Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll podcast.
My name. That's right.
And I'm stone watcher but all my friends call me Vulture.
There you go. And today, today we are looking
at we're going to be going over a a weird hope, A weird hope,
not grim dark post apocalyptic game eco mofos from friends of
the show, David Blandy and Daniel Locke.
We actually talked about this a while ago when it was funding we
had, we had both of those gents on.
We played it briefly because we won the game very quickly.
Can't often win the game, but in one shot we, we, I think we we
ran across a tile that dropped us into the one way to get off
of what we were doing. I will say that we are
consummate winners though, you know.
Yeah, we live for the West here on the Weekly Show podcast
What's up? But yeah, this is a a fun,
interesting game we're looking at.
There's a there's a whole I just tweeted this and and forgot what
I what I said about it, But the the the whole string is this is
a a mid future weird hope eco punk ruin delving survival game.
This, yeah, it was on Kickstarter a little bit ago.
It funded for, gosh, almost 25,000.
That's not doll hairs, that is pounds, which I have no idea
what that is in American with 633 backers.
As I said before, we have the the fellers on from the the copy
paste. I believe it's a copy paste
collective is what's by the way that's.
Almost $33,000 Almost. That's, that's sick.
That's dope. This is a fun one.
This is a good one. And both of us only have one
copy of the book, right? Yeah, yeah.
So I think I have 4:00. So for those that don't know,
some of those creators works, David Bland, David Blandy
actually prior to economics had put out Lost Eons, the game that
we've been meaning to go over for a long time.
And I have for those in podcast lines, you can't see this.
But for those on YouTube, I'm holding up two box sets of it
because there was a AUK version and American version and of
course I had to have both. I might have only.
I might have only got 1, but the UK version was the black one and
the American version was like the tan 1.
So of course I had to get the black one of.
Course. And if you yeah, I know, right,
if you read lost eons, you will understand kind of like where
eco mofos came out of the whole like weird hope post
apocalyptic, because this is very much like a lost in the
urban. It's like a solar punk game and
but as part of the Kickstarter, which Hunter alluded to, there
is the original version of the game, this beautiful hardback
book, roughly 166 pages with a a punk with a Mohawk on it on the
cover of this. And then there is a version with
a punk girl on it with blue hair and a grimace and tattoos all
over their face like earth 1st and weird hope and whatnot.
That's version #2 The first one has a like a purple blue spine.
The second one has a pink spine and and back.
The third version yes cuz there's three different art
versions has it's my favorite version.
It's a very trippy like there's these figures that are like
flipping on it and there's this like Roach creature in the back
that reminds me of Terraformars, which is like a a fucked up
manga anime that I really love. So this is my favorite version.
It's got this kind of like burnt orange cover and that's three
versions. So let's grab the 4th version.
There is a black and white spiral bound version so the
covers are still color. It's the it's the original pink
Mohawk punk but inside is black and white and again it is spiral
bound which this is such a perfect table version.
Is hey, you know what a spiral bound book lays flat on the
table so. Oh God I wish every book, every
hardback I had also had a spiral bound version of it.
Fantastic, you have room. At home for that you have room
in your shelves for everyone in the.
No, I have so many. I have so many books on the
floor before that that not not, no, not at all.
And then that's that's not all that came to Kickstarter, but
also there's the Ikomobos patch says Ikomobos on it, which is
great. I got two different bookmarks
and I love these. It's got the how to play like
super basic rules on that. We have a couple of of games
that came with that. But I love that when there's a
bookmark of the base rules, there are two encounters from
David and Daniel Sinistein and Rakas with our pamphlets.
And then on top of that, there are 123455 adventures that came
with it as well from guest writers.
They're all roughly like 8:00 to 10:00-ish pages long.
We have to put away a sword from Zedek Sioux.
We have into the Ant Lions den from Samantha Lee, we have a BIS
protocol from Logan Dean, friend of the show Logan Dean, we have
a hole in the ground from David Blandy, and then we have the
silo from Eco over at the Lost Bay.
And wait a minute, we're still not fucking done because there
is a whole another little mini Zine of solo rules.
Eco Mofos solo from David Blandy and Chalka Lips.
Brandon, you a fantastic artist and solo game aficionado.
So a whole solo pamphlet for that.
And then on top of that, as part of the Kickstarter, I also
snagged Helms of the Multiverse from Daniel Locke, which is the
whole book of Helms of the Multiverse.
And then Lone Eons, which is the solo Zine of Lost Eons.
So quite a quite a stacked Kickstarter.
That's pretty cool. Yeah, I did not get the big
Kickstarter package and I do regret it.
I do want the patch. I really want.
I like the art cover that you is your favorite a lot.
I mean they're all good. Daniel Walk did not hold back on
the art in this thing. It definitely, it definitely
goes off real hard it. Like super hard.
It it's really very good and going through this, we'll see.
There's a bunch of art, there's a bunch of style choices that
are good. Yeah, and I love that label.
Version man. Bro, the, the the the spiral
bound one is it's it's fantastic.
It's so it's so great. And I will say I do love that
not only did they do a new cover for each version of the
hardback, but like the spine and back of the book or a different
color for each one too, instead of just just the art, they like
redid the whole cover front and back.
And that was such a good choice. They made a lot of fantastic
choices with the Kickstarter all the way through.
And I don't remember how much it, excuse me, how much it cost,
but I don't remember feeling bad about it.
So it must not have been that much for the the tear that I
got. And I'm not going to go look
because I don't want to be reminded of of how much money I
spent. But yeah, so that's, that's all
the physical stuff. And I have to show off show off
for a second for for I'm using chat.
Let me put this stack of books off to the side and we will get
we'll get into this game. So let me jump to the cover and
then we'll do our our normal. So this version actually let me
do a let me let me get the whole boom.
That's a whole cover there for those in in the Youtubes, those
in podcast land. Imagine, if you will, a punk,
but seen from the back so you can see their their battle
jacket, right? The head turned to the left in
profile so that their pink Mohawk is up to the sky, says
spaceship Earth tattooed on the side of their head with a
lightning bolt. And then there are a number of
patches on the back. Weird Hope.
One that says home with a picture of earth on it.
Some skulls. Some people like dancing around
in a circle. What does that say?
The Lonely Mountain? Yeah, on it some.
Some pins like happy faces and things like that.
So great. Cover.
I will say, as much as I like the alternative art covers, this
was the correct choice for the actual cover.
I will say yes, as the primary cover, this is a great shot.
This is a great choice. Yep, Yeah, I think it says, it
says the game the most, I think. Yeah, yeah.
I just also just like it. The image I think is very like,
it's bright. It's like attractive to look at.
I very much enjoy this piece. I know at one point I think that
you could get a print through the Kickstarter of this cover.
And that's one thing I'm like, damn, I should have gotten that
because this would be a great poster to have framed on my
poster wall. Well I mean you can just get a
high def image from David and just like go to fucking staples
and print a poster. I could, you're right.
Yeah, I do. I will say that's probably why I
like the Rochi 1 the most. For those that I don't know, go
to our Instagram and stuff like that.
We do have an Instagram and that's where we post like the
scores and everything. Someone actually quick tangent,
I know we don't do that very often in the show, but someone
actually commented on one of our show like, do you have like a
like an excel sheet that's got the scores for all the games?
And I was like, that'd probably be a good idea.
I'm never gonna do it. That'd be a good idea thought.
Of that before and I was like, I'm not doing that.
Yeah, I'm not fucking do it at this point.
We have like what, 170, almost 175 episodes deep not doing it,
but all of the scores of every game we've ever done are on our
Instagram and I'd love finding like a random image.
It is not the cover art, but is very like an essence of the game
image to put as the background for those.
And the if that cover art was in the book, the the one that I
like with the Roach man on it and not a cover.
That's exactly the kind of image that I would put on those back
the Instagram page and that those are the ones that kind of
speak to me. Those like weird random ones.
Anyway, I think the only thing as I wish that those other two
covers were also in like the PDF files because I would love to
just have those as like art pieces in there as well.
Yeah, I can see that I. Think I have them because they
sent us like an asset folders for when we did when we had them
for the show. Absolutely, yeah.
Yeah, but but regardless, anyway, so so this is the cover
and it slaps and Daniel did amazing art.
So it is written and laid out by David and then the art is all
done by Daniel Luck real quick as we get into this initial
thoughts. What liners, What you what you
got? This is a really good hunter
game. Yeah, Yeah.
You know, it's like sort of my favorite games all you know.
Also the vibes are good good vibes.
But mechanically so so mechanically this game is is
great. I really enjoy it a lot.
The vibes though, I I enjoy. I think it's great, but
obviously it's it's more of a you game than it is a big game
like Weird Hope. All together a a good hunter
game. You know, yeah, because my post
apocalypse is very much more grim and literally one of the
things says weird hope not grim dark.
And I'm like, oh, I would reverse those for me personally.
But I still think it it's it slaps like crazy, you know, to
play the hell out of this game. But but yeah, mechanically this
is like a mix of some of our favorite games, which is really,
really fantastic. It feels like, I don't know,
we'll get, we'll get into it more, but go on right through
the beginning. First of all, love the maps like
right off the bat. Dude, immediately these are.
This is a great stylistic choice for how to depict your like
little map segments. I can't tell you how much I
enjoy how these look. What's interesting is like in
the PDF, I'm like, why are those so early?
And then I realizing in the book it's like, oh, they're the end
pages. It's such a great choice for end
pages of a book because these do come up later in the book.
So for those in Pakistan, they can't see this.
Basically there are these kind of like isometric squares that
are basically like a point of a point crawl or like a, a square
that would be in like a hex crawl and you would roll on
those. And as we go to the next pages
here, so these say like a, you know, map A1 bunker, a map like
B6 or whatever, you Scroll down and there's like a list of A
123456 and B 123456. And there's a little like
there's 66 circles, right? It's 222 columns of three and
there's lines connecting them, either solid lines or diagonal
lines like all in different varying forms, the door on one
side and A and a door on the other leading in and out.
And then you realize when you scroll up that each of those
isometric sections is one of these six sections.
So you basically make like a six point map by just putting these
together. And then in the previous ones
where they're actually are the world tables, each one like is
drawn up artistically like insanely well, like the one of
the very first ones, the top right by one, the a dark forest,
an herb bear bellows. And it literally has this like
fucked up forest and this giant pink bear just like standing up
in the middle of it or the the one to the left of it, the skull
of a huge beast poking from the mud.
And it's exactly what it is. The arts fantastic.
But yeah, like the style where it has like the path, secret
path, crossroads, all of that, the way that this whole page
goes down to that tiny little drawing of like those three
circles. So fucking good.
I agree. I mean, I was there for quite
some time. I was not even.
Vigorously. Vigorously so getting right into
it credits we got we got, like I said, Danderlockus art writing
layer on design is David Blendy editing from eco publishing.
It's it's a copy paste Co-op. What did I say before?
I don't even remember. Paste press I don't know but
it's copy paste Co-op. Co-op I started to see whatever
I said before. What I meant was Copy Paste
Co-op crowdfunded on Kickstarter with 63633 Mofo Mofo and backers
and supported by the Arts Council of England.
I like the top here. Says Into the Odd is where it
starts. Chris McDowell is the original
creator of Into the Odd. Is that hyperlinked?
Yes it is you sons of bitches you know and you knew if they
came to the table with an UN hyperlinked thing we would chew
them apart, especially after they came on the show.
It says the principal spells and beast area are based on Cairn by
Yohi Gall layout is based by on Clayton.
Notice Dean's classic explorer template and everything is
CCBYSA and then you can use it for whatever you want except no
bigotry, no AI and give credit. You know what that's like just
those three things to live your life by is no bigotry, no AI and
give credit, you know, and then a lot of inspirations.
Mythic Bachelorland Cairn solo rules from from Chow 1000 of
delights bastards Lorne song of the bachelor from zedek mouse
sweater derf meteor from David Lombardi which is 1 I I I I
talked to you about it as one I want to go for.
Just talk about. This yeah 24 XX from Jason Tochi
is another one that we need to go over.
I don't know, notes from Nikade. I definitely have to check out
that. I've looked to see Monolith
before by says Dungeons blogs from Marshall B Vault so far and
obviously and then the Ire from Mccarring.
So the good stuff there, a lot of good stuff out there.
Amazing stuff. So contents wise, it says use
the color tabs on each page to navigate back here, which is
fantastic. So the headers of each of these
sections in the book, we have the basics, character creation,
the rules, Luton stuff, Essence adventuring and factions and
jobs in solo. They're all given a color.
And if you actually look at the side of the book, it turned out
really well. There's a tab on every page and
you can actually see where those color tabs are on on the spine
of the book. So if you know that it's a blue
section, you can easily at least flip to the blue section by just
flipping to where it shows blue on the side of the book, which
is fantastic. Troika does a thing like that,
but they actually make the entire page like a lightish blue
or a lightish pink. So I really love that as like a
subtle thing where you can just put a color on the side of the
page and and have like a really great reference.
That's like basically the best way to like hyperlink a book I
would think is to just like color code the side of the
pages. And what's also nice is that the
book has a silk ribbon for bookmarks and it came with two
bookmarks as well. So you can easily, even if
you're not doing the digital version, navigating the physical
is actually tremendously easier because you can flip back and
forth between 3 spots endlessly, you know?
Endlessly, you know, and then so so let's continue to look here.
So are there bookmarks in the PDF?
Oh, surprisingly no. There are not bookmarks, but I
will say that like because of the colored tabs.
Yes. They're on every page.
It's just so easy. I mean, because I was going back
and forth reading this, it's so easy to just fly back and forth.
I don't think it really affects me very much.
No it doesn't I just wanted to see something bro.
OK so the tabs in I didn't even notice this because I read the
physical of this the tabs I would did for it.
The tabs in the PDF are hyperlinked.
The tabs are hyperlinked. Yeah, they send you back to the
because I first saw there was no bookmarks and I was like, that
kind of sucks. And then I read the color tabs
in each page to navigate back. And then I clicked.
I was like, oh, and it took me back.
I was like, oh, that's very good.
This is very good. Hey, all of you hyperlinking
stuff. Here's another great example how
to do it right. Hyperlinking to the chapter is
super helpful, and I'm very pro that.
But having anything on the page that you can Click to take you
back to the contents table? Wildly, wildly helpful.
Because as all of us know, you don't always read these things
linearly. Surely if you're using them as a
tool or you're making stuff. So yeah, big, big ups to them on
that. Yeah, big UPS.
Yeah, I didn't even realize that.
Well, cuz I just scrolled over the red and so you guys, so here
now you can see my hand and I realized, shit, the red's
hyperlinked. Does that mean that like all of
these are hyperlinked? And it is if you scroll to any
page and you click the tab, it'll take you back to that
color tab on the type of contents page.
Fantastic. But I also do love it says on
the thing, use the color tabs on each side to navigate.
Like there are times where things will be well, hyperlinked
and I love that. But if there's actually a page
that says click here for this, click here for that, that's
really cool too. So love that.
Obviously we have to stop and pause and talk about how great
the hyperlinks are and everything because that's
basically what we're known for, for the people that actually
care. So we gotta, we gotta get props.
So otherwise it's also an extremely well hyperlinked
thing. Every single thing in the table
of contents is hyperlinked and and then we start with A2 page
comic. Well what the fuck this is so
cool. It's so good.
This is like, oh, we're starting with like a short comic as like
as an example of play. I was like, that's fucking
brilliant. Yeah, it's so good.
So it's a, it's a, it's a kind of like in, in like breaking the
4th wall, kind of like an example of play, like Connor
said. So it shows these three punks
looking down into a hole, like going into somewhere.
It says we're going in, we've got, we've got our rope.
It's a hella drop. Because, you know, they're
punks. They got to say hella, right,
Specifically, Yeah, right. Northern California punks, it
says, I rolled A12, I got an 8, but it's like coming from the
punk. So like I love the in and out of
character. Then it's great.
There's the thing they say, says the guide in Mentor and it's an
arrow going off the page and it says that sounds a bit tricky.
It's a long drop. You need to roll a Dexterity
save under or you put to your Dexterity to make sure you don't
hurt yourself. And then there were 12 and an 8,
you know, and it continues like they, the the punks in the punk
world are talking as if they're the players outside of the
world, which is really dope. And then they fail some stuff
and encounter happens. And then there's a great full
page spread of a vermin, giant ants and rats and stuff like
that, like coming down a tunnel at them.
And it's a it's a really great page.
That's such a good. Like, I love that it's so good.
I like the numbered bugs. I don't know if you just
mentioned that, but I like the bugs because at my table, if you
have like if there are 8 enemies, a lot of times they do
have little, I'll put little numbers on the if I'm using like
a digital interface, I'll put little numbers on the page on
the screen for them to see. So it's very funny.
They're like, Oh yeah, this is the exact same thing.
It's there's 8 bugs or whatever and they're they're numbered and
I'm like perfect. Yeah, it's great.
It's great and it's a great. I don't know, it's just a great
piece in general. Like I love the red that's on it
and everything. So yeah, it's dope.
So getting into the basics, which again, I we've talked
about this over and over again, I think I won you over to my
side before character creation, even if you're not going to do
all the rules, at least give the basics of like the cord ice
mechanic, things like that. And they do that here and it's
great. They do use the the classic
Explorer template, which is basically, it's great that it
exists and I love that people are using it.
It's a, it's a great thing. But it's also just like a very
basic like grid layout with just like a column on the side.
But they do a really good job of it in this layout.
We've seen it used to poor effect, I think in some other
games where there's like basically with a lot of pages,
you end up with just like a giant empty column on the side
of a page. But I don't think there's a
single page in the book where they don't utilize it or don't
have it formatted in this way, which is the correct way in my
opinion to to use that. And they do a really good job
and they keep in the grid. So even like the basics, even
though I don't know why I pointed to my screen instead of
just using this the even the basics.
You can see it keeps in line to the to the grid column off to
the side. But but yeah, anyway, So what is
what the funk is eco mofos. It is a mid future eco punk
ruined having survival game players play PCs or punks travel
the world seeking safe homestead called a glade.
Start a new community. There's a bit of like the only
real lure in the game outside of tables, which is all you need is
it's almost as if it's an implied setting.
There is no lure. Around 200 years ago, everything
went too crud. The wealthy who created this
mess freaked off to Mars, while the lucky ones hid in vast
underground bunkers. We were left to fend for
ourselves on the surface, eking out an existence in the broken
ruins they left behind, searching for remnants of a past
world to help us survive, Searching for a place to call
home. We play a group of misfits who
have found each other in the waist and ruins of the fallen
world. The passage is a hazy legend, a
story scattered over thousands of USB sticks and servers.
The future is there to be written and that's that's it.
That's pretty much all you get outside of tables and stuff like
that. It's really great.
I like it. Off to the side it says weird
Hope, which is what they call this a bunch.
I'm glad they don't call this like weird punk or something
like that. I think people don't understand
that. Like the thing in front of the
word punk is the thing you're fighting against.
And but people are like, this is like joy punk.
And it's like, so we're killing joy.
Let's fucking do it. I'm rebellion against joy.
I'm with you. And it's like, no, we're happy.
And I'm like, then that's not what that means.
So weird hope is a great way to say it.
It says lean into the weird hope.
Things can be scary and odd and and damn scary and odd and damn
bad things happen, but things are getting better.
So it's weird. But there is hope, you know, as
opposed to grim Dark where it's like it sucks and it just gets
sucky here, you know, and then imagine a different future.
So how to play basics. So basically the core of this
game is into the odd. Like it's very much into the
odds slash Cairn. It's a roll on your system.
Yep, you roll at or under. The closer to your ability to
score, the better. Roll over and things go bad real
fast, and that's pretty much it. Yep, it says this is pretty much
it. Offer a trivial task, you just
succeed. And we need to remind people
that over and over and over again that most games are not 5
E. You don't have to roll to take a
goddamn breath. If you can just do it, you just
fucking do it. So that's it.
If it's risky, again, it's a roll under D20 score.
You have hurt protection, which I'll never not be annoyed by.
It doesn't bother me at all. I know it doesn't bother you, it
bothers me to my to my core hurt protection for those that don't
know into the other Karen and stuff like that.
The way that this game works. I mean I'll just read it till
you understand. There's hit protection.
It pushes damage in combat. Once lost, damage rolls rolls
over to deplete your strength. If you lose all your strength,
you die. Surprise damage hit your armor
and then goes directly to strength.
If any strength is lost in combat, you have to save against
your new strength or go down. And that's every time once your
hip protection is gone. If your strength is 18 and you
take 3 damage right, 15 you have to roll and beat a 15.
And if you keep getting strength damage anytime that you roll
over your new strength every time you are down and that's it
to attack, all you do is roll damage.
There's no attack rolling into the Odd Cairn, any of the any of
the children of the Odd or whatever.
I can't remember. I can't remember what the family
tree of Into the Odd is called. The mark of the odds there.
Mark of the odd. Mark of the odd.
That's what I meant. Yeah, yeah, The children of the
spawn of the Odd and. To be quite and to be like a
little technical. The damage role is also
technically it's a hit role because things have armor and so
if you roll below their armor you do no damage to them.
That's not it's kind of that's I'm going to I'm going to
disagree because all you're doing is rolling.
So to hit roll is to see if you're.
Hitting every single time, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's just, it's just whether you surpass their armor
or not with the damage actually works because if you actually
have it to hit roll, then you also roll damage that's still 22
rolls. But but yes, we've talked about
this before. I think Into the Odd.
I mean, I think David Blaney loves Into the Odd, but we've
talked about this before. Yeah, I really enjoy Into the
Odd. It's not my favorite, but I
really, really enjoy Into the Odd.
And we talked about this before in that like there's this kind
of like innate. So, so, so a game is what the
rules say and what they don't say, but are right, Like what,
what, what, what is that thing like a like a, a system is what
it does, right? So when we were originally going
over into the odd the the, the newer version that Johan did
the, the art for and everything, the layout and everything, we
said that into the odd is not a combat game.
Like, and the way that the rules work really makes it where you
don't play combat. It's an exploration game that
has combat because if you fight stuff you die super fucking
fast. Yeah real fast.
Like if you don't have to roll the hit and you just always do
damage unless you're wearing armor.
Like you die fast. So you learn very quickly to
avoid combat, which is the point.
And into the odd is that I've always seen it as it is an
exploration game that you can fight stuff in versus the vast
majority of TTRBGS which are combat games at the end of the
day. And I think this is a really
great choice specifically for this game because I don't feel
like any aspect of this game says combat to me.
Even all the times where it says like combat's bad for you.
It's like that's fine. Designers will always say that,
right? But like weird hope future punk
stuff to me feels more like you're running around trying to
get that juice. You're not really going out
trying to murder shit to this. Game.
Yeah, anyway, great, great two page spread here of this piece.
Yeah, someone sitting in a car, I don't think they have the
extra piece here. Let me see if I can actually do
a AA2 page, A2 page. Nope, it's they don't have that
extra page in so I can't do spreads fit with.
But yeah, great piece of like a broken down building, like kind
of in the mountains and these two punks sitting in this beat
down car just kind of looking out, I assume experiencing the
world and you know, I guess there might be.
So this game is very bullet pointed.
I know that there was a discourse at some point about
bullet points. It was as dumb as all the
discourses are. Bullet points are fine.
Bullet points are also not fine. It's whatever works, and I think
bullet points work for this. Yeah, I think this.
I think this is. I think this works well here,
yeah. Like there's no, there's no pros
really. These are all just like points
and that's kind of the point of a bullet point.
So that's great. There is a little bit more about
the world here. There is what we know.
It's the before the waste in our people, your story.
The world is created at your table and that's the only
reality that matters. But the before it basically
talks about like in the before times, the before four times.
They're barely believed by many punks have like seen glimmers of
the old life, as in like you still, the things still exist
out there. A lot of people just don't know
what they are anymore. It's far enough out that they
have forgotten, but it's still there.
There's legends about it. The wastes are just how every
waste is in every piece of prose you've ever read ever.
Like it sucks. It's waste.
There's like sandstorms and floods and stuff like that.
The there's ruins 01 thing that's important, though, is
that that only the punks dare to seek a world beyond.
So everyone's kind of just like settles down because the world
sucks. But the punks, they have that
gumption, you know? Yeah, they're.
Trying. They're trying to get out and
make a better world, yeah. They're trying to get that
glade. The ruins haunt the land,
obviously hidden silos and things, whatnot.
Our people, these are the types of people in the world.
There are the wasters, the corpos, the bandits and the
punks. So this is very much like a
rock, scissors, paper kind of situation.
The wasters just want to survive.
They obey the corpos and fear the bandits.
The corpos want to control and keep a fragile hold on the
wasters. The bandits know the world is
broken, so life means nothing anymore.
And then you have the punks. The punks.
Yeah. So the punks are outsiders who
inspire strong emotions. Some hate them for their
nonconformities. Some find their strangeness
alluring. They are the weirdos.
There's also the hermits. They have the elders who have
adapted, able to see the glimmers of the past and future,
and they share their their visions of the world with the
punk. So they see as kindred spirits
because they're weirdos too. There are others out there that
are malevolent, the bad guys, you know, the the horrors, the
twisted things. And then there is essence and
spells. So when the world broke, guy
awoke, releasing essence into the world.
That's capital E essence. Freaks touched by essence can
sense its presence and weave it into spells.
So you got punks and freaks, freaks and geeks, you know.
And then there is the glade. You've seen it in your dreams
and a vision given during your first adaption, which we'll get
to. It is a place, it's a good spot.
It's it's it's, it's, it's where the arrow points on the map of
water world. You know, the glade is your
secret obsession. It is the goal.
It is the thing that you're going for.
It is the thing in every post apocalyptic.
It's at one spot where things are OK, you know, and that's it.
GM principles there. So on every page there are
things in the side column. And what I love is even when
there's not something in this I column that needs to be
addressed. So for example, it says weirdos
gasps over weird. So what they do like a big
bolded, just kind of like important, like note tip, like
the one above it says essence is terrifying, delicious and
strange. Like there's a light, very vibey
stuff mixed in there like reminders.
I mean, that's what the side column is for.
It's for it's for don't forget this, it's for vibey pros.
It's for like reminders like that that and they do a really
good job, I think using the the classic explorer template to its
full potential, I think here. I very much agree.
But the one on the side here is this TTRBG.
It says Inca Mofos is a tabletop role-playing game played through
discussion to create an emergent story using papers, pencils and
dice. That that is one of the best.
What is a TTRPG pages I've ever seen?
Because A it's not a whole page and B it's one fucking line and
that's it. I love it.
There are at the bottom one says OSR slash NSR question mark.
It says this game comes from a culture of tabletop role play
where exploration and interaction with the game
environment is the focus, not the rules themselves.
Again, I love that because is it NSR?
Is it OSR? Guess what?
Who gives a who? Cares.
Who gives a fuck? Anyone that's like I don't know,
is this really OSR? Play the fucking game bro like
who gives a shit? Nothing.
OSR is dead and it is nothing more than a marketing term at
this point. So like is it OSR?
No, because there's no such thing.
There's a couple of pictures, GM principles, information.
Don't hide it, give it to the players.
These are very much the OSR. NSR like GM principles,
difficulty. Guess what, things suck, It's
difficult. Don't make it too bad And and
and reward interesting things, right?
Preparation. This game is very much a prep as
much as you want kind of game. You could do no prep at all and
just roll for everything, or you could prep things based on
tables throughout the book. That's great.
Love that there's even there's generators for basically
everything in very vault of iron kind of way.
Narrative focus, like play is what matters.
Just play the GameStop starting your character sheet and and and
do that. Danger Things are dangerous.
You can die. GM and player punks be your
punk. Play the game.
Loot and stuff. There is loot and there is stuff
choice. You should always give the
players the correct amount of of information to make to make
choices. And you should always try to
make those choices difficult to create more story and narrative
that is filtered through the player's lens.
And then randomness and luck. You can roll A roll and get that
that exists. That's that's the concepts of
the principles. I think we hit everything there.
Cool piece of art here of a a very adapted punk.
We'll get you out of patience again with like eye stalks and a
dope orange jacket. Their fit is kind of fire, I'm
not going to lie. Actually, yeah, they got that
shot. Yeah, they, they, they got like
a puffy hooded jacket with like, it's orange and it's got these
green and black stripe pants. And they're, they're going down
into what looks like the ruins of some type of facility.
There's like lights and everything.
And then it's dark all around them.
And there's things like eyes and and hands, like reaching out of
the dark. So so good a whole page for
safety tools content warning things are rough.
Cannibalism is where the pops out dead bodies heinous
billionaires. So take the time they have a
section here on lines and veils use them.
We're not going to go over them because they're in every game,
every game they should be and and use them at least be aware
of them. And that's it.
Batch of principles for punks fiction first be like water,
death, growth, agency, teamwork, exploration, talking.
They're great. Read them.
Just those one words. For the most part, anyone that
plays in this space knows what we're talking about.
They're well done. I really like that they're very
bullet pointed. I really like that they're
concise in a way that I would use this to flip back to if I
was referencing things. It's just an easy chunk for
anyone to go into this book to take in quickly and understand
it. I didn't even realize there was
a discourse on bullet points. It was small and dumb.
OK. I like them.
They're great. They're fucking great.
There's no problem with bullet points.
I think the discourse was more in the context of like
adventures and the information that you give in adventures.
So it's depending. But like, we're not all low
gearing. We can't all ride the aisle, you
know what I mean? Like, you know, so you know, you
get what you get. Also, there's this the the whole
I the OK give me give me 30 seconds in this topic.
The biggest like discourse maker in teacher RBGS is literally
semantics and personal opinion and people going, well, that's
not the way that I look at it. So you're wrong.
Like it's the stupidest fucking thing ever.
Like you're allowed to just be like, oh, I see it differently,
so I play differently. And that's a thing that you're
allowed to do. No, I'm sorry.
There's one way to do everything if you don't do it that way.
You're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong, and you're going
to find someone that will vocally tell you wrong.
But that's everything. Realistically, I think about it.
I'm like, why is this so dominant?
I'm like, oh, remember when like philosophy had all their little
like disciples and they literally got like fist fights
about it and shit like that? It's like, how dare you view
your existential crisis differently than I view mine?
You know, fuck off. So there's a section Principles
for punks which I don't. We're still in that same
section. It's a.
It's a three page section. Yes, OK.
I was like, we're still talking about the players, right?
More caution, planning, shared objectives and ambition.
And then you have the cover art, which is great.
So pick your punk. Do you want to do this?
You want me to keep yapping? Yeah, I'll do this.
Yeah. So you know, who are you?
You get basically, you know, you're making your weirdo from
your band of weirdos. And it's very much the the for
me, it's a very bastards into the odd because I play a lot of
bastards still. It's not.
It's not for you. It is.
This is bastards like this is bastards character creation.
Yes, this is bastards character creation, which is a great
choice because it's a great character creation, although
it's expanded in a way because I'm like, oh, this is great and
I'm stealing this from my own home game.
Yeah, so you're going to roll AD 6 for your hurt protection.
You were going to roll D6 for your adaptation, which we'll get
to. It's more like your your kind of
character class ish thing. It provides you with abilities
and like some starting items. Then you're going to roll 2 D 6
+ 3 for each of your ability scores.
There is strength decks and Will.
You're going to roll AD 6 for your age.
That's right. You can only be 6 years old
tops. But no, if you roll A1, you're
almost 22. You're 20 something.
Yeah. Anything after that since the
number of decades you've been on Earth, Yeah.
You roll D6 for a burden, which is just a something, a tiredness
or where that you've picked up along the way.
And then you're going to start with D6 shots of juice and.
AJ Biggie. Yeah, with AJ, Big J and A
supply a fantastic rule, and then you give your punk a name.
I do like I, we say this over and over and over again in games
and again, I think that David did a fantastic job with the
layout in this, in that it says roll D6 for a burden.
Go to page 44. But what is in the the the bonus
column to the left burdens? Actually, you can just roll it
right burdens, and you can just look at what the rule is for
that one burden, how to get rid of it when you get down to that
page. Exactly.
I love that we've seen this over.
And over again like. If you mentioned something.
If you mentioned something, give that now and explain it later.
And they do a that's like one of my favorite parts in this whole
book, and this is random as fuck, is the fact that there's a
burden table right there. And that's for that exact thing.
It's like, wait a minute, what's a burden?
And it goes, oh, there's AD 6 list of burdens.
And then I can click on the the page 44 thing to hyperlink me to
page 44 to read what the burden rules are.
Like I claps, claps, claps. I'm 10 claps because 1 mic chops
out my claps. But good job anyway, sorry.
So adaptation table, this is our like character kind of classes.
Basically you get like an overarching you, you see what HP
you rolled, right? So let's say we rolled A1 HP and
then you look at your adaptation and you rolled a six.
Well, then you're an Oracle and in the section here we'll go
down and they'll give you your character classes, which gives
you a little bit of lore and ability, a key item that you've
absorbed into yourself and your starting items that you have
with you well. Why don't you let's, well, let's
go through one. Do you want to roll up to D6 or
do you want to make one that you want?
To do this, this is the best. This is exactly how I like
stuff, so yeah. And again, the bastards
character creation style here is is so good.
And as you said, they expanded it in a really fun and
interesting way like that. Like the role for your HP and
then role for the thing that's under that HP is so is.
This game is very much an amalgamation of other games and
they're all good. Yes, yes, this is the
amalgamation of all things that I specifically love.
I I really enjoyed this game. I rolled a 5-6 so it's going to
be an engineer. 5-6. 5-6 I went down too far.
It's on page 39. I will say I really love the way
that they do the the layout in this too, in that like if you
like, if you go to shape changer, for example, you get
1234 on shape changer and then when you flip the page, you get
a full page piece of art for shape Changer.
And then you get the last two 5-6.
So it's two full spreads for each one of these.
And one of which is one of those 4 pages is always a full page
piece of art, which is first of all, again, Daniel Locke fucking
killed it with the art. But it's a great.
Fantastic. I'm glad you said something
because I was just scrolling through to get into the art.
I was like, well, I forgot how well laid out and how much art
there is in this section. So yeah, I'm glad you you
pointed out because it's very much a joy to go through.
And all the key items are drawn as well.
So engineer. So engineer, your key item I
think you've already absorbed into yourself is a neurochip
implant. Your starting background, you
revel in systems. You see the layers of history
everywhere, labyrinths of secret routes occluded by time and
neglect. You love to share hidden wonders
and cunning ways your ability. You can easily disable locks and
devices. Always has the right tools.
Knows the layout and hidden ways of built structures.
Very useful person to have when you're out going through the
ruins of the of the old world. You're starting items.
You have a pocket mig welder which is AD damage and close
range, you have a nail gun which is D6 damage and near range
baseball cap, a Kevlar jacket which is 1 armor, a set of
walkie talkies which is a fantastic thing to have, and a
mechanics kit. Yeah, they're great.
And that's one of 36 backgrounds.
You get 660 sixes. Yeah, really, really great.
And as you said, like all of the key items, or at least there's
this images for each. One the Weld or the nail guns
drawn here? I was going to say because the
one above it is AGPS implant, but it's a compass.
So there's at least a piece of art next to every single one of
these, which again, like Daniel went off, which is which is
fantastic. Any of the other classes you
really want love that you want to go over?
You know what? There is actually someones that
I thought were really like. They're all interesting.
They're all. Fantastic.
So you pick yours, not pick mine.
What? What?
No, you pick yours. Oh, mine's the last one so.
The tea monk. Yeah.
OK, I thought that the the rogue ones were very interesting.
Obviously I picked the the most violent ones in the game that's
not about violence, but Assassin.
I was like, that's really neat, so I'll let me run through
Assassin. Here we go, kill him again.
Yeah, and then I wanted to show the the the art page for
assassin is is great with like the overalls and stuff and they
have like little patches as oops like on their pants.
I love that. But the the assassin, so the
first kill was the hardest. Now it's just a job that you're
trying to escape. The past doesn't want to let you
go. Take time to create poisons or
potions from plant to common materials.
Target saves or is paralyzed, sickly, unconscious or dead.
Potion to cure minor ailment. So you're like a killer and a
healer, which I really like. Yeah, and then you're starting
items. Sniper rifle with scope, bastard
sword, padded jacket, potion kit, grappling hook and stems.
The bastard sword I'm like, that's a very quiet blade to
have with you, I guess. And then Dark Root and Phoenix
TI really like a lot of the items too, have things written
on them. That's really cool and I like
them a lot. So the sword on this says twat,
I'm a total bastard. I'm a total bastard.
A wanker is what's written on the sword.
And then like the compass had something written on it.
So like the book above, this is no one's business but mine keep
out like a lot of the items have like a little like quirky fun
vibe, like like engravings, quote UN quote art on them,
which is cool. And then the team monk for you.
Yeah, the team monk whose key item that they took in to become
a tea monk was Ayahuasca tea, which shout out and then yeah,
the starting background. Come sit, take a warm brew to
cleanse the soul. Your calm presence mass a quiet
or sorry, a quick rebuke and yeah, your ability can attack an
additional 2 unarmed strikes in a round without penalty.
Contend flesh once a day which heals one strength wisdom of
decks twice as much if used on someone else, and with time can
brew specialty that heals D6 strength wisdom or decks
Starting items you have AD six staff, ragged clothing, hidden
pockets, hemp cloak which is 1 armor, 3 bombs, a wooden flute,
and a tea set. I love those bombs.
Alms. You know, give me some of that
bomb. Yeah, I.
Really like this character I I I like the idea of this like post
apocalypse. I love the assassin with the
bastard sort because like the assassin has a sniper rifle as
well and people have like guns or like flamezers and this is a
team monk and he has a staff but he can hit so many fucking
times. That's just.
Like, yeah, no, that's great. That's great.
Yeah, burdens. Hey, here's the thing I like.
Yeah. So burdens are emotional debts
that must be paid in specific ways.
Basically, they're like conditions that you can acquire.
They take up inventory slots. And if you get three of them,
I'm not reading, so mostly off memory, if you get three of
them, you are deprived. You get the deprived condition
and there is a You're about to say something.
No, I was agreeing. There is a burden table right
about that. It says lean to your burdens as
you play, letting them shape your behavior.
Think of creative ways to take advantage of situations to
unburden yourself. So there are 6 burdens.
They're very easy to write, and if you wanted to write more of
your own, it would take very little time.
The first one is wary. There's arrogant, shamed, vain,
sad and are enraged and right next to them it tells you how to
get rid of them. So the first one wary you spend
a full day at peace or consume juice and get wasted.
I'm not really, no. They'll cure your wariness, you
know. I love that it's basically the
two complete opposite sides of the spectrum for for getting rid
of it. You know what?
Do you mean? So each one has two opposite
sides so weary you either spend a full day at peace or you get
wasted. Yeah.
OK, got you. Enraged is unleash your anger on
the world or refuse to engage in violence and either way the
burden is gone. So you can choose to indulge in
two completely the opposite ways for each of these and in order
to get rid of the burden. It lets your character be
whoever your character instead of being wary is like, Oh well
if you're wary, you need to like just spend the week at peace.
It's like, well, if my characters are like a weird like
like like gutter punk that likes to get fucked up, you know,
like, well then they have that option, you know, or partying,
which is more in there. Yeah, it's, it's very cool.
It's very small, a very small thing to add on that gives more
option to the player to play into their character and it's
fucking cool. Actually it's really cool, I
like it a lot. I love the lie to the left too.
You can live with burdens, but they weigh you down.
Yeah, I like the, I like the art piece of the one ton weight with
the person under that carrying it.
And here's a little blurb on juice.
It doesn't mention again. Juice is basically solidified
essence and it's used as the currency in this game, but
obviously it also has other uses.
Yeah. I like, I like this is not the
first game and it won't be the last game where like the
currency is a consumable. Yeah, I love that.
Where it's like I could buy food with this or I could eat it.
You know what? I mean, I can spend this ink
that I got, or I can huff it and cast spells, you know?
Yeah. Yeah, and next we have the name
Your Punk D66D66 table. That's where I rolled mine.
Mine was Stone Watcher and then my nickname was Vulture which is
just what my friends call me. Vulture.
I want to I don't want to roll the punk name.
Let me, let me, let me roll 3D66's real quick. 2D6 I got 36,
so that's oak 52. Oak apple.
No, no, no. Got to go in one Oak, the knife
and then 56. My friends call me Shark.
Yeah. I mean, the knife makes sense
for my assassin, you know? Yeah.
Anyway. Yeah.
So move it on to companions. Yeah, if you're playing with a
smaller group, basically you can add companions.
You roll their ability scores in order and give them one HP and A
and AD 6 blade. They don't have adaptations or
burdens and not real punks, you know, and they have about 10
inventory slots. If asked to do something
dangerous against their interest, your companions will
only go through it. If they fail A will save, fail 3
similar will saves, and they will leave the party.
So if you make them do something three times they don't want to
do, and they do it like they'll leave because they don't want to
be doing those things. Yeah, which is fucking great.
Yeah, it touches on like a funnel.
Funnel adventures are cool. We love a funnel.
Yeah, I do. I do like above that though,
with the little helps like the companion thing.
It's really interesting how many ways are to play this game in
that you like the big group, you can play with the small group
with companions. It has solo rules like there's
really like. This is a one to six player
game, you know, like really and actually is so.
Yeah, very, very, very much so. And and the final thing is
awesome too. I love that it's not just like
for an adventure, it's like written in game.
It's just like make a bunch of companions and do a funnel
adventure and whichever 1 survives or, or whatever.
Like I I love funnel games as much as I love funnel
adventures. Yeah, I, I agree.
I think that's a it's a good time, especially if you're with
a party. It's like, really into making
all deaths as dramatic or comical as possible.
It's an amazing final adventure if you do that.
Yeah. And mercenaries.
It just gives you three different examples of some
mercenaries you could hire, obviously, to build your own.
And it has the juice cost next to their name and some example
stats. Yeah, it it, it's great.
And also once again, very easy to just write up a bunch more of
your own. And here's some examples of what
the cheapest, the mid cost and the higher end cost is.
So fill in the spaces in between, you know.
Yeah, it's very much hireling rules and and they're good.
They're they're clean, they're concise.
I will say, is this the page? I don't think it's the page yet.
We can keep going. I'll point something out at some
point. Yeah.
Oh, another really interesting rule.
The life path. I did like before.
So basically this is the ability to gain more past your like
initial adaptation that you rolled and there does come some
race with it. It actually kind of reminds me
of Traveller. Yep, I was going to say you know
where this is going like. You can you roll on this table
and there is a chance, there's a one in six chance that you just
die. Yeah, this is, this is like an
extremely simplified version of like traveler character
creation. Yeah.
But if you want your character, you don't have to do this is an
optional rule, but but if you want to add a little bit more to
your punk, you absolutely can. There's just there's just a
chance they may die and you won't get nothing.
But on the table it's it's events from your past life.
The first one, one is you die in the waste.
The second one is hard times. You roll a burden and you learn
a trade, which is on page 163. It's under the NPC's section,
but you can click and go straight there.
Three, you settle and learn a trade, so you've no hard times.
You don't have to roll a burden, you just get the trade.
Four, you're faced with a hard choice.
Roll a burden and adaptation or hurt.
No burdens and no adaptation, so nothing can happen on this one.
If you don't want to take a burden, or if you're already at
2 and you don't want to start the game deprived, 5A moment of
good luck or a friendship made, gain an adaptation. 6 Sometimes
things work out. Gain an adaptation or remove a
burden. So if you started with a burden,
you can just immediately remove it.
Yeah, the rules for it though are are really good too.
So to to create your life path for your punk, you roll AD 6 as
many times as you want, but each time you do, you actually add a
decade to your life and then four burdens or rolling to die
on the life path and then you you're dead.
So if you end up with four burdens in the while rolling,
you just die. Or if you ever roll A1, it's
great. Like you could, you could roll
up like a bunch of punks that just like completely flame out.
And I think that's so great. And then the, the the column off
to the side, it just says try not to die, which I, which I
love a lot. So yeah, this is this is really
great. It specifically says like you're
you're playing Russian roulette with your character.
So watch out if you want to do this.
So OK. Next we have the growing and
changing. We're still, this is like
characterization bits and things of this, but we're getting more
into like key items and things like that, like adaptation.
So you're adapting to the world during the adventure.
If the correct key item is found, you can choose to gain an
adaptation to adapt your body in a physically and mentally
draining process. Each time you do take a burden,
but you also become more resilient, you add 1 to your HP.
Then you choose to roll AD 20 for one of strength decks or
wisdom. If a result is higher than the
ability, it increases by 1 to a Max of 18.
If your ability doesn't increase this way, your current luck
increases by 1D6. Stone orbs, implants are
absorbed into the flesh. Mushrooms, roots, molds, and
teas are consumed. All require a quiet period.
So this is basically the like character advancement and like
that's all, that's all this is. So you don't really have, there
is no like class that you can just like advance in.
There's no levels, which I really, really like.
Like you can, you can increase your stats a little bit, but it,
it's always a role. So it's always extremely
difficult after you roll your initial stuff to continue to, to
increase it and eventually you're just going to Max out
anyway. I really enjoy the style of game
in that like you, you don't have like again, 5 E, for example,
like you don't have to wait for like at level 5, I get this at
level 7, I get this. Like it's, it's very much more
narrative guided in that you can choose when and how to absorb
whatever key item it is. And then you get your your HP
bump, you might get a bit of an ability bump, but then you
pretty much you're just getting what you get from the key item
as the primary thing. So you can choose when and how
to do that. And and that's really fun and
interesting way to do character creation to have it be much less
linear and much more narrative focused, which is great.
And the key items themselves are weird, funky stuff that you find
and then you literally absorb into your body.
So we'll go over that a little bit more.
Downtime is the thing that exists.
You can do things that you can do in in any kind of OSR and
start game in downtown. Like you can find a teacher, you
can learn new things, things like that.
So you can do that very interesting piece here.
I love that it says turn left on this dude's forehead but the
arrow is definitely going to the right like.
You know. Yeah, he's, he's what's up?
Keep going. And he's definitely huffing on
that pipe, you know? Yeah.
So how to play? We're actually to the rules of
the game. We'll go this a bit more.
So how to play their turns? Each punk gets a time to shine.
A turn is a move and an action. And this is like this is a bit
of I think this is one of the first places I saw this as more
of like in in black hack. I can't remember what they
called him black hack, but it's like you get a move and an
action and that could be like in combat or out of combat and it
could be seconds or it could be hours or days.
You just basically continue a turn order even in the narrative
as opposed to just kind of being like up for whatever.
And I really like that that like you can basically just be like,
it's your turn to like push, push forward what's happening.
And that feels better than like the kind of like default to like
a party leader and the stuff like that and people, it allows
people the opportunity to shine and not fall back so much, which
is cool. Saves is the core mechanic.
It's a dice roll. You roll for a risky action.
It's D20 equal to or under your ability score.
A crit is when you get exactly on and and that's it.
There's a contest though, of two characters up against each
other. You determine who is the most at
risk and only they roll. So it's not a roll off against
each other. So like if we're both doing
something and we're doing against each other, if you are
more risky, if you're, if you're say you're an unsafe footing or
something, you would always be the one that rolls, not me.
And I think that's really interesting.
Luck is a thing. It exists.
It's a special attribute, you can decrease or burn it to
modify a role. Whenever you roll luck, your
luck changes and if you pass. If you pass, lose 1 luck.
If you fail, you gain 1 luck. So every time you do a luck
roll, you could potentially like keep going down and down or up
or down or up or down. And I, I like this kind of
swinginess potential of luck versus it being just like a
thing that's just gone and and always gone.
I agree. Also I'm I'm so sorry everyone
listening along. When I was reading the player
stats I did totally skip luck because it is actually up there
and that was AD 6 + 6. So you have potential having 7
to 12 luck which pretty good. Yeah, it's not bad.
I mean, especially since like the only real way to get luck
back is to roll to get it back. I believe.
Like you can only get luck back by attempting to use it.
Yeah, that's right. If you fail a luck check, your
luck goes up so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So yeah, it's an interesting way that like the more luck you, you
actually successfully use, the more goes away and the more you
fail to use, the more you get back, which is which is a neat,
interesting way to to to do it. There's short rest, full rest,
long rest, bulky items, deprivation of burdens.
It's literally into the odd Cairn.
Like short rest is when you can just take a breather after
combat to get all of your hip protection back.
Full rest and that's just a breather.
Full rest is a week and you get all your ability scores back.
Bulky things. Most things are one handed, so
it takes up one slot. Bulky are two.
If you're carrying three bulky atoms, you're deprived.
Deprived means that you're unable to recover HP or ability
scores, so you have to get rid of that first.
And then armor. Shields and armor provide bonus
to defense. Like plus one armor means when
someone rolls like if you have one armor and someone rolls a
three, you only take two damage. Violence, so the reaction tables
under violence. So it's the standard D6 reaction
table. Hostile wired wear.
It's very much like the standard one turns in combat, everyone
takes a turn if the other risk of being surprised because don't
forget if you surprise damage goes against your armor first,
but then goes directly to strength, that doesn't go to
your HP 1st. And that's only if you're like
pure real surprise. I like one thing on the side it
says normally violence means something has gone very wrong as
like a a a bolder thing in that column.
And if you go to the next page in the spread, it would say
normally violence means something has gone very wrong.
Like it's literally on like every spread in the violence
section. And I really, I really like that
that they that they put that in there that way as just like the
reinforcement in the reinforcement column, actions
you used to move and perform action, as we said before,
that's in or out of combat. We're talking about comments
specifically now. So you get to do that.
And action can be anything from negotiating to attacking,
fleeing, whatever actions are detailed below when we get to
that and it says for other actions that GM can call for the
character at risk to roll a save attacks an attacker rolls a die
dictated by their weapon. We'll get to that in just a
second. And very much obviously this
still end of the odd. If you, if the attack would be
impaired, it's you roll AD 4. If it's enhanced, you roll AD 6
or AD 12. And if you ever roll multiple
damaged dice, you only take the highest one.
And if multiple damaged dice are rolled against you, you only
take the highest 1 and that's it.
So if if 10 people hit you with a sword, whoever rolled the
highest number, you just take that damage.
And again, that's very much just mark of the odd damage.
I think I just said everything about that.
So when anything takes damage, it goes against a her protection
armor 1st and then her protection, then strength.
If your strength is all the way down, you're dead.
We talked about the rolls for a strength roll previously.
And no matter how many attacks are made, how many attacks are
made on a single target and around, only the single highest
die gets to go against them. I said that already, but each
other die rolling a four or higher adds plus one, which I do
like, yeah. So that was a very cool and
clean rule. You know, if you have 5 people
attacking you, what the whichever 1's the highest you
take that dice. Say someone rolled a A6, you
take 6 damage and two of the other people rolled at least a
four. You would take a toll of eight
damage. And I really, I really like that
a lot. It's it that's one thing.
I don't know if that's not a normal into the outer rule,
right? No, it's not.
I like it. I like that like, because you
kind of get that sense of like, yeah, I'll just go fight.
I'll just go run into 10 dudes and I only take the one damage.
I do like that this gives you that opportunity or that, that
the, the, the, the don't do that, you know, ability score
loss. We talked about that if any of
your scores ever hit zero, you're you're dead or your
strength is dead. But if your will or dex does,
you're paralyzed, you're delirious, but you can recover
from that. Actually, you're down if you
roll that you know, under your strength when the strength is
like critical damage to you, but you can recover from that.
If you if no one helps you or you don't recover within an
hour, you die and death is a thing.
When you die, make a character as quick as possible and it says
specifically to the coming back into the game is more important
than realism. So just if they just like pop
out of a hole in the ceiling, whatever, like they're back.
Woo, good. Keep going, you know.
Make that player sit at the table and watch for 20 minutes
till I find a convenient time to add them in.
Yeah, go, go grab a bite, pee, and then I will give you a buzz.
No, they have to sit there and watch.
They can't go anywhere. No, yeah, just you sit and
watch. That's what you get for dying.
More violence. Morale is a thing.
It requires a will save to avoid running away.
I do like there's a little column on the side that say run
away. It's very rare that anything
fights to the death. It's so final.
Think about it. What would you do?
You know? So groups require a will save to
avoid running away. So literally the default is that
they will run away if half of their members are done.
And if a group has a leader you use, the leaders will score.
Fleeing the safety on a pursuit requires a deck save and
somewhere to escape to again into the odd units.
There's rules for attacking like a unit.
You get that unit, you know. Yeah, I just want to say unit a
bunch. So attacks against units by
individuals are impaired except for blast attacks, and attacks
against individuals by unit are enhanced and deal blast damage
spells in combat. So a character can use an orb's
power as a normal action, but we'll take a burden and have to
make a will save. So this is talked about briefly
here in combat, but in the magic session we go into a little bit
more. Anyone can cast certain types of
magic, but only freaks can cast magic in combat, and they always
take a burden. Always.
Asterisk have to take a burden to cast.
We'll get to that though. If the save is failed, they take
D6 will and essential Chaos ensues.
So we'll get to essential chaos, which is fun shooting.
That's a thing that you can do. The GM adjudicates all
positions. There's a section here about
using minis in combat. It says you can if you want to
do whatever, but this is like a bunch of different effects in
combat, right? So near range, far range range
weapons, if in soft cover, if in hardcover, if hiding, blast, aim
close, like the different tactical options that you can
use in in the game. So like soft cover adds plus one
to armor, even a beyond a three. It took me a little bit to get
to a three. I don't know if they explain a
three until literally the bestiary.
So that's one thing that might because when they talk about
armor before they talk about plus one armor, but then they go
a three, which that's a bit confusing.
They might want to have explained what a three means in
this section. Hardcover is +2 even beyond a
three because you can only have up to three armor pieces.
You can only carry 3 armor at a time in your 10 and then damage
from the world. This is a whole table of like
falling damage, rock falls, poison, things like that and the
different stats that it would go towards strength decks like
whatever. Great table.
Yeah, I really like this table. I'm like, oh, cool.
It's a good way to contextualize things.
I don't know, like you can have this printed out and on your
like game master screen or or you can just have this in your
easy table version of this game open.
Just a little reference to like world damage and I like that.
Yeah, I do like it. I think it's really interesting
to have. I mean, this book has so many
tables. We haven't hit it yet.
Just letting you know, 54 pages and we haven't hit it yet.
But trust me, they're coming. The back half is pretty much all
tables. Yeah, we're we're almost done
with the game because the vast majority after this is just
tables, which is fine, which is great, they're all great, but
it. Is I love tables.
It is really nice if like if you want to know what horse
tranquilizer does, it's on this table.
Time exists or does it, you know, round, turn, watch.
I like this rounds or 10 seconds turns or 10 minutes and there's
like there's the standard turn of like if you're exploring shit
the GM rolls AD 6 every 10 minutes on A1, then encounter
happens blah blah blah blah blah.
Watches are 4 hours in game when traveling and stuff like that.
And then there is AD 6 table where there's a list of 6 for
the different watches. There's dawn, morning,
afternoon, twilight, night, and dead of night.
There's also like if you roll A1 to a 3, it's a day and 4:00 to
6:00 it's a night. That's a nice little.
Again, so much of this is like you can just roll up everything
that you need to do 5 minutes before the game starts.
And I like that you can just roll AD 6 to know exactly what
time of day it is or which watch you're on.
I thought that was a really cool thing to have.
And I like the little vibey thing to the side.
They mostly come out at night mostly.
Again, it's a great way to use that.
The column off to the side, OK, equipment and inventory.
So trade everything's done in juice baby.
Like that's about it. It's juiced all the way down.
Yeah, for random NBCS, Punk should roll D20 twice against
the Punk's luck. 2 fails. They they don't want to haggle
with you. One pass, 1 failed.
There's a complication. So they're haggling difficulty
with you or they want something from you or whatever.
And if you get 2 passes, they'll trade with you.
I like that. It's, it's a super queen, click
super queen. It's a it's a quick clean.
I enjoy it a lot and then supply, one of my favorite rules
in all of TTRPGS, quantum inventory.
I love it. Supply here gear bubbles in like
the vanilla game. It's it's quantum inventory.
You, you, you have a supply. It is just a thing that is both
nothing and everything at the same time.
It is your Schrodinger's inventory.
You just have a space. This says supply when you need
something you and it's a basic adventuring item, it's a common
available item. You just say, oh hey, that
supply is now rope. And then you mark off the
supply. You write rope in your inventory
and that piece of supply is was and always was rope.
You just, I hadn't named it yet and I love that.
I love it so much. It's in Derp Derp is the first
place I saw it, but I stole it and it's in like all my games
that don't exist. But yeah, ammo is an interesting
thing. It's basically like a poor man's
usage die. So it's an abstraction with a
diminishing resource. So diminishing resources you
roll oh this must it must be later.
Spend 1 Amo to fully replenish a chosen weapon.
All other diminishing items need one supply to restore their
resource. Where did where did I?
Oh I'm so I'm going to go quickly go to the bottom next
page because of what I'm talking about diminishing resources
being used like batteries, torches, things like that.
You roll 2D6 each time it is utilized.
On a combined score of 6 or below, you get rid of one of the
D sixes. And when you're rolling a single
D6, if you roll A1, you have one of that item left.
I love that. Yeah.
It's great. Very simple.
Yeah. It's a way to use usage dye
where you only use D sixes. Yeah.
Which is.
Funny in a game where it's not only D sixes in this game.
That's literally was about to say, do you have D4C60, eights
and D12? Yeah, you could.
Just do if you did this in just bastards, these bastards is like
AD 6 only a system. Essentially stuff AD 20 for a
test but everything else is D6. I'd be like that would make
sense, but for this one it's like you just.
You could just use usage dyes because this works fine.
I take no issue with this. Really no.
Not at all, but I you know, I actually have a post a note
here. This is figure out how to do
ammo in my game and I don't want to do usage die but like I was
like my game only is D6 is I'm stealing this.
Yes, this is a great thing for that, yeah.
Yeah, wear and repair. So things can wear and need
repair. If a role is, if a one is rolled
during combat, something gets wear, including weapons, armor,
or things like that. You can use a supply to repair
an item. So if you have an empty supply,
if you have a supply unused, you're going to spend it to get
rid of the wear on an item and it's great.
One supply or special materials can be used to repair it.
So damage, it says if damage is unspecified.
Unarmed attacks are D4, standard weapons are D62, handed weapons
are D8IF2. Dice are shown.
You take the highest. If your attack is impaired, you
roll AD four. And if your attack is, what's
the other one from impaired juiced up, Come on.
Enhanced Enhanced D12, so you get everything.
D4D12 inventory, you get 10 slots.
We talked about everything's one unless it's bulky.
Yep. Resources.
I went over that. Loot and stuff.
Do you want to go into loot? Do you want me to keep?
Going yeah, I mean, yeah, there's salvage.
Hey, there's salvage all over the world.
It could be, it could be new stuff, could be old stuff, could
be stuff. All those were kind of harking
to like whether new stuffs kind of like the corpo stuff.
It's the new technology they're kind of using.
Stuff is just the general things that you find, and old stuff is
like remnants of the old world. Any items you should get from
that, there are roll tables. They're very good coming up for
that. Yeah.
GM should roll for a new item once in each new Overground area
or something that's just laying about, which I do like that.
As you're traveling the world, every area you go to should have
something, some sort of stuff in it.
You know, this is like a, this is that type of game you're
exploring your finding. Yeah, rarely, but I mean
anywhere you go, rarely will you not find either loot or stuff,
right? Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. And remedies.
Yeah, they're remedies are rare plants, stones and mixtures
imbued with essence. So we have balms.
Balm like my monk had. It's a pungent paste made from a
blend of powerful herbs. A dose can restore D6 strength
decks or wisdom. You have anti essential dust
which a temporary temporarily disables all essence.
Within 50 feet you have black leaf which when ingested you
lose a burden is then require. You then require to make a will
save to avoid its addictive properties.
I think that's that's pretty funny.
Listen, you can forget your burdens if you take this T.
Yeah, yeah. Hey, take this.
You'll you won't worry about anything for a while.
Yeah. And then, yeah, if you fail that
save, it leaves you deprived and able to focus.
And so you can eat in the black leaf, providing only a day's
reprieve from addiction. It's actually kind of a brutal
addiction rule. It's.
Brutal. Well, I mean, it's always, I
mean, most addiction, Yeah. So yeah.
So I take knowledge. I love the next heart piece,
it's so good in and of itself. But then the graffiti at the
top. Mofos come out and play.
Yeah, very much a call back. Come out and play.
You ever seen that movie? I've seen enough to that.
Oh fuck you. Ryan to to know what's
happening. I've seen that part a million
times, just like everyone over the age of 30.
It's. Classic.
Yeah. I'm over the age of 30 so.
You are, and you've seen it a million times, haven't you?
Yeah, I have. I'm yeah, ingredients.
To be honest, I actually didn't really deep dive this section to
be true to be well then 100 with you.
Then oh oh oh oh, look at this. I got distracted by the
immediate tables on the next page and I was like oh here we.
Are foraging fine, You can collect stuff.
So basically this is a way to I, I do like, this is definitely
the kind of game where you should have foraging rules,
where you, and not only foraging rules, but also like, like,
yeah, for I'm forging in the way that you like, mix shit
together, which is great. So you can combine ingredients,
You can find ingredients. There's a huge list of tables
we'll go over next for minor stuff.
So ingredients can be combined through alchemy or cooking.
You know, some would say that's the same thing, but at a
stronghold, there might be someone who can do it for you.
So when in a safe place, you can take time to combine any three
different ingredients of your choice.
And then you roll for the result of the combination, which
becomes a concoction. And this combination is now
fixed in your game. And I love that.
So whoever first makes this combination creates that forever
in in your game. And I love that.
That's such a cool little rule that I want to somehow steal in
some way. So why don't you?
What you want to roll up, roll up, roll up some shit.
Yeah, OK. So.
So you need to roll up wait result of combination of three
ingredients. So you need to roll 3D sixty
sixes. OK, I got a pumpkin.
OK. I got honey.
So strong so far. Yeah, both are good.
I would. An aromatic truffle.
Oh, OK. And then roll another D66 to see
what the result is. Listen, you listen, guys, here
you do you. You get a pumpkin, you empty it
out and you fill it with truffles and cover it in honey.
And then when you eat that, you turn translucent for 10 minutes.
As one does, you know, as one does, and now forever.
If you ever put truffles inside a pumpkin and cover it in honey
and eat it, you are translucent. So so great.
Some of some of them, like again, the tables are are
fantastic. So you vomit maggots.
You fear the moon, fear the. Moon is such a good one.
You can read 1 mind what's the anti essential dust like you can
actually like find the combination to make anti
essential dust, which is just crazy.
Imagine being in this part of being like the fuck the
essential like fuck Jay, you know, like I don't want what guy
put into the world to fix how we fucked it up, you know?
But I honestly, at the end of the day, I bet you corpos just
like blast that stuff in the air.
You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, yeah. Armor table that is just a fat
it's AD 66 armor table that gives you the value of the slots
and the arm of everything. And these are also fucking
funny. Bark, plate armor, saucepan,
lid, shield, plastic foam bracers, nano chameleon suit.
Very much like AI. Don't know why like Shannara
keeps popping into my head, you know what I mean.
Do you ever read any of this Shannara books?
I haven't, but I've been meaning to recently.
Yeah, they're OK, but it's very much like the, I call it Future
Past, you know what I mean? Where like people think it's a
fantasy world, but then they come across something that's
very clearly an engine, but they don't know what an engine is.
But you know what an engine is? You know there's a weapons table
again, great shit. Any of these that stick out to
you just like call them out because like the the razor sharp
boomerang is great the the. Rusty Crowbar glass Shank is a
great one that's on there because because it sounds rough.
Yeah, and these are all, they all take up an individual page
themselves. There's the stuff table, which
are the D66 table stuff value in slots like the gosh, the spiked
boots, the grease, the solar powered torch, you know, So you
get you get the stuff, you get the old stuff, you get the new
stuff and you get the cool stuff.
The cool. Stuff.
Yeah, and then you get the if you want.
If you're just populating a world with any kind of stuff,
you literally just roll 3D sixes and it'll take you to the first
D6 will point out one of these tables, and then the next two
will tell you where on the table to look for the thing that's
going to be in this space. Yeah, Oh yeah, I forgot to say
that like the the the armor table is one XX, weapons table
is 2 XX, stuff tables 3 XX, old stuff is 4 XX and new stuff is
five XX. Cool stuff is 6 XX.
The unique stuff table is AD 66 table onto its own.
Yeah, doing a roll, roll up, roll up a unique stuff.
So 2D66's. Why did I close the dice roller,
Ryan? I don't know why you would ever.
I don't know either, I rolled A45I got a sleeping bomb.
It's blast damage will save or sleep.
Nice, nice. So yeah, key items.
So the key items, as we said before, key items are the thing
that you can actually ingest into your body for an
adaptation. So this actually gives you the
item. So for example, if you if you if
you take the dark wood root, right, and you absorb that into
your body, your adaptation is shadow and there is a value and
an order of slots. But you can you can, you can
have this as an item and use it as an item until you decide to
absorb it into your body as a way to do character advancement.
Because again, the only character advancement in this
game is absorption of key items in your body to to cause
adaptations, which I love. I love that so much.
The character advancement in this, I can't remember if this
is the book that says, but it's much more with the death, you
know. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a
non linear advancement. Yeah.
Like you just you, you, you narratively can take those key
items in and get some cool stuff to do.
You get one HP, you might a bump up one score and that's it.
So it really it comes down to the key items and how you choose
to play that narratively, which is fucking fantastic.
There's a whole USB stick table. I rolled up for the an MP4 movie
Flies of Alien and Aliens. Nice.
The MP fours of Lynch's Dune and Eraserhead is also great.
Oh my God, yeah. Never again will I watch
Eraserhead. Once was enough.
Dude, I love Lynch. Gosh, we're almost halfway
through the game, but again, we're not going to go over like
a bunch of the stuff at the end. So orbs, the essential vessels
and things like that. Did you go?
This is mostly magic. Did you deep dive this or let me
keep going? Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, totally. So yeah, orbs are are essential
focus. Basically they allow you to
cast, they take up two inventory slots.
They are two handed. Whenever you want to cast them,
you got to stare into them and then they say that words.
Ponder it, you know? Yeah.
Orbs can track the attention of those who seek essence within.
Obviously they're valuable, so they can't.
You can't get rated for them if it's an.
If an orb is absorbed, which is not an option, the recipient
merely needs to clasp their hands or use a focus such as a
significant object to channel its power so you can take them
into your body. You can be 4 orbs.
Simple. Orbs contain 3 random spells.
Named orbs, Key items contain one random spell until absorbed
for adaptation. And then you have shards, which
are like mini orbs, right? They are.
They're they're they're they're kind of spell scrolls.
They contain one spell. They're released when broken.
They don't add burden, so you can just cast that one thing you
have. They shatter when used and they
can be absorbed by a freak to permanently learn a spell.
So if you're already a freak, you can learn a spell through
shards. Even more freaky?
Even more freaky. Yeah.
So spell casting. So yeah, like Ryan said earlier,
anyone can cast spell by holding an orb, but they must add a
burden to their inventory, occupying one spot.
Given time and safety, punks can enhance a spell's impact, EG
affecting multiple targets, increasing its power if they
have the times like really focus and cast without an additional
cost. If the punk is deprived,
burdened, or in danger, the GMA asked them to make a Will save
to avoid any extra I'll effects from casting a spell.
Consequences of failure are on par with the intended effect and
may result in an added burden, the destruction of the orb or D
Sorry D6 will damage or even death.
So bad things can happen. If you're already beat the hell
up and then you try the cast, or you're in a bad situation, you
try the cast. So there is, you know there is
some anyone can cast, but also it could kill it.
Real quick I I do want to point out one thing and this is
something I noticed and I was like, wait a minute did I
remember that? And we happened to be on the
page. So in the beginning the first
paragraph and orbs. I will I will say that I do like
the bullet point aspect but in a lot of these rules are very much
like pared down by the language. You know what I mean, like to be
very simplistic, but I think there are times where it might
be like a little bit much where they and I don't know if it's
like layout wise. So if you look at page 74, they
fill the entire page right. And even and if you look at like
that top paragraph, it literally ends like there's not really any
any space to do like another word without jumping to another
thing. But if you read like the second
line, it says they take up two inventory slots when carried or
none if a key item and absorb during an adaptation.
And like there's times that they say that and it's just like they
take up two imagers thoughts of carried or none if it is a key
item and is absorbed during an adaptation, right.
They chopped off like a bunch of like is and like a little words
where like you get it, You know what I mean?
But like so it says like or none if a key item and absorbed
during an adaptation. I had to read that a second time
because again, like or none if it is a key item and is absorbed
in an adaptation reads a little easier.
So like I don't they that does come up like they're out in a
little bit where they like I don't know if it is just like to
fit the layout because it is pretty.
Suffice language for layout a little bit.
Yeah, so that's, I mean, it's fine, like it's fine, but it is
something to point out to be like, how are you really going
to fix that? Because where you're going to
have a whole another page because you want to put an is in
there. But also like, you know, like
it's, it's just a weird thing that I didn't notice throughout
where like there are times though, where even when there is
room, it's like simplified to like almost like an outline
language versus like a prose language where it explains a
little bit more. And I don't really know if I
have an opinion about it. It's just something I pointed
out like I noticed in the writing a little bit where it is
maybe sometimes just it's tiny bit oversimplified, but it's it
doesn't, it didn't really bother me, just being like pedantic and
picky because that's what we do anyway.
I'm, I'm mostly unbothered by it, but yeah, spell casting,
yeah. So anyone can cast a spell, but
it can really fuck you up and you you'll have to take a burden
and then. But freaks.
Freaks are different, you know. They're the people who've gained
adaptations through absorbing an orb already.
They only risk a burden. So they will roll will to cast a
spell and then and risk gaining a burden on failure.
Rather than automatically getting one failure on the roll,
cast an additional random other spell simultaneously, acting at
the GM discretion and inflects. D6 will damage on the caster and
essential Essential chaos does ensue.
So yeah, you don't have to take a burden to cast.
You risk a burden, but also if you fail, weirder shit may
happen. Which is the best kind of magic?
Yes, absolutely. And I love the the art piece,
the strip across the bottom with the guy holding the OR about and
the magic just like, but like the pink glow on his face and
stuff like that is so good. Daniel is such a fucking good
artist. Yeah.
A really great artist and there's also so much art in this
book, it's really a treat. It's ridiculous, yeah.
And I mean, but it's not too much and there's plenty of pages
where there aren't any. And the layout itself like with
the the way that they use the colors where they use a column
on the side like everything is is it's it's done so well.
Yeah, so when essence breaks, when will damage is taken in the
process of casting a spell, there is a risk of the caster
being permanently altered, twisted by forces beyond their
understanding, marked by essence.
And so there are some fun. How do you roll D6 for?
The. Yeah, how much will damage?
You took for this essential chaos.
OK, boom 2. 2A century. No, no, no, no.
Come on. Yeah, I guess I'm better than
2/5. Cool, mutation.
Skin gain scales. Well, actually, you know what,
let's go ahead to the next page where it has mutation.
Or maybe it's the page after that, because there are chaos
details which will give you options for what you get.
Oh, I forgot this is like a nested table.
This is like an HP table, but for essential chaos.
So you roll the damage and then you roll AD 6:00 on that type of
damage. So I need to roll another D6.
We'll just let's flip it. I rolled A2 and A5, so let's do
five and two. So So what?
What's the two on the of your? Mutation.
Hundreds of tiny tentacles sprout from your skin.
Slightly adhesive. Listen.
You're a fucking. Monster, you're not.
Coming back to town with us, you'll scare people.
You know, what's what's cool about that is that you can pick
stuff up a lot, right? What's terrible about that is
you will always have like hair and stuff all over you because
if you're slightly sticky, it's just like dust and pet hair all
the time, you know what I mean? You're like one of those, like
stretchy hands that's cool for like one second before it hits
the dust, and then you have to go, like, use soap and water on
it. I completely forgot, dude.
The eye stocks one. Yeah, pop up, pop out.
Eyes pop out on stocks can be retracted but still appear
bulbous is so good. I completely forgot that this
was like a nested table. So there's literally 36 options
for for how the essential chaos affect you.
And it's so good. What were they?
So it's sensory alteration, incursion, mutation and
evolution. Yeah.
The. Other way to advance your
character. Yeah, incursion is really
interesting. Like bad things will just like,
are coming your way. Like viscous sly.
Something viscous slides through a crack in reality.
Just Graves that's there now, yeah.
Incursion is definitely. Essential troll.
Yeah. Yeah.
Incursion is definitely the best one.
Like, that's really, really fantastic sound of wet slaps, a
creaking yawn, a piercing screech, a tentacle hell.
Hey, one man's hell is another man's heaven, you know?
I mean, so yeah. Love that.
That's great. What are you on, Visions?
Yeah, visions. Yeah, you can see visions in
this. Many things inspire visions,
from substances to deprivation to taking it on an adaptation.
Yeah, you can roll for a vision here of the past, the present,
of the future, of the past, again, the present of the
future. But I mean, they're cool.
They're almost like story hooks or like, or like, yeah, they're
hooks. Essentially.
You can roll on this table to get essentially a hook for
something to do, which is cool for the player but also really
cool for the GM because I can be like, OK, cool, you rolled A6,
You see a corporal stronghold and this and that, and then I
can write that and that'll be our next adventure.
Yeah, I mean, if visions are are always come true, then like you
got to throw it in. Like if you roll that three and
like in the future a hermit beckins, you got to throw a
hermit in there, you know? Absolutely, yeah, it's cool.
I like it. It's a little, there's a lot of
little stuff in here, you know, that is not, it's not
cumbersome, but it's fun. And like, if you frankly, a lot
of these things, if you didn't ever do visions like this game,
it would function great if you had a reason to or you wanted
like to start building some hooks for you to work on.
If you need some inspiration, you just do that.
Yeah. This is where I think a lot of
the vault of Varn inspiration comes in because like so much of
Varn is built on like little tables like this and stuff that
like like could spice up your game if you want, but don't
break the game if you don't use it, but are like super vibey and
like really interesting. So this is definitely where
where where Varn comes in is like the four or five games that
make up this game in a in a very good way.
It's a chunk of J, right? Yeah, spells.
Maybe you can do it if a spell
is held in an aura Burchard A, roll in the spell tables to
discover what is held. Flip a coin A or B, then roll
D66. Yeah, so there's, you know, flip
a coin spells. I will roll AD 2 because I don't
know a coin with me. I roll A2 so B.
Cool B side then roll D66. 26 Headed Dice 01414.
Inside of your spell Shard, inside that essence Shard you
just found is fog. You coalesce a deep fog around
you that extends up to 30 feet in any direction.
Very cool 1. You want to give them summon
where you you RIP a tear in reality unleashing something.
It may listen to you if you're lucky and to.
Go hell, baby. Yeah, I yeah, the spells are
good. They're all very weird.
I think maybe the one I was looking at the other day that I
was like, I love this one because it's a very not basic
spell, but just the way it's described adds so much to it.
It was, what the hell was it? Atomic.
Something we'll never know. Oh yeah, on page 83, atomic
flux, which is the 65 choice. Separate your atoms before
combining again a second later. Up to 50 feet away, it's
teleportation, but the way it's described.
Like Star Trek? Yes, but the way it's described
I think lends a lot to like how your players were also
visualized what that is and your like, it really adds to this
weirdo vibe that the whole game has going on.
I really like how it's explained.
I'll say all the tables are. They're written so well, yeah.
The table's pretty much all the way down from here, except, Oh
yeah, the wall generator. Rules So did you do the casting
spells under stress? Because that was the one of the
important. Things we started reading
spells, so casting spells under stress yeah.
So in this game, spells are like fairly cumbersome and they do
require like time and preparation.
You can cast. Freaks can cast in combat, but
they must risk a burden against will to cast, which I think they
already have to anyway. Yeah, but so only freaks can
cast if there's any stress, which includes combat.
Yeah. And then?
They but it's the risk of burden.
The same way, but only freaks can cast in combat.
Yeah, because like, anyone can cast a spell, but only freaks
can cast if there's any stress whatsoever.
Yeah, yeah. And there's like there's a,
there's a light a concentration rule right here.
I would call it you know spell will last typically until the
freak loses concentration, gets hurt, or gets hungry.
Yeah. Listen, I'm that's you can
always be hungry out here, you know what I mean?
Yeah. And I mean, that's as much
concentration rule as I need for anything ever, you know?
Yeah, another full page between the two spell list is the art
that they used for the second cover with the the Growth of
Blue Air. So technically I could just
extract these pages out and have all the art if I wanted to.
But yeah, what's yeah after that is is just a a ton of stuff and
there's procedures and stuff for it.
We don't really need to dig into the like exploring world
procedures. Do you want?
Just so you know, there is a very in depth of varn esque
world map building procedure that does work very well.
I ran through it a little bit. I definitely would suggest that
you buy this book and you read this part.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's, it's great.
So it's like it's exploring the world.
So there's the map and time scales, there's adventuring
procedure. It breaks it down by like weeks
and hours and days and how to roll like those those maps in
the beginning of it talk about those points that has those like
key things off to the left. It's so cool the the maps we saw
before are in this section of the game too.
Weather It literally talks about weather I I love the one ruler
where it basically talks about like change the weather up to
match or players yeah pathetic fallacy.
Occasionally shift the weather to reflect the players mood Rain
starting when they feel sad. You know all the.
Just like, hey, you're. Sad.
Here's rain, yeah, more map exploration stuff.
And then there's there's basically like a like a, it's
not a gaze, a tear, but it's tables for each of the different
kind of places. Again, very Varney.
So there's a bunch of tables for the wastelands.
There's a bunch of tables for like wastelands, weather, day
encounters, night encounters, all of that just for the
wastelands. And then you get all of the same
thing. For the wilderness, you get it.
For the ruins, you get it. And then art, a ton of art for
all this stuff too, Like full page, gorgeous piece of art all
the way through. Again, night, day, random stuff
like everything. And then random counter tables.
A table for D6 for D6, table for droids, factions, stalking
beasts, crawlers, great beasts, denizens, waster punk faction
tables. A mofo ING beastiary.
So you get to actually the beastiary here.
So there's a breakdown of other creature stats work, including
the armor. And then you get like Android
militia, grizzly bear. Any any any of these beasties
jump out at you. The dust whales kind of cool.
I like the replicants just because they're referred to in
like the world building section as well.
Yeah. 6HP. One, yeah.
They're with the ORB. They're replicants.
Oh yeah, the Recluse. But I also like Tentacle.
Hell is not just a thing that we brought up a bunch.
It's actually a stack. Yeah. 18 HP, 1 armor, 18
strength, 8 deck, six wheels, Savage Thorns, which is AD 10
plus D10. I mean it's unit, it's a it's a
whole unit and then the bullet points are gargantuan networks
of writhing fleshy tentacles with central horrific spined
mouth. So very much like AI mean
there's literally a picture of it on this page.
It's it's horrifying. It's a.
Starlike Pit. Yeah, it's a starlike pit, but
like, I don't know why it feels worse.
Is it like the green? Worse it?
Is worse. Chameleon to can mimic adjacent
services, occupy tunnels and caverns.
Victims that save against critical damage caused by the
warmer knock prone and then critical damage.
The target is grappled and dragged 10 feet towards mouth.
If they reached them out, they're devoured.
Anything inside the mouth receives D12 acid damage each
round. So it wouldn't be it'd be very
quickly before you're you're dead.
So that's great. There's a whole section here on
faction rules, not only how to like the procedure and how to
use them, but like basically every faction has a goal and
once a week you should advance those goals and allow and the
players should be able to interact with those goals to
make to help or into them, which is cool.
So a lot of good faction stuff here with faction rules, and
we're going to skip through most of the rest of that Da da da da
da da ecological events, the whole section on event tier job
tables. The solo mofos, which is its own
Zine, but it's in the game here too, so it gives you a whole
breakdown on the solo rules, including the Oracle and
everything. Solo mofo.
Example of play here portents punk NPC maker.
So there's the tables in the back to make all of your NPCS
more NPCS. The appendix M made me giggle a
little bit like EM instead of N because it's eco mofo.
So the stuff here is like a bunch of Philip K Dick, some
Ursula Le Guin deep carbon observatory.
You know, I the master Star Wars a New Hope.
It's a great mix of not just books, but like all sorts of
different media and things like that.
Picture of Ausb, stick a whole page of weapons in the back,
character sheet in the back, which is great.
And the only thing about it is like there's no place to
actually write your burdens. I guess you could put in your
notes, but there's like the 1234 dots to write to put burdens
there. But it's a great looking.
It's a great clean looking table.
Well, burdens take an inventory slot, so you would just put it
under. Oh, that's yes, you're right.
You're right, you're right. And then the you are and then
the back piece, which is just like a mouse with transmitters
and it's head smoke and a pipe. So copy paste mark of the odd
human made for a game. Let's review it and get out of
here. If you're, if you're, if you're
watching this, I'm scrolling real fast to the top for no
reason whatsoever. So let's go to the review score.
So this is obviously a book again, we, we, we, we take
everything we just did and we quantify it into one of five
different metrics for 10 points each.
Art and layout is the art and layout in the book visually, how
it looks, not necessarily how, how, how usable it is, because
the next one is usability and that is how usable the book is.
It's, does it have bookmarks? Does it have hyperlinks?
Does it, is it navigable? Are things in the correct order
in our opinions, both in the book and the PDF?
Rule set is the rule set of the game.
If it's adapted rule set, how well is it adapted?
If it's a unique rule set, as much as one can be, do we like
it? Originality is just originality
in any aspect. And then value is bang for your
buck. How much money?
Not just how much it cost, but what you get on top of that.
So I don't know is this is this available in the world now?
No, it's on pre-order right now. Pre-order.
Is that from a website or is it from Space Penguin or what is it
because I know they did the distro.
It's on backer kit. They were sends me a backer kit
so. Gotcha.
OK. All right.
So art and layout. So art.
Art is great art, super great all the way through.
That's fantastic. Yeah.
This is a, this is a truly joy to go through, you know?
Yeah. All of Dandy Locke's art is is
insane. It's insane all the way through.
It's super vibe. It gives you perfect picture of
of everything that they talk about all the way through the
book, so you know exactly how things are and look layout wise.
I think the last fine. I think they did a really good
job of adapting the the the classic travelers layout from
Clayton. Again, I I think the only I have
very few qualms with it. I think the only thing is again,
occasionally where like the wording does get a little bit
sacrifice for layout, I think in a couple of spots.
But what are your but again, I mean, but the layout is it's
very utilitarian for those part. Like it definitely doesn't blow
me away. It works.
I do like everything they put in the column.
What are your thoughts overall? I mean, I think, yeah, I think
the layout's good. I think the art is great and I
think that bumps it for me up to an 8. 8 is exactly what I was
going to go for. I completely agree.
I think if there was a much less art, they would be closer to A7,
but I think that that the amount and quality specifically of the
art definitely bumps to an 8 usability.
I mean, it's got pretty much fucking everything we want.
It's. Got everything we want.
I mean, doesn't have bookmarks, but I'm really not bothered by
it because of how easy it is to maneuver in a digital version
back to the table of contents at any point in time.
You know, yeah, I'm not bothered by it, except that it's not
there. You know what I mean?
Like, yeah, you know, I mean, but yeah, sections are
color-coded. They put the the, the, the they
put it on the side of the book so that you could easily, easily
reference those basically like tabs without being tabs every
every version of what comes to the ribbon except the the the
spiral bound, which you can't really.
Yeah. How would you do that?
Yeah, tie it to 1 spirals. Yeah.
I mean every single. Always be on one page.
Right. I guess you could like just put
it on the inside of the back cover and then but you know,
every single page is hyperlinked back to the table of contents,
which we love, which takes you back to where you want to be
like that. And they do it in such a cool
way like, oh, just click on the color of the tab and like it's
it's great. I'm.
Gonna tell you right now that that one detail is doing a lot
for me because a lot of times there's hyperlink stuff and it
takes me to page and I'm like, OK, I want to go back to the
table of contents and I gotta like go back myself all the way
up like. How dare we take an extra
second? But it's 2024.
Yeah, I'm with you. Massively a big thing for me,
yeah. Yeah, it's huge, it's huge.
I I, I, I love it. I do really enjoy that a lot
Like it makes it so easily navigable because you could be
like, oh wait, USB stick table. Let me check that out real
quick. And you're like, OK, I saw that.
Let me go back to character creation.
I want to go to adaptations. Boom.
I just did all of that. You didn't see that because
we're on the different window, but I did all of that super
quick and it's great. Yeah, I think, I think transfers
usability goes, I don't know 899 probably I.
Think a nine, I think for this one, yeah.
I can't think that much more. It's really in a good order as
well. Yes, yes I have.
There's nothing about this book that I really would rearrange at
all. I think it's near perfect order
of how I would want things to be laid out.
Yeah, there's very little I could say like the whole like 3A
thing where they don't explain that very well, but that's
that's not really a usability issue.
But you're listening to this and you're riding a tabletop game.
There's never going to be an instance where people are going
completely linearly through your book.
They're going to loop back. But you want to create a way to
read your book in the most linear fashion to be able to
understand it. And this book does a good job of
that. There's not a lot of like me
being like, oh crap, I don't have any idea what we're talking
about. And that's on that's on page
500. So let me go to page 500 and
then come back so I can understand this.
You really know what's going on the entire time.
But even, but the thing too is like, even if you loop through
it, like being able to read and understand something on your
first, like, first impressions are extremely important, right?
Yeah. So like if I get to a book and
it is just scattershot and I read through it the first time
and I'm like, I don't know what the fuck is going on.
And actually the book told me I wouldn't.
That's the only thing that can make it worse, right?
So if you. Understand this going through
the first time. Then write it better.
But if you like, going from the basics to character creation to
the rules is always going to be my favorite way to do things.
And I love that all the tables you need are early on, but all
of the world building stuff that we jumped through in the end is
exactly where it needs to be in the end, where it's not as
important and I can go to it when I want to.
So yes, you're right, there's going to be times where you're
going to jump all around the book, but having it be in a good
order for your first read through to really get a basic
understanding before you then choose to go to the parts that
you want is extremely important. And I think they did a fantastic
job here. So I think 9 is great.
Again, like you said, there's not really anything that I would
move or change or do differently.
And there's not really anything as far as like like at bonus
usability tools. The only thing that I could
think of is, man, we'd have to ask dye sugars to check out to
see if the the PDF has been optimized for screen readers.
Then we're getting super deep anyway, rule set.
So I mean, as we said, I don't there's very little, and I don't
mean this in like a negative way.
There's very little of this that I feel is unique.
I think this is mostly, as we said, this is an amalgamation of
games, but I mean, so was mouse reader, you know what I mean?
It is, but it's an amalgamation with some of our favorite parts
of games. It's it's into the odd, it's
Baltifar, it's bastard's character creation, it's Derf
inventory mixed with some care. And I mean, they took all the
best parts and put it into a good game, so.
I think there's little things dropped in here and there that
are fairly original thoughts and I think that counts for a lot.
I think you should give this number score because I'm biased
as this is a like. Amalgamation.
It's a mark of the odd thing, yeah.
Yeah, it's only things that I love.
So I mean, it's it's also stuff that I love too.
They're just not my not not they're in my top ten, but on my
top five like you, you know what I mean?
Yeah, it's really my top five, I think.
I was going to say it it like I don't.
I think into the odd bastards Valsivarn like what else is in
here? A little bit of derf.
A little bit derf in there, yeah.
Yeah, all, all insanely fantastic games.
All games we've actually reviewed on the show.
So 8. I think that's a good.
I think 8's good. Yeah, I think, I mean, so you as
we said, like it is an amalgamation of a lot of things
and the things that we love and they do a very good job of it.
But as far as so, but there has to be like nothing's A10.
We've already decided the one or two games that are going to be a
10. So everything is a nine.
But to me, even to get to that nine then, which is basically is
the new 10, like I think that it kind of does need to have like a
much more like originality in the rule.
So like this is pretty much as high as you could possibly get
for a game that is basically a mix of other games and and done
in a very, very good way. I think this is the highest this
game possibly could have gotten. And I'm very I'm very content
with that originality. So I mean, as far as rules go,
again, we have to basically, they're not going to get
originality points for putting together the best parts of good
games. The whole weird hope thing I
think is really interesting. I like that, you know, there's a
very positive span on the post apocalyptic world.
I do like that. I like the the, the type of
character you are, the punks and how that's really like hammered
home all the way through, you know?
Punks and freaks? Yep.
Yeah, and freaks. Freaks are just punks with
magic. Yeah, I will say they again,
there's very much an implied setting and things like that.
But like, they really don't give you a lot about like the wasters
of corporals and bandits, do they?
No, I mean there's there's more plugged into the tables when you
roll the. Tables, yeah, but.
Even that's still like a lot of it's implied.
It's like a guide. It's like a guide, you know,
like it's, it's inspiration. It's a spark, Yeah.
But like, I mean, it's still post apocalyptic.
You're still like the people that decide to like go out in
the world. Like I mean, they even say it's
basically Mad Max meets like Miyazaki.
So great. Combination.
It is a great combination. It's just, is it when, when,
when you're taking the best of a lot of things and putting it
together to make a good thing? At what point you is it original
and at what point is it just like a very well adapted
amalgamation? You know what I mean?
So what are your thoughts on originality?
I don't know. I'm, I'm, I don't know,
honestly, I'm, I'm probably not as high as the other scores, but
I am still thinking maybe like a six to seven range.
Yeah, I I was in like A6 to a 7:00-ish too.
Because I mean, even still though, like first of all, like
the the scale it takes to put all of those things together to
create something new with it is really fantastic.
But like, I do like the weird hope thing.
I do like the punk thing. I do like the way that like the
juice works. I do like all of that.
And that is like. I think.
His work is really interesting as well.
Like I think Burdens is a great like kind of, you know, you have
the rule where like you take injuries and takes up inventory
slots, but there's a lot more narrative and it gives you a
chance to express your character in in their solution to that
narrative issue. I think so.
Yeah, well, and then even even even just in like this game,
like I could not reach behind me and grab a shelf, a book off my
shelf and play this game with it.
You know what I mean? Yeah, but like any dungeon game,
you could be like, oh, I could play another dungeon game, but
like I couldn't play another like weird hope future punk get,
you know what I mean? Like I don't, I don't have that.
So I think 7 is a solid. I think 7 is solid for that
value. I don't fucking know, like you.
Are you looking up for that? Yeah, I have it open some.
The pre-order prices. There it is.
Yeah. So listen, we're going to go off
of the Kickstarter prices because that's the data that we
have. The book and PDF with the two
Help Me Out bookmarks was 35 lbs.
The PDF alone was 15. The spiral bound rule book is
£20. Man, that's, that's honestly
like a really OK price for that. That's.
A really, I mean, obviously Kickstarter is going to be a
little cheaper than retail though you.
Know yeah, but even, you know, even like a 5 or something
dollar difference it's like OK, that's that's pretty damn good.
Am I looking at the early bird levels or am I looking at the
regular ones? No, I'm not.
I'm looking at the regular ones. It's fine guys, I'm fine.
It's fine. Yeah.
So those are the basic ones. There's a lot of stuff to add on
here. So I'm really not going to like
get into the weeds for. That yeah, let's just look at,
let's just look at the basic stuff.
So like the the PDF you said is 15 lbs and then the OG punk
level the 35 lbs is just like the physical copy of the book
35. Bucks So what's up?
35 bucks. Yeah well 45 bucks for the book
and PDF. No, because the 35 the physical
copy comes to the PDF. Yes, 35 lbs.
Yes, pounds, dollar, pounds to dollars for us.
It's more for them what they price to that 35 ish.
It's reasonable. It's normal.
It's freedom units so. Yeah, right.
I think it's well priced. I think it's well priced.
It could be more expensive. I mean, I've paid more for less
bulk. You know what?
I mean priced so. Yeah, yeah.
I mean even 15, even 15 bucks for the PDF is is a very good
price for 165 paid PDF. It could be more expensive, you
know what I mean? I think it's great value.
But on top of that, on again, on top of that, it is bang for your
buck, not cost. On top of that, you've got to
look at everything else that you get with it too, because you can
get the regular books, you can get the spiral bound version of
it, right, But you get there are out there in the world, the two
pamphlet versions and the six adventures written by a plethora
of amazing people. So there's a lot of content for
the game that exists already, on top of the fact that the game is
basically endless based on all the tables.
So the value the tables. For me are the big thing.
It's like, that's a lot of play time right there, yeah.
But not only that too, you also get this bad boy here.
I'm holding up the solo Zine because you got the solo
version. You got like the the the low
numbers companion version of the game.
I mean, there's a lot of game here.
There's a lot of adventure here. I think this is a good value.
I think this is a good value there.
And it's CCBY, Yeah. I feel.
Like I'm so yeah, I'm between the seven and eight almost
because I mean, the fact that you can get six adventures and
two encounters like right now instantly.
And and again, it's 165 page and let's just say 35 bucks, right?
Like that's a great deal for a book, for a hardback book.
Yeah, I'm between the seven and an 8.
I don't know. You can pick.
I think I, I think I'm going to go with A7.
Yeah, OK, let's go 7. You know, if they if, if like
the if like the PDF was free or some shit like that on like,
then we're going to like 8-9 territory, you know what I mean?
So we're looking at a solid score here.
We got 8 + 9 plus 8 + 7 + 7 equals.
That's a. Is that a 30 nine 8 + 9 + 8 + 7?
I just don't even do the math anymore because Ryan doesn't.
Even I told you, I told you, yeah, it doesn't matter.
Yeah, that's a 39. That is a really fucking solid
score. And I will say the number on
here that I appreciate the most is usability because the fact
that they came on our show, played the game with us, know
know us, are listeners of us and and brought all of all of the
usability tools, all of the hyperlinks even more than we
asked for. Really, I appreciate that very
much. Great fucking game.
Daniel David fucking killed it. I would definitely play this.
I would love to have them back in the show so we can play it
again. Maybe we'll do a side quest in
the future with them. Love that.
I would. I would highly recommend to go
to the backer kit and pre-order this.
And if you're listening to this in the future and it is possible
to to snag it I highly recommend you do so.
Fun game and great rule set, even if you want to move it into
a different setting. That's it, that's us.
We will. For those listening, and if I
put this out before it happens, what we have coming up on Sunday
is the Liminal Horror Seminar series #2 with Josh Domansky
coming on to do more liminal horror stuff.
So tune in for that on Sunday. And we're going to be back on
Monday for our first side question a very long time.
Josh Damanski will be on to run Best left buried.
Hey, don't forget Hunter, we got a game at 2:00 on Monday, Best
left buried from Soul Muppet. Very excited to play that.
So some stuff coming up and will not tell you what game we're
doing next week just in case we don't do it.
So that's it. Have a wonderful day.
Thank you. Bye.