right, Storing hit points.
And if it's not fudget. There are two ways.
Sleeping and eating. Sleeping get a night's rest if
you get a night's rest without armor.
Again, such a weird thing to be specific about.
I don't like it. Take your armor off if you want
all your HP and MP. Eating food is important if you
have food or spirits or other consumers.
Wait, I think there was a specific mechanic.
Yeah, you regain HP by rolling one hit die and adding your con
and whiz and you get all your HMP back first.
Sleeping. Eating.
You cannot restore HP on bread alone, which is again, you don't
have to track food and water. But if you find if you have
food, spirit, or other consumable comforts handy and
spend a few minutes to rest and eat, you roll the risk die
associated with your meal and regain hit points equal to the
roll con plus whiz. So sleeping is hit, die is
rolling your own hit die and adding your con and whiz, and
eating is rolling the die for the food you're eating.
Plus continent Wiz yeah. Like that.
I think it works well. I also like this like, oh, you
have to eat every watch, you know, like, I mean, I like that
way into the game. That makes sense for that.
And I'm glad this doesn't do that because it wouldn't make
sense. Yeah, not at all.
Hit points and wounds. Restoring hit points does not
mean your wounds have disappeared.
We've talked about this already. Magic.
Talk to me about magic. Magic.
Magic Man. Yeah, so all low lives are can
cast, which is my favorite thing ever.
I love when everyone's a wizard. Yeah.
So you begin play with a domain, which we talked about, a magic
dye, which we touched on, and a pool of MP.
Your domain themes, your magic, and your magic dye kind of
dictates how powerful the potential for your spell is.
Now your pool of MP determines how many times you need to cast
before you have to take a nap and restore those spell slots.
Magic domains as discussed in Section 4 three.
It basically is just like how is your magic themed, which you
know grants you some parameters for how you could use it.
The turn of a magma. You know you can gain another
domain through advancement, which I think is really cool.
Your magic domain may grant advantage to a role if it's
specifically applicable to the situation.
In disadvantage, if it's uniquely I'll suited.
I like that's there. I'm sure that a table full of
people can find a lot of occasions to use something in a
weird way that wouldn't grant them this, but those few
instances where it's like, Oh no, this specifically makes
sense for my magic. It's like, yeah, go off, I want
to see people succeed. The magic die.
Very interesting. It's it's kind of like the
Marshall die in a way. Makes it outside the armor or
whatever doesn't really dictate it.
But your magic Determine your magic die determines the powers
of your spells. Anything summoned through your
magic will be of a quality equal to your magic die.
That's cool. Deal damage equal to your magic
die and protect you from harm equal to your magic die.
Healing, restoring magics. Recover hit points equal to your
magic die. Roll lasting effects will create
a countdown equal to your magic die.
Once your magic wears off the subject of your spells, we'll
know magic was cast on them and probably be upset about it.
At character creation. You begin with magic die of D4,
which can be improved upon advancement.
Cool open format magic system. Which I don't know if you guys
listening know this, but I'm really into that.
Yeah, just a bit. Any comments about that, Ryan?
Just nothing. Just.
I think it's it's cool. I mean, you know, I like when
magic is like open. I hate dancing magic.
I think it's I I do not like it. I do not enjoy it.
So in it's called high magic, low lives.
I want magic to feel high. Totally, you know.
And it does. Like, it's very cool.
I mean, you don't roll for most things for magic.
It's just like you have AD 4, so it's four.
It's it's a risk for whatever, you know, it makes a lot of
sense. I don't really need to reread
the section and over and over to learn the gram of this for Magic
in Pete Pool. Let me tell you that I am not a
massive fan of spell slots. This isn't technically spell
slots, it's a magic pool. And I really do actually like
this a lot. It's just how many times you can
cast before you need to rest and game back.
And that pool is equal to your Wisdom plus your Charisma.
So if you've got a zero and one, you got one each time you cast.
Cost one in P Yeah, when you sleep without wearing armor,
yadda yadda 6.5 point one casting.
Is about that. Yeah, yeah, I know, really.
Casting spell A lowlife cast a spell by using their
intelligence. Spell casting is unique in that
benefits of success and consequence failure not
necessarily bound by what makes sense.
Spells are limited only by their domain, their magic die, and the
imagination of the player. The consequences for rolling
poorly are similarly unrestrained.
The position of the spell, therefore the consequences of
rolling poorly should be determined by the context of the
casting. Trying to make a Drowsy Guard
fall asleep is much easier than trying to make a rampage and
pulls rift off in the middle of the fight.
I like this. My one issue with this is this
is a six stat system and you need intelligence to cast but
everyone casts and I don't love that.
If everyone can cast and you have that many stats.
I personally believe that this the casting stat should have
some wiggle room as to what it is for the player because this
is saying like well intelligence needs to be good because it is
what you're casting from. Do you not feel the same?
I mean it doesn't necessarily bother me because again the the
modifiers are so small it's zero to three.
That's a good point. You know what I mean?
But it's interesting that using Intelligence to cast, but your
pool is made-up of your Wisdom and Charisma.
So, like, The thing is like, you're you don't have one magic
stat. You know what I mean?
Because like someone could have three Intelligence, but they
could have zero Wisdom and one Charisma.
They can cast one spell, you know what I mean?
So like, if it was just one, it would be different, but it's
half your stats make up your casting.
So like a combination of any of those three can really make a
difference. Like you know, you might only
get like a + 1. You could get a + 0 and still be
able to catch magic but have high wisdom.
If your wisdom's three, that means you get at least three
spells. You know what I mean?
Yeah, so like, I don't mind it because there's like a mix match
of so many of the stats together to give you either how many
spells you get or attribute added to it or something like
that. And like I said also it's the
the there's a ton of ways to increase your MP like really,
really quickly or increase in attribute and stuff like that.
So like, it doesn't bother me when you start out, if you just
have like lower shitty magic, you can always just be like, I'm
going to be a magic boy. But like you could also play
people that are like, I don't fuck with magic, who gives a
shit? Yeah, you know, that's very
true. So it could just be dependent,
you know. I mean, if that's the case, and
I wouldn't mind seeing maybe some more options for like what
you can do physically if like you're like, oh, it's open to me
being like not do magic at all and you'd be the guy with the
sword, you know? Yeah, I mean there's I mean The
thing is like you swing a sword, you swing a sword, you know.
I mean it does use strength and decks for for melee and range,
but that's going to be in every game you ever play because Magic
always going to be like cooler than like hitting some of the
sword, but it's hitting some of the sword is almost always going
to kill them faster. So it's like.
I think it changes a little bit when everyone's a caster, you
know? Yeah, my.
Question really. Good.
Why do you need success? Oh, I don't think you do.
No, I think you can do 4 on this easy.
I think you can combine wisdom, Caribbean intelligence all down
into one, and all of this would go away.
I mean, personally, I'm thinking of like a sword St. or
swordcaster, and I'd be like, yeah, you can use strength to
cast, you know or or whatever dexterity, as long as you're
using your sword magic, you know?
I will say I would. I don't think you need 6, but if
I was writing this game I would absolutely have to have six in
here. Really.
Why? Because everything is sixes and
my brain would just be like what success it is.
Everything is sixes. The entire game is built around
sixes, so success it is, you know.
Yeah, I mean, maybe I'll just house rule stuff in my own
table, you know? But.
I would give someone optional. Magic.
You're gonna mess with a magic system.
Yeah, I know. It's really crazy to think that
I I would make a magic system. I mean, I just think that, like,
if I have a person who sits at my table and plays this game and
they're like, hey, I want to be a Sword St.
I want to be like psychically connected, like my magic is the
magic of the sword. You know, I'm thinking like if
anyone's read kill 6 billion demons, like that is a thing in
there. And like the casting is just
like the art of cutting. You can slice through anything,
you know, or whatever. And I would.
You can do that in this and there's already precedent for
it. What do you mean?
So like consumables, we're going to get to consumables, but like
it or like if you have magic consumables, it talks about the
effects that you can put onto weapons.
So like, I would just use that as a context for a spell for my
sword, you know what I mean? So if you're saying that you
want to make yours, let's say your your sword becomes like
magically sharp, right? I'd be like, OK, you get extra
damage while your usage dies while the risk dye is still
rolling, the same way you would do it if you had like magic
fire. They talked later and we'll get
to it about where you pour fire over a blade and now you have a
flame blade. Until the usage dye goes away, I
would just be like, fine, you're a sword mage, your sword is
extra sharp. Until that effect wears off or
you know, you're you know. But if if it's always dependent
upon like Wisdom, Charisma, and Intelligence, and you want to
play a fighter, why would you ever upgrade Strength or decks?
Again, I just think, I think maybe I'm wrong and you can tell
me if I'm wrong. I think the your brain is
thinking that the the numbers are way bigger than they are
because the difference between 1:00 and 3:00 is so minimal.
Yeah, like, well, I mean on Tuesday.
If you have. A + 3 you're it's always a sex.
It's. Huge.
But like plus one is also not bad either.
And once it gets like advancement, it's so easy
realistically to it to just be like, well, I felt like in that
session I need more intelligence.
You get 6, you get 66 experience points.
Boom. You can just raise an attribute
by one. It's so easy to raise attributes
that it doesn't bother me. It was incredibly difficult to
raise attributes. I would say it's not.
But like realistically, if you fuck around a lot and really
grind XP, you can have all of your stats at three in like less
than 10 sessions. That's that is a very, that's a
very fair point. So OK moving on to I I like that
point. That point does make me feel
better about mine, phone and brand.
Bruises pretty quickly. Yeah, you have a phone with a
decent signal, an unreliable battery, a camera and a flash
that can be used as flashlight. You have a phone.
It works like a phone. Your brand is interesting, so
you like post and live stream. You fucking with the immortal
aristocracy. And like you build like an
online following. More more or less.
There are some special actions that you can take with your
phone and when you start your brand begins at 0.
A battery. Hey, anytime you you're so your
battery starts at I almost said UD 8 but risk 8 and it shrinks
on a roll of one or two. Recharging your phone for an
hour restores one level to a maximum of eight, so never gets
higher than eight. Make sure it's plugged into the
wall too. Do a phone.
Anytime you use your phone, you're going to roll.
You're going to roll the battery essentially.
Yeah, you can chat with your phone, you can send short
messages. If you have someone's username.
They can block you if they're pissed.
Very funny, like depth of narrative thing here.
It's like that you have friends online.
If you piss them off, like they might not help you anymore.
Yeah, you can treat this like any other conversation, which
makes a lot of sense. You only need to roll when
trying to do something that might fail, like intimidate
somebody over text, which I love this because this happens in the
real world. Yeah.
And particularly Nuance discussions over chat may result
in rolling disadvantage, because we all know that if you try to
text something Nuance, sometimes it can be totally misread.
Yeah, capturing the moment. Yeah, you roll battery to take a
photo or capture a short video with your camera to post.
You're going to roll, plus Charisma to upload something new
from your phone. This is a special action.
On a one to six, you're going to choose one of the following
outcomes. On 7 to 9, you choose two.
On a 10/11, choose three. And on a 12, you choose five.
There are five. Yeah, it's all of them.
Which is interesting, because hold on, never mind.
Ignore what I would say, but yeah, so of those, it's your
brand increases by 1. The immortal aristocracy can't
figure out your current location.
The immoral aristocracy can't make you look like the bad guy
in the news. You gain a notable follower of
your choosing. You get a like from your crush.
This is good. I like this a lot actually.
Yeah, it's interesting because we get to a part later where
again I think that they I think they just like missed the the
verbiage change that they use like special actions are are
almost all PBTA moves like the live stream is just an attribute
role but call to action is 1 and the the post is 1 maybe it's
just those two. Do we skip call to action?
Oh, we haven't gotten call to action one.
Yeah. But the when they explain how to
make moves later, this makes more sense in retrospect because
it specifically tells you like when you're making one do like
2, that means something bad hasn't happened to you.
Do one like random one and do two things that like make you
learn shit. And I'm like, oh now this will
make sense, like you get a like from your crush.
You're supposed to be that it's like 1 random one tossed in for
fun, you know? So it's it's interesting, but
you're always supposed to have ones that like, batshit doesn't
happen to you. So this one specifically says
the immortal artist actually can't find you and they can't
make you look bad. So like, they really did stick
to like that idea of like make two that don't happen to you,
and with like as the two most important kind of ones in it,
because if you only get one that means something bad, well, it
could almost definitely happen to you.
And it even tells you what what it could be.
Yeah, yeah, very cool. Yeah, imagine just turning on
the news and the moral Irish ocracy is like.
The. You know criminals, Yeah, you
can live stream if something exciting is happening.
You roll battery at disadvantage, which makes sense
because you're using a lot of it and you post with advantage.
So you know, call to action is exactly what it sounds like.
You're going to roll plus brand. Yeah.
And once again, choose one, choose two, choose three, or
choose five. If you have a noble follower
who's uniquely positioned to help roll with advantage, your
brand decreases by one after you roll.
So Brand is kind of like you're it's a stat that you spend
special stat. But what's weird with what's
interesting about brand is what? At least in everything that I've
read and you can tell me if I'm wrong, the only way to increase
your brand is to post. Right.
And the only thing you spend your brand on is calls to
action. Right.
So it's a very early. Thoughts that we got from all
this? Yes.
Yeah, yeah. I wouldn't mind if there was
more to that. I think it should be expanded on
as well. I agree.
But I do like that there's a feedback loop to it and it feeds
into itself and it's almost self-contained.
You know, like don't really need to worry about brand for all
everything else, like it's just within posting and calling to
action. I wouldn't mind though like on
the call to action like you spend because it says you
decrease your brand by one after the role.
I wouldn't mind when I was reading this I was expecting one
of them to be like you don't have to decrease your brand by
1. Like I wouldn't mind if there
was a way to like maintain your your brand if your call to
action was like super successful.
Because like you could roll a 12 + 3 modifier for a 15.
You lose a brand no matter what, even though you, like made a
call to action that was so insane that like you know but
like the other thing too is if you get a 12 plus, you lose a
notable. Follower, Notable follower.
Yeah, no matter what. And I was interesting.
That's kind of the one that I was questioning.
I was like, why would I lose a notable follower on a?
Call. To action plus, yeah.
Well, because people don't want you to succeed.
Yeah, I guess that that's like, that makes sense, right?
Like as a on like a meta narrative of like posting online
whenever you do anything big, like someone's not going to like
it. So like none of the other ones.
The other ones are all like it stops a bad thing from happening
to you. There's no I guess like you lose
a notable follower like, but if you look at the previous one it
says they can't figure out your current location like it would
be like you. You could be like you don't lose
a notable follower, but like honestly.
I would either do that. You don't lose a notable
follower, which means one of the one of the bad things could be
that you did lose 1 or like I said, outer playset for you
don't lose. You don't have to spend a brand
like you were so successful or like whatever.
Like you you get to keep your your resource.
So to go through the list, it's you gain useful insight into
your situation, you gain useless but fascinating trivia about
your situation, which is I think is a good one.
You gain 1D6 coin and donations. Someone in the a mortal
aristocracy ends up looking like a real asshole.
And then there's a lose a noticeable follower.
I like these. I don't like to lose noble
follower, and I genuinely actually really like you gain
useless but fascinating trivia about your situation.
I think that you keep that shit. That's good.
Well, there's there's always that one weird, flavorful one,
like the get a get a like from your crush or like the weird
trivia. Like, I love that, Yeah.
Yeah, spending coin, spend coin. You know the more aristocracies
everywhere. They run everything.
Yeah, the goods and services are available in the marketplace as
long as you have the coin to spend them.
You don't gain XP by spending coin this way.
Roll battery and spend coin to order food supplies, hire, ride
or adventure or other valuable services through your phone.
Risk 10 and risk 12. Goods and services are
restricted to members of the aristocracy only and are
therefore unavailable. I do like that this is what you
have phone and it's super modern.
Like you order food, you can hire help online, you can get
like fiver or whatever right now or other services.
I'm like ah, that's good. I'm glad that, like, I like that
there are phones and I like that it's not half ass.
There are phones and it's a commitment to like there are
phones. Like, you know what you do with
your phone, your DoorDash last night.
Which means that I get to make a weird modern fantasy equivalent
of like Uber and DoorDash and all that shit.
And I find that that that tickles me, you know?
Well, I do like the part that says most hirelings will help
you form illegal acts. Yeah.
I I do feel though, that like, again, like I I feel like the
whole thing needs a little bit of a reshuffle.
And I'm not sure. But like, I feel like combat,
health, wounds and death to me. I wouldn't mind if, like, Magic
and phone and brand were above that, you know what I mean?
Like, this is what I'm talking about.
Where we got to we finally got to the phone 94 pages in and to
me suddenly like technology took a like a huge leap forward in my
mind in like the Canon that my head was coming from.
Like the way the game was written.
Like I might mention a little bit of technology, the gun sword
and shit like that, whatever. But like like you just said,
literally have. Yeah, we literally have
smartphones and and gig economy. Like 94 pages in my brain went
wait a second, I need to reevaluate so much of what I
thought about the setting already, so I wouldn't mind if
either some little intro about the phone or the phone being
earlier was like just. Totally.
I once again think that when they do their second edition of
this, if they, I assume they're going to get an artist to do
art, like putting art through this, that shows a little more
of a technological. I think I'll add a lot because a
lot of the art is like the HG LS like stuff.
It's cool as hell, but I think it kind of maybe leads your mind
in the wrong direction. Yes.
If there was like a early spread of, like, what I'm thinking of,
but someone rocking a fucking cell phone, yeah, my brain would
be like, oh, OK, you know what I mean?
I. Mean I still want like dirigible
airships and don't you know that's?
What I'm saying I literally if it was literally like the
airship or whatever maybe like a carriage going by and someone
playing or like texting on their phone, I'd be like oh, I totally
get this like this world to me and tell me if this isn't what
you think. I really feel a varn electrum
archive with cell phones is what what I get from this.
I think somewhere around there. Yeah, yeah.
I would put it in the same like it might it would be a farther
bubble, but that's where my brain goes like vibe wise.
I like it. I don't know why, but like
reading through is, I cannot help but see Paradigm City in my
brain. I mean, yeah, yeah.
You know it. Yeah, I just.
I see what you're saying, but I just see.
So I just see. I just see something a little
different. But isn't that cool though?
Because technically like both those can be perfectly correct
based on 100%, like 100% and the theme of the immortal
aristocracy and everything else going on can fit easily into
both of those things. Like it's really it's up to you
and your tables interpretation. Well, that's what that's what
you said like 70 to 8% of the world is this implied Canon, But
the 20% really changes the vibe of all of it, depending on what
you want to do with it. So, so good.
Got to do the most important rule about phones.
No one does call someone. No one does this anymore.
It's it's great. Might be the best, like 8-7
lines, 7 words and the whole thing.
I once again saying this again. It just says I'm really excited
for another edition of this, but I really hope that they keep
shit like that. Like I mean.
It's this is fun to read through.
It's funny. You laugh as you're reading
through it. It's good.
We're going to call someone. No one does that.
No one calls anybody. I mean even just a reshuffle and
and tightening up but like hacking off like all the
unnecessary like you know especially some of the early
stuff would tighten this whole game up better and just like and
just a little bit of clarification, I mean this is
like we said already really fucking good and and could be
great. So next is inventory.
Inventory we discuss in which we discuss your stuff and how to
use it. So carrying capacity we talked
about already it's it's you know the 10 plus strength plus con,
you can carry a bunch of stuff. Everything takes one slot, you
can hold 100 coins in one slot essentially you hit 101, it goes
to the second slot. I like what it says down here.
Magic rings, locked pick suit of armor.
It's all different sizes of weights, but we are on the side
of simplicity for inventory management.
The reason we bother is that it's simple.
The less useful stuff you take into a dungeon, the more sex of
coins you can carry out. Again, we err on the side of
just being like, fuck it, except for when you sleep in armor.
Like it just again. Anyway, equipment is made to
last, so we've talked about this before.
Your equipment, dye are not risk die, user die, whatever, They're
not risk die. They are actual die.
They don't degrade. They're meant to last, et
cetera, et cetera. Protective armor, tools,
Shields, weapon, grimars, important stuff like that.
Things that are not risk die. You have a regular die and
there's different rules associated with it.
Equipment has a die, denotes the quality you can see Table.
It's not table one, it's like table three.
I think I think that's a miss. A miss right there because table
one is the GM. Like what's the G?
What's the M table? Right.
Weapons seal damage to equal equal to the dye associated with
them. Makes sense.
If it's AD six, it's D6 protection absorbs.
You have to talk about that half your highest number.
You may end with a bunch of weapons in armor.
Cool. Have fun with that When
equipment dye sizes, when using inventor of something other than
harming others or preventing yourself, the associated dye is
useful as an indicator for quality.
We've talked about this already. Again, it's the table three.
You can use the same quality for your equipment as you do for the
risk dye. Like levels that we talked
about, you know, whether something's really good or
something's like really bad or whatever.
It is what it is. Consumables.
These are food, drink, medicine, batteries, things that when
they're gone, they're gone. You're not repairing, they're
gone. Using a consumable.
Consumables have a name and associated risk dye.
The use of these consumable is not prescriptive.
So this is again something that's very abstracted and I
really love the example. Ball of fire oil for instance,
could be poured on a weapon or ammunition or rubbed on armor,
all sorts of stuff. So for example, if you pour it
on a blade, you now have a flame blade and you roll the risk die
every time until the and it lasts until the risk die
disappears. If you rub it on your armor, you
now have heat resistance until the usage until the risk die
disappears. Super smart, super clever.
Love it. Very broad, very abstract.
Like the way the magic system works.
Good fucking job. That's how everything should
work. Coin and treasure.
Coin is the official currency. Basically coin is what you want.
Only rich people have coin and it's good to have coin but not
good to keep coin is what the game basically tells you.
Again, you can hold 100 but most things are done by bartering.
I love the barter system. Basically you take the risk die.
You take the risk die. If it's equal you just fucking
pass it off. But if it's one up it takes two
of the one below it. So D6D6 you can just trade, but
to get AD eight you need 2D sixes.
To get AD 10 you need 2D8. I think it's really clever.
I love the way that just expands exponentially.
It's great selling treasure for coin.
It's also a good bartering rule because you only really need to
read it once. After that you're like, this is
not a complicated bartering rule like I now completely
understand, so I'll have to reference this because it's
yeah, 2/1. Super easy and again explained
super easily. Yeah, add it down to the the
bare minimum and add if you need to.
So selling treasure for coin exactly like it sounds.
You could sell treasure for a coin.
When attempting to sell treasure to someone with a coin to buy
it, roll this die and multiply the result by 100 to discover
what you're able to get for it. Selling other items for coin is
a mechanic. Hoarding coin.
It's bad for you. Don't do it.
It's most dangerous stuff in the universe.
Coin is. Having too much puts a target on
your back and make gives you weird ideas on who should be in
charge around here. And holding on for too long, I
forgot. About that line, that's very
good. It's such a good fucking line.
Holding on to coin for too long
invites attention to debt collectors and other forms of
trouble. Such a good fucking line.
So many so many fucking lines in this there.
Are a lot of good. There's some great one liners in
there. But that's such a that's such a
pointed, that's such a pointed, modern take.
It's like, yeah, it gives you weird ideas about who should be
in charge when you're rich, Yeah.
Experience and advancement talk through this pretty quick
experience and advancement experience points.
I love the way I love the style of experience gaming.
It's not like kill enemy like you know when the touch you 5 is
not a combat game and you just explain to me why everything you
can kill gives you XP. Yeah.
Sounds like the game. The game is how you write it, so
experience points. I love this style where like at
the end of a set, OK, stop yelling.
I wrote that right there. Let me look at it real quick.
Stop. Yelling yeah, I have umm on
mine. And I've said umm so many times
today, so whatever. You.
Know I have. Umm, and stop yelling.
So I'm gonna try to stop yelling for you guys.
So yeah, so you gain experience. Point for the following.
So at the end of a session you calculate experience points.
Death and space does this. Dragon band does something
similar? Ish.
I really love this style. So you gain 1 experience point
for each sack of 100 coin you blow on your goal between
adventures. That again, the rules are the
game, right? Like and people can wax
semantics about that shit all fucking day and I do not care.
What I mean by that is the way that you write the game will
affect, both consciously and subconsciously the way players
play the game. As I just said, you can't tell
me a A game isn't a combat game when the best way to gain XP is
to kill shit like that. It's a combat game like you are
teaching a player to kill shit. In this game you gain 1
experience for blowing 100 coin. It's telling you blow your
fucking money. And I love that, because that to
me is the game is get money, blow money, Go do what the fuck?
Again, I really enjoy it. You gain 1 experience point for
embodying your character's general deal.
Two, if you do it multiple times, you get one experience
for playing off another character's general deal.
Two if you do multiple times. And you gain 1 experience for
thwarting, embarrassing, harassing or robbing.
Basically fucking with the immoral aristocracy and you get
2 points if it's unquestionably you that are directly
responsible. I love that advancement so this
is what we're talking about. Before it's super easy to
advance realistically. So you may spend 6 experience
points again any of the following advancements.
There's 123456, there's like 7 or 8.
Improve and attribute to Max 3. Gain an additional hit die.
Grow all of your hit die by one size.
Grow your Marshall training. Die.
Grow your magic dye. Acquire a new magic domain, or
invent a move. That's the first time they
mentioned move. It's lowercase M, but nowhere
else to say that the special actions are moves.
So there's a miss. There's like a a a miss in the
vernacular here. Like, if it is it a special
action, like all the rest of the things that have that style,
which there's only two, and they're both special actions.
Or is it a move? And if it's a move, I feel like
the the the concept of like when the move, what a move and all
this stuff needs to explain a little better.
I think get rid of the word move because I fucking hate it.
Getting rid of the word move is a move though, so.
I would just. Bring it back.
Everything's a move. I hate it.
So yeah, we're doing an. Advanced podcast move right now
you know. Right.
Yeah. And then being hating moves is a
move. Yeah, absolutely.
It's my favorite move. So how advancement effects HP
and MP. As you improve your attributes
and your hit die and your MP and everything also increases.
I love that. I love that.
Like as you get better, your derived shit gets better.
You know what I mean? It makes sense.
So when you gain additional hit die, roll it and add your Con
and wisdom, add this total to your current maximum HP.
Interesting. That means your HP is going to
shoot up pretty quickly sometimes.
I didn't expect the amount of HP that it sounds like you could
get from this game. Yeah.
I'm curious what average? Yeah, because it's not like you
don't have levels, you just have the numbers.
So like what? When you're like 4 sessions in,
how much HP do you have? You know what I mean?
And again, in this game, it's not like it's an abstracted
number that just whittled away, so you really couldn't get to a
point where you just have. Well, no, I guess not really,
because eventually you Max out on con and stuff like that and
you really just can't take more. I guess.
When your hit die improves, replace all your current hit
dice with the dice. The next size up.
For each die you improve this way, add 1 to your maximum HP,
so that's another way to gain HP.
So if you already have 4D sixes, you can make them all D eights,
and then now you have 4 HP, one for each D1.
For each die you know. Mm.
Hmm. When your Con improves, add 1 to
your maximum HP for each hit die you already have, regardless of
size. So increase your Con by one.
Boom. If you have four, that's another
four right there for you. When your Wisdom improves, add 1
to your maximum HP for each die you have, and add 1 to your
maximum MP. So Wisdom is really important
for HP and MP. Interesting.
I feel like there's so many ways to gain HPI, don't know why.
I. Feel like there's a lot.
Of gaining HP. But again, I.
Was like my brain went, why would wisdom give you HP?
It's it's an abstract of your overall like mental and physical
health What? Were you saying I like don't
outright have an issue with this, but I would be interested
to see it in practice and see what HP gets up to for like a
regular. Person.
Yeah. Last one, when your CHA
improves, add 1 to your maximum MP.
So lots of ways to get HP, couple ways to get MP.
Yeah, so inventing moves again. Weird that suddenly we're
talking about moves in this game.
Not special actions. Is it special actions?
Is it moves like what? Like there's a there's a lack of
explanation of if there's a difference, why there's a
difference. I would personally just get rid
of the the word moves entirely. Again, I hate it, but I don't
think it. I think it gives a bad
connotation because so many of the direct descendants of PBTA
EV, literally everything was moved down to the basic moves.
And in this game, the basic moves aren't like the basic
thing that you do, like your attribute checks aren't moves or
attribute checks. Yeah, it's only the special
stuff that is moves. So I would get rid of the word
moves because. Also, special actions is just
better, like it's just a better thing to call it, like, yeah.
Actions in general, like my game that I'm doing is it's a 2D6
game and it's like it's the GM gets an action, you do AGM
action, not AGM because action sounds better than a move.
Kind of like not the word moves. I like the idea of inventing a
special action for your character that gets so
specialized at a thing like and you just you guys come up with a
list of five consequences that lay out what they should be.
I think that's cool. I think it's way cooler than
like the bog standard PBTA. Like here are all you're
assigned everything. Again.
I love when quote UN quote moves are used as spells, powers,
important big things where the laid out consequences affect the
direct situation you're involved in.
I don't like the triggering, like the basic moves, quote UN
quote from Apocalypse for all are the things that I hate.
I'm like just give me an attribute check and let me just
like make up what I want to do. When you box me into three
fucking little scaffolds, I'm like, why am I even playing the
game? I can just read this book, you
know what I mean? Like it really irritates me.
But yes, I love inventing moves with the character.
So talking about this, it says there's a template, so you can
invent a movie using the same temple as posting from your
phone, which is a special action.
So just get rid of the word moves and use special actions.
Give them a name, declare the attribute, the limiting
condition, the whole one to six, etcetera, 55, blah blah, blahs,
everything. So there's some example moves
here that I really like. I really like.
I really like some of them. So the fight, dirty roll, plus
decks on an opponent with an obvious weak point, groin eyes,
etcetera. So they got a groin, you got to
which you have access, you can access that groin.
Here you go. So 126 choose 17292, etcetera,
etcetera. So the five are you don't expose
yourself to a counter attack, Nobody else sees your dirty
trick. Attacks against this opponent
gain advantage until the take a moment to recover.
You embarrass them, you deal 1D6 damage.
So the only thing different about this is in the template it
really says where does it talk about that there's a specific.
Bot in the. First paragraph, you're talking
about the five possible consequences.
Yeah, two that prevent a consequence for you.
A few good outcomes and a few that are fun.
So the only thing with the fight dirty is you don't express
yourself to a counter attack is the only one.
That's like stopping something from getting to you right?
Nobody else sees your dirty trick is another one.
Oh, see, I saw that one as Oh yeah, I mean, I saw that one
more as like a fun one. But you're right.
That is the bad one. You.
Embarrass them, I think is the fun one.
Yeah, yeah, cookie dish is fine. It's about cooking and then
shield bash roll plus con an opponent.
When you're wielding a shield and you can conceivably bonk
your foe on the head, it literally says bonk your phone
on the head. I love this fucking game.
So you don't break your shield, you don't expose yourself to a
counter attack, deal damage equal to your Shields, equipment
die. Your opponent is dazed by your
blow and has disadvantage on the next role or your opponent is
distracted. If an ally attack soon they have
advantage on their role. I love this.
It's such a good broken down of like the the template that they
use, it's really well done. Also, again, the thing I do like
about this is how the two that are like stopping something bad
from happening to you gives you kind of the way that the PBA
does those things that the GM can just do without having to
break everything down into a GM move and giving you a fucking GM
playbook that you can only do these things or whatever.
Like this says like you don't break your shield, so if you
fail miserably you can just go, Oh well, how about we just break
your shield? You know, it's it's right there
for you. It has a special action.
I really love that. All right, talk to me about NPCS
and aristocracy and we'll be done at 3 hours.
Like we're going to cruise this one so fast.
We're 2 1/2 hours in with two chapters left.
Oh, there's a lot of really good stuff.
You know, we don't have to deep dive MPCS.
They are like, they're die size, hit die size, like MPCS, right.
So D4 is a terrible MPCD. 12 is a glorious warrior creature of
legend. You just basically determine,
like, you know, the size and quantity of dice, their gear.
If they're magically inclined, give them a domain.
If they're legendary, give them immunity and means for a PC to
learn it. Where was I?
I'm lost how tough they are, termed by how many dice you'll
be using. Tiny wimps get one, huge
Monsters get five, another. Great.
There's some great tables here that just kind of lay out like
what these things look like. Gear.
NP CS got a piece of gear. Piece of equipment.
For each die in their hip pool, magical NPCS, members of the
Moral Arc, Socracy, or other thumbs, allergical inclined foes
get access to magic. You give them appropriate
strange domain. Their magic dye will be equal to
the quality of their hit dye, essentially.
So how good their hit dye is Otherwise, Magic works pretty
much how it does for the players legendary NPCS.
This game operates under the assumption that suffering A
grievous wound or watching a friend cut down in battle can
make the best trained soldier panic retreat.
You may, however, wish to introduce a serious threat to
your world, a force nature of literally, literally or
metaphorically as written. Even if they are huge and
glorious with 5D12 hit dice, which is a crazy amount, there's
a chance that this NPC will panic and flee.
Basically this is just like you get a less likely to flee and
more legendarily actioned in PC, and it says don't be cool with
like they're immune, they're immune to things.
They're, they're they're the big tough demigod.
It basically says like you can just not even fuck with the
dice. Just.
Give it. Just make them like, literally.
You can't kill them until you have this one special thing.
Yeah? And then you can kill them like.
Sprig of mistletoe or whatever, you know, Yeah, some examples.
NPCS. The Dragon punch retainers here.
I like this because it it all fits in again really well.
So dragon punch retainer, HD3D6. So you know that they get three
items that are D sixes and that's just so clever again and
clean like the the next one is like the 48, so they have four
items that are D eights. Like again, Super clever, super
clean, really enjoyable. Yeah, it it follows the same
through line of logic as everything else does, where it's
just like so straightforward and so apparent that you can
immediately understand it. And then like, yeah, I think the
last one was the play in the assassin, which is like the one
with the vulnerability, which is the tear off the mask to expose
their eyes. Yeah, in the season, combat
pretty much talks about like morale tracking.
HP. Good, Good to look through as
the GM, but I don't think we need a deep dive.
It there is a morale table that you roll on.
Yeah, there's some examples of combat.
Targeted hit die. I think this section is like a
good section and there's a lot of a lot of examples of combat.
There's a long example of combat, yeah.
The example of combat's really great, definitely.
Is really my? Favorite part, Real quick,
because we're not going to read it, is.
The black hole stretches. Thomas Bahamas declares that
Hurricane Jim will beat up anyone for him, but he fails and
one of the bad guys says Hurricane Jim's a big dumb baby
and anyone who hangs out with him is a big dumb baby too.
Yeah, great. Love this fucking game and and
it and it goes for like 3 more pages.
But it's great. It's really great.
It hits all the things you want. It hits morale.
It hits the the, the like a bad consequence of a special action.
It hits fucking everything. It's great.
It's really good. We're not going to read it, but.
It's also just very funny, the moral aristocracy.
All right, break this down. Listen, the moral aristocracy
exists, and they're basically represented by.
I think the minor Arcana represents the structure.
Each tier of the immoral aristocracy below describes how
they can be generally used in play and what size dice to
employ for hid dice, employees, guards, quality of their gear,
and generally like what tier they operate at enslaved gods.
So we touched on this earlier. That's right.
And every house, every House of the immoral aristocracy commands
the divine right of the kings. The right is not freely given,
but must be taken. Yeah, these houses are built on
enslaved gods. These the gods are represented
by the ace of each suit. And so it's wands, cups, swords
and pentacles. The God, the existence of gods
is well hidden conspiracy. There is no indirect means to
learn the location of. Insight of God.
Very few can even confirm their existence.
The king, and only the king of a noble house knows where they are
housed, their mean or how they can be killed.
Yeah, dealing with enslaved gods should be used.
Should use D 10s and D twelves. And then it breaks down wands,
cups, swords and pinnacle aces. What that God is a God of and
what the house enslaving them is likely to be like.
Concerned and involved with there is petty nobility, so
those are like the two through 5, the numbered cards of the
minor Arcana. They represent Knights, minor
chorus, and some may be common people that are valuable to the
power structure. There's typically feuding
there's like a political intrigue intrigue to this.
But it's cool because you can have a tarot card deck and you
can map out like a like aristocratic house and then move
on to another one. You know, like who is in those
places? I think it's a good organization
tool. Peerage.
So 6 to 10 represent like lesser barons, marquees, high level
merchants, warlords people who who are not low level but kind
of like climbed their way up or pulled their way up.
For peerages are frequently seen as a necessary evil by the
common folk. They are able to use their
public facing enterprises to hide whatever shadowy dealings
secured their position, which I think is really interesting and
and rife with the ability to like you know, build the
background more for your world court page.
Knight and Queen card represent the the highest level of power
in the house. The three will be tied to each
other through family membership, on board of directors or
criminal ties. Under normal circumstances they
trust each other completely. But situations could be
contrived. Contrived to like kind of
disrupts that trust. And then the king is the head of
the household, represents the hand that holds the least to
which their enslaved God is bound.
Through them flows all true power.
They're like the true demigod leader of the their immortal
aristocracy house. The king alone will know how to
kill the gods and grant the aristocracy the immortality.
They will protect this knowledge of every fiber of their
building. Dealing with the king should use
D 10s occasionally D twelves to keep things exciting.
That's it. That's the game.
That's it. Hashtag.
Build your brand. All right.
Easy, easy. 90 minute episode. Yeah.
Quick, quick, quick, 90 minute having to glow lives.
We're going to write this as a book because it's 123 pages.
So as always 5 metrics worth 10 each to a Max of 50.
Art and layout is all the visuals in the game.
Usability is how well it is used.
The rule set is if we like it, yeah, originality is exactly
that. That's what that word is.
You know what it means and value is bang for your buck on what
you get. So art and layout.
I think it's a pretty quick easy one.
Thoughts. I'm going to give this A5.
Yep. I think that.
If. I don't.
Yeah. It's not awful.
It's not great. But I mean, you know, yeah.
I would. I would.
Almost be tempted to go lower.
I think the numbered chapters add enough for me to be like
it's a 5. It's it's easy enough.
Well. My question is what would a?
Three have to look like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, what would a three have to look like?
What would a what would a one in art and layout look like?
That's what I'm saying. Like 5 is literally halfway to a
10. Yeah, How many?
There's like 6 pieces. There's like 12 pieces of art.
It's public domain colored pieces at the beginning of the
chapters and that's it. What are you thinking?
I mean the thing about a five is like, it's it's fine, it's good.
Like I don't have really anything good to say.
I don't have any bad to say. I just think like there's just,
I mean and this is a product of the thing, there just isn't any.
There's just it's chapter, header, full page art that was
colored, you know what I mean? Like.
So what do you think of for art and layout?
Like it's a four or five for me, like I'm not gonna go look.
That low I'm. Between those two, so I'll let
you make the. Call ah fuck it.
I like I like we'll go 5. Usability.
I mean it's a troika layout which is my favorite layout.
It's the only layout that's it's or the only yeah that's ever
gotten A10. This is not that.
This is not that, but I the number chapters are great.
There are bookmarks as well. Here's the thing though.
In in if If they were to vibe this thing out with a bunch of
art, do you still think the number chapter is the way to go?
Yeah, I mean Troika has more art and numbered chapters.
Yeah, troika's, troika's, troika's troika, though, you
know. What I mean all things exist.
No thing. No one thing exists in a vacuum.
I just mean like you couldn't. You wouldn't want the the 1.21.3
in like Mark Borg. It would ruin the ball it.
Doesn't have to be Mark Borg, I'm just saying like they're.
No, I'm just saying like you could.
Increase the amount of art in this without decreasing the
usability of it. I mean, I think that, like, the
usability is going to take a hit for me here, because First off,
there's a lot of parts where there's just too many words.
Oh, don't even. Know.
And there's like an issue with the way things are ordered.
And also there is an issue with the fact that there are parts,
especially in combat, where it's like go here, go there, go here,
go there, But there's no inline hyperlink to very quick make
that navigability really quick, you know?
Even though I mean I will say though that like because of the
way the layout is, it's always going to make it easier because
you can just scroll to the top and click the one you want.
But agreed if it says in the same page, click this, click
this or go here go here, go here, I would like to be able to
click here, here, here, yes, yeah.
Also, I would like to just not have to click, just give me that
there. Yeah, I would say this is still
pretty usable. I mean, it's more usable than
most things. I mean, even just the like, I
can literally just be like, well, I know combat's five,
right? And I can just tell you what's
in 5.2 and you can be like, oh, that's super.
I can fucking collect right to it.
That's super easy. So.
What do you think of reusability?
I mean, so it's not a 10, take that right off the board, right?
It's not a nine because when you compare that to, let's say, like
death in space, there's no colored pages.
There's no different color chapter headers.
Yeah, there's none of that stuff.
So I think in the context of what it is, the highest I could
possibly imagine for this game is A7.
I was thinking A7. OK, I think it is an insane.
I think this is the correct way and I was just like spitballing
earlier about like do you think adding or would change?
I don't think it would. I think that keeping this format
for this game is really smart, but as you said, lots of words
need to go away. Chapters need to be reordered
inline hyperlinks, like, you know, a lot of, yeah, it's going
in the right direction a lot better than a lot of books.
So rules that. I fucking dig it.
I dig this game, man. I think this game is fucking
great. I What are my major?
I think that the one, the one thing that now is in my mind is
your thing about the donning and dotting armor, the sleep.
It's just because there is no particular.
It's so particular. But for no reason.
There's so much like open format narrative.
You create this character and by the time you're done, it's just
so fleshed out and it not only fleshes out the character, it
fleshes out what's in the world and it makes the GMs job a
little bit easier because they don't guess a lot of questions.
There's this like use of tarot cards that's not at all overused
and doesn't feel super contrived and annoying, and you can use
that to organize your immoral mortal.
Aristocracy is the GM building world.
It's 2D6, which you know Ryan loves.
There are moves, but they're special actions and they're
treated as an individual thing, which I think is where, like
that's how you make moves. Throughout, that's.
How they should be done. So I'm pretty high on this one
for for for Rules, honestly. So yeah, where are you?
Where are you at? You might need to temper me
because I really like this. What did you say?
I said you might need to temper me because I really like this,
I. Thought you said you I might get
a 10 from you and I'm like bro, we are way off.
Oh no, I'm not done. No, here's the thing.
I love it. I love.
I love what is there and I will think that this is one of the
best games we've ever viewed. I think when we get to 2 E if
the potential is met it's not there.
There are some I think not only is there a couple of like little
rules that I would chop out specifically the armor one.
I think there's some word choices throughout the entire
way the rules are written which is part of the rule set that I
would completely change. Please stop calling it wrist.
I just use this I it makes much more sense.
Your rib position in effect. There's no reason to have the
blades in the dark language in here when you don't really use
it the same way. I mean a lot of that early like
basically chapters like like chapter 2, you can basically
just delete and then combat. Delete.
You could cut a lot of stuff out of it.
You could explain to how dice work in one line.
D66 doesn't take a paragraph I I think combat needs to be
completely rewritten. I think outside of that, yeah,
magic is insane. Consumable is insane.
I love the inventory system, the core system of using usage dye
and extrapolating that across all subsystems.
So good, so well written, everything like that.
I I I think that like 80% of this game is insanely good and
20% of it is just this bog bogging the rest of it down and
could just be scraped off the top like fucking foam on a beer.
So an 8. An 8, Yep.
That's where I'm at. So that's finally me.
This Honestly, I'm not even kidding this game for me if it
if 2E hits potential, it could could be our 2nd 10.
Yeah. Oh yeah, totally.
I I think this game is like, it's so unbelievably clever.
Like, yeah, it's. It's very good.
If they drop a bunch of money in some really good art, make it a
hard back and again like really tighten up a a ton of language
to rewrite some stuff and reshuffle this like this could
end up being if it comes out this year, could end up being
one like our game of the year. Like, that's how insanely low I
am at this real set. Yeah, it's I completely agree.
But I I when I tighten the language, I don't want them to
lose the here, I don't think. I don't think they're possible.
We read and I lost Malala like they.
That's very true. That is who they are.
I don't think it's going to go away.
It's so. It should go deeper.
Yeah, it's interesting to read something like this, because I
can't remember what I was reading recently that tried to
have a sense of humor, but it felt really contrived and this
just feels so. Natural.
It's so fucking natural. Like there was never a time
where they dropped the joke where I felt like didn't really
need that there. Like every time I was just like,
Oh my God, another fucking banger.
And then they'll randomly hit you with like like the opening
setting paragraph they were. The prose is just fucking fire.
But again, you'll have like the the doll head that pops up out
of nowhere, immediately followed by, yeah, the the goblet of of
night. But you live.
I'm like. Oh my God, Like the humor mixed
with like the insanely well written thought out like depth
of it. Like sandwiched together it so
it works so well originally. I think we're.
Already talking about originality, I mean, I think
everything we just said. It's such a great use of so many
different things together, like this weird anachronistic magic
magic world that's modern and like ruled by this aristocracy
that enslaves gods that are all represented by tarot cards.
Like Dude. Well, it works.
And you know what? One of the reasons I think it
works is because of the language they used to write it.
Yeah, yeah. If this didn't have a bunch of
jokes in it, didn't have like like a bunch of werewolves or
like that kind of shit in it, I feel like it would fly.
Yeah, like, I don't think it would fly.
Because I think the jokes really make the anachronistic elements
actually really feel more cohesive because you understand
that like, you're not taking the shit seriously.
Like, this isn't. You know what I mean?
So the language used feeds into the ability to keep it goofy.
So I'm pretty high on this score.
Yeah, yeah, I'm at. Like a nine.
So I'm at a nine easy. I'm at a nine easy for this.
Wait. Oh, I didn't unhide it.
Value. What is it like 10 bucks?
For PDF. 10 bucks. And then?
And it's 123 pages with that's rife with stuff to build on.
And then you have the neighborhoods of the hi to see a
Hi is it hi I. Oh, don't.
Even my brain is not going to remember that, but there's a.
High Magic Lowlife City. So it's it's a bunch.
It's a bunch of supplements. 11. 11/11.
With the 12th one supposed to be coming out soon.
And the cool thing is, I I was not.
I didn't. I had not signed up for the
newsletter and I would have done it forever ago.
If I would have realized there was a newsletter, you would get
them free. If you had signed up for the
newsletter like every month, you'd have been like every.
If you signed up now, you'll get the 11th 1:00 and then you'll
get the 12th one free. If you'd have signed up on the
first one, you would have got all of them for free and they're
only like what, like 3 bucks? They're $3.
It's like a neighborhood. They have some stuff to do, some
missions. It's like some NPCS.
They look really cool. So right now, eleven of them for
33 bucks. And those are full adventures,
basically. That's so crazy.
I mean like if we looked at like a regular like 200 page book and
there's 40 bucks, we'd be like that's a good price for that.
And this is 10 bucks plus 33 for.
It is only PDF. I know.
I'm just saying, yeah, I think value for this one is still not
off the chart, but still fairly high.
You know, I'd say it's a good seven, you know?
Yeah, it's a good well, because also did we say like the
character keepers and like all that kind of stuff too?
Like you still get like more like more stuff for your
character and table shit too. Like there's.
Yeah, you have the. Character pamphlet, which is a
handout for your player carriage.
It's much shorter and I also really did enjoy that.
I haven't looked at it in quite a while for me.
I got this game a while ago and I deep dived it then and so I
reread it for this but I forgot to go through like the Character
Keeper pamphlet and stuff. So also an adventure called ah
Jeez, the Airship's on Fire you get as a free download.
Boom free. Another free adventure.
You're talking about? Once once the 12th neighborhood
drops, that's 13 adventures or adventure locations with it.
Is it $10.00 for the PDF? Is that what we decided?
Yes, it is. Yeah.
Or again, like it's it's probably in more than one
bundle. So yeah, value wise, I think you
get a lot. Like with what is there right
now, you could play this game for a very fucking long time and
enjoy the hell out of it. That that's what's interesting
about this game is like, we've looked at other games before
where I'm like, damn, like this thing has the potential to be
really good. But the person that's been
making games for like 10 years, whatever, they're not gonna come
up with a second edition. It's just like this is the game
that you get what, this game is so fucking good right now and we
know we're gonna get a better version of this, hopefully
sooner than later. And to me, that's so fucking
exciting. Yeah, value wise.
What are you thinking 7? I think 7.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the fact that there
isn't a print reduces the value for me, but it's also this isn't
going to get one because that's just not what this was.
You know what I. Mean.
Yeah, but this is a really really was.
This is a first outing for gym room.
I think that this was if it wasn't their first thing they
did, I'm pretty sure it was the first thing on their itch, at
least. Yeah, what's absurdly?
What's? Absurdly good.
Like first itch release. This is like people, people
release like tons of games to reach this, you know?
Yeah. Well, and the thing too is that
like the all of the the fixes to take this from good to fucking
amazing are not hard. And with the quality that we've
seen from gym room games in subsequent releases, I think
it's would be easy for them. And I think the hardest thing
would be for them to just be happy with it.
You know what I mean? If that makes sense.
Like I feel like. Oh, that's what I'm worried.
That's the only thing I'm worried about is this game is so
fucking good right now and really only needs like a gentle
shove in a direction and then a budget for art and printing.
I the only thing I worry is that it's so good.
I exactly like you said, I don't want them to get this.
Urge. To over engineer it into
something different or have to add like so much to wear
something like that when it's amazing.
Now just clean it up and it's I would be so fucking happy.
So technically, a primordial version of Nine Lives was their
first. But basically, yeah, this was
the first outing, that's what, Dan.
I love, I love 9 lives Valhalla. Oh, so good.
So yeah, 3636, which is insane when you think that one of the
scores on it is A5 and it's not a print version.
So that's that's really fantastic because realistically
if he if he'd even had like a decent amount of art in it right
now and that got like an 8, you'd be looking like a 39, you
know? And for us like anything 40 and
up is like crazy good. I think the lowest score of our
top five was a 40, right on in last year.
I believe there's. Like 5 tied for 40.
So like a little bit of art. And this would be almost, you
know, in the top five for last year.
So yeah, so that's it. High magic, low lives gym room
games. Here's the thing, too about gym
room games is I will be waving the baited breath for everything
they fucking do for the rest of the time that they're making
games. I agree.
I I I love this game. This game was a This game was a
a hunter, a hunter Choice immediately.
Yeah, it's it's fire. It's so fucking good.
And again, I just the the way that they write, the cleverness
that goes into the games, the vibe that they put into the
games, which, you know, I think I don't know them personally.
But I can only imagine that when they put it into so many games,
this kind of like, I don't know joy and like jokiness into their
stuff, that it's just, I don't know, like 9 Lives of Alhalla is
insane and cracks me the fuck up and it's so fucking good.
And that's the thing about Gym Room is like that game we we
gave a fucking 9 or whatever for like mechanics and had one
fucking rule, but it was so good.
Like you only need to. Do one thing well, so but yeah,
I just. Think they're so dialed into
modern post Pandemic game design right now.
You know what I mean? I think they are the the the
cutting edge. They're the bleeding edge of
Post Pandemic. Yeah, game sign.
Absolutely. All right, three hours on the
dot. We're out.
Keep making games. Gym room games.
We love you. I love you too, Hunter.
My God, I, I, I I realized that I have two games the rest of
this entire month where I don't play a game, have a podcast
episode or go to work. So busy month ahead.
We'll see you all later.