Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll podcast.
My Name Is Ryan. And I'm the bare hand brawler.
And today we are gonna be looking at the TLDRPG from Billy
Blue. Look at that cover.
Gray cover. I do.
I do dig the cover. It definitely, you know has has
some creepy vibes for those who can't see.
The cover is like the lower half from like Bridge of the Nose
down of this toothed bloody face with a big old smile on it.
I really like it and it's and it's got like and that's it on
the cover side the side the the soft back and the hard back
they're they're print on demands from drive through but the dope
it's a pretty dope cover and and yeah and we'll get into that in
a second but how how are you buddy I feel like we we we have
been kind of back and forth sick for like since Zine quest I
think so hopefully we're. Back on track.
Yeah. Look at us.
I think I just had allergies.
So I'm, I listen, I'm great, man.
I've just been, you know, I've been working.
I'm doing some, like, professional certifications
right now. So I've been doing that
non-stop. And then when this episode's
done, I'm gonna do that again. So how about you?
There we go. I've, I've been doing nothing.
I've I've burned through on my PTO because we've been over
staffed at work for the last couple months.
It's been great to feel like a slow rolling vacation for the
first quarter of the year, which the first quarter of the year is
done, which is crazy. Don't fucking say that.
What the fuck? I know, you know and the other
the other crazy thing too is we were talking about like peeling
back after after Zen Quest. But I feel like the next two
weeks we like stacked up again. But yeah, at the end we will
talk about a lot of really cool stuff that we have coming out in
the next two weeks. And if you're listening to this,
make sure you go back and listen to our or watch our trophy dark
side quest. We did this past week with Josh
and Stella who are now our default side questers, besties,
best friends of this show. But for for all of our side
quests, it's pretty much they're going to be Josh or myself
running in the games. So probably Josh and and Stella
Condrey will be our our in house third person and unless they are
unavailable and then we will get a third.
We we with side quests, we were kind of like rotating players in
and out, but we love playing with Stella so much and their
availability is perfect for ours.
So we just fuck it like you're just part of the team now so
they are awesome. So yeah, so welcome both of of
them as what amounts to permanent members here on the
podcast. Hi guys, But that's it.
Like I said we we have a bunch of stuff coming out in the next
week to two weeks. We'll talk about that at the end
of the show. But why don't we hop into
TLDRPG. So before we get going I do have
a little write up here TLDRPG. So this is a lean mean in the
RPG gaming. Yeah, it's always our influence
with high action and little crunch, old school feel with new
school mechanics. That was the the pitch on
Kickstarter. This is a game by Billy Blue and
Paper Airplane games show it right there.
I think it's in the yeah, paper airplane games right there.
It's a nice little paper airplane logo that's not
focusing. Whatever you you, you get it.
So this is pretty much all all Billy Blue as far as I can tell.
Art. There's like one guest piece
from Michael Harmon who does amazing stuff.
We've watched some of the games that have their stuff on the
show before editing from Jert, a friend of the show.
Jert are not Cat Chatter. This was successfully funded on
February 17th of 2023 with 144 backers pledging 28162 dollars.
So this is one of those ones where someone who's prime, who
at least I've always seen is primarily an artist in the
space, then puts out their own game and we'll we'll be doing a
couple of those this year. I think maybe we can talk about
like theming a month, but then we yeah, we're us sure.
So we'll do it. Yeah, maybe.
We'll get Yeah, we'll see. But let's hop in.
So TLDRPG rules like Game by Billy Blue.
Paper airplanes. Special links to a bunch of
people. A long list of names here.
Hey, Billy Blues in the Chat, Marcus Lindrum, Allen Barr,
Douglas Cole, Mark Parrish. MOV, Michael Harmon, Billman and
Jerk Crater. Those are some.
Those are. That's a list of names there,
you know. Allen Barr, Michael Harmon, Jerk
Marcus Lindrum. Great stuff.
So kicking it off, we give a table of contents.
So the one great thing that I can only imagine is cool if
you're an artist, is you can put as much art as you want in your
own life, Which I will say this book does not lack for art.
Yeah, it's got some really great.
Especially we get to the like in the ability pages.
There's some really cool, like, character pieces.
I like, you know, I love a wizard guy.
Yeah, for sure. And there's there's also this
kind of like dirty texture throughout the book.
I don't know what I'm like a like a like a grungy splatter.
Yeah, throughout that's consistent.
And also, you know, aside from I think just one piece, it's
Billy's art through the entire thing.
So there's a consistency of the art.
So right on the table of contents page you have this like
skull shooting out from the left side.
Art and Game by Billy editing by Jert.
So let's what do we got for digital tools here?
So we are fully bookmarked, which is really nice.
And hyperlinked. So we we do have a hyperlink
table of contents. But I will, I'll say this, we'll
say this to what's we do this sometimes what's your what's
what's A1 liner for your impressions of this before we
get going. Dice pool fantasy game.
Gotcha. So I, you know what we've been,
you know what I feel like we've seen a bunch recently is that
like I feel like we've reviewed a bunch of games that have
really good bones and would probably have really good two
ES. You know, I think that to me
this kind of falls into that as I think A2 East of this could
really go off 'cause I do, I do really like it.
I think it's got great. I think it's got great vibes.
I totally see where they were going when they made this.
I just feel like maybe like a step or two more would have got
them where they really wanted to go.
So we'll go over that that here. But I will say it off the bat, I
do really like this game regardless of anything I say
after this one. So yeah, hyperlink typical
contents. We got about 100 pages in here.
If you if you have the just the salt the the so they're POD,
which I mean is great for distribution, but you know
they're very glossy. They're not going to be the
nicest books on your shelves. But I will say that the drive
through Prince have gotten slightly better.
If you have just the paper copy, it only goes to about 70 pages.
And if you have the hardback, yeah, it goes to 100 pages.
That's why I told you to read the hardback one.
Because the paper, the softback 1 softcover, that's the words,
those are words. I'm looking for digital tools.
The hyperlinks on that are incomplete, they just become
page numbers eventually. But the hardcover PDF was
completely feels complete and like they added like another 30
pages and a bunch of stuff like all the generators in the back.
All of that stuff's not really, most of it is not in the soft
cover version. But so we get to the table of
contents, introduction, character creation, playing the
game, combat and then a bunch of other status effects, weapons,
you know, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
What's up? Nothing.
No, you have a A look on your face Guest artist Michael
Harmon. This isn't a little piece here
by by Michael Harmon and then page of a sad, sad little
soldier boy person. A soldier person with a spear
hood up. Then we get to.
Love a spear in the shield, you know?
Very, very. You know, I'm trying to play in
the phalanx, you know? I've I mean, here's the thing.
So obviously, you know, none of these games are actually
accurate to humanity at all. I mean, we all know stud leather
wasn't really a thing, but man, I wish that more games really
appreciated the spear, you know, and had better mechanics for it
because the spear was fucking insane, dude.
It's funny, I've been referencing this game a lot in
the past, like months of our episodes, but like, I'm still
playing my solo game of Wolves Upon the Coast, you know?
And I and I use a spirit in that game because it actually is
incredibly useful. So good.
Yeah. All right, so TLDRPG we get one
obligatory page of what is this? And what is an RPG?
So, TLDRPGTLD for short, Does it ever say what TLD actually
stands for? Besides, like the standard?
Like too long didn't read TLD RPG, did I?
Am I? Wait, does it I.
Don't know. Billy's in chat and we can ask,
but I do like the TLD RPG, yeah, it's it's a fun kind of
reference to being a rules like game, which I enjoyed from the
first time I heard it. So it's a rules like
role-playing game designed to get you and your friends in the
action as quickly as possible. So it says this game assumes you
have a little familiarity with RPGs, but even if you don't,
that's OK, you will pick it up just fine.
A glossary of common terms, an example of plays included at the
end of the book, just in case. I really like that They tell you
right off the bat that all of that stuff is at the end.
You can jump if you want, So it it does.
I will say so. It says TLB doesn't try to
anticipate every scenario. It's deliberately incomplete.
With enough rules to get you going but not enough to get in
your way. You aren't going to find every
answer in the book. That's OK, your creativity,
role-playing, all this stuff. I will say I am completely fine
if that's the last time I heard that you can just do what you
want with it. But I but I I think the the
desire to make sure that you understand, yeah, that is like
really pushed hard throughout the book.
And I think once you get permission once that's more than
enough. Even once is more than for some
people out there that say of course I can do whatever I want.
It's my It's my game now. Yeah, I will say that I think
this is one of those games that we go over that has a what's an
RPG where I'm like, oh, I can actually see this being
someone's first game. Like, you know, like absolutely.
This could absolutely be your first game.
Well I will say that this is first this is 100% definitely a
system like there is very there is little to no, I don't even
think there's really any like implied setting in this fighting
search. Imagine it's just a pretty
standard like you know western medieval European fantasy like I
don't even think there's any like implication for anything
else. So it is just it is just a
system there's no like you know rounded out game or anything but
but like you said they're like yeah this is this is something
someone could be like oh this this is a a nice rules light
little system for sure. So it does have a what's an RPG.
It's it's a role-playing game. GM describes the situation,
players describe their reactions, dice are rolled with
characters, attempt bubble, etcetera, etcetera.
Yeah, I do have a little note here.
It says see page 28, the test, then the GM describes the
outcome. So a little nod right there to
the game mechanics. I will say this is not inline
hyperlinked. I would say it's not.
No, and every other instance of the word PAGE is written out as
PAGE instead of PG period. This is I think, the only time
that's run up, so there's all inconsistency there.
I will say it's nice to see this.
Who edited this thing, man? It does say in the beginning
here. See page 28 for the test, which
is good because we were gonna we were talking about it before the
show. It's you don't know any of the
dice mechanics of the game at all until you get to page 28.
They're not mentioned in any part of character creation
whatsoever. So it's nice right in the
beginning, But I will say that the core mechanic being told to
find the core mechanic on page 28 in the What's an RPG section.
I would have maybe bolded or put it on the side or something,
because I'm sure any like many of us in the scene immediately
skip this entire page. Yeah.
Because it is the obligatory What is this game?
I might have I might have skipped this page.
Exactly. So put it in.
I mean, there's a reason this layout is when we'll get to that
has all this blank space on the side.
I think it would have been really good.
If you're gonna indicate like an important you know, thing to
check to pull it out of the what's an RPG section.
Maybe even put it up in just the TLD section or put it in red on
the side. What you need stuff D sixes.
All right. Getting into your character,
let's talk about this layout a little bit right off the bat.
So this is definitely it's reminiscent of the classic
explorer template and that's from Clayton Notistine.
It's like a mostly like column system where 1/3 of the page is
left blank so you can like write notes and things in it.
What are your thoughts? Funny, I actually have the Grid
base or Grid System basics by Clayton Osteen on my hot bar if
for referencing it. Yeah, it it is, it exists.
You know, I'm not. I don't find it like incredibly
offensive or anything. Yeah.
I feel, and I don't feel super strongly about it.
I guess what I should say. Gotcha.
It's readable. I probably, I probably have a
stronger feelings. I think the lay it was really
readable. I just think that so so we'll
get into it. So on the first page of your
character, the entire left third is blank, and then there's one
sentence that says grab a character sheet and follow this
outline. I don't really understand the
purpose of the left sidebar because there's a real there's a
weird mix of like sometimes direction, sometimes bonus
stuff, sometimes different things, but like it's a lot of
empty space on the page for what amounts to 7 words and a letter
that could easily have been plugged.
In I hate an overly crowded page, so I think actually I'm
probably more on the side of this is good than rather than
bad for me, you know? I'm I'm torn.
I'm torn because I just feel like it's a it's AI mean at the
end of the day too. Like if you chop it's like 1/3
of 100 pages. You could save 30 pages by not
having that space. So would you say that into the
odd would save a bunch of space if they didn't center everything
and put small amounts of text on every page?
No, but I think the into the odd layout is is better.
It's more artistic than this. I think it uses that space in a
way that makes more sense in this.
Like, I just don't. I feel like this column I think
was like, we can put notes and directions here and then they
just kind of lost the way going through on like what was a note,
what's a direction, what's this and that.
I don't mind the layout. I just think if it was going to
be used in this way, it needed to be used more.
Yeah, thoughtfully. You know, there's there are a
bunch of directions here that could be here on the side, and
we'll get to that. But anyway, I just want to hit
that right off the bat because that's where something moves
see, all the way through. So character you start with
attribute points right? You have mind, body, and spirit.
Mind is mental power, magic. It's used for magical attack and
defense, memory, willpower, technology, etcetera, blah.
All the mind stuff. Body, which is your physical
power, melee attack, defense, everything.
Spirit is dexterity and finesse, Spirit, spirit get the whole.
I get the whole mind, body, spirit part.
Like it's it's it's very classic three parts, but like it's
ranged attacks and defense, manual dexterity, social
interactions, avoiding sprung trap, deception, spirit is a
weird word. I don't think it fits well.
It's so I don't know. I think that I don't think it's
awful, but like, I think it's close to.
In other words, I'm searching through my almost empty brain
for I get the direction they were going for it, you know,
like the quickness of spirit or whatever.
But yeah, I am. It's a weird choice of word.
Yeah, I I think it's so this kind of defines kind of how I
feel about a lot of parts of this game is that like, I see
what they're going for and it like, it works.
Right. It's a little inelegant, yeah.
It's a little clunky. Yeah.
So the attributes, because we're
going to get in the second, we're going to get into like
derived stats from our attributes.
So I get the whole mind, body, spirit thing.
It's supposed to like encompass like the the your, the
attributes of your character. But like I would never take like
it says, mind is mental power, body is physical power, and then
spirit is dexterity and finesse. I would never think spirit,
dexterity and finesse. I wouldn't mind it if they just
went more with like finesse or something here.
Or like you know, having like a like a mind and two body stats
like a speed and a strength kind of thing with body as opposed to
going into like the mind, body spirit thing.
I think a like a strength, speed, mind would have been.
It wouldn't have changed anything, but I think it would
be more applicable to like the way it's used, you know?
Yeah, I mean IA little bit like am sick of how everything has
the same names for their attributes.
So I I appreciate the trying to like change dexterity away from
being whatever decks or quickness or whatever.
But yeah, I yeah, I think I. Mean.
We've both We've both tried to make RPGs enough to that I've
I've burned out my thesaurus for like the five words that
actually apply. So, like, there's only so many
ways you can say, like, move quickly, but not like, you know,
top end speed. Anyway, so those are your three
attributes. It says each attribute starts
with one point and those are your 3 overarching attributes
you assign starting XP. So each character starts with
five experience points to improve your attributes and
character creation. To improve an attribute to the
next level requires XP equal to that level.
Pretty classic. So if you want to get to level
2, you need to experience points.
If you want to get to Level 3, you need three more experience
if you want to get to, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera for each
individual attribute. And then you get your stats.
So stats are derived from attributes, so you get mana, HP,
gear, and luck, right? Mana is equal to your mind score
plus one, and it's how you cast mind abilities, because we're
going to get to abilities Mana refills after arrest.
HP is another Dr. stat, it's your body plus three, it's your
health. 0HP equals death. HP refills after reset.
There is there are two death mechanics in here, one give it
A1 optional. We'll get to that.
Gear equals body plus four. It's just every item carried has
weight. Gear tells you how much.
There is a bit of a a little bit of like a quantum inventory in
here that I like. We'll get to that too.
And then luck equals spirit plus one.
This is spent to use spirit abilities.
Luck does not refill after arrest and is instead earned by
Critical Failure and Difficult success roles.
Or is an award from the GM. We'll get to that again.
On this entire page, there is one paragraph one sentence here
in that left notes column. More info on abilities can be
found on page 11. Not hyperlinked.
Choose two abilities. So we have attributes, we have
derived stats and then you get 2 abilities.
Pick one ability per attribute point assigned for each.
Example if a character has two spirit and one body, they get 2
spirit abilities and one body ability.
Makes sense. There you go.
Yeah absolutely easy logic. And then on top of that you
choose the skill. Yeah so pick one related to your
character's background Skills are explained on page 8.
I like those are references to page numbers.
Just type link it. I know it's it's a pain in the
Dick, but you know it's there. So we have I will, I will say it
starts to feel less rules light once you have attributes, stats
derives, attributes, abilities and skills and then other stuff
on top of that. It does start to feel a little
bit less rules light and a little bit more pushing towards
rules medium. Once you start having to keep
track of so many different things.
Continue with character creation that says gather equipment, pick
up, pick or make up starting weapons.
Be sure to write it down on the weapon category.
It's light, medium or heavy, so that's the weight that it is so
and the damage that it is. So I do, I do like that and I
that's one of my favorite things to do.
I don't give a shit what light weapon you're carrying.
Make it up. Like make it your own, but it
weighs the same and does the same damage as every other light
weapon. I do really enjoy that.
That was that was like slimmed down so you don't have like a
list of you know, 50 fucking different like short swords you
know and then says weapon and shield and armor suggestions are
on page 46. Take one small potion that heals
to HP and choose one miscellaneous item relevant to
your character's personality. This item doesn't necessarily
have a mechanical effect, it's just for role-playing.
There's a lot of these, like, kind of inserts throughout the
game where it's like like it really is pushing hard to like
role play a lot, which again, I understand what they're going
for. There's just a little bit of an
inelegance in the way that they push it over and over and over
again and finally make up the rest of your character details
like their age, name, appearance, etcetera.
In the future, you might even consider hiring an artist to
illustrate your character. Nice little ad right there in
the game from the artist. I really like that.
That's great. That's a very funny line.
Yeah, I really like it. We're on to gear.
I do like this box here and I don't like the box for two
different reasons. So it says it is assumed that
adventures are carrying basic adventuring equipment like
backpacks, rations, etcetera. This doesn't need to spell out
if your character needs something and it's like one of
those basic ass things, you just have it.
If you're doing want you to have it like it's it's whatever.
Like you don't need to keep track of like every little, like
every piton and hammer like the basic shit.
You just have it and you don't even worry about the weight of
it. I like that.
To me, that's clean. What are your thoughts?
I think for this game it's great too.
You know, like some games I'm like, yeah, like no, count your
stuff or whatever. But this is a great game.
Like, yeah, no obscure the other way.
This is a fun role-playing game. Don't worry about that.
Yeah. If it's a piece of equipment
that doesn't really fucking matter, then it doesn't fucking
matter. I will say that if you if you
take one hammer and that hammer becomes like your signature
shit, at some point I might like assign a weight to that and it
becomes like something that you carry under belt or something.
But again that's that's up to the gym.
I will say the reason I don't like this box is it is a
different font than all the rest of the game and it's a different
font than all the rest of the light blue boxes you find.
You don't see the until until the bestiary it.
I mean it is also the footer font which I also don't like it
down there. I just don't like the font kind
of for for this anyway, but it's it's a different font than the
rest of all of these, like blue note boxes.
My other thing too is like, why do we have these blue side note
boxes when we have a third of every page empty for notes and
directions? That's that's my thing, not this
page, because there's a a big old piece of art here, which I
do like. It's a great piece of art, you
see, you see what I'm saying? There's like some incongruous
yeah, PC is limited in how much they can carry.
Most items have a weight from 1 to 4.
Standard carry you already says body +4, so small items can be
bundled. There you go character levels
and leveling up. So this is this is I have notes
on this. So until the RPG, a kicker has a
level for each attribute between 1:00 and 7:00.
When a rule or ability or first level, this means to use the
level of the relevant attribute. OK, so we're saying that if your
attribute is 3, right? Say mind you have mind 3, then
you are mind Level 3. Right.
Why? I don't know.
I was wondering that too. I'm like, well, isn't that just
mine? 3 Still it's.
Just mine three. Yeah, it drives me.
We'll get here and we'll be. It'll be like a role level here
in a little bit, but literally it could just be role, mind or
whatever. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Yeah, this is, this is another kind of thing that that happens
to this game. It's just a lot of like
inelegance, trying to like. I feel like there was a vision
and they just like shoehorn just a little bit in without with and
and it kind of creates this, this lack of elegance throughout
that like doesn't make it bad, but it just makes it feel just
like a little clunky throughout. But just like this like like a
character levels. The assumption one is level is
like your whole like your whole character.
But this is the original attributes levels.
Yeah, like I don't. I don't like the concept of like
there aren't character levels, right?
You just raise your attributes. Character level is nothing in
this. Essentially.
I like that fine and I wish it was just called that, but.
I yeah there's an example of here how to do it.
I there the next section, The next header is called Leveling
Up again. So my note says if leveling up
just means increasing an attribute, you could easily just
call it Attribute increase instead of instead of adding
another keyword. Yeah, I think it, I think the
the issue that we're seeing here is that it's, I don't know if
shoehorn is what I would say. I like overly keyworded, you
know, overly keyed. Like there's just a lot of words
that kind of like mean very similar things or don't mean
exactly what they say that they don't need to be in here.
Like I don't think it's character levels.
Leveling up doesn't bother me as much because you are leveling up
a stat or an attribute, right. But the character levels, I'm
like, it's not you're not character leveling.
That's what I'm saying is if you're not going to use like
character levels, you don't need to use leveling up because
you're not leveling up. Yeah, I guess increasing
attributes would be more correct in that circumstance.
But I feel like that's kind of like the vibe that that we run
into a bunch of the game where it's like, I don't dislike this.
I just feel like there was a cleaner way to do it.
And I I yeah. And that that comes up over and
over and over again throughout this.
It's just like it's fine it, but it could just be cleaner.
So leveling up. Leveling up means spending XP to
increase the level of an attribute.
Just like doing characterization.
They come down after short rest, so you get stuff when you level
up the amount of XP spent we already talked about You can
improve the selected attribute by one I assume like if you
like. It's just telling you I I don't
think that's a little hard and fast for like if you have enough
XP to increase the level by multiple times, I assume you
just wait. You can wait multiple short
rests, you can do whatever. But it says increase by one.
It says improve stats accordingly.
So your derived stats increase when your attributes increase
and then it says choose a new ability for the new slot which
must be the new type. So this was a weird word to me.
It's just it's slot is never used everywhere, anywhere else.
Again, I understand that it's just like you have this like
attribute point that has an ability assigned to it.
It's just a weird way to work that because then you go wait a
minute. Are there slots?
Wait, where are the ability slots?
Exactly. So it's just yeah, that could
just go away earning XP in luck. I have thoughts.
Another PG no period, no space earning XP in luck.
You earn XP or luck when you have a critical failure or a
difficult success page. Look at page 33.
You demonstrate excellent role play.
We'll get back to that. You finish a difficult battle.
You reveal a secret about your character.
You complete a dungeon, mission area, or do anything else that
GM feels is worthy of award. Demonstrate excellent role play.
I don't like it. I don't think it should be in
here. What are your thoughts?
I I don't know. It's like my, like on one hand
you're like oh, so people who are not great at role-playing
never get this. But yeah, I mean, I think that
my, my biggest point is if you're a bad role player like
which people are sometimes and they sit at my table and they're
still fun to play with. So I guess maybe I would
probably take role play out and just put excellent play, you
know, and you can just define that however you want the table,
if that's making a really funny joke or being really great in
role play or doing something really cool.
But yeah, I wouldn't limit it to just because.
Yeah, I mean, some people are just not good role-playing.
I'm not great at role-playing. I just make quips, you know?
I make quips and I do little voices and they're bad.
My voices suck. Yeah.
I will say that. I do love the art piece on this
page and I like the stall on the page before this because I kind
of like Twisted Skull and the last one has like one eye still
kind of looking at you. Very, very good and terrifying.
Yeah. And the bottom jaw is off.
I do want to point out we're going to have two more pages
with that third column on the side, completely empty.
Yeah, Demonstrate excellent role play to me.
Like you said, it's built in punishment.
It's not a ward. It's not a reward.
Like it's because it can be. There's I listen, I prefer when
I play a game, people that are super invested and are in first
person to me that really helps me stay immersed.
But third person role play is also totally fine.
You don't have to have a voice. You don't have to be you.
You can see my character, this is my character is that.
But this kind of lends immediately to AGM to determine
what they think is good role play and if it's not how your
style again like you said you're never going to get this.
So like you said, I think it's just like I think if you want
something like this because this is another one of those times
where I'm like I get where you're going but you didn't
quite get there. I think it's it could just be
like you said, like if you have like a fun cool moment or like
you make the table like if you want this to be on there at all,
which I don't think you necessarily need.
I think that's more the direction it should go as
opposed to like zeroing it in specifically on this like out of
game thing. And I I think I had less of an
issue with this like, but if you look at everything else, like
finish a difficult battle, everyone gets an experience
point, right? But what if you finish a
difficult battle and two people had really great role-playing in
that battle, So they just get 2 experience points?
And then your third dude is like, well, you weren't that
interesting of a role player, so fuck you I guess, yeah.
That's what I'm saying is it feels like a built in to me.
It just feels like the opportunity to be a built in
punishment exceeds the ability for it to be a reward because of
the differences. And I think, I think, I think
Torchbearer does something like this and it's it's not fun.
So again like I just I find it not not bad because I understand
why because all like throughout the game they say there's a
bunch like like role play do the thing.
That's why you have like background skills and stuff and
like you know, supposed to get out there.
But I I just find this to be unnecessary.
Next, we get into skills. Skill is something that anyone
can do, but you can do better because of your past is
basically what it is. They're vague.
They can sometimes overlap. The point of skills is to bring
creativity to the table in order to help roles.
When a player thinks a skill might apply to a role, they
should be creative and present their case to the GM.
Even though figuring out which attribute discovered by the
skill can be a Gray area, they should still be related to the
character background, blah blah blah.
Pick up or make a character skill like character creation.
Then again, anytime an attribute reaches 7, so this is this is a
personal thing for you. It could be anything you want.
It could be fucking pie making, you know what I mean?
Like it could be anything you want.
I don't mind this. I think it's fine.
No, I like for like background skill stuff.
I really do prefer where it's just like, yeah, well, like,
pick a background, you know, like I'm a big guy.
Like, I love a thief guy sometimes where I'm like, Oh
yeah, I went to a thief school, you know?
So it's like, OK, well, cool, Anytime you can reference.
Yeah, we learned climbing at my thief school.
We learned falling at my thief school.
You know, I like stuff like that.
When you can kind of obscure it and just like, you and the gym
can decide like, hey, does this really apply to that situation?
I like that. So go ahead.
No, no worries. I was gonna say the picking up
another one at attribute 7. I'm like, OK, what's the thing?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, there's a whole, I
think, I think it's a later part talking and not in the leveling
up section where it probably should be, but what like talking
about like when you get to level 7 and stuff like that later you
get a bunch of stuff. So we'll we'll talk about that,
Yeah. So side note here it is highly
recommended to you skills as often as possible.
So again, this is my and this is last.
This is probably not the last time I bring it up.
This is the third page now with the entire left column in
completely blank. There's one sentence that could
easily just fit any any anywhere else on here.
It's just an unlike. This is why I'm like what is
like if it had a point. I get it right.
It just feels. Like and there are more if there
are more meaningful margin notes would bother you less is what
you're saying? Absolutely if it had like.
To me, the point of this layout is to have this column in order
to mark meaningful things into it, right?
And then they didn't utilize it like pretty much at all.
So that's why the layout I don't mind.
I like this layout. I think that this layout, the
style is great, but if you look at something I'm not gonna give
examples that's escaping me where it is used more
effectively. Like these columns like die for
example has like a similar kind of like not a third, but like
those things are packed on the side with like information that
is nice to have but doesn't necessarily need to be in the
core text, you know. So how do you skills, if it
relates to your character's skills, mention it when rolling,
Be creative. So it says.
For example, they might be adept at lock picking because they had
a shady past as a jewel thief. So mention that and then how
skills effects how skills affect roles.
If the GM agrees so you can use the skill, you get what you get
plus 1D to the role. So on page one it tells you go
check the test on page 28. But we still don't even like at
no point unless you went to page 28 do we know that it's a dice
pool game. Yeah, that is something I even
though it does say go to page 28, I wouldn't have minded like
what is this like a thing at the beginning that says this is AD6
dice pool game, you know? Yeah, especially because I love
AD 6 dice pool game. So it's great.
Yeah. So you add 1D to the role, it's
a player critical failure or critical success.
They get to ignore the negative impact of those roles, such as a
penalty, but still gain the positive impact such as XP and
luck. More on that on page 7, which
was the last page. So basically, like if you're
using your skills, you negate critical failure results.
Fine then once you use your skills, yeah.
I think that's fine. You're skilled at this.
You like, even if you don't necessarily pass this, you're
definitely not going to, like, run yourself into the ground
because you kind of know what you're doing.
Yeah, I think from a narrative point of view, you're like, that
totally makes sense. I agree.
The next page it says here are some possible skills and their
associated attributes. I like this page.
I think this page is extraordinary, extraordinarily
necessary, or I would not have liked the previous page, but
it's it is 3 columns in, another in in that font that I'm not a
huge fan of. And something that doesn't
bother me at all. Yeah, it's just so much
different than like the rest of the body font.
You know what I mean? Like, look at it in comparison,
like even the size, like it's just but so mind, body, spirit.
There's what, 123-456-7892, There's ten different ones for
for each, for mind, for body and spirit.
And they're color-coded blue, red, and green.
It's a, it's a, it's a. It's a fine looking table.
It's a fine table. There's a, a blue, a blue note
bar on the bottom. It says player and GM are
encouraged to add to the list the GM as a final say in how it
works more kind of like editing things.
This isn't it picky, but there's like there's no space after this
period. There's time.
Oh yeah, so this suggestions regarding which attribute
relates to which skill, or just that, suggestions.
Skills with some homes fall under more than one attributes.
They don't take the list too strictly, blah blah blah blah.
This isn't on those ones where it's like like, I know we get
it. Like there was like beating your
head over this, like do what you want kind of thing didn't feel
necessary. So now then we get to perks,
which is what happens at different levels when you get
your attributes. So again, this is another just
unnecessary keyword and I don't understand why this whole
section isn't wasn't just in like the leveling up like it
should have been like the next page after leveling up.
I agree. Yeah, which should have been
called attribute increase. Yeah.
Oh, my note. Said yet another keyword in a
quote UN quote. Low crunch game.
Perks are automatic bonuses. A character gets it attributes
Level 3 and seven. So for mind, body, and spirit,
whenever you get those attributes up to three and then
seven, you get bonuses. When mine reaches 3, your mana
increases by two, so your mana is now mine plus 3 instead of
mine plus one. Cool.
Keep a note of that. Basically you just get 2 free
mana points at Level 3. Cool.
When body reaches 3, you improve your melee attack damage by plus
one. It's not added to, it's just
melee. No magic, no no, nothing.
May seem unfair at first glance, but I remember that range
weapons of magic can hit from a distance.
I don't mind that note here, but this is what I'm talking about.
You know where that note would have been much better?
In the left side column because it's not important to the text
whatsoever, but it's direction. You know what I mean?
Yeah, absolutely. That could easily be just off to
the side because you don't need it.
Umm when spirit reaches Level 3, luck is increased by two, so now
your luck is now spirit plus 3 instead of spirit plus one.
OK, so basically body gets plus one extra damage at Level 3, and
your mana and spirit get +2 on top of the one that they got
already for total of three. And at level 7 perks, umm.
The level 7 perks are all the same.
When Mind, Body, or Spirit reaches level 7, characters gain
a new skill. If a character survives long
enough to get all attributes to level 7, they'll have four
skills this first line. The level 7 perks are all the
same. It's just a nice just delete it,
just delete it. That's.
I mean, that's it. Abilities.
OK, so so we're getting into abilities.
Abilities are characters, bread and butter.
They are the special things the characters can do, as well as
the best way to build your character.
Each of the three attributes has its own set of abilities.
Here we go. So you get active and passive
abilities. Yeah, yeah, so active.
And passives. So there's also a note here on
the side. There are also miscellaneous
abilities and ultimate abilities that are explained later.
Mm hmm. Mm hmm, everything I've said
already. There is my note there.
So active abilities require so supposedly require a successful
test. On a failed test, there's no no
cost is paid. OK, that's number one.
Number two requires the use of 1 action, OK, and three have a
cost required to them ranging from zero to four.
That is paid with mana or luck, depending on the ability.
OK, all right. Mana or luck?
All right. And then you have passive
abilities. There's four things.
Automatically succeed without a test unless the, unless the
stated otherwise do not require an action to use, have no cost,
and will have AP after the ability name.
Abilities are written in a way to communicate all this
information at a glance. And then there's like a a an
algebraic type equation with brackets and all this.
Bold this Please make this bold and bigger.
Ability name and then cost from zero to four if active or
passive. And then the effect of the
ability. It's listed out here and there's
an optional rule listed here. Some gyms may allow an ability
swap. Sometimes a mission ahead could
benefit from trading out old and new.
Fine. Whatever.
OK, great piece of art here. It's blue.
Yeah, it's blue. So we're going into mine stuff.
But it's a full page wizard boy with like a an energy thing in
its hand and he's like coming down to slam it.
It's great. It's a great piece.
Great. Piece.
Yeah, it is an amazing piece. I do love this piece a lot.
OK, so mind abilities. So there's sixteen of them.
OK, and we're going to read every single one.
Y'all. Gear up.
Every single one. If if a mind ability has a
listed cost, it uses mana. OK, so let's just talk about,
let's talk about a couple. So mana costs?
Do me a solid hunter. OK, all right, there are sixteen
of these. How many different mana costs
are there on 16 abilities? 2.
There's two mana costs, right? What are the mana costs?
It's one and X. OK, OK, so X is Fireball.
Right? Before rolling, the caster picks
the amount of mana they want to spend, then throws an explosive
fireball. We'll get to the rest of the way
in just a second. Yeah, so if you spend 5 minutes,
huh, You get like, what? With X damage?
So it's magic The Gathering
Fireball X damage, right? So if you spend 5, they get 5
damage, right? Everything else is 1 every.
Everything is 1. 15 abilities is what so wide listed wide list
the cost at all. The yeah, my other thing is like
I think up there it says this the cost range from zero to 4.
Where is the four? Is it in?
It might be. It's maybe.
No, bro, we talked about this. It's not get there though.
You said yeah. Oh, maybe it's saying that for
the X, the highest it could be is 4.
With that, it's. Just that's not.
I mean, you're being very generous because that's not what
it says. It says the ability cost.
No, sorry. Maybe that's what I was trying
to say. Ranging from zero to four and
every single ability cost is 1. Is that a mistake?
It has to be. It fucking has to be it.
Has to be a mistake, right? We talked because we talked.
About this. Because it's in percolating my
mind. I'm like, there's no way this is
right, you know? No.
It can't. What's the point of having
ability cost saying they range from zero to four and making
every single one of them one? Yeah, resurrects cost one, yeah.
And also barrier cost one, Yeah, I mean obviously.
Light. Yeah.
Creating a 30 foot diameter of light is the same as
resurrecting a player. It's the same cost.
It has to be a mistake. It literally says it ranges from
zero to four and then lists everyone at 1:00.
Yeah. But yeah, barrier, control,
light and begin. It's it's mind magic that's what
you get. So but here's the other issue.
We'll get through this. So bend the elements.
Caster creates a malleable shape of up to level times 10 square
feet of volume. Oh yeah, that's the other thing.
When we haven't gotten to ranges yet, have we?
So. Yeah, no.
Should we jump to range real quick to explain this or wait
till later then come back to this?
Because one or the other, we have to do both.
I say we just keep going through linear in a linear nature, but
everyone who's listening, if you are listening, remember that it
says 30 feet in here and it gives like I think 10 feet as
well as a form distance. Level times 10 square feet.
The effect of the globe goes for a 30 feet in big, and the target
gets a 1D3 body for level rounds and grows exactly 20% larger.
Mm hmm, Fireball. Anyone within 15 feet?
Let's just go. Let's just do range now 'cause
it doesn't really matter. OK, let's just do Range now.
Yeah, so we're gonna go down to to range.
It's somewhere down here. I don't remember where it is.
Was it above using an ability above attack?
It is, yeah. It's in combat.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's on page 37. OK, so for for distances it's
just move right? This is your movement in combat.
OK, so short distance is within melee range.
OK, so they're short, medium, long and very long.
OK, short distances within melee range.
Hunter What is medium distance? Oh, it's one move action.
One move away, what's long? It's two moves away.
How about very long? It's more than two moves away.
How long is a move? It's it's medium distance.
And how long is medium distance? It's it's one move away.
I think. Like this is where you really
benefit from like medium range that's that's the across an
average size room you know. Anything.
So it it says there is this little blurb on the bottom.
It says these distances are meant to to answer simple
questions. Am I close enough to stab?
For example, if something is long range, taking a move action
to move towards it puts it into medium range.
We get it. It's range bands emanating from
you Totally makes sense. Like I I love range bands.
I'm a fucking range guy. I hate feet, right?
But here's the thing. This is how all all of the all
of it works in the game. It says TLDRPG defines distances
as ranges, right? Except when?
Yeah, range weapons and range magic attacks maybe use it.
Ranges at the GM deems reasonable, blah blah blah.
OK, so it literally says quote distances as ranges, so we're
going to hop on back to. Seven or not 17, sorry, like 12
or something. I swap that.
Abilities it is. It is well hyperlinked, so it is
incredibly. Well hyperlinked.
Yeah. So 10 feet, what is that?
30 feet? What is that?
We don't need to be over a dead horse.
There's an incongruous Ness between the use of feet multiple
times about this book and then the use of ranges later in the
book. This is what we're talking about
again, where there's like this inelegance of like, we see the
vision, but it didn't like it there because I think both were
on the mind and they just, like, forgot to get rid of one.
Most likely they went with feet, 'cause it's very classic BX, you
know, whatever, it's D&D. And then they're like, let's
simplify it with going with ranges and then never just
switch these alter ranges. Yeah, so that's that's what it's
got to be, anyway. So that's that.
Another great piece of art. Another.
Great piece of art. Mm hmm.
And then another great piece of art, and this one's red.
Yeah, this is a very it's like a demonic night with like a Mace
in this badass, like skulls hanging off the bottom of the of
this like, long. I don't know what it is.
Bladed weird axe thing. It's gorgeous.
It's a great piece of art. Body abilities, OK, we're going
to start cruising through some of this stuff.
So the body abilities all lists either P or 0.
After them there are probably 16, So P is passive, 0 is
active, but it even says in the thing that there are no that
it's only spent on mind and spirit.
It never says anything my body. So.
So why is it a cost listed at all right?
And how are they used? Like do I These are just I get
to do these every time. Yeah.
I guess it's like, so, yeah, you could do SHIELD Dash every turn
like, yeah, if you wanted to. I mean, it costs nothing, so
yeah. Yeah, it costs.
So all of all of the melee stuff, just like costs nothing.
I mean dual wield. So The thing is like it's I mean
it's active because you have to roll but the ability itself is
not. It should be passive but
whatever. So basically yeah it's all the
so backstab, battle cry, blood loss, dual wield like gash, you
attack a target to do one damage and cause bleed.
We'll get to bleed but like I just don't understand.
Like I think if if they don't cost anything, there needs to be
an explanation of like how you can use it then.
And also don't list a cost of 0 because it's just confusing
people. Unnecessary.
Yeah. And then and then like there's a
werewolf piece. Great piece.
Which is such a strong art piece. 01 of my favorite in the
entire game. Weird double daggered guy with
his like mask has like blood spatter on and he's hood up.
Very much like a very cool assassin rogue, dude, you know?
And the glow on the daggers is. Yeah, the glow on decks, yeah.
All right, so talk. So tell me about Spirit
abilities. They all cost one except the
ones that are passive. I mean, yeah, they yeah.
And they use luck so like. Yeah, so luck.
So, so luck. So man, that comes back on.
The rest? OK, but luck.
You have to either crit fail or is it crit succeed?
It was one of those two. Well, I got to go back.
I don't remember, honestly. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, So inherently it is incredibly hard to get luck
back. Or maybe I can probably, but
it's much, much harder to get luck back.
So hey man, listen, if you're building a, you're building a
spirit based character. Good fucking luck.
Patch and but again so one thing you said every one of these
abilities that isn't a peeve or passive is just again listed as
just one. But why?
Why make luck something that only comes back sometimes like
versus everything else. It makes no sense.
Like there's no there's no rationale I can think of because
it's not like here's The thing is like it would make more sense
for mana to be something that you that like it's harder to get
back because it's like magic and shit and not everyone has to be
magic or something. But like even having luck as
like the derived thing from spirit to me is just weird
because first of all spirit is your dexterity and finesse and
then you add luck to it. I can see agility and luck and
stuff like that. But like, why would it?
Why would it not come back? Because like you're saying, like
if I want to make a thief character that uses a bunch of
these, like thief finesse, if you if you want to build a
finesse build, you're fucked. You can't use any of these
abilities. Yeah, I mean, if you do use
them, you're going to lose a point and it's going to take you
a while to get it back because you have to either crit fail or
crit succeed. Yeah, Which I guess I'm the dice
mechanic for this. Crit failing is rolling.
It's rolling double S, isn't it? Yeah, kind of.
But there's like targeted dice in it too.
Yeah, it's a whole. Yeah, maybe it's maybe.
I did not do math for this one. I'm sorry.
I've almost thing but maybe it's more statistically significant
for to quit, fail or quit to see in this system than this in like
AD 20 based system. I think it's like we'll we'll
get there. They actually have the math in
here, which is nice. They do have some math in here.
They have a little table math. And I'm like, yeah, good for
you. Put that shit in here.
I love that. Yeah, it's nice.
But what I'm saying is like, but they're even then there's no
rationale to punish all agility based players and have their
derived staff be the only thing that doesn't come back because
like because again luck isn't in a lot of games.
Luck is like a re roll or something.
Luck is just the derived staff that you used to spend spirit
abilities. Like there's nothing that like
makes it special compared to the other ones at all.
So it makes no sense, but like Blessing, bullseye, etcetera,
etcetera. Like, you know, Second Chance,
it's it's it's your, it's your sneaky guy.
Like, yeah, there's a couple of mice.
There's a cool skull boy. Then we get some miscellaneous
abilities. I mean, OK, you can put into an
ability slot regardless of attribute.
OK. So some are similar.
So you get blood packed. Coward, Hearthmaker, Holy Mite
and Hustler. Oh, oh, there's more.
There's 10. Most of them are 0 or P and one
cost one, which is lowering or raising a dice ability.
It's these random miscellaneous things like Coward.
Once per round the character may attack a fling foe within range,
but they have to yell coward. Like it's just it's just random
ones that don't fit anywhere that are like maybe slightly
more powerful. And that's your miscellaneous
abilities. And that doesn't even count your
ultimate abilities. Yeah.
Born winner concentrate gambling or gamblers luck.
So there's only three of them. If the character has an ability
granting plus 1D and they decide not to use it, they gain 1 luck
and one XP. If they succeed again they make
luck in XP. I feel like they wanted luck to
be something that was that it just isn't and this is just a
derived spirit abilities. But in other games I get why you
would get XP and luck, you get another re rollback or something
like that. It's just it feels like, and
anyway you can only you. Ultimate attributes may only be
put into level 7 slots or attributes or whatever.
That's it. OK, 28 pages in.
Now we learn how to play the game.
Yeah, so that was a lot in the character section.
The rest of it isn't nearly as much, so we'll cruise that.
So it's a nice pull system. When performing a test, you get
a number of D6 is equal to the character's relevant ability.
So if you are doing a mind test and you have a mind of three
Level 3, you get 3 die plus whatever you get.
If they get at least 1-6, they succeed.
Usually only one six is needed, and there are cases GMA decide
that you need to. So dice pool.
You have to have at least 1/6 for a success.
That's the game. If multiple things are altering
the number of dice in the dice pool, the effects are
cumulative. Good place for that on the side,
actually. That's the appropriate use for
that. A large pool of dice gives you a
better chance. Obviously you also have your
abilities, skills and other players helping you.
Adding to dice pool. It's a dice pool right?
The most important rule just have fun.
If something works at your table but isn't 100% by the book,
that's fine. Two issues with it.
If it's the most important rule wise on page 29 and 2nd like
this is like the fourth time you said like just make it your own.
Like we get it. That's that's what indie games
are like. We get it like at.
But then on top of the core mechanic, you have the dice
bump, right? It's a very lethal game.
Particularly in the beginning, it's recommended that players
use every means at their disposable to add extra dice.
So to do a dice bump, simply spend one mana or one luck to
gain an extra dice on a test. And then there's rules for that,
like it has you have to say it before the roll.
You can only bump your own character.
You can spend as much as you want on mana or luck, and it
does not take a special ability to use it.
Great players always roll at least one die during a test,
even if the character's attribute is 0, or some other
rule effect would require the dice to use that.
I don't understand why this is a blue box way down here, and this
isn't attached to the actual definition of what the test is
because it's literally. Part of the one start up with at
least one in each attribute. Yeah, OK.
Yeah. So you always have that.
But if for whatever reason it's 0.
But what I'm saying is like that's a core part of the dice
mechanic and we're like 2 pages away from like the test put them
back up there. And again, why are we having?
What is the point of the blue bar on the side here when you
have 1/3 of a column on the left that's completely empty?
I'm. Saying I too.
Players almost always roll for tests, except when they don't,
and it doesn't make sense as a core mechanic.
It's basically it's a it's player facing rules.
For example, MPC might have an ability that grants.
So this is this is interesting. MPC might have an ability that
grants plus 1D to its attacks. Since the defending PC is 1
rolling to determine the outcome, they roll 1 less die to
reflect the MPC ability. So the bad guy will have plus
1D. You actually just do -1 D to
defend. Yeah, I would not put it as plus
1D. Then I'd probably put it as like
the bad guy has -1 D and you take away one die when you roll.
Exactly. Because plus is plus and minus
is minus. And while I totally understand
what it's saying, there's already so like several moving
parts in here. And I wouldn't like there's
that, that I said you had 10 rules for writing games, you
know, And one of them is like call a thing a thing, you know,
call it what it is. You know, that's what I'm
saying. With the attribute level is like
the attribute thing, it's just you're increasing Attribute is
called actually increase. There's no reason to have
levels. Like slinkers, 10 rules for
writing, 10 rules for writing rules, yeah.
Yeah, but but yeah, so like, why would it say like plus 1D to
their attack? It should just say this attack,
subtract 1D from your defense. Like there's no reason to have
it be like a thing that you have to remember to be a thing.
Yeah, it's counter intuitive is what I wrote.
So a word about failure. While it's true at least 1-6 is
needed for an action to succeed, there's some area for GM
discretion. For example, if a character is
jumping over deep chasm, a failed role doesn't has
necessarily mean they fall to the death.
Maybe they make the jump but twist their ankle.
OK, so like make success, but not in the mechanics.
You're supposed to narratively decide it.
Come on like if you if that's what you want then just say like
on A5 you on A. Five.
I told you that was immediately. What I thought when I read this
was like, give them a five. Option 5 is a mixed success.
Oh, the highest role is A5. Cool.
Then, yeah, success with a little bit of, yeah.
Yeah, you shouldn't have like this is a little note, but like
just put it in your game then like if that's what you want to
happen then just make it happen. You have a lot of room on this
page. No need to roll.
There's dice math here which is really nice.
It's the number of dice listed in the percentage to hit a six.
So if you roll one die, you only have a 16.7% chance.
If you roll 8 die, you have a 76.7% chance.
I like this. Great table love that it's in
here. Should be.
Great table. I love adding like, you know,
D20 base games like people play a lot of.
Obviously 5E is D20 base. It's very easy to do the math
when you have diceable games. It's a lot harder for people to
contextualize what the math looks like.
Obviously I've sent you a bunch of math that I've done for my
own dice pool thing, but it's really nice to put this in for
like, hey, like, this is what this actually looks like.
Just so you know, because people don't know.
Yeah, I mean, exactly like, it's the number of times that we
literally like sit here and. Do the math.
It's nice to get there.
And we love D sixes. I do.
I love AD 6 dice pool, so yeah. Yeah, I mean I enjoy dice pools
like I just the two D6 is my favorite.
But dice pools or D6 dice pools are are very close after.
That I really do like the core of this, like I really enjoy
like the system and how it works, and I like the idea of
the like abilities and I I like the attributes.
I do think like this absolutely would benefit from a 2 E,
because I do think there's so much good in the bones of this,
you know? Yeah, yeah.
I mean, that's what we said at the beginning.
It's just like there's, but there's so much just kind of
clunkiness throughout where it's like, I get where you're going.
You just didn't like. It's not like.
And I I think a lot of the points we've had so far, like a
second pass on editing, frankly would have fixed a lot of, you
know, yeah. I also think that the a lot of
it too is it feels like. It almost feels like a game was
written and then there was a Passover it to like add the like
quote UN quote new school mechanics with the old school
feel and they just missed a bunch of like the the stuff.
It's like well let's simplify the ranges on page 37 whatever
because they hit range was like oh let's change that.
But they didn't go back and fix all the things that also applied
to it. So it's it's it's, yeah.
Crit success is how crit success works.
I do remember now. Sorry, keep going.
Yeah. And I just don't.
Yeah, I I wrote a note that says I do not know how I feel about
this, but at first read it feels superfluous.
So a character's attribute level determines the number of total
dice rolled. For tests.
We got that, but actually it reaches level 2, The possibility
of crit sexes and failures is introduced.
So two of the dice you roll are now your crit dice.
So if you like you just have two.
So they should be different colored.
And then when a player rolls, crit dice along with the rest of
their characters dice, so they make sure they're blah blah
blah. For example, a character with a
level of four will roll 4 dice total, two being crit dice, two
being not. A six on a crit die is the same
as any other six, unless the roll is one of the three
critical results below. Except it's not below because
you look at a book. The crit die overrides the rest
of the dice. OK, so then we go down here and
it says the crit results double ones, double sixes or both A1
and A6 on the crit die. So 11 snake eyes.
It says it's a 2.8% chance. I love they put the math in
here. 66 is a 2.8% chance and a both one and a six is a 5.6%
chance. So didn't we say that like
getting locked back was like on one of these?
Yes. So a 2.8% chance is how you're
going to get your stuff back. Well, it's on any and I think
it's crit success or crit failure, right?
So. You have you have like an 11.2%
chance. That's not really probably very
accurate, but somewhere in there of getting your getting luck
back. But my question with this math
is. So wait, if I use my if I use my
spirit like a my like luck points on abilities when before
I'm level 2, I just can't get them back?
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, that's so.
Funny, yeah, it just there's a little, there's a little logical
hole there. Yeah, again, this game I feel
like wants a luck to be like ADCC luck or something and
didn't realize that they just made it their derived staff that
only like is your is an entire player's core.
It even says about like like the ability is like to find your
whole player, but like you gave one whole of your three
attributes like a massive penalty right off the bat to
just not get those abilities back like everyone else does for
no specific reason. Again, if it to me, if it was
magic and that like magic was more difficult so everyone
didn't have it all the time, that would make sense.
But just your speedy boyness. Yeah.
How quick you are. Yeah.
Yeah, makes no sense. So anyway the test fails I.
I would consider running this, but if I did, they'd come back
on your rest, you know. Yeah, yeah, it would have to,
yeah. So these these that's failures
and successes and and difficult. So character gets a penalty, but
they also earn one XP and one luck penalties defined by the
GM. Critical success.
It succeeds and you get a bonus, the bonus defined by the GM.
If you get a one and a six, the test is successful, but the
character also incurs a penalty, as with the critical failure.
So basically you get both. So on a failure you get XP and
luck. On a success you get a bonus,
and on a difficult you get penalties.
But all you also get like XP and luck or a bonus.
So you don't get luck from the critical success, you only get
it from failure or difficult success.
Yeah, which makes it even less likely to happen.
Yeah, yeah. Combat surprise.
This is the whole big page to say it exists.
You get a one, you get a + 1. DI do like the art.
The scally boy with the glowing eyes is dope.
Scally boy. Art is good.
Yeah it talks about on surprise action the play the character
gets advantage on their role plus 1D.
Using the word advantage in there does not mean the
advantage but advantage is so part of RPGSI want to use that
word there initiative. This is a whole page to say
there's two ways you can do it. 1D6 plus spirit, right?
Just like normal initiative or optional rule for faster simple
initiative. The GM may decide to do 1
initiative role for a group of BCS, one for MPCS.
Cool. Yeah, that's a whole page to
tell you how to work initiative. Combat turns characters, so
during a turn characters get two actions, Move, Attack,
Usability, Focus, or Parry. Characters may do the same
action twice, such as taking moves or doing two attack
actions. There's a thing that says this
is just the most common stuff. Other things happen, enemies get
the same shit. We've already talked about the
move page. A move is defined by itself.
A medium distance is 1 move, and a move is at least a medium
distance. No idea what that means.
We can assume. But I it need that needs to be
fixed attacking, use mind body or spirit to do attacks, magic,
melee or ranged. And then to me I think this is
this second paragraph where it talked about doing like defense
roles really needs to have like a header, like a red header just
like everything else. So when when we're willing to
defend against an attack it characters the spots determines
the relevant attribute. So basically like if you want to
block with his shield use body. If you want to dodge out of the
way you spirit basically what it says and then again it says.
Remember that players make almost all tests like it's a
player facing game and it lists everything else you can do.
You can use an ability, you can focus which just gives your next
action 1D. You can parry which gives all
defense tests plus one DI do like that.
You get 2 actions, and some of those actions can set up like
your next turn. So if you want to say, all
right, I attack once and then I parry, you can put yourself in
like a more defensive position or like I want to focus on my
next one because I'm too far. So I'll do a move action and
then focus and the next time I can do it, I do.
I do like that. I think that's great.
I agree. I concur.
Death. When you read zero, you die or
you don't. Those are the 2 rules resting.
I don't like it. I love the art on this page.
This like warlock looking over like a cauldron.
I was thinking more of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah, like a shaman.
Almost, yeah. Resting each hour of rest fills
one mana and one HP. Resting for at least six hours
fills all mana. The resting does not fill luck.
Luck is earned from critical fails and difficult success
roles, or is an award from the GM.
Oh, you can award luck. Does it say that earlier?
You missed that? Yeah, it says it in.
Oh, it does say that. Yeah, it's the word of the GM.
Oh, OK, interesting. I still don't love it, but.
No, I don't like it at all. I also want to go back just to
make sure that I'm not talking about my ass.
Like when we derive luck, Spirit plus one is luck.
Luck is spent to use spirit abilities.
Yeah, there's. Well, until you get to Level 3
and then it's Spirit +3. Yeah, yeah.
So anyway, so resting every hour you rest, you get one mana and
one HP for a minimum of six hours.
To me. I don't know how you feel about
that. I I don't.
There's a lot of stuff missing from this.
How many rests can you do in a day?
If it's as many as you want, then yeah, then let's.
I would just do like a one to two hour nap like every fucking
all the time and just have my shit back all the time.
And if if not and there's a limited number of rests, why
would it matter if you get 2345 or six like what you would like
to me that's what I'm at. That's bookkeeping that at GM
doesn't need to worry about. You took a rest and let me get
your shit back, you know? Yeah, it's just unnecessary.
Great piece. I love this castle piece here
with like the stuff glowing, the person in the in the back.
Is a very there's some really cool like darker almost like
charcoal pieces in this. You're like very iconic art
going through this. It's.
Definitely dope status effects. There's a bunch Bleed, burn
days, plague, poison, stun. They cause things, They cause
statuses. The one I don't understand is
bleed. Unlike other statuses, the
status does nothing on its own. Instead, some other abilities
may activate when an opponent is bleeding at the beginning of a
turn. Decrease bleed status by one.
The status are moved at 0. I really couldn't.
Maybe it's listed somewhere and I was just like frustrated and
couldn't find it. But like I don't know what it
actually does when it is activated though.
Oh, I saw this in the ability. Actually, I'm gonna find it real
quick. Yeah, Gash.
Mm hmm. Yeah, Gash.
Yeah, but it just says that you bleed.
Where is it? Does it?
Have you gone in the wrong direction?
I mean, let's control F bleed too.
I am. That's what.
That's exactly what I did. That's what I'm saying.
So it's I just don't understand how bleed works.
Well they have it on the blood packed ability.
A gym to see the dies or have the bleed status heals this
character for one HP. This is one of those things
where, like it's defining what it does by itself with no
explanation. There's one.
It's like if your melee attacker hits a target with bleed status,
you gain 1 HP, so it's almost like and then you do one damage
and cause bleed. Yeah, it's almost like it
doesn't exist on its own. It only exists when in concert
with something else. Which is what it says.
This is like, unlike other statuses, the status of nothing
on its own. Instead, some other abilities
may activate it. But there's not a ton that
there's two abilities to activate it, so yeah.
An example here or like a like a page number to one of those or
something would have been nice 'cause like right?
I don't I don't mind this like I think it's kind of neat that
like the ability only matters when something triggers it but
it like it's it's I should we shouldn't need a control F to
like try to figure out how it works.
You know what I mean? Yeah.
Anyway, a whole yellow page here with a dope fucking zombie on
it. Cause zombie is an effect.
Make a body test when the status is applied.
On a failure the character has one D6 plus body days to be
blessed or they become a zombie. I like it.
Me too. No automatic statuses so
Delirium, Fear feeble. There's three automatic so for
example, like fear, when active the target must roll 1D6 at the
beginning of the turn, etcetera, etcetera on the side.
Here it says the effects listed previously are typically
imparted by an ability. The statuses listed here are a
bit different. They have an automatically when
the relevant stat drops below 0. Have we ever have we looked at
anything where a stat can decrease like below 0?
Like you can spend all of your shit, but like, at what point?
But it's not like spent. You use your abilities, right?
Like they don't. They don't go down when you use
them. Well, so this is the stats, not
the not the not the attributes. But like there's nothing that
reduces except spending yet, and you can't spend when you have 0.
So I don't understand why it would drop below 0.
Maybe we're missing something where something could
potentially, but this is a lot of writing for like a maybe I
don't, I just don't get it. Like when I read the rules I
never understood a point where you you could reduce the stat
below 0 if there is one. It just needs to be better
explained. Below 0 Yeah OK.
Yeah. Too many keywords too also.
Yeah, but it's fine. I mean, we'll just we'll cruise.
I love this is another one of my favorite pages.
This is one right for the weapons page.
This is page 45. It's this full page, kind of
like Reaper guy with just like the bottom bloody jaw.
Really gorgeous with like the I I love that bluish purple in the
background too. I like the yellow highlight like
there's some like toy off on the side.
So good. I mean that.
That's the thing. Billy Blue's art is, is
fantastic weapon categories. I really like this Unarmed
light, medium, heavy, that's it. And then you just pick what it
is. Who cares?
I love. That's my favorite way to do.
Weapon. Yeah.
It's so good. Yeah.
Perfect. Great.
Thanks. Damages consistent throughout.
That's it. Oh, another great piece that's
like just weird. Tall, skinny man with a giant
axe on a red background. It's stunning.
So they're listed here. So unarmed is weight damage, so
weight is 0, damage is 1, and you get plus one dice when you
use it. Light weapons weight is 1,
damage is 2 + 1 dice. There might be a couple of
things I do like the part about wizard stuff having potentially
like wands and Staffs. Light, medium, Love that medium
weapons weight 2, damage 3, heavyweight 4, damage 5.
And with heavy you only get one attack per turn.
I do like that it basically says like it's such a big thing that
normally like you have the ability to do 2 actions, but you
have to like spend so much of your time like swinging this
thing around or whatever that it takes it both.
I like that because you're also doing fucking five damage per
turn and you don't get any pluses to to your rolls.
You only get those on your own armor and light.
So I dig that. And the dual wheel was only a
light OK armor and shield. There's the thing on the side.
I wrote a note. What does my note say?
Just no. I wrote just no.
So let me read what it says. When you see armor with a
lowercase a, that is referring to the actual piece of armor.
When you see armor with a cat with an uppercase A, that is
referring to the armor stat, which is how many times a piece
of armor or a shield can block damage.
That's why I wrote just now. Come on.
Screams internally. So.
It's like armor, but also it's armor we're referring to.
Just you two different fucking words.
Or if it's a stat quote UN quote like AP Armor points.
Let's see. Oh yeah.
Or use. Yeah.
Uses that. Like, Absolutely, yeah.
Yeah, so like weapons, armors and Shields are things.
When selecting an armor category like medium, heavy, it defines
the things right? So like likewise Shields are the
same. All armor and Shields have a
rating they absorb, so this is not when taking damage.
Characters may reduce armor by 1 to fully ignore a single source
of damage, such as a trapper and attacker spell.
This is kind of like mothership, where you don't take any damage,
but once your armor is broken, you take all the damage, and I I
don't mind this, I think that's really cool.
It's interesting that you're not going to take any damage, so
your armor's gone and then you'll take a ton.
So you're going to like be up, be up, be up and then.
Die and then really be down. Yeah, I'm not.
It doesn't matter. The source of damage would
impart a special status. You can.
Basically it says if you can decide if you want it or not.
Like if you're going to get poisoned from like a claw armor
might block it, but if you're going to get poisoned from a
gas, armor might not do what you want.
That's fine. Armor and shield categories.
It's weird that this is a table ish.
That's kind of different because it's not anywhere else but
light. Armor weight 1.
Armor two. Medium weight 2.
Armor 3. Heavyweight 3.
Armor four. Small shield weight 1.
Armor one. Large shield weight 2.
Armor three. I like it.
It's simple. That's fine.
There's a long example of play, which is fine except that there
are many times where like there's a lot of stuff that I
would have loved to seen in in a in a example of play that aren't
in this example play. Nothing really happens in this.
You cast a spell. I think when the when the actual
combat starts the the example ends.
So there's no critical success, there's no getting luck back.
There's no like it's it's almost all narrative to the end.
I will say there's a section here that doesn't make sense to
me. Abby rules 5D6.
She needs one success, she gets 2.
But like my spirit rolls four, I roll 3.
Long story short the math doesn't math.
Like I think they only have four but it says 5 so that sometime
that they might need a fix and editing.
I don't I'm not going to read it again to get to there.
But I mean it's yeah it's like a very long example play to not.
Oh wait a minute is this example like longer than the paperback
one? I just skipped it.
No, it does say something about a crucial success.
Not only does she get a hit, you do double damage and then roll
initiative. Then the comments aren't you So
bestiary beasts, They happen. They have ranks, they have
attributes. I wrote notes, The note says
scroll through the enemy slime and now we'll get to that.
So in general, Munch's rank is a clue to how big of a threat they
are. So if you want a more
challenging adversary, look further down the list.
It's the G Ms. responsibility to scale enemies appropriately to
the needs of the table. My note was not very OSR.
So then it says however, not every fight is winnable.
Blah blah blah. Oh I I I put the word
suggestions in my note. Says too many suggestions.
People change what they want to change, and if they require your
permission then you need to only say it once.
At this point it feels like hedging and a lack of
conviction. Damn, I was on a lot of coffee.
That's my bad. So basically there's a table
here and I like it. Bad guys are ranked zero to four
and then they have ranges for mind, body, and spirit. 0 is
fodder. Rank one is typical.
Rank two is tough, Rank three is challenging.
Rank 4 is a big bad. I love this in a system that I'm
working on. I I do very similar things.
That's one thing I liked about TLD.
There's things in it that are exactly what I would do because
I have. I'm literally play testing those
things. This is one of them.
I really like that you can just be like I have a rank 3 baddie
hear what the all the stats could derive to be.
The only thing is like, they're all the, they're all exactly the
same. Like there's no mix up.
Yeah, you could just actually just put like one ability, yeah,
one column or two columns. Like it's rank and their
abilities. Yeah, if it's not gonna be
different, you don't need 4 columns to say all the same
stuff. And then we get to the bestiary,
which suddenly switches to a completely different font.
It has multiple fonts or typefaces in the same thing and
then this the typeface used in like the body of this I it does
not feel like a very pretty body text and I I don't like it even
more than I didn't like the other one like am I wrong?
Like what? Like this font?
Actually this font I do not like this one I did.
I know this was like, Nah, I don't like this font so.
Yeah, it's. I will say a really sick art
piece is coming up. Yeah, yeah.
Oh, my note says I hate the layout.
So yeah, I just don't like this typeface.
This is that Michael Harmon Gobbo's art.
Yeah, fucking. Cool.
Yeah. I really like this.
The adventure in the, in the, in the back of the book talks about
gobos and stuff like that. So they're really cool.
They're basically, you know, badass goblins and shit, bite,
kick, slash, you know, everything.
So the notes that I was referencing are like slime,
right? So multiple times it says that
the it's player facing roles. Players roll defense tests.
So I don't understand. There's a bunch that have this
like dodge ability. It says plus 1D on defense
tests. So the slime is dodging.
The slime doesn't make defense tests.
No, it's -1 D on the whoever's defending against it.
So that's what you think this means?
Absolutely means. We established earlier that if
they get a plus 1D to something, that actually means -1 D.
So it specifically said in there attacks.
Oh, did it OK. Yeah it specifically said in
there attacks but like I don't so let's run with what you're
saying though just so we can math was was we can brain it out
dodge. Right.
Colon plus 1D on defense tests. I don't see how you could
possibly. So you're saying that that would
mean -1 D on attack rolls? I'm That's what I'm going with.
That would be such a ridiculous that that would be so
incompatibly on like just not good.
I don't know anything else I could say about that.
Yeah. And the problem is that like the
establishing that like plus 1 -, 1 earlier, it now makes it more
confusing when trying to parse this out because you're like
wait OK is this the same thing? Even though it doesn't say
attack, you know he's that earlier when it said attack
wrong. What section was that in?
Actually, I'm gonna look. Dude, I don't even know.
But to me what I think this is, is what I said before where it
feels like they wrote a game and then they said let's simplify
this mechanic with some new school mechanics and then just
forgot to fix some of it. Because.
To me this is a bad guy that before they decided to do player
facing rolls they had good guy rolls and bad guy rolls and the
bad guy would roll with a more of a dodge and they never came
back and fixed it to say they have a dodge ability.
Player gets -1 on attack rolls and if if if the fix for that
was that one little line that says where I say plus 1D for the
for the for the bad guys you get -1 D for you I think it would be
in the defense section under attack.
It would be in the attack section in like the the
paragraph above the blue box. OK, I'm there now.
Let's look. So we're looking, this is where
I think you are looking. Yeah.
Where is it? Well it's somewhere.
It's somewhere if an attacker possibly for example when
attacking, when rolling to defend for example a magical
bolt. Remember that players.
Yeah it was it's, it's, it's somewhere in here.
We we said it before but like that's oh wait no that's a -, 1
D to partial cover for example when attacking what's?
Funny because there is a another example of a -, 1 D in there
which is like it's the partial cover one.
So I'm like, OK, so we could just said -1 D this entire time?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
OK. No, that's pairing.
Yeah. So I mean, but even if that was
the case it shouldn't be this difficult to to figure it out.
Oh, it should not anyway. So yeah that's that's a problem
is I feel like like there that that there's a lot of bad guys
that have dodge that it doesn't make any sense to to either if
if the point is that they have a + 1 so you get a - 1.
I found that. That's ridiculous.
Where is it? It's under.
Players almost always test. The example given is that an NPC
might have an ability that grants plus 1D to its tax, so
it's not hard like it's only attacking.
This is just an example so that dodge I maintain at that plus 1D
dodge means -1 D to defending for the player.
Which is bad. Bad.
Like, yeah, I mean words. It took a words out and.
It's in, it's in and it's in an example that doesn't even talk
about defending. For example, an NPC might have
ability that grants plus 1D to its attacks.
Since the defending PC is the 1 rolling to determine, they roll
1 less dice to reflect. That's.
So that's not that's gosh, I'm trying to be nice.
That's bad. It's not good.
Don't do that. Fix that.
Make that go away. There's a lot of bad guys and a
lot of them are really cool. I I just got hung up on that but
like imbued slime slam dissolved again dodge again dodge bites.
Like they're really cool. I do like it.
I think that the bad guys are are simple like they give you
HP, rank, armor, what they look like and then why and how they
do their attacks which I really like and then three quick
attacks. I think this is a great way to
do Obesiary. It's great.
It's a fat bestiary it's very long and and it's good so we'll
cruise through that and then we're basically done.
In the back you get character examples kind of so you have
like Berserker let's say this is not sure what kind of character
to play here some fun ideas. So what what it gives you is a
cool little piece of art. So for the Berserker, it gives
you a little line that says a bloody death is a highest honor.
And then it gives you the abilities that they would take
to make the Berserker, which is fine.
It doesn't give any of the stats.
It doesn't give any of that. It's just like the ability is to
kind of give you the vibe, which is fine, that's cool.
The blood mage servant of the ancient spider queen.
It's got like spider eyes and a little like, you know, the, the,
the fucking, what's it called? Black Widow kind of symbol.
Yeah, like the time thing. The hourglass.
Yeah, And then the abilities. That's cool.
Barehead. Oh, the bare hand brawler.
And you, buddy. Look at you.
Bite. Kick.
Smasher, Pete. Weapons.
Who needs him? Spell sling your divine knight.
You know, cool. It's whatever.
A weird monster maker. There's a cool, very kind of,
like, like, legally distinct beholder creature here.
Then there's a bunch of tables. There is a weird monster maker.
So you roll twice on the first column.
Why don't you just rip this out real quick, Yeah?
Absolutely. Let's just.
Make one, then we'll be done. So it's D66.
Yeah, so on the first column you got a 13.
Twice. OK.
And 31. OK.
Nice roundness to that. Armored.
Freezing. OK.
And then a 36, which is a lobster, which is perfect.
It's an ice lobster. It's got armor because that's a
shell, obviously. And then with I'm rolling a lot
of threes. I'm trying to get out of the
threes. Oh my God, was is my roller
broken? There we go 16 A pair of glowing
eyes that encircle it. Yep, Cool.
That's cool. Yep, they're great.
Yeah, they're great lists. I mean 3D60 sixes for this.
There's loot table, so there's D6 potion, superior Shields.
There's a great art piece for like, how the heck do I roll AD
66 And it's this weird, like, fucking demon thing?
And it's really. Neat.
I do. I do like that.
The D66 loot generator. Lot of really cool loot in here.
Cool weapon generator, D6. So the whole back is basically
just that. Character creator, so you can
quick make like it. It's character creator, but this
is just like stuff. So like possession, D66
possessions, quirks, personal philosophies.
This is a way to like round out your character.
Then there's an adventure. Happy birthday goblin king.
It's 8 little rooms for like a gobbo goblin king kind of
situation. Happy birthday to Goblin King
Big AB, which is this guy, which this, this dude was used in some
of the promo art as well. And then that's the adventure.
And we don't talk about adventures on the show.
And then in the back you get a terminology page, which it did
reference in the beginning, but it literally is just like
XPPCNPC. It's it's super basic, which is
fine for new players, totally fine.
And then there's yeah, then there's a character sheet.
That's nice. It is nice.
It's nice character. Yeah, so where it says Level 3
perk plus one mana, it's +2 because it's Yeah yeah.
So the character sheet in the back of the book is wrong
because you get a total of three mana and luck.
You get +2 bonus at Level 3, so that should be 3 two mana.
Level 3 perk should be +2 mana, not plus one.
And then that's it. Big QR code in the back so you
can support more Billable's work.
So that's this game. Let's jump to reviews.
Boom. We're there.
Oh, it's in a book review. Weird.
It's 100 pages. I know.
It's just like we haven't done that in a while.
I know we had so many zines. You were messaging me like, we
should go faster. I'm like, bro, it's not a Zine.
It's 100 pages. Like, I think we did good.
Yeah, about an hour and a half. Yeah, So for that, for God.
We haven't done a book review in so fucking long.
So for those that don't know, it's five attributes or well,
you can derive stats from those if you really want, that are
worth up to 10 points each. We give points to shit to give
some quantification to our bullshit opinions.
Art and layout is the art and the layout usability is how
usable something is. The rule set is if it's adapted,
rule set how well it's adapted. If it's new, how you know?
Do we like it? Do we feel that it is good?
Originality is exactly what it sounds like, and value is the
bang for your buck when you when you when you buy this thing.
So, art and layout Thoughts. The art's great.
Yeah. I love the art.
I don't think it suffers for art at all.
I think Billy Blue style suffuses everything.
Oh, I fucking forgot too. I backed out the tier where
Billy drew inside my book. Oh, nice.
Cool. Wait, I'll go back to a bigger
page real quick. So yeah, I'm trying to get,
trying to get it. It's cool.
It's just like Wizard Guy it. Really likes sword planted in
the ground with Moss growing all over it.
It's really cool. And then on the side this says
thanks for support, Hashtag TLDRPG Billy Blue sig there.
So yeah, this is cool. This is why it took us a little
longer to get around to it too, because I've had the paperback
one for a long time, but Billy got these, drew in them and sent
them out. So that was really cool.
That was nice. It was nice to get that as a
tier. That's a cool reward.
I really like any time that creators do that.
So art and layout, again, like you said it art's great.
Doesn't hurt for art. Billy styles through the entire
thing. Michael Harmon's a great artist.
It's cool to see a piece or two from them and their art solid.
Can't see anything like that. Layout No.
Yeah, it's fun. I mean I think your your point
about the third column makes a lot of sense and I think there
are some typeface changes that you find grading that.
I even I know this and I'm the person that wouldn't notice the
things like that. Like I'm I'm that guy.
So both guys are in this room and then we both noticed.
So not great. What are you thinking?
I mean, this is one of those weird ones, since we're doing
art and layout where the art's great and the layout to me is
bad if I went and it's only bad because it's poorly used.
I really like that extra column on the side, but there are a lot
of times where what's written in it didn't need to be there.
Or there's stuff written in the body text that could have been
there and the whole thing could have been 30 pages shorter by
not having that that whole. Because there were there were
times, I think the the longest one I counted was maybe 3 pages
worth nothing in that column at all.
And then the fourth page had like one line of less than 10
words and then another empty page.
So there's literally like you're talking like 567 pages in a row
where a third of the page is empty like just just because of
the delay out choice. To me it was just a poor choice.
And I don't understand the use of the blue, the blue boxes for
notes when you have an entire column on the side like it
didn't make any sense to me. I just think yeah I think the
typeface changes were are were just inconsistent and yeah if I
was just going by layout it would be honestly be like like a
three or four. I just.
Think I was thinking A4 for layout and like A8 for art, you
know? Yeah.
So let's average that to. 6. I mean, the art really pulls it
up and it makes me it. Really does, yeah.
It makes me not want to give it that high of a score because of
of how much I dislike the layout.
And again, it's not that it's not completely legible, it's
just the the use that it seems like they were going for was
just poorly, poorly. Right.
Usability. Fine.
Yeah. I mean, it's unfortunate that it
refers to page lines so often. ISME like inline page
references? And they aren't hyperlinked, but
bookmarks are great and they're plentiful.
The table content is hyperlinked.
There is a list of terms in the back for newer people into the
RPG space. There's some good tables in the
back too for rounding out a character, and I would say that
putting the rule set 30 pages in it does actually hamper the
usability of of this as a game and system.
Yeah, what are you thinking? Yeah, I mean, I agree with all
of that. I also think that, yeah, I
think, I think the digital tools for the most part, obviously we
would love it. I wouldn't mind the lack of MPH
hyperlinks or inline hyperlinks as much, except they use them a
lot, which is great for direction.
Yeah, it's great for direction, but if you're gonna put it into
your PDF, it would be really nice to have those hyperlinks.
But to me that's like the I personally find it necessary,
but in this course of what we use for scoring, that's the one
I find the least in. Like I give the least.
It's, I know that's one of the hardest ones to do.
So I weigh that a little bit less than like even just having
a fucking like like hyperlink, table of contents and bookmarks.
So the bookmarks are fantastic, they're very thorough.
So it doesn't bother me as much. I will say, like you said, there
there are. You don't know for 28 pages that
it's a dice ball game. It's never mentioned anywhere
that it's a dice ball game. Yeah, you there is.
Even in the test, there's that random part where like there's a
a very important part of the test where you always were at
least one die and it's like the end of the next page or like 2
pages later that should have been put.
There's a lot of stuff that I would have rearranged to help
with usability. There's things like bleed where
like we had to dig around, try to figure out what it meant.
To me that's a usability issue. I think the layout itself is a
usability issue because that's where you could have like
written a lot of that stuff in. Like anytime it references
another page, if there's a whole blank column on the side, you
can give like a little quick, a little quick bit and then say
for more go to this page, you know, I mean, I just think the
layout is something that should have helped the usability and it
hurt it. I don't think it's bad.
I think it's it's pretty average.
I'm probably about like a like a six for this too.
I was about to say I'm probably about five for this, so I'm.
Good with the five I'm good. With the five I again I yeah,
the art really pulled up the one above it.
Rule set this is. Hard.
I I like a loving, but the rule set?
I like the dice pool system. I don't.
I I kind of like the drive stats as like a pool that you spanned
as a resource. I don't love how.
I mean obviously we don't like how luck is regenerated, but I
like the idea of like making abilities for like a lighter
weight game and like, yeah, you can just do an ability.
Like I think that was a cool addition to this.
And like I we we've played several dice pool systems now
and I have one and it's like, I don't have that.
I'm not going to add it to mine, but I think it's cool.
Yeah, I think a lot of us explained fairly poorly and I
think there's too many keywords, like, I mean, we could stripped
out a ton of these words and just called the thing the thing
for the rules that I'm probably actually like about a six,
honestly. Yeah, I yeah, yeah, probably.
I mean, that's the thing. This is this is one of those
tough ones because I do I really do like the bones of this for
all the reasons that you said. But like my thing is like you
barely even need stats for this because you could just have like
your attributes and then say that like you're you get just
like pluses at like so if so for example like like mana you get
plus one mana to start and you spend it right, you could just
have mind and you spend your mind points like it doesn't make
any difference. Like the the the derive stat is
using the same number. You know what I mean like.
Whenever you make a mind, well, if you're spending mind, do you?
Whenever you make a mind roll, are you still rolling all of
your mind? Or is the do this go away?
Because the nice thing about the drive thing is they create these
pools that slowly drain so you run out of ability points.
Like you don't want to run out of your stats, right?
Yeah. Like, no, you're right.
You're right, you're right, you're right, you're right.
Yeah. I mean you could though.
I mean that's a very caring ish thing to do and a very into the
odd like actually using your stats.
But no, I I agree with you. But like, again, so I like the
bones. I like the dice pool.
I like that there's just bad applications to a lot of it.
Like, yeah, poor, poor explanation of defense roles,
poor explanation with like a lot of stuff in the Bestiary.
That's thing is I think I I like all the bones and I dislike a
lot of the flesh. You know what I mean?
Yeah, so I'm probably at about a six, two, like again, like this
is one of those games that I I really think like a two.
EI is a game that I would really, really enjoy.
I see a really, really good game in here.
I just think there's a lot of it's it's it's extremely
inelegant and I feel like there were a lot of choices made where
there was like, this is the idea I want.
So I'm putting it in and didn't fix the problem.
They just put in what they wanted to put in or they changed
their mind and didn't fix all the things they should have
changed with it. So I'm about a six two
originality. Yeah.
So it's. Yes, it's.
I don't know why I just turned the sound on for our stream.
It does. It's not really like derived
from any setting. It doesn't really reference any
setting there. There isn't a lot about it that
is like an original concept to this game.
Mm hmm. So I don't know.
This is one of those ones where like, and again, the people out
there who love to talk and hear themselves talk, call it
whatever the fuck you want. A game is a game.
The book contains what I would call a system, right?
To me, this is a system. This isn't what what I would
call a game like. It's a game in that there are
rules and stuff like that, but like to me like a quote UN quote
full game. There's like, I would call and
again this is a game, but to me like the full part of it is
something that also comes with a little bit of setting and stuff
like that too, like a Merck Borg or like a like a like even into
the odd or or. Yeah, there's not even really an
implied setting into. This, this is like this is like
Cairn and nave to me. Not none of those have setting,
they're just systems nave to me. I haven't seen to eat.
I mean there's more to it too, but like those are so I I would
lump this in with with nave and Cairn and like derf and stuff
like that, where the implication is you got swords and Shields
but other than that it's just a system, you know what I mean?
So. So originally in the rules then.
Yeah, I think that it. Obviously there's nothing new,
but I think there's a really cool, I think there are some
different ways that things are used in an interesting, fun ways
because like, like you said, like what?
What? What?
What's the closest system to this that you can think of?
Exactly. That's my point.
Like, I really couldn't, Penguin.
You know, you're right. Yeah.
So, and I like it. I mean, once again, I like the
bones of it so. Yeah, I I do enjoy the bones.
I think the dice pool's great. I think the abilities are great.
I have the ability to add actual point values and stuff like
that. I think it would really shine a
lot more. Yeah.
I think the core of this is really good.
What do you think of her originality then?
I. Guess 6.
I think it's 6 is good for this. Yeah.
Value. So on drive through RPG the PDF
is $10 and again this is 100 page PDF.
The print on demand PDF hardcover standard color, 35
bucks. I'm gonna do it.
Yeah. Wow, that's incredibly
affordable. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, yeah, I mean Death in space is $35.00, but like
that's, I mean that's one of the rare ones, so it's just really
good. Yeah, that one.
I also, I think I've said I'm like, man, this is incredibly
affordable. For like a $50 book, yeah, that
should be like a $50 book. But I mean 100 the thing that so
you don't get setting with this, but like on top of the rule set.
The the loot tables are cool. The B series huge.
The monster generator is really neat.
So you do get a lot of tools with the system, like the system
does come with cools. It's really neat.
You do get an adventure in it, which is great.
So in this you get the rule set. You get the adventure.
Oh, with with the map. There is a, there is a a map
that comes within the PDF stuff. You get the BCRI, the optional
premade characters tables for rolling.
Yeah. So you get you get all the stuff
that we talked about. So I think it's fine.
I think it's, I think it's, it's I think $35 for this and a
hardback. I think it's interesting that
there is no Unless I specifically clicked and that
there's different things, I don't see a soft cover option,
which is interesting. There's a pay what you want
character sheet, which is cool. But yeah, I don't see a soft
cover option. I just see the hardcover option.
So that that would raise the price.
I mean I think that this as soft cover at like you know 2025
bucks would be more affordable, but I think it's fine.
I think I'm probably at like a where do you where are you at
for this? A six or seven maybe.
Yeah, I'm probably at a six for this too, because, I mean,
there's, I mean, I think there is like maybe one other
adventure, but the there's not like a lot of extra.
I mean it, it did just come out, you know, a couple months ago,
right? So that's it.
That is TLDRPG. This is another one of those
games very similar to mecha concrete, where also a dice pool
system. So dice pool system.
So that'll be a 29 I think would really benefit from a second
edition with, I think, art fantastic.
I think a new layout and a fine tooth comb through the rules to
to fix some like kind of like glaring mistakes that I think
are glaring. I think that I think the
abilities have to be a mistake. I genuinely think those have to
be a mistake. No, they they genuinely have to
be a mistake. I don't.
I think that like if they fix that, if they fix luck, if they
explain things a little bit better and relayed it out, I
think this would the all of these points.
This could probably shoot up by a good like 8 + 8 points at
least. Yeah, with just.
Fixing the errors that are in it and and and changing the layout
a little bit I think would would easily jump a lot of these
points from sixes up to sevens and some of them into eights and
that's TLDRPG from Billy Blue. We'll make sure all the links
are down below to Billy's art, which is fantastic to the game
and and yeah, that's all we got, what we have coming up.
What do we have coming up? Tell me.
So if you're listening to this now, there's no way I'm going to
get this episode out today. So go watch our interview.
That is going to happen on Friday.
We are going to be talking to Crescent Chimera for Astro
Prisma. My goodness, did that project
come out of fucking nowhere? I know I would.
I'm so excited to talk to them because who are they?
Where did this come? Yeah, what's?
Insane. It's looks gorgeous.
They've done all of it, you know, Apparently, like all the
layout, all the writing, all the art.
It looks beautiful. They sent me an asset package.
It's got like 3D, like moving gifts and renders and shit, like
the quality of everything beginning to end for someone
that literally just like popped about a fucking nowhere.
This project looks absolutely stunning and I'm so excited to
like you to say, like figure out who the fuck this person is
nowhere and just my gosh, it's it's it's beautiful.
A one person team doing all of that is insane.
And to have so much of it looks like it's done before the game's
even out is crazy. And then on Monday we're going
to be doing the second part of our trophy side quest.
We already did Trophy Dark. We're going to be doing trophy
gold. We're going to be continuing the
the adventure kind of from a warm and pleasant home into our
adventure. It'll be another Michael Van
Vleet adventure into trophy gold.
Same crew is back Monday, and then next Friday we're going to
be having Christian Sorrell meet Castle on to do an actual play
of Tacticians of Om. The game that they are.
Yeah, you can snag it right now, but it's they're they're they're
wolves upon the coast. It's funding it.
Funding it. Yeah.
What's he? I love calling it that.
It makes me go. Wow, would you do that?
Why would you say that? What's it?
I know it is, but like why? It's fantastic.
You can go get it now. It is.
It's a work in progress that's like monthly updates, but it's
playable now. It's beautiful.
There's more art rolling out for it and Meet Castle is one of the
the best people in the scene and and is a is a fantastic game.
I got to play test it. We've talked to them on the show
about it, so very excited to have them on.
And then the week after that, Jert is back for For our Not Cat
Chats episode 3. Just a slow couple weeks for us,
you know? You know, just stacking
everything in. Other projects to look at.
Go back. Karen Box at 2 E from Space
Penguin. Go back.
Gardens of yen like Soul Muppet. Yeah.
And and that's what we got. That's our episode.
We will see you tomorrow. Same time to talk with Astro
Prisma or to talk about Astro Prisma.
That's what I got. I will see you later buddy.
Excuse me? Bye, bye.