Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan. And I will reach heaven through
violence. Don't we all, I guess.
And today, yeah, today we're going to be doing something a
little bit different. We're going to be looking at
violence from Luke Gearing. And what I have is the violence
collection, which is not violence.
It is a collection of violence. I will say I don't know if
you've seen this. I'm sure in the book you've seen
it, but did you ever see the sticker that comes with this?
No, Show me. Oh yeah.
Cool. It's that one.
Very cool. It's like all shiny and stuff.
It says ha ha, I'm using violence and it's got this guy.
It's got like a very Western thing with like a monocle and
he's like literally like head back cackling with his fucking
teeth out. It's it's, it's a dope sticker.
This is like honestly worth worth the price of the book just
to get the fucking sticker. Absolutely.
And then Scott, Luke Gearing's blog post, the URL for for
violence on it, which for those not watching, Luke gearing dot
blot, blot dot IM slash violence.
So, so, yeah, so like I said, we're doing something a little
bit different today because we're not going to review this
because first of all, the game is like 2 pages long.
It's, it's, it's, it's more than a micro game.
Like it's not it, but not much more.
It's a, it's a, it's a tiny little game.
It's a blog post that people in the community really ran with.
Yeah, it's So what it really is is.
First of all, if you don't know who Lou Gehring is, I can't help
you. Google exists but.
I can help you listen. Lou Gehring created.
Swivers. Wolves Upon the Coast, The Isle,
a prolific writer in the tabletop RPG space, the indie
space. He has a really fantastic blog
that also supports a lot of his previous releases with some more
mechanics that go with it and just his kind of musings on
design and other things about games he works.
I think he's currently employed or they're currently employed
with Tuesday Night Games, so. They're on the most people.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're shit fucks.
Yeah. Unceasingly, Yeah.
Everything, everything, everything they touch is great
and hard. And we'll get, we'll get into,
we'll get into that. Yeah.
So. So what is?
There's a very, there's a very like anti holding your hand with
anything that Luke Geary puts out that I find really pretty
funny. There's this very subtle
undercurrent of like, fuck you to everything that they put out
that I enjoy immensely. I.
Think it's more that it's more maybe it's a little bit that,
but I think also it's like the respect of the people, like the
respect to your readers to figure this out and not have to
hold their hands through it. Because anything that Luke puts
out is definitely not for a casual first time TTRPG player.
Like there is context to a lot of the things that they release
that they expect you to have an understanding of.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's well, we'll get
into more in the system. Maybe a little bit of fuck you
too. Yeah, so.
But also also the pros is fire when we start getting to some of
the monsters in some of that stuff.
It's it's crazy. If you ever read the aisle, the
aisle is very much an adventure. That's like incredible as a
piece of prose, but also as an adventure is very much like,
again, like there is not one. It is very much like an absentee
father in the fields you get from like the support you get
from Luke Gearing's stuff. But again, I very much enjoy it.
But so. So what is violence?
Violence is a yeah, it's a it's a resolution.
It's not even a game really. It's just a resolution system.
And it's not even. And even that is just a
framework. And we'll, again, we'll go over
that a little bit more what that means and everything here in
just a moment. But what we're going to go over
today is the violence period combined and revised PDF, which
is the PDF on the on Lou Gehring's blog, which is the
resolution system, which really just gives you violence, non
violence and kind of a bit of framework for character
creation. And that's about it.
And then a little bit of examples making it into a bit of
a game. And then we're going to be
talking about what's in my hair and out, which is the print of
the violence collection. Violence collection.
Fuck war. There was a violence jam that
was put out and this was collected and made in this book
and then it you can buy it on Spear Witch and you get the dope
sticker I was talking about. And then there was a violence
jam too which will go over a little bit too.
It does not currently exist in print.
I think maybe recently because I've looked at it before and
didn't see it, but recently there is a.
For those that don't know, Mix AM does print on demand now.
So there is a on demand link to mix and for violence too.
And when you click on it, it basically just says we're like
the mix and people are in the process of approving it.
So the second that gets approved, I'll be I'll be
snatching that. So we're going to kind of go
through those things because those jam entries, the first one
more than the second one is a little bit more like a lot of
them are kind of incomplete or they're just like an addendum to
a rule or maybe an adventure or things like that.
And then the second one is much more complete adventures, kind
of. So we're going to touch on a lot
of those things, but we're not going to, like I said, we're not
going to give a score. We're just going to kind of talk
about it, talk about what we like about it and just kind of
go through the jam stuff. And really just, I don't know,
this is kind of a more of kind of the episode we did with with
Nate dreams, like Highland paranormal stuff where we just
kind of go through the stuff and just talk about how it's so
fucking cool. That's pretty much it and how
the people in the scene can make cool shit and highlight that
stuff a little bit. So if you're watching live and
you haven't gone to our blue sky and liked our post about hell,
like the Black Rainbow Society, you have until the end of the
episode to like that post. And then we're going to pick a
winner at the end of the episode.
And then Gavro Rogo, the creator of this is going to send you a
free copy of this book. So scroll back in our blue sky,
find the picture of me holding this and make sure you like the
post, not the quote post of the post.
And and we'll do that. But otherwise, let's just let's
get fucking violent. Bro OK, I'm ready.
Yeah. Yeah, let's fucking do it.
So violence combined and revised for those that can't see, it's
black on white in a very what is this font?
It's, it's just a plain serif font.
It is as bare fucking bones as you can imagine.
Like this is the most Logan shit ever, pretty much.
But you know what's crazy is this whole thing is only 9 pages
low. And yet.
And yet, even though we're not reviewing this, did you notice
that it not only has hyperlinks, it is fully bookmarked and it is
only 9 fucking pages so. Fucking ridiculous.
I also I think it 11 pages long. Sir Oh, maybe, just maybe, the
last entry just starts on page 9.
You are correct. So the contents are rules.
So funny I did not realize it was, but I didn't need to look
through bookmarks. I did not realize it's.
It's like completely bookmarked. Yeah, it's crazy.
So you get contents, which is the rules which covers violence,
which is initiative shooting, melee injury, down rolling with
disadvantage and advantage edge cases and the non violence.
Then you get characters making it yours and then pseudo
historical violence, which is just a modification to the
system, which is cool to show the modification of the system,
like how you can kind of make it your own.
And then there is the Modern Federal Paranormal Horror and
Investigation Toolkit, which is as close as Luke gets to kind of
making this a game. And I don't know if you notice
in violence too, like half of it is just like three more
adventures for this, for the modern federal paranormal.
So we'll go over those a little bit, but that's that's it.
And that's what we're going to go over right now.
And then we're going to go through the two violence
collections. So let's let's read up on
violence and even the even the table of contents.
I love because it's like violence.
And then it's just like dot dot dot dot dot all the way across
the page. It's very much like if you were
to write this up in like, I don't know, the 80s on a
typewriter like it looks it is. It is again, yeah, as bare
bones. It feels like modern Federal
Paranormal Horror Investigation Toolkit too, a little bit.
You know what I mean? So getting into the rules,
period violence, period initiative, you roll AD 20 for
each individual or group. There is a what is this thing
called? The thing.
It's the the little, the one after that denotes a thing.
I can't remember what that that part of punctuation is called,
but it denotes a thing. It says roll AD 20 for each
individual or group involved in the combat.
Scroll to the bottom. But do you know?
Those are hyperlinked on this too, no?
They're not. Yeah, they are they.
Fucking are bro. They are.
No excuse not to do this for anybody.
So groups can be used for larger scale actions involving for
example, 3 to 4 bands per side of a conflict.
So that's what that means. Roll the D20 for each individual
group involved in the combat. Write these down and resolve
highest first. Do this at the beginning of each
round, so the beginning of every round.
Everyone rolls AD 20 and you put it in order, you know, shooting,
and don't forget this is not a complete game.
This is a framework and a resolution mechanic, right?
Shooting to shoot someone? Roll 16 plus on AD 20.
So if I want to shoot you, I roll AD 20.
Got a roll 16 plus. There's modifiers to this.
So roll with advantage when the target is not in cover or
moving. That means the baseline is
advantage. Like if you're to stand in
there, it's advantage, you know? It's a cover shooter.
Yeah, it reminds me, Rad did this a little bit where they
decided that like, if you're not in cover, you have advantage,
you know? Yeah, yeah.
Similarly, those with training may take an advantage.
So you could have training from what?
Figure it out when firing multiple shots at plus one per
additional shot to a maximum of +6.
If successful, roll for how many shots find their mark resolve
each bullet individually. I did have questions about this.
I talked to some other people that have run violence before.
This is probably the only part that I'm I'm I'm the least sure
of. So when firing multiple shots,
add plus one per shot. So if I fire six shots, right, I
add +6 to my my 16 plus right? Yeah.
OK, it's. Successful.
Yeah. So if successful, so I'd say I
rolled an 18, right. I shoot you and then if
successful, roll for how many shots find their mark.
Resolve each bullet individually.
That's the part I'm not sure of. So then.
Do I roll D 26 times? Is that?
I mean, it's how I read it at least.
Right, but do you add the +6 for each bullet each time?
My thought is no. My thought is just you roll to
see how many hit you've already hit.
You're already going to injure, you're just seeing how many hit.
But like, if you're just doing the modifier on the initial roll
or for every individual bullet is my only question.
That's the only part that you can't really parse out of this.
Yeah, I agree. What did your sources tell you
about how they ran this? To just do it for the first shot
to see if you hit and then just do 16 plus for the rest of the
bullets individually just to see how many of them hit.
That's how I would do because rolling with +6 for every
bullet. But I mean it makes, I mean that
would also make sense. So you can just do it kind of
either. Way.
There is definitely an argument there for that.
Yeah. And I think that is the only
unclear thing in here because I think the other question I had
does resolve itself if if you just read it not dumb, which I
was. I think like again, the we'll
get there in a second. So when someone is shot, roll AD
20 and apply the following modifiers.
This is called an injury check elsewhere, apparently not here,
but it is called an injury check.
So each injury they have adds +2.
So if you've been shot at all, you have an injury and you get
+2 rifle calibers out of plus 4 shotguns at +5 at close ranges
and +2 at medium and concealed or civilian armor subtracts -2
military heartsuit subtract -4. So let's just say for a, for
example, you take two bullets, hit you, I assume that's two
injuries, right? Each injury they have adds +2.
So that's +4, right? So you don't roll AD 20 + 4.
And that's where you're going to check after you've been shot,
right? So roll me AD 20 + 4.
Already it's OK, we're here more than that.
D-24. So I rolled A20.
So sick. Yeah.
So I'm immediately down. Yeah.
And then so you're more. Just for the example, yeah.
So every. Time.
Go ahead, go for it. I rolled A9 this time, so 9 + 4.
I rolled a 13 which is actually. Awesome.
Which is awesome being down. So the three results are D20,
it's one to six is a flesh wound, no effect. 8 to 12 is an
injury, 13 plus is down. So when you get shot, you're
seeing if you getting shot actually injured you or not.
So you could get shot 6 times, but if you roll between 1:00 and
6:00 for each injury, including these modifiers that are listed
here, you can theoretically get flesh wounded by every single
bullet. That's totally fine, but the
odds of that is is not high. And then with all of these
injuries that you add, realistically you're very likely
to get a 13 plus and go down. And that's kind of like the core
of the system is if you get shot, you have a very good
chance of fucking dying on one. I love her rules that have like,
gun rules. It's like, Oh yeah, guns kill
people, like, almost immediately a lot of the time, yeah.
So yeah. I mean, the entire, even the
name violence is like there's like a a nuance to it because
it's very much like this might be the deadliest system we've
ever looked at. You know what I mean?
Yeah. It might be.
Like if you 9. Lives Valhalla so.
Well, something died. Yeah.
Well, yeah, right. Every dash roll, something dies.
This is damn close to every dash roll something dying.
So that's kind of like the core of the game a little bit because
like it really is kind of about shooting wig to melee in just a
second. But that's that's kind of what
it is. You roll 16 or higher when you
want to shoot to one on AD 20. And then if you shoot them, they
add some modifiers to see how injured they get from your shot
potentially immediately going down on the first shot.
That's crazy. Then there's melee.
So compare melee modifiers and the modifiers listed below it
says. Note the difference between
them. Below is only a sample, which
again, this is saying that this is a resolution mechanic and a
framework for you to take this resolution mechanic and make it
your own. And that's one reason we're not
rating this or scoring this, because it's not a game, it's a
resolution mechanic. It's a resolution mechanic with
built in explanation to an extent of like making it your
own thing, which is great. So the modifiers, for example,
only a sample, improvised weapons add plus one small
weapons add +2 large weapons plus three training, +2
masterful training plus 3 injuries subtract -2 when you're
going into melee. So both combatants for melee,
not AD 20, both combatants roll AD 12 and then the combatant
with the highest total modifier adds the difference to their
role. That was the other question I
had because, and that's a later edition.
It's the last addendum on the blog post because they they Luke
put like kind of like a change law kind of every time they
updated it with like the date for what they changed.
The last thing they said was that they adjusted the melee
bands and and when you when we look through by this question,
one that add on isn't there. It basically just says add your
modifiers, see who hits right. This one says the combat with
the highest total modifiers adds the difference to their role.
So if you have a modifier of four and I have a modifier of
two and I add 2 to my role because that's the difference
between our two roles. Like if you have 5 and I have 1,
you would add 4 to yours and I would add nothing.
I like that it, it keeps the modifiers low even as you stack
because you have to like chop off the differences and we get
to advantage and disadvantage. It's very.
Interesting, I I I definitely can like see how it works in my
head. I'd love to play some combat in.
This with this, well, advantage and disadvantage work similar to
that in a second where like they cancel each other out.
So you only have so many versions of it and I feel like
this is like that version of it or they can't your modifiers
cancel down until you only have like some remainders and that's
it. I like it.
I think it's interesting if the difference between them so it
doesn't even matter what you roll, it's the difference
between the two roles is what matters in melee.
So if the difference between them is 1 or less, both are
injured and go down. Fuck, if you both roll A12, you,
you're down. You're both down, you both.
Stabbed each other, Hit each other in the head at the exact
same time. And you're out.
That's crazy. If the difference is 2 to 3, the
victor is injured, the defeated is injured and goes down.
OK, Like you're still hurting even if you walk out of it,
right? And if the difference is 4 plus,
the defeated is injured and goes down, so you have to roll higher
than four plus to be able to hit someone.
But again, same thing with melee.
If we're both in a knife fight, we're both getting fucked up,
you know what I mean? Yeah.
Absolutely. Yeah, so injury.
What is an injury? An injury is not just an
abstract measure of damage. The referee should endeavour to
make injuries real. Broken bones, debilitating
wounds, blows to the head. What is an injury?
That's the explanation for it. Like again, this is a framework
for how you to make it yourself. So we'll look at some examples
of some injury stuff in some of the jam stuff.
I like that like immediately when it talked about injury
being like an abstract and you should like endeavour to make it
real. The rules actually like the the
mechanics here already kind of reinforce that because having
injuries already works against you like in roles.
So it's easy to be like, yeah, you fuck, you broke your hand or
whatever like it hit you in the hand with a baseball bat and now
your hand is broken. So now you are less good at
shooting or using melee because you have to use your off hand or
like gripping a weapon hurts now.
So it's cool to be like, yeah, hey, it's abstract.
If you're going to use this make up your own thing.
But also, like, if you're using this resolution mechanic, it's
already kind of baked in anyway, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like you said, say you did
take that injury, injuries subtract -2 from your role in
melee. And then I think we'll get into
a section about injuries with when, when you're shooting.
We'll get to that. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Each injury adds plus two.
Yeah. So to the flesh, to the check.
But it's down. Yeah.
After the violence is concluded, roll AD 20 for each person down,
add +2 for each injury. So you rolled to be down before,
right. And let's say you just got.
Let's say you got shot twice, right.
Add +2 for each injury on a 16 plus you're dead.
Otherwise you're critically injured and will die without
medical attention. So if you go down you're you are
very likely to die. So roll me D 20 + 4 again
because she took two injuries. I rolled.
I got 12 after the plus 4 model. 6 So you're not dead, you're
just dying. I'm just critically injured, so
yeah. Yeah, So rolling with this, I
love the way that they wrote disadvantage here, dis slash
advantage, because you almost always see advantage slash
disadvantage, but when you dis slash advantage.
It's disadvantaged, but also advantage like it's this is the
way I'm running it forever from now on this great.
So when making a D20 role, keep a track of all factors which
afford a disadvantage or advantage.
We talked about this before like things like training and things
like that can can give you advantages.
These factors should be easy to spot natural language, but might
also be called out in the text. Advantages and disadvantages
cancel each other out. Once all factors are considered,
follow one of the procedures below.
There's three things here, right?
So advantages and disadvantages cancel one another out.
Roll 1D20 normally. So if if you have one and one
one and one of each nothing, roll remaining advantages.
Roll 1D20 and a number of D sixes equal to the number of
remaining advantages and add the highest rolled value of D sixes
to the D20 roll. So this is my question.
Add the highest rolled value of D sixes.
So that's just saying if you roll 66 you just pick the one
highest 1 and add it. That's how I ran it, yes.
Yes, yeah. So again, the technical language
in here is as streamlined bare bones as possible with very
little example. It is the most, it's
extraordinarily technical. It is.
It is like it's it's again, we talked about it not holding your
hand, like if you just read it at face value.
And my teacher RBG brain is trying to think of like what
they really mean. It's like just read what they
fucking say. Yeah, but I.
Mean also like, you know, if you're using this resolution
mechanic in your own game that you're trying to like make and
put out as your little project or whatever, like you're
probably going to play test this and that's also going to answer
a lot of questions for you in the play test, you know?
Yeah, yeah. And again, since it is just a
framework, you can make it your own anyway, and a lot of people
do. We'll go over that.
So the other one is remaining disadvantages.
Roll 1D20 and number of D sixes equal to the number of remaining
disadvantages. Subtract the highest rolled
value of D sixes. So that's it.
Either it all cancels out or you roll D sixes equal to your
advantages or disadvantages and add the highest.
Roll D6 to either way, right? That's it.
Couple of edge cases. Explosives resolve as shooting
against all in the blast radius, right?
What is a blast radius? It's not given here.
Make up your own. There are three radiuses though.
There is. Those in the kill zone
automatically receive 1D6 injuries with again a + 2 to
injury checks for each one. So if you you could get a + 12
to your injury check, which means it's impossible not to go
down because 13 is down. They add +8 to be shot and +6 to
the injury check. So I think that's per injury.
So if you get 2 injuries from in the kill zone you're you're just
down. It's called the kill zone.
So I mean really. Like the kill zone you're?
Also like laying into like the realism of weapons as this does,
like if an explosive goes off next to you, like the likelihood
of you surviving is incredibly low.
Extremely, extremely, which is it makes sense in this.
We just, I just talked to the mechanic like, oh wait, actually
it's D6 each or and it's a D8 like it's you would basically
have to roll A1 to maybe live and that's about it.
Even on a D6, those in the shrapnel zone zone 2
automatically receive one D 6 -, 2 injuries.
They add +6 to be shot and +4 to the injury check.
And those in the tertiary zone add +4 to be shot and +2 to the
injury check. Still sucks, but survivable
maybe if you don't have a lot of injuries already.
So that's explosives. The next is suppression, which
is again is a later thing added when you look through the the
notes. So when firing to suppress, no
role is required. So this means this means by
suppression, this means like you're not firing necessarily to
hit the person, you're firing to keep them, keep them down behind
something, keep them locked into an area like suppressive fire,
like cover me kind of shit, Yeah.
When a suppressed target attempts to take an action which
could expose them, roll AD 6 so you don't roll a suppressive.
You're you are saying that suppression is happening, and
when they want to do something, their role.
Or when a suppressed target attempts to make an action that
could expose them, roll AD 6. You're rolling when they make an
action. If the number rolled is equal to
or less than the number of people firing to suppress, the
target is shot. If you got four people firing
and you roll AD 6 less than four shot, the number rolled is how
many individuals hit resolve each separately, determining
randomly which shooter hits. If suppression is at hidden or
obscured target, it only has half effect.
EG two people would have to fire to have a one in six chance of
shooting individuals as they take action and then firing to
suppress uses half the ammunition in a weapon.
Weapons without magazines or similar cannot be used to
suppress. Makes sense because like you can
just wait out like the six shots in revolver.
Yeah, if a shooter double s their ammunition expenditure,
they count as two people firing. Makes sense.
Again, you're just holding that automatic down.
Machine guns and the like use only 110th of their ammunition
to suppress because they generally have big ass
magazines. Makes sense without having to
count ammo, which is it's a. Really great edge case rule
though. Like it's, it's really elegantly
like slid in here. Slid on in that's that's Lou
Gehring elegantly sliding on in. So non violence when discussion
and common sense is insufficient to resolve an issue.
Roll 1D20 and try and score over a difficulty value.
This difficulty value is set by the handler, DM, whatever and
stated publicly they should be able to justify this excluding
any hidden difficulties unbeknownst to the characters.
Standard OSR shit like people should know what they're rolling
against and why they're rolling in the consequence of their
actions and things. This role is subject to dis
slash advantage which might come from training or the situation.
And that is the game. Like that is the resolution
mechanic. It is it is shooting, it is may
light, it is edge cases of violence in those realms.
And then the non violence, which is basically like whenever
you're just doing some shit, set a difficulty value, roll, roll
it, you know, And then we got a page on characters.
So characters should mostly be defined by their so this is not
telling you, this is just examples because they're not
giving you exactly how to do it. So characters should mostly be
defined by their competencies. Some of these will be broad a
job, role or archetype, while others, whilst others will be
more specific. Competent characters have three
to six skills. Newer, inexperienced characters
will have less. Duh, we'll get to that.
So more fantastical games might have traits or similar to
exceptional strength, amazing ability and the like.
After notable experiences, players should record these on
the character sheet. The referee can also dictate
that experience must be recorded.
These experiences can be invoked to give advantage.
Disadvantage characters may have a maximum of five experiences by
default, a racing old one if desired or required.
I like that. Like the, the it's, it's if you
learn a thing effectively enough to write it down, you can be
like, oh, I know this thing from this time.
I did that thing and boom, advantage, you know?
Yeah. Narrative character growth.
Love it, Love it. Characters will also accumulate
injuries and skills throughout the adventure and training.
Skills should take a significant investment to develop, whilst
injuries can be caused in an instant.
For a lighter, pulpier game, allow skills to be accumulated
after each quote UN quote adventure or major obstacle and
injuries to be recovered after one to two such excursions.
More dour games it's shit that I would play for sure.
Will require in world time spent training, researching and
practice. Whilst the skill is being
actively trained, allow it to be used as a normal skill.
You'll have to research the healing time for various
injuries and consider what impacts they'll have.
So literally it's like if you break a bone that's how long it
should take you to get a bone. And then when important, where
important, you may want to generate the background details
of the characters over defining this can lead to solved
characters who are uninteresting, but having some
concrete details to riff from can be very useful like that,
just like a little bit of something.
You know what this get this, you know what this gives me what a
little bit of or or or a character creation kind of like
thing that I might tack onto this little bit fist.
OK. Oh, I mean, yeah, your your
character's two different. Like it's.
Two things, just two skills, like 2 traits.
That's it. Like like first of all, I would
run the face system, but you could kind of tack on a little
bit of fist character creation to the violent system and I
think it would work beautifully. I agree.
I see, so I fuck with the vision.
Are you fucking making it yours? Much of these rules were
developed as needed in the vernacular style.
Think less of what you want to achieve and more of what you
need to run your game. Avoid building any further than
that. Channel that injury into making
more content for your game. Just make what you fucking need.
That said, some of the things you'll want to consider upfront.
What are the primary definitions of your characters?
Of that Do characters have anything beyond skill and
primary definitions Will there be a provided skill list or
should players just determine their own skills very like very
smart do they need a defined background prior to play Next
one's the best one. Are you sure and what can I
steal from other games to make this easier?
That's a great that's a great list of of of every game.
You should you should think about I.
Absolutely agree. I love that.
Are you sure? Yeah, it's so, it's so good.
This very much feels like. And for those that haven't
really dug back into God, I'm going to see some some shit I
like blog posts from the OSR before blogs were content.
Yeah, when people made shit like this just to make shit like
this, hoping that people would maybe use it.
Because I feel like a lot of blogging now is very much just
like I'm a Blogger, so I need to put shit out when I mean, maybe
I missed the time when people were just doing that all day.
But I, you know, you can find lists of older OSR blog posts
and I love digging through them because this is the kind of shit
you're going to find in a lot of them.
And, and that's all I'll really say about it.
And that's kind of it. So there's 2 examples here, that
of a little bit more, but other than that, that's 4 pages, one
of which is the table of contents.
That's the whole thing. And I love it.
Again, it's a resolution mechanic in a framework with a
little bit of direction to make it your own.
It's not a game. And I and I, I want to, I want
to play, I want to play all the stuff that comes from it.
So the two, the two things that are added, one is pseudo
historical violence. So it's basically just a way to
make violence fucking crunchier. If you really want, there's a
table and chip. So modified melee procedure.
Use this to make melee slower and more involved.
Good Frev is going to come up a lot like in a fantasy or
historical game. Both combatants roll AD 12 and
had relevant modifiers. Highest roll wins.
Combatants compare their relative levels of
effectiveness. However it is derived the
difference between them is added to the more skilled combatant.
There's like A0AD6 roll 0 through 5 untrained all the way
up to trained master, natural born killer stuff.
And then you compare the weapons used by each combatant.
Always apply the modifier to the player characters role.
If only one party is using a shield, modify blah blah blah
blah blah. So there's literally a table
like like an X and AY fist, dagger, short sword, sword, 2
handed sword, hand axe, battle axe, 2 handed axe, club, Mace,
flay, a warhammer, spear, halbert, pullack staff.
And it goes down one side and the same goes across the other.
So if I'm using a club and you're using a hand axe, I would
go across club and down hand axe and there's your modifier.
Yeah, interesting. Amazing.
It's amazingly like BXE table, yeah.
It's like, yeah, 'cause if you're.
It'll take you a second to decipher it.
It does make a lot of sense. And like once you like start
thinking about it, how this like resolves combat, you're like,
OK, I do get this. But I love that it's just this
table that's like borderline legible.
It's just like all negative ones and negative twos.
Don't even start on Hyperborea. So, but this matrix makes sense
except like the top is abbreviated.
So it just makes it obviously because it needs a space.
But like so the highest, so the highest it's 3 to -3 basically.
So the highest is it's like it's well, fist is I think the
highest in just about everything.
Anything against a fist. So a spear against a fist is is
like plus 3 and 200 sword against a fixed fist is +3 and
vice versa -3 and shit so. And again, it's melee.
So you're just looking at the difference between things and
the difference between them is 1 or less.
Both are injured same as it's the same same check as before. 2
to 3 victors injured, 4 plus injured and injury check and
everything. It's just a little crunchier and
it gives you like like a weapons matrix.
And then there's injury check resulting from melee combat.
They're modified by the interaction between weapons and
armor, so it's the same list down the side.
And then it's light, medium heavy armor.
And then so whenever you do an injury check, the best you can
get is a fist versus heavy armor gives you -7 to the roll.
That's the worst you can get. Well, yes, best for the person
taking either. One yes taking yeah and then the
so the highest modifier you can get is I mean they're all it's
all minuses. It's all because it's 00's the
best but that's the best yeah. So A2 handed axe versus light
gives you no modifier so that's like that's like no armor same
thing with two handed axe versus light and medium and a pole axe
versus light armor like other than that there's always a it's
better for you on your injury check.
I like that too as a really interesting mechanic that like
you're not reducing damage because like there is no damage
rolls. It's just the number of times
you're injured and what that injury does to you.
So you never have to worry about how much any of these weapons
do. It makes no difference
whatsoever. You're just saying how injured
you can get from the weapon, which is so it's such an
interesting way to do it, to not worry about literally any damage
whatsoever because it doesn't matter, because you're either
going to get a flesh wound, fucked up or basically dead and
like that's it. Because that's how fucking
weapons work, you know? I really, I'd like like you're
kind of just reinforcing. I really love this table
specifically like I love the idea of like the the weapons
like having modifiers against armor, because obviously with
heavy armor, if you try to punch somebody with heavy armor like
you could, you could. So a punch can kill a person.
You know what I mean? They're like they're.
Wearing heavy armor, like maybe you get a flesh wound, you know,
and maybe you get an injury if it's like 1 off, but like really
like you're going to get like a -, 7 to.
Well, if you if you, and this is what's fun because the more you
look through the numbers, the more like obviously they're like
well thought out, right? But like, so what's the number
for going down? It's 13, right?
And what is Fist versus heavy armor -7 -, 7 So like it's.
You have to you. Have to crit to hit the lowest
possible where you could actually maybe get that one
number that could take down a person in fucking plate, man.
When you punch up like that's that's, that's the more you look
at that and when you go through the other matrixes and stuff
like that, that shit pops out over and over and over again and
you're just like, that's so smart.
So again, well thought there's not random numbers.
Like I wouldn't be surprised if that was like the number that
started and everything goes up from there, you know?
I that may be how it was. It is like a fun idea though,
that like if you have somebody who's been wearing heavy armor
and you've been like beating the shit out of them and they have
multiple injuries, which will like add like a positive
modifier to their injury role that like you could actually
finish them off with a fist if they're beat up enough, you
know, you get my 7:00. But if they have like a + 8, at
that point it's like, well then fucking it balances out fine,
yeah. Which is.
There's a lot of fun interactions, you know.
It's so good, it's so good range combat resolve shots normally
require 16 plus to hit targets without a shield.
Grand advantage injury checks. There's more modifiers here and
it's basically like the weapon used for range and again, armor
modifiers and that's it. So the most kind of complete
violence thing that I believe that Lucas put out is this
modern paranormal horror Investigation Toolkit, which is
like 5 pages long. So we'll just we'll just briefly
touch on it and then go through some prose bits.
But what it is is it says these modifications were used to run a
game where all players were federal agents inducted into a
covert unsanctioned government faction looking to investigate
and contain inexplicable happenings.
So very much like what is, I mean, modern federal paranormal.
Yeah. But what is is SCP or something
like? That foundation, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, that's what it gives me the vibes of.
Most notably, this means curtailing the initial types of
characters and the skill listings, right.
So there's a section around agent creation.
So it says before you play, generate an agent.
And I love the agent generation here.
It's fucking hysterical in parts and like all of it is, but also
amazing. Before play generate an agent.
So you have to determine a federal agency and record down
what that is and the capacity the agent works for, right.
So let's say, like, I mean, you could just go straight fucking
Scully. Oh, you know, we've got Men in
Black. OK, we'll go Men in Black.
So alien hunters, right? Yeah.
They a subdivision of the FBI right proficiency is determine
any and records one D 6 + 2 skills.
Of note, the agent has these can overlap with their agency role
love that represent particular skills.
So if it overlaps with the agency on top of your regular
skill, you might get, you know, a bunch of advantage.
So characters with three to four skills are young 20 to 35 to 6
are mature 31 to 60 and seven plus are old 61 plus.
I love that. I love that.
It's literally like the older you are, obviously you're going
to learn more shit. Determine family using age on
the table below. You're going to roll for this.
Kidding me? So it's so fucking ridiculous.
It's. So ridiculous and I love it.
So I'm going to finish it out and then we'll roll on the
table. So provide a name for the agent
and and any family they have, work with your handler to
determine redactive. We'll get to redactive and
determine your record, your determine and record your
everyday carry. As in just like what gun do you
always keep on you? Because obviously you work for a
federal agent, you do that shit. So the table is age, spouse,
partner percentage chance, children percentage chance plus
number, and it's young, mature and old.
So roll AD three first I guess. Roll AD three, I got a 2.
So you're mature, so you would get 5 to 6 skills.
So you're 31 to 60. And then for mature it says 60%
chance of having a spouse. So that means roll AD 100 and I
guess if it's less than 60 you have a spouse.
I rolled a 82. So no spouse for you?
Yeah. Let's pretend you did, though.
OK, cool. We'll say I rolled a 55.
There we go, Right? So children chance percentage,
it's a 60% chance you have kids. I roll at 51.
So you have kids? I roll 186 for how many kids?
I've got 5 kids. You got five kids, I know.
And then there is a little, another little little number
thing, addendum thing that comes down for if you're old, you have
a 40% chance of having a spouse or partner, right?
It says 40 to 70 represent a dead partner.
Roll for children is normal. So if you roll less than a 40,
you have a partner. If you roll 71 or up, you have
no partner. But if you roll 40 to 70, you
had one and they're dead. I rolled a 42.
So you got a dead partner roll how many kids that they left
behind? And I just, that's so fucking
funny. I love that it's so good.
Yeah, you got 3, three kids that were left behind by your dead
spouse and you're old, but you know, they're grown.
It's whatever. So there is now AD 20 list of
federal agencies. And well, I think that's just a
typo. It should say federal agencies
twice, but it says federal agency on the 1.
So this is great. So you don't even need to come
up with a list of federal agencies because they give you
one through 20, everything from Air Force Intelligence to the
Office of Export Enforcement. U.S.
Postal Inspection Service is there too.
Yeah, the ATF, the CDC, it's great.
And then there's AD 100, list of skills, which I love.
So Romeo D, just make a fucking character quick, roll the D20
for your agency, and then roll 5D100 for your skills, I guess.
Or just like two or three, whatever.
Let's just do three. OK, so for my agency, I got the
Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
So the CDC, yeah, yeah, a lot of very cool story stuff you can do
with like paranormal shit or like weird Lovecraftian monsters
in CDC. For skills, my first one is
going to be 55 Locksmith. That's a solid one for a first
skill. But not not particular because
it doesn't really work for the CDC.
Right. No, that's just not my personal
life. The I got another one.
That's cryptography. Cryptography, I can fucking
speak. I know what either you know what
Potato. Potato.
Yeah. Golem Golem my.
Last one actually really leading into the CDC one is chemistry.
Boom. I would say particular skill
obviously in the CDC. Yeah, sick and and that's it.
So there's a redacted thing here.
It says paranormal investigators are scarred by the experiences
they have. Experiences referee dictates as
needing to be recorded cannot be erased or replaced as part of
accumulating other experiences. If all 5 slots are filled and
the character needs to record another, they breakdown.
For most, this means abandoning their beliefs and retreating
into whatever safety they can construct from the tatters of
their old lives. So in the previous thing it said
like if you get more than five like erase one do whatever.
This one is literally like Nope. Well, this one is very like A
Call of Cthulhu, right? Your characters just get worse
and worse until they like, just cannot operate as people
anymore. And this is very much the same
vibe. Like, yeah, things you just get
hit harder and harder until like your mind cannot handle
continuing on what you're working.
You know, and it's sick. There's the inhuman violence.
So this starts going into AB series section.
The pros and some of these are incredible.
So it says impossible beings respond differently to violence.
They have evasion, shooting, melee, harm, and that's their
stats, which is great. And then there's monsters.
Were there any that really stuck out of you?
I want to read one or two because the again, the pros is
fucking incredible. Were there any that you were
like, fuck yeah, this is this one, this one, this one, this
one goes. I'm sorry, what?
Repeat that. Were there any that you read
that you were like this dude? I I really liked there's.
Too this to go for me? Yeah.
Please, please read that one. Please read it because I want to
hear how you read it because I know how I read it in my head.
I mean obviously like this is like a a Lovecraft reference but
the fun guys from you goth your boys.
When using their heat weapons, they simultaneously attack a
target and suppress the area, counting as four people firing
all flammable objects or any area are you not are ignited.
Yeah, we don't need to worry about like the stats and stuff,
people gonna read that shit. But the fun guys, fun guys, fun
guys. Yeah, bro.
But when I read your boys, I was like.
It's so fucking stupid. It's so fucking, it's so good.
It reminds me of a lot of the Swivers BCR ones.
So one of my favorite ones was the black count, which are
crazy. The Warrens Dogs, Vanguards.
A face spreaded like a bouquet of flowers, wrapped in a black
plastic bag and left by the side of the road behind this
disaster. A long body of taut flesh over
many knuckled bones, flexing and moving independently.
There are too many legs. And it continues.
But the again, the fucking the Rose dude, that's so good.
It's always fun reading Luke's stuff, like, it really is always
fun reading it, you know? That's why, like I, I know like
for a while, if you were watching or listening to the
show, I was talking about Wolves upon the coast, like non-stop,
because I was really, really reading it.
And there's a massive map that has like a lot of entries into
it and a couple of the books within wolves that have a bunch
of entries and they're just like a joy to read.
You know, you're like, fuck, this is so fucking clever dude.
It's it's, it's so good. So.
So that's the end. We're done.
Good. See you guys later Where?
Is. Where are you?
Oh, I'm going to, I'm going to bring this up.
So this is the Luke Gehring blog post.
Luke Gehring. I gave the URL, I gave the URL
before and I'll give it again in where you think the links are.
But April 2nd, 2021, rules gone violence, it talks about this is
the updates for it. We can get the PDF for this and
everything. There's a couple it has been
tooling around tooling about with a fast nasty system for
violence resolution. And then I stumbled on this and
what they stumbled upon is this. It is from chocolatehammer.org
and it's a discussion of Boot Hill and the fear of dice, which
is interesting because I've read this article previously.
I don't remember who showed it to me.
So I have first edition Boot Hill.
And for those that don't know what Boot Hill is, root Hill is
a it's a game of, of when it originally came out was
basically like a cowboy western war game that eventually was
recognized as kind of a role-playing game.
But like the rules of much like early like chainmail and stuff
like that were basically war game rules.
So did you read this blog post right?
I'm going to be honest, I did not end up right.
I opened it. Listen, I open it and start
reading it, but I had like several beers beforehand and I
was like, fuck, I need to read this tomorrow and today is
actually tomorrow and I didn't read it.
This is. Literally, of all the Thorks.
Before this. Of all the things to read, this
is the one you really needed to. Read my iPad work right now.
So then, so let me explain to you in the way that I'm
explaining it to the audience. And So what Boot Hill on the
fear of dices is basically this the person who posted this and
I'll I'll remind me and I'll make sure the link to this is
down there too, because this this blog post does go so
fucking hard. It says by Rutskarn RUTSKARN
January 9th, 2019. OK, so basically what this says
is they wanted to play a game, a campaign, a politics, deception,
intrigue. Like what system are they going
to use for that? And apparently they used, they
tried a bunch of stuff, but at one point they tried Boot Hill
and basically they all fucking died right away because it's
this brutal fuck system. It's basically a war game.
I mean, it's super easy for everybody to die.
And then then they kind of tried to drift into other games, but
everyone kept coming back to Boot Hill, right?
And what what the blog poster did, what they did with their
campaign is they built this, They built out this whole area,
a very, very tombstone esque area, a lot of intrigue, a lot
of just like the shittiest people doing the shittiest shit,
right? But the game, it's so fucking
easy to die. Like you, you know that if
anyone draws a gun, a bunch of people are dead.
And even if you piss someone off the wrong way, you can just take
a shotgun to the back because they're not going to come.
And like, let's roll initiative and fight and literally just be
like, Hey, boom, you're, you're you got shot in the back of the
head playing poker. Like who cares what happens to
to them or whatever? So basically the campaign became
about this. They became so much about the
intrigue and the politics and digging deep into all of the
things that aren't kind of in that system because of how
deadly it was. Because you know that if you get
to that resolution of, of getting to the rules of
shooting, of doing things, it's over.
Everyone's fucking dead. It's just a bloody massacre or
whatever. So everyone works too much like
in real life, not pull a gun because as soon as you do what,
what is the end of doom? So it's just everyone fucking
pulling their guns, right? Like that's the the resolution
and that's the end of it. And what they say through a lot
of stuff like the culmination of the campaign was they eventually
had the sheriff and deputies and stuff that were like triumphant
and super aggressive and stuff. And they they went to go meet
the go solve something somewhere because they needed to.
And when they got there, it wasn't what they thought it was.
And they so they hurried back and as they came through a
Canyon, like 12 people popped up and gunned them all the fucked
out. And that's the end of the
campaign. And they loved it.
And it made sense because in the context of this.
Sounds amazing. I mean, just that sounds
fantastic. Yeah, and in the context of this
sheriff being super aggressive and pushing and surviving and
doing whatever, they basically push too far.
So it made sense for the NPCS to do this, right.
So the culmination of kind of like what I got from that blog
post is basically when you want a, a system that isn't about
using violence, the question is, is it better to use a system
that is ultraviolent? So that if what you want is
intrigue and all of that stuff, you stay away from violence
because it's so it is so violent that getting to that resolution
is the end, you know? So that is kind of like the
stated kind of like or unstated question through the entire
thing is like, I did the best political entry campaign ever
because I use the system where if anyone used any violence, the
game was just fucking over. So people did everything they
could not to get to that point. And when you go back to Luke
Ewing's blog post, it says been tooling about with a fast nasty
system from violence resolution. He stumbled on this or they
stumbled on this. And that's where they kind of
got to here where we talked about a bunch, like if you
resort to violence in the system, your odds are that you
will fucking die, you know? So when you are making games for
this, that's the thought is what else is around this?
And I guess the question, the discussion we can have for a
couple of minutes about this is what's your take on that?
What is your thought about not only that, but about South Boot
Hill does not say like it's a war game in the beginning.
So they really went like like an off label, you know what I mean?
Like it's like getting, it's like when, when when Viagra
started, it's a pulmonary hypertension medication, but
everyone found out made their Dicks hard.
So like it was an off label usage, right?
It's not what stated, but it's what came about from it.
Huh. Well, I think about that.
I don't know like I all like for me personally, I.
Do you want an example? What's up?
Do you want an example? Yeah, shoot me.
So with violence, so violence gives you that, that is the
subtext of the entire thing, right?
But we've talked about this before.
One of my biggest issues with with like motherships, like 0 E
and 1 E is the amount of stuff that's unstated.
And therefore, to me is a missing piece, not a defined
absence. It is not a thing to work
around, right, right. So the whole, the fact that
there's not sneaking in mothership, a lot of people
like, what the heck, right? And because it's never addressed
that there isn't sneaking. To me, that feels like a, a, a
missing piece. It doesn't feel like a divide,
like a, like a defined whole. Like in my brain, when I see
this, I picture a puzzle and imagine a puzzle with a big
chunk missing out of the middle. It looks unfinished, right,
right. But imagining a puzzle with a
find circle cut out so the edges of the puzzle pieces form a
circle out of the puzzle, It looks like a complete puzzle
that just happens to have a a circle missing from it.
But it's complete because a circle looks like it's supposed
to be there, right? And that's how I view a lot of
stuff like this where if someone says rules a lie, don't even
fucking start with me. I saw a lie about peripheral
vision and I was like, no, don't get me started.
To me, if you don't address it, it's not it's missing.
It's not part of the system. But if you address it, it
becomes part of the system. So if you don't want sneaking,
you can just say hey, there's not sneaking and here's why
without changing anything besides, but without putting the
sneaking in. So IA lot of it to me comes down
to context, intent and communication where that is not
how anyone would ever run Boot Hill.
Obviously they did and it worked.
But if someone didn't put out Boot Hill and said hey, if you
shoot people, you're going to die, it's a social game than
that that I. Think there's more like this
example, like the Boot Hill example in this blog kind of
speaks more to like that table and their experience and knowing
how that person running the table like Game Master, knowing
how to corral their players and their players really being
attracted to this game as a way of like, hey, violence is so
deadly that we should always try to work around violence.
I don't think that would work with every single table, like
obviously so I think it's a very table specific.
But I mean, for me, like I and John just put something like
this in the chat. I know we don't talk about the
chat a lot, but like, yeah. I was going to, I was going to
say his. Don't like like the
mechanization of social rules. I like little social inspiration
tables or something like that, but I don't like mechanics
around my social interactions. Like I think that's a thing that
you should allow to grow naturally through like
storytelling at the at the table.
So I think like in games like that, that have like a limited
scope where they just do not acknowledge another aspect of
the game, leave that open to you.
And like I obviously am always like very pro super minimal
games because I want to fill those holes how how it works for
my table and it works for me. Yeah, absolutely.
So I don't know, I don't think, I just don't think in any game
you need to define every single aspect.
And frankly, the games that do try to define every single
aspect usually come off like weaker for it.
Instead, I think like something like violence or something where
it's like we're going to focus on this aspect of like res, like
resolution for violence. You know, it's like, well then
you at your table, you can fill it in how you want.
This is, but this is that's me. Like I want to do that that work
for myself at my table so. Absolutely.
One of the things you said, social rules and getting to a
point where there are no rules for the social stuff, right?
That is, that is a learning curve.
We talked about this on previous episodes where like teach RPG's
and like the amount of scaffolding that people need for
them. Does I, I've maybe I'll blog at
some point. I don't whatever, but like I've
been trying to think of a way to talk about like what I'm
currently calling like like micro and macro scaffolding.
Micro is in, in an individual game and macros in like your
journey through gaming, right? And when I say the journey, I
don't mean that there's ever an ending, right?
The journey is the, the, the structure you built along the
way, right? And that's what it is, is, is
scaffolding in like a 30 second thing.
Scaffolding is the amount of structure that a thing has.
But scaffolding is supposed to be temporary.
Like when you have see scaffolding on a building, it's
so that you can build structure and then the scaffolding falls
away, right? And in a game, it's not going to
fall away, but in in the way that you choose to play games,
you can learn and get more experienced in gaming to the
point along the amount of scaffolding you need.
So you find that that is that is no longer scaffolding.
That is the structure that you enjoy and require, right?
There is not there's not a direct path between There's so
much scaffolding that's all you have and none like you're
basically like board game to Larping.
It is not saying that that is the destination to get to.
It is a winding path and at any point people can decide to stop
and that scaffolding can just become a permanent structure.
And that's where you realize the amount that you want and need.
I do think, and this is very like whatever like 5 E is
obviously one of the reasons that people really enjoy 5 E is
because. It goes like.
Is because it is so scaffolded like newer players like
literally they used to tweet out extremely specific rules and
exactly how you had to play it no matter what like people knew
exactly what to do all the time and if they didn't know they
just tweeted fucking Jeremy Crawford or whatever and he
would tell you exactly what to do.
That is a lot of scaffolding for a game versus a lot of the
rules, like stuff that we enjoy and we've talked to us before.
Like I don't. One of the reasons that I shy
away from a lot of Pbta games is the scaffolding that is involved
in the in the narrative. And I know a lot of people that
that really enjoy that and I understand 100% why they do.
And it completely makes sense to me.
For me personally, it's just not the type of scaffolding I want
in a game for my narrative. But again, it's not about like
I'm now further along the path. It's just I've decided that that
that kind of structure is not the kind that I enjoy.
So I kind of I just shy away from that.
And what we're talking about is a social aspect of a game that
has really no scaffolding. What you're building is kind of
like what's around it. And the thing about 5 E is
people have tried to make an argument before and I'll say
flat out Five East is a bad game mechanically and you should play
other games. But people have tried to argue
because it is a, it is a, it is an OC generator and a combat
game. That is all it is.
And people try to be like, well, well, actually, because all you
get is combat rules. It leaves all this open space
for you to do social stuff. No, it fucking doesn't.
Again, that is an absence, but also.
There are like, there are like social rules to 5D, like your
ability to like, you know, read whether or not you think a
character is like lying or like whatever.
Roll insight check and check exactly.
Insight, whatever, I haven't played fighting in a while.
But but what I'm saying is like is trying to say that because
it's only combat rules and there aren't any social rules, then it
can be a social game because because it doesn't give you the
rules. So make it what you want.
Again, that is what the difference between a, a, a
missing piece and a defined absence, right?
It's the communication. It's not a social game because
they're not a bunch of social rules, because that wasn't the
intent. And that is not because you can
use it that way. That's fine.
You can hammer in a nail with a screwdriver.
You absolutely fucking can, right?
That doesn't mean that's the ideal way to fucking do a thing
just because, again, it's a defined absence versus just a
fucking void, right? And the difference, I think,
between what the blog poster did with Boot Hill and what Luke
Gearing then decided to do with violence, is literally just
that. The subtext of the
communication, the nuance involved with it, where Boot
Hill, again, that's probably the only person that ever played it
that way. And it worked geniusly.
It's great. It's a great idea, you know.
And then Luke takes that idea and gives you that with
violence, because now it is the communication.
It is you haven't. If I played a game with this
system like this, I would understand going in that that is
the point, right? And that to me is the again, the
difference between something that's missing and a defined
absence, like a purposeful designed absence of a thing so
that then you can fill it with your own, you know, and the very
difference you just because you can in a thing doesn't mean it's
not missing. Again, they're like, it's a big
difference between something missing and something as the
defined void, you know, And I think that's what I really got
from the, from the blog post is, is that Luke does the effective
job of giving you the nuance and the subtext.
And because it doesn't straight up say that, but it, it is
communicated in a way where, like, again, if you play this
game, you will fucking die. So the point is to not shoot
shit, you know? So anyway, so that is the blog
post I wanted to bring up. Chris P Wolf tossed that out to
say, hope they talk about this. But obviously it is the link at
the top of the blog post. Yeah, it is the been tooling
around in the assembly. It is the link at the top of the
blog post that triggered this entire system, which is great.
But so, yeah. So for the rest of this, we're
kind of going to go into the jams real quick and we'll talk
about we'll talk about that stuff.
So first of all, there was the violinist Jam 1, which you can
find on Itch. I'll make sure the links is down
here. Yeah, and this is violence jam
fuck war. This was put out from Magical
Bee on H dot IO. So what I think happened, and
I'm not sure because I didn't reach out to Luke and ask, is
that they did a give me two seconds.
And what they did was someone someone put out a jam for
violence and then someone put it into a book and then they
published it again. You can find this on Spear
Witch. I believe they're still
available. It's a dope book.
If you are in podcast land. It says designed operatives
training simulation 09 and then active transgenic incidents.
And then in the bottom left is a person kneeling like down on one
knee firing a gun and in the bottom right is that ha ha, I'm
using violence logo, which is like one of the best logos in
fucking TTRB GS with this person fucking laughing and just
whatever. And then has some stuff on the
back. So and then the second one is a
violence Jam 2, which has some art from Chow Chow brand new,
which is Chow, I always say Chaocalypse, Chaocalypse
violence to Jam and has some more people in it.
And then there is the print on demand option.
So we're going to hop into violence collection 1.
So you for those that are that are watching on the Youtubes,
you can see the cover for this and there it is.
And then we're going to talk about the things that people did
with violence with this resolution mechanic and a little
bit of framework. So we're not going to hit on
everything. So what you get, first I need to
enable scrolling, is the system. They just put it in the front of
the book. It is exactly everything that we
just read. A slight difference in the
melee. Again, we talked about that.
I believe Luke changed it after this probably came out.
So both combatants roll AD 12 and add relevant modifiers.
Now you just have the difference between the modifiers to the
highest roll edge cases, suppression, non violence, cool
graphic. And then we get a couple
different things. So Epic Violence is a small
edition from Theodore L Rivera. Yeah.
Do you want to go through Epic Violence?
Sure. Yeah, I got some comments.
Oh, am I? Yeah, yeah.
Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, so every glance starts
with down. Badass is like you only die on a
20 plus instead of a crit injury, you receive a wound.
Each wound counts as an injury, but adds ads plus one to
violence. This is very much your.
This is way more of like a action movie badass version.
The poppy. Yeah.
The poppy version. Yeah, the poppy version.
Yeah, wounds you're going to roll.
Roll 1D6, add plus 10 for each wound.
So one to three cool scar and you get to roll where the scar
is. Why don't you roll where your?
Scar is real quick, Ryan. And there's 1X to 3X because I
looked at the numbers because it's like 10s, twenties, 30s
because I was like, wait, that's going to get over 10 real quick.
And then I was like, ah, smart you smart you.
Am I just doing AD 6/4? D6.
Six my torso. Torso yeah, cool scar on your
orso. The next 4X is nasty scar. 5X is
a missing body part. Again you have a roll between 1
is eye, 2 is ear, 3 is finger, 4 is toe, 5 is hand, 6 is foot. 6X
missing body part. Worse rolls for this one.
One is crotch, it's gone 2-3 arm, four to five leg, 6
internal organ and then 7X plus is crushed soul.
That's it and that's the entire and that's the entire entry,
which is great for the jam because there's a bunch of ones
that are like it is everything from literally just these two
kind of addendums to down and wounds to like complete games.
It's it's so crazy. And that's how jam.
I mean, that's jams, and that's what's great about jams
addendums. Like very powerful.
Like those two little rules really shift how the game feels.
It's becomes less lethal and well, it changes it.
It becomes a different kind of lethality and more scarring and
less like going down. Like, you're not dying, you're
just becoming fucked up. Fucked up, yeah, 'cause you
could lose your Dick and, and, and your, your eye and your
kidney, yeah and then have a some dope scars and shit, but
you're still, you're still chucking, you know, still
chucking. Along violence on the snow is
the next one, right? Yeah, so, and this is from
Violence on the snow is again from Theodore El Rivera.
Yeah, Valta Snow. I think this is only three
entries on this one because I think next one's New Dawn.
Yeah, Character creation. Do not name your character.
Instead give them a short nickname to differentiate them
from the others. They get a title once they begin
killing demons. But, well, now you know, it's a
demon killing game, yeah. This is like the heart of
minimalist riding setting. You are primitive humanoids
living in a cold hell. You are not alone.
There are demons trying to kill you.
The demons have weapons far more advanced than yours.
Use your wits to survive. OK, we're playing in the frozen
hellscape with demons with high tech you know, and then weapons.
Weapons is a really interesting addendum rule.
Anything man made gives a disadvantage.
So you really want to get a hold of like alien weapons?
Yeah, well, demons. I'm sorry, demon weapons?
Yeah, so. Alien to you, I guess you know.
Yeah, that entire, that entire thing, right, is 76 words.
And that's the fucking that take the violence framework, take
these 76 words, play a fucking game.
Like, I love it. I love it so fucking much.
So I read through the original violence collection, this one
twice. And the first time reading these
I was like cool. And then like the second time,
because I was like really like locked into reading them, I was
like, wow, this like shockingly adds like like a non
insignificant amount to like what the system is or what
you're doing, you know? And that's crazy too.
And it makes me want to just be like, do I need to even make a
whole game? Maybe I'll just put out a
resolution mechanic, let people make games for me.
You know what I mean? Like that's, I mean, that's what
SRDS are really for, for people to hack and shit like that.
So it's just, it's incredible. New Dawn is the next one that's
really interesting. Your parents did not give its
New Dawn character Christian. Your parents do not have much to
give except the name. May you wear it with pride.
You'd have no glory, no titles, only survival.
Those things were of the old world.
Time to make something new. And the setting is Ragnarok has
come in the form of nuclear Hellfire.
Balder in his roiling flesh has arrived to scrape the old away
to make room for the new. His disables roam the lands,
etcetera, etcetera etcetera. One of my and then weapons, as
Einstein predicted. We've missed the best part.
Other gods have come to shit on the land once more.
Keep. Going no, no, I'm just going to
finish it. His disciples roam the lands,
looking for more souls to feed the hungry God so that he may
finish his rebirth. Other gods have come to shit on
the land once more, bestowing their mutating blessings upon
their disciples. They want what you have, however
meager it is. All that you build will be found
in time. All you can do is try.
And then weapons, as Einstein predicted, sticks and stones are
plentiful, but so are sharpened metal bits.
Great. And again, probably like 100.
And that's a whole thing. That's great.
And New Dawn is from Frankie Stein, Frankie Stein dot itch
dot IO. And that's again, like there's
no extra rules or anything. It's just setting
characterization weapons. It's so good this next one.
Fuck, I sent you the link to this you did send.
Me the link to that yeah, it's in the it's in our Discord
messages. Yeah.
So the next one is literally Describe the next one please
while I find this. Yeah.
So the next one is definitely like a code snippet for a
generator. It's it's written like a like
your coding like there, there's even like at the top a note on
how to make comments in your code, which is, you know, a cool
basic skill. But yeah, it's a it's the HTML
and CSS for a generator. Well, actually I guess it's also
like got classes and everything that you would use as well to
create like a generator and there is one so.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I so someone coded and I went
through it and it's all just, it's all just it's all gun
generation. What are you talking about?
Like everything is in here. I literally rolled this like 100
times to be like, is that one in here?
Is that one in here? They fucking did.
They put everything in here. So, so this is it.
So I roll and you the selection option is you can pick military,
hunting, looted or foreign. So pick one.
Foreign. Foreign gun so a foreign machine
gun, a splitter Tarn camouflage pattern is painted on.
It has a huge and mostly useless suppressor and it's found with
148 bullets. So someone took this fucking
this part of this. I don't know if it's a person
who made it or not, but they literally took this and it's
pages long of literally just code of literally like I'm
talking for those that don't understand what I mean by by
code. Literally it's like like tab in
a bunch of stuff, tab out, tab in and then name equals pistol
shots found with like parentheses or like whatever the
parentheses with points are 250 bullets stat.
Like it's literally the code that you could copy paste into
some code maker and boom, you got a generator and they
published it like that. It's.
The code. PS Code, sure.
This one just cracks me up in every possible way where it's
just like I, I made a generator for it.
How do I put it in a book? Oh, let's just publish the code
of the generator. It's so this game.
And it's also in the weird way that people that made shit for
this are so Luke Gearing too, you know what I mean?
Like it? This book is as unapproachable
and unsympathetic as like all of Luke's shit.
This is the one. I don't know what it is, so it's
AD 666 table of stuff, and I'm not sure who it belongs to.
Oh. This one, I honestly, I went, I,
I gave up on this one. It's here.
Because it's not swan songs, it's not a gun for country, it's
not Blessed Art thou, it's not Maybe it's Cryptic 2 by T in
Scrivener. Been a lot of fun deciphering
this obviously. Yeah, because so there's a,
there's kind of like a list of of contents on the back, but
it's not in the order that's listed in the book as far as I
can tell, because After New Dawn is not so on song frickin areas
from Seth Ian. It's just this D666 table.
So roll me D666, I'll roll, I'll roll one 666 sided die.
I got 237. I got. 26.
Two yeah, 237 is oh fucking where is it?
Well, you're going to be a pain in my ass.
What number did you get? Control F237 bone picker, What
did you get? If my numpad was unlocked, there
we go. Well, what it will let me do it
so like I can see it 20. 6. Or 26?
All right, all right. What'd you get?
Still birth. Still birth.
Yeah, that is just. It's just it's just I don't know
if it's attached to one of the other ones.
There's a gun at the bottom. So maybe these are like your gun
names. I don't know what it is, but
it's AD 666 table of just rent like Barrow, butcher, bird,
bandit, hagfish, earth mother, silverback, stillbirth, Fisher
king, Enochian, Death Valley. Like I don't know what this is
for, but it this is sick fucking list.
I'm going to roll for it a bunch of times.
I'm. Going to say it's gun names.
I'm going to go with that. That's what I'm thinking.
So the next one is most likely. And this is another thing with
this jam is like some of them have authors listed, a lot of
them don't. And again, what's written on the
back is not written in in order, so we don't know what it is.
But my assumption is that this is probably blessed Art thou
from Nikko Santegui. And this is through
assimilation. We avoid annihilation.
It's a very it's it's it's a very religious coded stuff for
it. So we talked about the the Codex
of Saints, the archives wherein inscribed as the history of
Saints known to people talks about using the codex.
It talks about some alternations to violence, which is acquiring.
This is really great. So acquire clay from earth
touched by the roots of a tree struck by lightning or earth
scorched by an inferno or or earth witness to death.
Acquire any amount of blood from their next to kin.
Create a small doll with both ingredients and basically like
you hammer in a nail that is like either electrified, very
hot or or coated in strong poison.
You hammer that into the doll with the clay from something
that's been struck by fire, struck by lightning or or
touched death with the blood of the kin and you curse them with
that violence. It's it's so fucked.
It's so cool. It's so bizarre.
I mean, this is, this is one of my favorite entries, but it's so
incongruous with like, like everything else, you know, like.
It's so weirdly deeply like, and it feels very like, like
Santeria. Is that what it is?
It's like the very kind of like Catholic voodoo.
Oh yeah. Like, yeah, something like that,
Yeah, yes. Because that is.
The name of a religion that has some practices like that, I
believe. Yeah, Santa Aurora of subterfuge
Santa I believe is like Santa Ana is like St.
Anne. That's a very like yeah, yeah.
So that one just. So it's so it's something I mean
like the, the rituals it describes here are fantastic and
I love very ritualistic magic. I think it adds so much more to
magic for it to not be like, I burn my spell slots.
Like, no, I super heated the nail and I drove it through a
doll with with a piece of hair or skin from my enemy and I
burned my enemy from afar. I'm like, that's pretty cool.
That is dope and we're not going to.
Go through this is yeah. We're not going to go through
every bit of this because it's it's 1215 inch.
Go fucking buy it or go to spear rich and buy the physical book
support all the creators that made this like sick fucking
stuff. So we're not going to we're very
rarely going to dig through like every bitten part of us of
someone's thing, but we'll talk on some.
So like, for example, like Vio SIM is another one from Niko
Sagatoy. I'm probably saying that so
fucked up, but it basically adds a card mechanic to initiative,
and then the cards give you the number of actions you can take
per turn. So do one card to each
combatant, one additional card for things like superior
numbers, prepared position, things like that.
For every two ticks of suppression, combatants lose a
card in case of surprise, right? And blah blah blah, you deal
cards. Once this is done, all cards are
revealed and actions are taken in descending order, including
suits, and then combatants with multiple cards take multiple
actions. Each action is like a thing.
Whatever. That's so interesting.
It really is a really interesting system and like you
can lose actions in this by I think taking damage right is how
you lose actions. So, so I think if you have
multiple cards and a card goes before you that damages you, you
lose cards before it gets to your turn is my assumption.
Yeah, I will say one thing on the Luke Gearing blog post, if I
remember correctly, I think at one point he was talking about
initiative doing it like Troika tokens, and I couldn't be more
glad that they didn't. I love Troika, I just don't want
to use that in a system and I think they would like it would
muddy the system so much. I've actually, fun fact, we play
the one shot of Troika several weeks ago that someone else ran
my table and we use the token system and a lot of the players
at the table were like, oh fuck, I didn't even get to go this
round because they were like, they do the end round token and
that'd be pulled and you'd be like, yeah.
Which is fine. And if you have a group of
people that are like buying into it all the time, that's great.
I personally, again, we've played Troika before and I think
everyone, even people that have made a million things with
Troika were like, now what I do with that, it's extremely clever
and I like it. I just don't want to use it.
So I'm trying to think of some other really.
So there's a lot more to this than that too, because it talks
about body armor, weapons changes, close quarters, this
ones very fleshed out shooting at a melee whence comes the.
Venison is an interesting one. Bro.
It's like so when's comes the venison is a like.
Your real quick. I don't want to forget.
I'm sorry to interrupt you wins comes the venison is from Seamus
Brad at OPHIOLITF Ophelius O Ophelius dot blot dot IM Seamus
Brad. Fuck, it's a.
Really interesting one where you play as like poachers going on
to like this like royal land to hunt, but the like the royal
lands like it changes and it's very like it's very dark and
it's a really cool take. And the setting itself, like,
yeah, you're like hunting illegal animals to bring food
back to your town, but you're going into these like royal like
forests that changes every time you go in.
And the more you go in, the better you are at navigating it
if you survive to come out again.
It's. Crazy, bizarre.
It's awesome. It's great.
It's bizarre, it's bizarre. It's great though.
Is it great for violence? You know what else I would run
this the fuck out of in. Oh, trophy dark.
Trophy fucking dark bro. Like in a heartbeat I would run
this in trophy dark in a second. Here's just one line.
Trophy dark. It does.
It does like, because we know we're not going to give too much
away. And I'm going to roll past some
of the tables so you can support the creator and go buy this
shit. But one of the lines I'll say is
as a poacher, all you know is that the game meet here fetches
exorbitant sums from clandestine Byers.
It is said to be delicious beyond measure, but you must
never ever consume it like that. It's it's this incredible and
it's got character. So it's an adventure, but it's
got character creation stuff. It's got equipment of weapons
stuff. And then you start to get like a
bunch of map stuff, encounters some changes with the with the
stuff. And then there's some stuff at
the back, the violence addenda. So it adds some stuff for
marksmanship. It talks about machetes, hunting
knives, creatures and then credits and thanks in the back.
Seamus Brad, you know, Luke earring big logo here.
Dope. This is one of my favorite ones
and buy less one just because of how fucking dark and fucked it
is. It also is a more complete one.
No, Insane. I would love to play this.
Like it'd be just such a bizarro dark game.
But in the same way like that's, I feel very similar about being
trophy dark. I mean, I read it and I was
like, cool, yeah, I see it, you know?
Yeah. It's it's this one, man, that
one, this one goes hard. I love this one.
The next one we're going to kind of skip right over is Albedo.
So this, this physically exists. I just can't find it.
I own it. That's a role-playing game of
violence on the High Frontier. And it's got a picture of like
the flag waving on the moon, right?
And the brief, this is from Sam Barrett.
And the brief kind of synopsis for this is it's a hard science
fiction role-playing game about lunar warfare.
The reason we're not going to talk about this any more than
that is this is one of the most complete games in any part of
the violence collection, and it's definitely complete enough
and exists physically. So I would I want to go over
this on the show at some point. I would absolutely love to go
over this. Yeah, so we're going to skip
Albedo from Sam Barrett because it's going to be on our list to
actually go over and review and score and everything 'cause
there's enough to it. As we scroll through, like
really quickly, you'll see that it's got safety tools, it's got
intro, it's got character generation, traits and
languages, mechanics. Like the system with a bunch of
adaptations to it, great. And progression, which is
different jobs, tables, condition and maintenance.
It's. A cool game game.
Yeah, and and an adventure. Built in with the system too, so
that this isn't this it's it's great character sheet, which is
cool. So yeah, we're we're going to
skip that one. And we're going to go straight
to hard lads. Hard lads, hard lads.
An extremely relatable scenario for violence.
OK, so I'm good to read this one.
Yeah, I'm going to read it too. It's Friday night.
You've just sculled 2 full bottles of Britain's finest
tonic wine. Some blokes just looked at your
girlfriend approvingly. And it's time.
You and your mates. So it's time for you and your
mates to prove your worth as hard lads.
Yeah, so rules. Melee rules only, no weapons.
This is a fist fighting game. Rule 1D6 to tan a drink.
Odds give advantage, evens give disadvantage.
Rule A6 cause uncontrollable vomiting.
Being down does not result in death.
Instead, roll on the tables below.
What is the first one? Yeah, well, no.
What is the name of the table? The first one, fucking L mate,
he's out cold. Death is for the weak.
Real Hard lads do the following. So we're not going to go, we're
not going to go through all of the things because again, like,
yeah, by the fucking shit. Then there's favored drinks and
then the last table is 1D6 fight excuses.
The first one is my. I'll just say the first one.
He was looking at my bird. It's also wonderfully British,
you know. It's so British dude, like his
bird is obviously like not an actual bird.
I also I'm not there's another part I really like #6 in the
favorite drink. But anyway, so the next one is a
swan song for Canaries, a scenario for violin system by
Seth Ian. And the background to this is
it's 1940 in swan song Colorado. You're a miner for pine Cliff
coal. And basically they're a bunch of
union Busters and they, they, they've trapped all the rest of
the union in a mining camp and with hourly patrols and shit,
because the union wanted like pay for dead work in an 8 hour
work day. And you need to strike out
across the Ridge from town, four days away, get home and save
the, the miners. And there's a whole thing on
creating miners and foraging and, and everything like this.
And, you know, tools of the trade, the bastard you're
fighting. And again, that's from Seth,
Ian. Who's just a bunch of stuff,
Yeah. And the bastards you're
fighting, it literally says the bastards like.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The bastard you're fighting the
Pine Cliff Cole. Pine Cliff Cole.
So Seth has done a bunch of stuff.
You can find a lot of their stuff over on like space
Penguin. I was going to say you can find
some stuff over there and and amongst a bunch of other things.
Again, we'll make sure that the links to everyone that we can
find is listed below. But Seth's where is swansong?
Oh, it just S at the end. They didn't put their itch or
anything down, but but yeah, magic bullets.
Sam Sorensen they did, I believe they did magic bullets and this
merchants of death part and then they actually have like a
picture kind of of like the the rainbow of the sticker, except
this one's like die cut. Love that.
But the magic, the magic bullets are magic bullets you got.
Magic bullets. Lag time bullets and recycler
rounds and piercer rounds and shit.
And then you have Merchants of Death, which is who they are,
what they want, where to find them, and who will be after you.
So we're not going to go to the magic bullets.
Why don't you roll me 46 real quick and and give me a Merchant
of Death? OK my merchant of death Victor
Bout. You can find them in East
Berlin. What they want is an
assassination cover up and then who will be after you?
Interpol. No, There you go there we go.
And again, this is just a cool the everything in this
collection is so again, it's from a thing that's only like 2
rules addendums to full adventures to full games with
adventures to just like AD 10 table of different magic bullets
and then a couple D6 tables for merchants to death.
Like, I love this collection. I will say, and we've talked
about this a bunch of times and we've did talk about like how I
think that this book is so I don't know how much Luke Gearing
had involved with this. It does list.
I mean, Luke has a bunch of stuff in here, including text
and empire compilation and secondary design by jerk crater.
I will say, I do wish that they had made sure to put the
author's name at least on the and the name of each one at the
front of each thing. But I also think that the
unapproachability of this and like the the difficulty of of
parsing it and the work you need to put in to kind of figure it
out also just feels very Luke gearing and it makes sense for
violence. You know, we said that a bunch
of time where I was like, man, this book feels feels Luke
hegemonic manifest is like ADI believe 20 table of I believe
they're just like sparks. So just row 1D20.
We'll we'll just go through one and I'll take them off the
screen. So that so pseudo MP3 players, a
wholesale shipment of consumer devices comes in two parts, an
audio player and their removable USB stick transmits and receives
audio with a 2 kilometer radius. That's it.
That's the whole thing. That's the hegemonic manifest
table. And a lot of the other ones like
like sometimes they're things, sometimes they're situations.
It's just a lot of really interesting pros and and my and
like what I said, I think it's like sparks for for stuff 10
Hail Marys for violence. This is Roz Leahy.
I like the the beginning part is is I'm using Yeah, I'm using
violence content note violence, religious violence, drug use,
sexual assault, abuse, institutionalization, infant
death. God fucking damn it.
I'm sorry. So this one is basically about
it's Irish obviously as soon as you see Clauda and Owen spelled
Eoghan, it's basically about nuns in this area.
One of them escaped the church. Everyone trusts the church in
the area, that's cool. But one of them escaped and this
lit a she escaped from the Sisters of Quiet suffering.
This lit a fire under some feet and a plane is being hatched by
some of the young lads to break into the school and free some of
the other girls. That is the adventure.
You get a map, you get factions, you get a map of the the Lady of
Quiet suffering, residential school and laundry and and all
of the associated things for the adventure for that and that's
what you get for that. The next 1, I actually have this
physically because it's Mark Conway and anything Mark Conway
does that exists physically, I'll do my best to have.
This is one for example. You had it physically.
That's pretty. Fun.
Oh yeah, yeah. So what they do in for those
that are in podcast land, what they did in the book for the
ASIC scenes is they just like printed it exactly as is with
like a big margin around the sides for albedo and swine, both
of them exalted funeral. But swine from Mark Conway who
did meatheads and a bunch of other awesome shit.
They this is a scenario for violence and basically you're a
pig farmer and you're trying to get your pigs to town and then
back again and there is just so much.
It's so good and it's so fucking funny.
One of the best lines in here. You would, you are a pig farmer.
You adore your pigs. Speaking of their beautiful heft
brings tears to your eyes. Sweet cherubs knowing nothing of
the world. The extent of the cruelty man
commits is rebuked by their muddy pin.
You would die for them. You would absolutely kill for
them. Treachery from hungry neighbors,
soldiers, and hog thieves is a nightly horror which rattles
your mind. My favorite thing.
I don't know if you noticed this through, but it cracked me up
all the time. It's the four day journey, but
literally everything you run into through the entire thing is
like, it adds a day, it adds a day, it adds a day, and you only
have four days of food. So it's like, oh you more than
one person's accompanying you adds a day.
You run into soldiers, adds a day, adds a day with your like 4
rations of food. It just cracks me the fuck up,
like all the way through. Yeah.
I mean, I think the logical, like thing about this game is
that, like, if you start running out of food, you know, yeah, you
got a herd of pigs with you. Yeah, like.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they're like, they're
soldiers that take bribes. So think about the bribes.
Might be. It's just, it's so fucking funny
and it's so good. And again, like it's just like
how much this man loves his pigs and how probably impossible this
journey is. Just it, it's so good.
It's so good. So that's Mark Conway.
Let's scroll through some more show.
Mark show Mark for writing something so ridiculous, you
know? But that's everything they do is
so good. But again, like, also like, like
Meatheads is so good as a system, but also just cracks you
up all the fucking time. And everything they put out for
it is just hysterical. And that's great just to be able
to like, read it, laugh and then play it and enjoy so much of it.
Yeah. Empire of Texas is like the
biggest thing in the fucking book.
And it is the empire of Texas. And it comes with like
everything you need, from weather tables to like loyalty
rules to traveling to like. Hex crawl like it's a.
It's an incredibly large hex crawl.
Yeah, which again, like is, I mean, if you know Wolves upon
the coast, you know, but it's it's huge.
And you get the hex map, which is, which is great.
How many hexes is it? I think if we just scroll to the
end of the hex thing it's like 16.314 point 30, like 49.
It's just a fuck load of text. It's a massive text crawl.
Corpo hit squad incomplete from Reese Carter.
Reese Carter has another one, and the next one we'll go over a
little bit more, but this one is someone's attempting to steal
the corpse data. Your phone buzzes and the job is
on you. Grab your gear, hit the road.
Corporations have equal power to governments.
And exactly what you think from that, like you're trying to hunt
down a runner who's stolen shit. So you're the bad guys trying to
get, not Neo in that movie where he has his stuff in his head.
You know what I'm talking about. No.
With the girl that's from that movie with the bugs that people
think is like pro fascism but it's really not and they're just
dumb. Oh yes, gotcha.
Yeah, like why am I blanking on? It's like, honestly one of my
favorite like Keanu Reeves movie.
It's so terrible. He just puts too much data on
his head and like the signal man.
And then there's the the dolphin.
Fuck I never watched. That movie, I know of the movie
of which you speak, but you've. Never seen it.
Oh my God, someone in chat, someone, someone listening will
know what I'm talking to and they'll be like, it's this, you
fucking idiot. It's great.
But this is this reminded me of that very, very much.
And then that's it. That's it.
So we'll, we'll put this up and we'll, we'll run through these
names real quick. So you know everybody that's in
here. So violence from Legering,
obviously. And this got Luke's Gearing's
blog and itch post Epic violence from Theodore Rivera, violence
on the snow from the same New Dawn from Frankie Stein.
Frankie Stein dot H dot IO swansong for Canaries from
Sethian, a gun in the country, which is the generator, and that
is from dukarinodukarino.cardd.co.
They're working on a cool game with like like like devil like
devils and Princess and shit. That looked really fucking cool.
I want to dig into a little bit more Magic Bullets from Sam
Sorensen. They're at Head of the GOAT.
I don't know if that's still their name over on Blue Sky,
Blessed Art Thou from Nico Santigoi, Hygienic manifest from
Redacted Albedo from Sam Barrett, Cryptic 2 from TN
Scribner. And that's why I think that's
the D66 table, because it's only one that we don't really know.
Tin Ham mayors from violence Ross Leahy at all things truly
or at 2 Rats press or at all things truly to H dot IO and you
can find them also on Blue sky Vaio SIM from Nico Santigoi
swine from Mark Conway venison, which is the from wins comes to
venison. Seamus Brad quick and dirty from
East Carter Hard lads, another one from Seamus Brad, Texan
empire from Luke Gearing and then we said secondary from Jerk
crater. So that is Oh, and profits from
the physical print run of this compilation will be sent to
Ukraine Refugee aid. Fuck war.
Yeah. Oh yeah.
So that's Violence Jam 1, which will make sure we have the link
to the jam page so that you can buy it just digitally if you
want. Or I do believe there's still
available on Spearwitch. The next one is Violence 2.
And again, this is art from Brandon.
You on the front Chaocalypse amazing artist, does a lot of
amazing stuff and teach RPGSA lot of fucking everything.
It's like, Oh, I just happen to make this line of cut thing.
Oh, I just happen to make this like sound thing that when you
scroll over it gives you different ambient noise And oh,
I just happen to like paint these minis and make the solo
game and do fucking everything like in the space.
Brandon is awesome. So go find them and and support
them any way you can. So for Luke Gearing's violence
submissions is art dot trash by CJ Samovia, Empire, Fat by Luke
Gearing, Haystack Oregon by Luke Gearing, Peep Show by Benito,
Sag River Extreme called research facility by Luke
Gearing, Stay back through by Reese Carter, and then Zombies
kissed by Spooky, Rusty and Tony Jaguar and then cover art by
Brandon New. So this one is much more
structured than the last one. There is a title page, I think
for every single one of them. Everything in it is much more
finished. I believe they're almost all
either full adventures or I think they're all just full
adventures. I don't think any more like
games, but some of them have more rules added to the games.
So we'll just run through these a little bit quicker because
again, we don't talk about adventures and we want you to go
go support this, get it on H dot IO and or, you know, buy the
physical print on demand, which I can't wait to buy.
So first they did print the entire everything in here except
the prehistoric violence like matrix is the same literally
like copy paste, even the even the hyperlinks, except that they
don't go anywhere, but you can click on them if you want.
So I think it literally copy pasted.
Yeah, and but it it changes colors in my hand and my cursor
becomes a hand. So I I feel better, but it's not
bookmarked or anything. And it does use the the original
highest roll wins with the relevant modifiers.
It doesn't have the modified melee band in this one, but it
has everything and including the modern federal paranormal and
investigation toolkit. And then we get to the best,
like straight up just the best like a one in this whole thing.
The art dot trash scenario for violence one.
The graphic design on this is fucking.
Insane. Great the adventures really.
Like really? Another bizarro cool adventure
in this too. But the front is has like, it's
mostly covered with like a not barbed wire, like a like a what
is that called? Like a something like a chain
fence. And then there's a a graffitied
image in the background. But this girl in the front,
which is obviously like a Renaissance painting, turning to
the left, but everything from her like eyes and nose down to
the to her actual like dress is bullet casings.
It's so it's so it was so cool. It's so cool.
So again, we're not going to dig too deep into this, but on the
outskirts, let me let me fit with.
On the outskirts of some droning city lies a carcass of an old
museum. An art gallery known as the
Daydream now resides within its crumbling walls.
Quarters of antique paintings and uncovered relics sit
alongside shrines to the occult. Recycled battery acid sizzles
away in steel drums, yielding psychedelic sludge consumed by
those who curate the gallery. Visions of crooked history await
those willing to submit themselves to the eccentricities
of the Daydream. Bro, I like again, we're not
going to dig too deep into the adventure.
Go buy it. But reasons for checking out the
art the cortex coven in the Violet drip This this, this
spread, bro again, let me zoom to page level with like the the
torn page. It's got like the the cat like I
don't know if they're like the Tasmanian, like the the cat.
That's whatever, little leopard cat, but with like half the
picture of this like that too, bro.
Like just the graphic design and this is crazy.
Then we get a whole page of like pixel art, like NPCS and shit
like Ambrosia Nash and Kenny Greaves.
This feels a little bit like the layout on it reminds me a tiny
bit of like Cyborg and Merkborg, a little bit like the way they
did like the like just the lines and and off fonts and stuff like
that. It reminds me a little bit of
like the very clean parts of yeah, layout for the entire
adventure. So there's maps of every level,
roll tables for the Daydream and random encounters and and guns
and again this bro like. Every time I get floor, as you
go through several floors, each floor has this like really
insane like graphic design art page as like the entry point for
each floor, like we're looking at the first floor right now,
but they're all like of like an incredible quality.
They're just they're, yeah, like floor 2.
It's got like if you're, if I'm not even going to describe
these, it either either go download the PDF or come watch
the fucking YouTube so you can at least see the spreads for the
floors. They're incredible.
This is third floor. And then we get to the basement.
Just just, it goes so hard. It goes so hard and then that's
all we're going to say about that Empire fat.
So there's a couple of these that we're really not going to
go over. But Empire fat is one of the
ones from Luke Gearing, which is clearly a like a mission
briefing for the modern paranormal federal thing.
Like the The thing is in the game.
So this one is about you're trying to X Phil BX poacher.
The opposition wants them and in 10 days, if they don't get them,
they'll kill them. And your job is to get in and
get them out. And that's that's what this is.
And obviously there's a lot more to that because it's fucking Lou
Gehring, but that's in there. Then the next one is Haystack,
Oregon, which is dope. It gives you a timeline.
And then there's a brief, there's some characters
involved. There's some descriptions of the
town. One of my favorite things about
the timeline is so upon the Pacific Coast rest Haystack, A
crumbling town of 687 boats rust in the harbor and trash
accumulates in the streets. The industrialization and a
failing fishing economy leaves most of the population retired
or unemployed. The sea does not weep for them.
Of course it doesn't look like that the like that.
When I read that I was just like oh God it hits.
It hits so hard. My favorite thing about the
timeline is it goes back from 130 years ago to 8 days in the
future. Yep.
I love that and everything in between, including the current
day you're on and multiple days in the future.
And then the brief is here again.
Go, go, go pay people money. We won't dig too deep into this
one, but it's it slaps and it's one of the longer ones for for
that too. Peep Show by Bonito.
It says it's a work in progress. If you don't have an eye for
weakness, then this is not for you.
This one is interesting. It's money that matters.
It's what it buys or what it it's not money that matters.
It's what it buys, or what it what it's loss represents,
faces, everything. The trick to calming someone
down is to trick them into thinking.
Conversely, a high percentage strategy is to never interrupt
an enemy making a mistake, invariably because they aren't
thinking. I love that.
And NBC is some of their reaction roles.
We won't dig too deep after this, but I love the reaction
table. Roll 2D6.
When something is threatened, taken, or destroyed, find out
what it is and squeeze. So roll me two D6.
Yeah, you should agree with the names of each choice.
Are you 2 to? 5 is Lizard Brain, 6 to 8 is
prisoner dilemma and 9 plus this is ultra game theory.
I roll A10. So ultra game theory see the
world in high def think a few moves ahead and extract maximum
utility cooperate until you can smell their blood in the water.
This has got to be the the best reaction table I've ever read
because it's it doesn't say anything without saying
everything. So like we're just going to go
through this whole table and then because it's so lizard
brain, it says suffer frontal lobe blackout, see red, assert
dominance at all cost, recoil from pain and discomfort and at
worst become unhinged psychotic break paranoia.
So lizard brain role is obviously like you're just like
not not thinking, which is the point of what they said above.
Prisoner dilemma is like a it's a it's are you are you not?
Yeah, So acquire the power of delayed gratification, cut a one
time deal and once it's done, the gloves come off.
And this is what rat cunning looks like.
And then we read the ultra game theory one.
It's so bro, like the the vibes radiated all for this are
incredible. Like this is narrative
mechanized narrative to like a a a a This is incredible.
I want to use this reaction table for everything from now
on. Fuck the 2D6 like to 12 and
everything. This is incredible.
So it goes into Tomico garment factory limited.
It immediately just goes into all of these areas, so a garment
factory and then a whole page on it and then Bennessy Industrial
Park Masterstrokes. And so again, this is very
obviously you tell like it's not super, it's not telling you.
This is this, this is that as you read, you figure out these
locations and things going on and the people involved in all
of them. It's such an interesting way to
write an adventure where it just starts talking about what's like
what The thing is and what the people that are there, and
that's what you get. And the writing is incredible.
The writing is incredible, always all the way through I.
Also meant to point this out earlier, I do think it's really
funny because I am from Texas and and Luke has an empire of
Texas adventure and I'm also living in Oregon and Luke has
like a haystack Oregon. Oregon Adventure.
He's following you bro, Following you.
I love this part in the back here but it talks about a little
bit more of the rules. Unregistered guns are run in
across the poison river and traded for a cup full of low
grade T Pulling a trigger is easy.
Hearing losses forever. Like it's so good.
There's like pistol stuff here that is like a whole table for
pistols over the phone. Order tech 9 buy now for one
D1D1D6 day express shipping like big semi automatic gap from
Italy sports a very fussy external safety.
It's great. There's a long arm stable 2
protection from 1D6 condoms all went to a baseball bat like
that's protection. Oh, this is my favorite 1D6
condoms, four and six chance your regular size 2 and six you
buy magnums. It's so good.
It's so fucking good. And again, all of these are
longer and more in depth than a lot of the previous stuff.
So it's really good. Novel opportunities for the cash
rich are more things worth millions to fight for.
You may hear about money begets money.
It's it's just it's it doesn't stop, it keeps going and it's
great. Next one from Luke is and it is
also hyperlink. So this exists somewhere and the
hyperlinks were just like taken out because I don't think it's
on page 2 or page 14, but there's a bit of contents in
here. I agree.
Sag River extreme cold research Facility, Alaska.
We're like, we're, we're running longer than I expected.
We're not going to go through deep into that one, but it's a
whole adventure with, with maps and everything.
This is I, I, I think, I think the long, I think I said the
last one was the longest. This one's clearly the longest
stay back crew from Reece Carter.
This is really cool. It starts with this one adds a
little bit more like I believe there's some more changes to the
rules here. So the dice required for the
game, advantage, disadvantage, initiative, choose a person for
each group to be the roller for this round.
This person should change each round.
So they did a bunch of different stuff. 1D6 is rolled per group
involved in the combat. So they did tweak a lot of the
rules for this and then have initiative modifiers and stuff
for it for 2, and then shooting is 15 or higher and then it
talks about short burst, long burst.
It adds a lot of other modifiers and stuff to it.
So they really went much farther with the system I think than a
lot of people did as far as tweaking it.
They even have usage dye for armor, which I think is
incredible. A whole like D6 lingering
injuries table usage dye for limited supply things and then
flat out listed difficulty values for everything else.
So they did a lot with that. And then what they did was stay
that crew. And it says after a number of
years combating insurgents in the war on terrorism, Eagle End
pulled out. A proper handover wasn't
conducted. And all the current attempts at
rebuilding, developing or stabilizing in the general area
have just stopped. And the equipment has just been
left behind. A small unit has been required
to stay behind once the uplift has finished.
And you are that unit. Dope.
It sounds really cool. There's known factions in the
area. This is very much like a
counterinsurgency thing, which is really, really cool.
And it talked about who knows what and what knows going on and
things like that. There's a lot of stuff here on
further reading which are really interesting, which are like,
like what terrorism in Western Europe?
Like there's a lot of stuff about terrorism and NATO secret
armies and like threat convergence and, and all of this
like Afghanistan, Taliban stuff. Like like actual reading that
obviously this was like, you know, further reading on the
Wagner Group. If you've never listened about
the Wagner Group, you should go check that out.
But but yeah. And then zombies kiss.
Last thing we're going to go over Spooky Rusty and Tony
Jaguar. Spooky Jaguar, bro, what the
fuck? Like what the fuck?
Mr. X introvert got in touch with the devil named Warren Buff
T Warren Buff it Warren Buff T to pay off his college loans.
Mr. X got caught using black magic on a patient and his
credit was already bad So what could he do?
Anyway, Warren Buff T shakes his hand and told him to marry his
daughter and make electronic cigarettes with dead bodies in
it. He said yes to both of them.
Bro what the fuck? Like what the fuck is that?
It's incredible. It makes no fucking sense.
I know. And I'm just going to, I,
there's an encounter roll table here.
Claire Danes whispers a hint seducingly into a player's ear.
She's nowhere. Like, I just want to go over the
container part in the beginning because there's a lot more to
it. But it just, it's just, it
continues to make no fucking sense.
But also be playable, you know, into such a funny way.
It's crazy. Ridiculous way?
Absolutely. You wake up here, metal teeth
grinding into your head, bald and naked, piled on the floor
under an iron roof, surrounded by crooked needles.
An empty Gurney under a dentist floor lamp separates you from a
person sitting on an office chair.
This is Eve's blue Klein. He's wearing a Chanel cut wig,
safety glasses, a bloody Metallica shirt, denim jeans and
red plastic boots. He's sitting on an office chair
next to a drawer with all sorts of medical cutting tools.
He is smoking an electronic cigarette.
Does it feel the dead bodies or no?
Checking his smartphone and an electronic bone saw sits on his
lap plugged to a gasoline powered generator outside the
container bro. And it just continues to devolve
and progress at the same time somehow into the adventure
surrounding the container like the mansion ground floor is a
front porch. Like it's so.
This one is obviously the most whacked out 1 and I would play
the fuck out of it. It's so.
Crazy, it's. So fucking crazy.
It's like several years ago I did play a like one shot with a
group of guys and the guy was trying to like achieve the vibe
that this is actually achieving. And I wasn't able to give him a
good example of the time of what he was trying to do.
But this is such a great example of like this fucking over the
top ridiculous like type of like weird, like pop culture
reference, like odd agent. I don't know.
It's. It's hard to describe, but it's
This was it. This is a This is a fucking
movie on acid like this is and you have no idea what the.
Fuck is going on? Yeah.
Yeah, this, this genuinely feels like like what's the Ralph
Steadman one with with what's his face with the wife that shit
on the bed and stuff. God, my brain's not working
today. Like he's he's he's the guy that
wrote about the it's, it's, it's Johnny Depp in the movie.
Where he does a bunch of drugs anyway, the part where he does a
bunch of drugs, is this a fucking adventure?
Like not that part, but I'm saying like the vibes around
that part. That's what I saw when I saw
this. And then there's a violence at
the back with I believe a couple small changes and that's, I
believe that's the end of violence too.
And yeah, there's a a person that deaths with Clifford in the
back. I assume Lou Gehring.
Lou Gehring is a a noted Clifford lover, Clifford the big
red dog. And that's violence too.
So that is that's violence. That's what we're going to say
about violence. Violence is is a nasty fast
resolution mechanic that a bunch of people have done some really
cool jams for and made some awesome stuff.
And I wish more of this kind of stuff existed than teach RPG
space. I do too.
This was like really cool to go through.
It was a lot of fun. It's cool to see everyone's like
take on this. I think the resolution mechanic
system is super interesting and obviously like easy enough to
riff on to create your own thing, and there's a lot of
great creations going on in for me in this.
I wish, I wish, like I'm not gonna I'm not gonna 5 seconds of
can people like I'm in this because I enjoy the hobby and I
like the hobby heart and I wish not.
I wish we didn't live in a society in an economy where
people felt the need to hyper capitalize like every aspect of
their free time, including their hobbies into into things and
worry about the how they're going to monetize everything
that they make. And I wish more people just made
shit like this. And this is what's great about
it's jams. It's more times than not like no
one's paid. People are just doing cool shit
to do cool shit. And this is a great one.
And I'm not not one, but two and both are physically available
relatively inexpensively. 1 is literally like print on demand,
like at cost. So you can just like get that
and then just pay for the PDF and and it's, it's fucking
great. And I love this and I want more
of this and, and like, this is kind of shit I want to make.
I want to make something cool enough that I can just put it
out for free and people can make more shit for it.
You know, we need more of this, but This is why we went over it
because it's Luke Gearing. Luke Gearing is awesome and the
system fucks extraordinarily fucking hard And everything that
people have made for it across both of the collections is
incredible. If anyone has more stuff like
this that they find, let us know or I would love to dig more into
things like this. Just let us know.
Catch us tomorrow. If you're listening.
Jerk's going to be on for our Not Cat chats.
We're talking about Rose Thorne Keep.
Mine's downstairs, but. Yeah, and, and, and next week,
the plan, we'll let you fucking know.
That's it. You have anything to add?
No solid weird episode. Violence, talk or support all of
these people. I'll put as many links as I
possibly can to everything that I can and including links to the
jam pages by the books and, you know, violence.