Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll podcast.
My name is Ryan and today we have a special guest.
We have James Crane of Crumlin Keep.
How you doing today, James? I'm good.
Ryan, I'm good. How are you doing today?
You know, not too bad. It's an early morning episode.
I just got off work. So we're we're going to fight
through that. I have my coffee and we're good.
Yeah, you got this. But for those that don't know,
you've been on the show before. We've talked about your game
before. But for those that don't know
who you are or what what game that you are most known for,
Who? Who the heck?
Who the heck are you? So hey, everybody.
I'm James James Crane. Myself and Brad Kishpa run
crumbling keep small little RPG company and our flagship game
definitely think we're most known for at the moment is
Marching Order which is a solo slash coop.
You can play it like one to four players RPG that's a bit like
you know it's it's a bit like choose your own adventurish with
like a little bit of a darkest dungeon vibe in terms of like
how the combat works and. A lot of times I have trouble
classifying it like, is it more like a game book?
Is it more like an RPG? It has like maybe a few elements
of like board and card games. But yeah, as far as solo goes,
there just weren't a lot of when we made it.
There weren't a lot of solo games out there that like, were
the type of solo game I wanted to play.
Like, I didn't necessarily want to take on like the DM and
player duties at the same time like you do with like a lot of
traditional solo games. So I made the game I wanted to
play and it's been going well ever since.
Yeah, it's fantastic. I mean, we did.
I I should have wrote down one number episode we reviewed it
on, but we definitely reviewed the game and you guys were on
for an interview as well. I get a little stack of marching
order down there. And you guys just finished a new
Indiegogo campaign as well, right?
Yeah, we just went to print. I didn't even actually put out
the update yet to let people know.
We just went to print with our new quick and dirty for it.
Those are like short little adventure delves on like fold
out pamphlet things. If I thought my camera and
virtual background would work, I'd show you one right now.
But yeah, we just see our newest one.
Let me out. It's a little bit of a you know,
tis the season whore Investigational 1.
And we expect to be seeing it here soon and then we'll be
shipping it out to everyone that grabbed a copy.
So that's going to be number quick and dirty #5.
So like the five short adventures.
Then there's like the four in the core book and also master of
the Onyx Tower. And you know, not to give too
much away, but in November we got something else coming up for
that. Expect some.
We'll be, like I've said before, talk to us about it.
We will talk about it. And you can hear on the show
more about that. Like I said, definitely go check
out our review of Marching Order.
We both Hunter and I love the game.
You'll definitely see more of it here on the channel whenever I
get the spoons to do more of that kind of thing.
But Marching Order is a fantastic game.
It's definitely. I like solo games.
I I like the concept of solo journaling games, but I can't
really make myself do it. So I love the solo adventure
games and and marching orders way up there for exactly the
kind of game I want to play. So it's definitely great.
Always look forward to the the quick and dirties and and for
what's coming up in the future, we'll definitely see.
But yeah, what what are we doing today?
We're looking at it is spooky month and you know, I'm honored
for James to be here, hunters away for a couple of weeks.
We get some awesome guest hosts to come on and today we're going
to be looking at a game called Hell Grinders from Bannerless
Games. This is a fun little interesting
illuminated by Lumen game for those that know the Lumen system
from Spencer Campbell over at Killa or Gila Rpg's.
And what was interesting, James, you said you have never read a
Lumen game or looked at the Lumen system from from Spencer
before. Yeah, and don't ask me how, but
I've just somehow and like I'm sure I have some PDF somewhere
from like bundles or what not, but I've actually never read
through and Illuminated by Lumen game yet.
This is a this is a first for me.
So I'm. I'm coming at it with a fresh
eyes. Yeah.
And it's interesting that you know we we chatted just a little
bit before we started about some some things that I guess I'll
you know we'll bring up when we actually get.
I've actually, I have notes here.
I took notes on my phone when I was at work last night.
So I just want to bring those up to talk about.
But why don't we, why don't we just, let's hop over to that
screen and we'll look at Hell Grinders.
First of all love the logo. It's a great piece of work right
there. It's it's a pretty good cover in
general. You know, I I think one of my
favorite things about like the graphic design of this game is
evident on the cover there. We got the kind of the etching
down in the bottom right where it's kind of worn the property
of Ken and Rachel. It has that kind of reoccurring
like somebody scribbled on this motif that I've I've found
really enjoyable whenever it came across.
See, I was going to ask you about that because I didn't like
it. Like, I'll be honest, there are
some places where I think it maybe could have been
implemented better, but like the the little part part on the
cover there I think came through rather well.
Some of the pen markings look a little, I don't know, like they
they don't look like maybe they look like a fiscal thing overlay
to digital thing. Like it doesn't look like it
quite hits on it, right. But I think on the cover it, it
pulls it off. Well yeah, I think maybe if it
was a little bit more subtle. I think I I don't.
I feel like I've read this like 15 times and I feel like half
the times I kind of liked it and half the times I caught it
didn't. And then I think I eventually
set it on like, I don't know I don't know if it adds anything.
But what what what James is talking about is we go through
for those in podcast land. First of all the cover is just
kind of like gritty black and he said that it's someone wrote on
it. This property of Ken and Rachel
which are the the the writers for Bentless Games.
It's got this Hell Grinders logo in this really beautiful red
font instruction manual written underneath that.
Really neat. But throughout the book it looks
like you said it looks like someone was sitting in study
hall and took a pen and just kind of like Drew.
Like there's like at one point there's comic kind of on the
side across like 5 or 6 pages of a kid and like shooting and like
killing somebody. There's like the S's that we all
drew as kids that were like the the three lines and the three
lines and you connect at all like parts of it.
Like I said, I'm just like, yeah, this is kind of neat.
And the parts of it I'm just like, I don't know, I feel like
there's parts where maybe if it was like a little bit less or a
little bit more subtle, I would have liked it more.
I just don't know whether it adds or subtracts.
And and it's one of those things where that's entirely a personal
choice thing. But on the first page there's a
little stick figure guy that says hi just just just in pen,
just right on the right on like the the cover page here.
Like really tiny. Like, you know, squeeze your
fingers together and you got a little stick figure day saying
hi on this. Otherwise, like, blank white
page with the logo in the middle.
Yeah, and it's got this like, Pentagram logo.
It's got the ban on this games dot H dot io and the positronic
woman dot dish dot io, which I assume are Ken and Rachel, Ken
Lowry and Rachel Stevens. But going on to the next page
it's the same Hell Grinders logo again, this time in black.
And it says design and written by Ken Lowry and Rachel Stevens.
And then underneath it is like again drawn on in black with
like some blue pit like blue pin underneath.
We're not going to get like I'm not going to talk about every
time that there is like sketches in the book.
But just know it looks like someone really excited about
this game sat down and like scribbled a bunch of sketches
and like some like hell yes and stuff like in margins and stuff
as as we go through it. Like you grabbed like a like a
textbook. That's been the same textbook
used in the classroom for like 10 years.
And there's like, there's a history there.
Yeah. And then it's illuminated by
Lumen. As we said, this is the system
that Spencer Campbell put out. It's in Nova.
It's in light, It's in a bunch of stuff.
I know Spencer's coming out with like a Lumen 2.0, you know, and
they've been talking a lot about moving away from dice and stuff
into different kinds of things. So it's very interesting.
If you don't know Spencer stuff, regular RPGs, definitely check
it out. Reap is great and Rune came out
recent, came out a little bit ago, so definitely want to check
out all of that. But hell Grinders is gosh, I
posted it to the Twitter here. So let me give you the the quick
and dirty one liner here. Turbocharged boomer shooter
inspired RPG about killing demons and angels as the baddest
bastards around. Tagline got me already.
I was like, Yep, I'll take that. And it's pretty legit.
That's it. Does what it says on the box,
yeah. And for those that don't know,
Lumen. Lumen is really designed with
video gave me, you know, I know that Spencer was really into
Warframe and Destiny and stuff, and he was putting out Light and
Nova and stuff. So there's a lot of parts of the
game where you're really like Nova, you don't like, you don't
die like you can't die. You're literally just designed
to like be a cool, like mechanical Warframe, like
murdering a bunch of stuff and doing super cool moves.
And if you ever hit zero, there's like a cool death move
you do and after a little bit you come back anyway.
Like, it's literally just about like doing cool shit in a very
video gaming kind of way. And a lot of that kind of
looming stuff comes through in the game a little bit, and as we
go through, there's some we'll get to it.
But to kick it off, there are these three.
I assume it's revelations. I meant to look it up, but it's
66 point 166.2345, and six of these.
Very well, it says. And all at once the gates of
hell were opened, and demons poured forth, and their
millions. And so they did consume the
earth and fire and blood, and then did the gates of heaven
open, and angels poured forth in their millions, and so did they
wage battle with Hell's legions. And in their haste, the demons
of hell left untended the prisons in which they held the
souls of countless billions which they would soon regret.
For even as the war of heaven and hell consume the earth,
Hell's own prisoners would escape to show the same mercy
they're granted in perdition, and soon Angel and devil alike
would find out they were completely fucked.
Obviously it's not revelations, because that didn't happen.
Maybe I'm completely wrong and only read the Bible, you know,
when I was a kid. But I love that.
Just vibes all day right when you start off like.
Yeah, I I think this sets the tone really well.
Like it's it's early on in the book, which is good.
Like, you know what the world and the game is about now, You
know? Yeah, I mean, at least from
this, it it tells me straight up that like, heaven and hell are
fighting and then all the people in hell, now that hell is kind
of empty, are pissed off and now they're going to start fighting
back. And that sounds awesome.
Like I don't know why you wouldn't want to do that.
And I think I like it. 66.4 in particular.
Like it just gives us really nice, like concise turning point
which they would soon regret. That division of wording I think
was really good there. It's funny, the 66.6 has that
pen marking. It's under underlined and it
says nice next to it. So that's one of the ones I was
like. I'll take that one.
I'll skull and crossbones on it and then another page of flavor.
And that's really, honestly, I love the amount of flavor in
this. It doesn't, it doesn't give you
everything, but it gives you way more.
It gives you plenty and just those two pages.
So we'll just go through that as well.
It says the end is here. And the other thing about the
book, again for those of Podcast Land, it's black and red text on
a white background, but it's very it's not two column.
A lot of like the boxes are like slightly off kilter as far as
the text goes. Layout wise, I really enjoy
that. It's not crazy art punky like
you know as far as like mark board or anything but where
things instead of bold things use red, you know and and vibey
lines are separated into their own thing and like everything
being slightly off kilts her a little bit feels very thematic.
And the fonts, the really big font like the end is here.
The you know, kind of very culty long spooky font used so good.
All around great fonts on this page like the copy text one.
I'm like what is that? I want that font.
Yeah right, but it says the end is here.
Hell's own legions have invaded Earth in retaliation.
Heavens armies met them in battle, and everywhere they
fought humanity was consumed in blood and fire and fury.
The apocalypse came for everyone and life on Earth as we know it
was over. Heaven and hell made sure of
that. But in their greed to conquer
the mortal world, Hell's legions left their prisons of souls in
the inferno perilously unattended, and some few souls,
thirsting for vengeance and perhaps driven by guilt, seek to
bring the fight back to those who would prey on humanity.
They have died once, so cannot die again.
They know redemption is beyond their reach, for they were
already damned. All that is left for them is to
kill every devil and Angel they see until the cosmos itself is
quiet as a tomb. They are the Hell Grinders.
Like, come on, like, so good they're.
Kind of like movie trailer feel here to it.
Yeah. Yeah, it really is.
It does really feel like I could see like a voice over, but like
everything, like going to shit for everybody.
And I just love. I love when when heaven is the
bad guy. Like, did you ever see what's
that movie with? Oh gosh, it's going to escape
me. It's the guy who was the Bard in
A Knight's Tale but it is also the robot guy in the Marvel
movie with like the the thing on his forehead place Chaucer.
I don't know, but he he's an Angel that came down and
basically God decided that humans not worth it anymore.
So we sent to angels to wipe everybody out and he is like the
one Angel that's being like God made a mistake.
Don't kill everybody but you're weird.
It should be angels. I just.
I love when they're the bad guy or even a prophecy.
When when Oh my God my brain is not working.
What's his face is is Gabriel. But Gabriel's a bad guy.
I love when Heaven Legion. Legion is the movie.
Thank you. Thank you Jacob in chat.
Appreciate it. I just love when the when the
angels are just as bad as the devil's it it really gets me,
you know And in this it literally is like heaven and
hell decide to fight. They fight on the mortal world
like regardless of humanity being there not, and just fuck
everything up. So they're both equally
responsible for making just the world of just consumed in this
blood and fire and fury. And I dig it.
It kind of has a little bit of vibes of like the the Preacher
comic series. Yes, yeah.
And just how, Like, you know humanity was the pawn and in
this one, and humanity is fighting back, at least the
damned ones against. Angel and devil alike, yeah.
And it's just such a good premise to just be like the hell
is empty and the damned people down there decide fuck it, like
we can't die. We're already damned.
Let's just go kill everything because they fucked everything
up and we have nothing else to lose and literally nothing to
gain. Let's just do it.
To do it. I I don't know.
I. It's great.
I think both like the the the lead up so far fiction wise and
the graphics just really like at this point in the book I really
feel I know what the game's about.
It's got that like definite like pulp feel to it.
Them like, oh, this is just like slaughter.
Like I expect to see like blood and chainsaws and like
explosions and fire, you know, it definitely gives me that like
the little bit of like a Doom Diablo like definitely very
video gaming. Like you said, I expect just to
be blood soaked and just just mowing through things in this
game. That's my assumption and we're
not wrong because you deal and that's great.
Yeah. So and immediately so this.
I mean this is a pretty, this is really short.
I don't even think if this was printed anywhere.
I will fight somebody for a print, but I don't think it was
is just on itch. It's 22 pages in the Zine so
it's pretty short. So that's what you get from
vibes. You immediately jump into how to
make a hell grinder again. The pages themselves look
fantastic. The The font choice all the way
through is great. So how to make one?
Each hell grinder has a set of unique powers to choose from to
fully customize their approach to kicking demonic ass.
And your hell grinder will be fueled by energy that activates
powers. Each class has its own thematic
name for this energy, but it is functionally identical to make
one you pick. You choose your character class,
1 inherent power, and three active powers.
Inherent powers are free. You basically.
They're like passive abilities you just always have.
Not passive. They're just you always have
them. They're not quite as big as on
the other ones. And then the the other powers,
you actually spend this energy source that you have to use and
it says no, the powers do not require a role.
As soon as you activate the power, that thing just happens.
So don't hold back the the right time to use your power is right.
Fragging now love that. And even for a game this small,
I really love the ask and answer section where like you're making
some, just like like you said, like a some chainsaw wielding
just murdering fuck, right? But like, it's still saying like
what was your name, how did you die?
Why were you damned? What is your weapon of choice?
Who or what did you fight for? And what will you say to the
demiers when you see him? Great, great flavor to know.
Like you're still playing that game, you still have a
character. Yeah.
And I think, I think that's like just enough characterization for
this game, you know, like. As far as like oh the the story
emerges through play, like that's enough like back story to
like base some character decisions and like small little
dramatic scenes on you know especially that I really enjoy
the what will you say to the demo urge when you see him?
Like that's just yeah. I think that sets a lot of tone
there with what direction you go with that see and what I I don't
know. This is one of the times where I
was like I wasn't a fan of like the writing on the page because
to me that was like a really like moment.
And then what's written underneath it is get in loser.
We're going to murder you. And I'm like, I don't know I
felt like that took away a little bit of the impact next to
it and like who or what do you fight for?
And it's dio. I'm like okay a Ozzy is a
million times better than Dio. Regardless, I.
Mean given. Yeah, but.
I think I can see it. Like, I think I understand the
why of this, right. Like if we're going with that,
like like some way story, it has a textbook and they're writing
in it, you know, like it. It thematically I guess makes
sense. But like, yeah, I think you're
right. You know, like I feel like
especially with that last one, there's like some room for
epicness there that it did kind of detract from a bit.
And again, to eat their own, I think a lot of people can read
this and be like, I think that's so cool.
Like, I love that. It's like scribbled on.
It looks like someone's like really use this and stuff like
that. I don't.
That's not, in my opinion like a
critique that'll come out like in the like score or something
at the end. Because I really feel like it's
a personal opinion for like whether people like that or not.
I just think I'd again, I was half and half and I'm just
leaning towards like I wouldn't mind maybe just a touch less of
of it sometimes but hopefully that's less time we talk about
it. But yeah.
And then the last part of it is, can you die?
Yes and no. Basically, if you lose all your
health, you die a gory death, but you resurrect somewhere else
in the stage and we get the stages later, but you just like
pop up somewhere else and you better go find your team real
quick before you get into another battle and die.
But there is a catch. Each team has a total of three
lives, and that's it. So if one person dies three
times, that's it. If each person dies one time,
that's it. But it's a total of three in
their pool. And but once the pool is used
up, anyone that dies after that stays dead until the boss fight.
But everyone gets at least one life against the boss fight and
then once the boss is defeated, everyone gets rezed, the light
pole resets to Max and you get to start over.
So very video game in that aspect where it's like you just
kind of like respawn at another spot and then come back.
And I like the idea that if you go down after that you if
everyone can still just get to the boss, everyone can come up
at least one more time. I think that's really mean.
Yeah, definitely. Agreed there.
When we were talking before the show and you mentioned just like
the the, the video game aspect to this, I think that's
something I didn't click for me the first time I read through,
which made perfect sense the moment you said it.
And you know, like it. Like if I'm envisioning like a
classic side scroller, like it's adapted the rules of that for
multiple people pretty well in terms of like, Oh yeah, you have
a shared life pool and you pop back up somewhere in the stage
and like. It's not fun if someone's dead
and you're just staring at everyone playing forever.
So obviously if someone, everyone comes back for the boss
fight, right? So I I appreciated this this the
life system here and the the loopholes through it of when
folks can come back. I I I dig that a lot.
One of the other things that kind of something you just said
kind of made me think about it is I feel like one of the like
biggest critiques I have for this game is some of it is
written as if you've already read Lumen game before or you're
familiar with like Nova or Light or something like that.
When we get to to later points there's like it starts talking
about distances but like it never says here are the
distances or like it says you can do this on your turn but it
never says what you can do on a turn.
So I think there's some things where like the whole game is
written as if like with like an implication that you had read
previous Lumen games before. And again, I know it's like
super small, but like I don't think it would have taken a
whole lot to just like have maybe just like a little bit
more explanation of like the system if you haven't used it
before. And from from having not read
any Lumen games before, did it definitely be with some some
questions because of that one of my biggest ones was like so can
I like activate multiple powers in a turn and there's a power.
Coming up on one of the classes in particular that made me ask
that, which we'll get to in a bit.
But yeah, it definitely left me with that question of like what?
What? What?
What happens in a turn? How many of these powers can I
activate? And I think for something that
feels lows, yeah. Anyway, yeah, we'll we'll get to
that a little later on. I think one more a literally one
more page that just has like a couple of those things for like
this is distance, this is movement, this is turn, this is
powers like could easily be done especially with the way they do
the layout here in literally just like make this 23 pages
instead of 22 which I guess would make the back cover you
know whatever. But like could easily make this
feel more standalone than having to necessarily like I said, have
the implication that you've read the systems before.
Yeah we'll get to we'll get to the power.
So how grinders are defined by three stats.
I love. I love 3 stats.
Four is great for me personally I think 3 is fantastic and I
think 6:00 is way too fucking mini.
I don't know what your ideal stat number is.
I don't think I really have one like.
I really think it depends on how it utilizes them.
For like a game like this, I think 3 is perfect.
You know, you got your, like, yeah, you strength fast, smart,
you know, and I think it's just how how many, I don't want to
say how many stats you can get away with before they start
overlapping each other, you know?
But that's definitely like one of the like signs.
There's too many stats like, oh, do I use this stat or the stat
for it? If it's not clear, you probably
have too many stats. Well, that's why I always go
with six or four, because I genuinely feel like Wisdom and
Charisma could all just be one thing.
Like they could do like a mindset.
Because those are, in my opinion, those are all like, I
don't see why one necessarily would be more than the others.
So like 4 for me is is great, but I I love the feel of three
and a lot of a lot of them use this like they use two body
stats and a mindset. So it's strength, speed and
savvy. And it's exactly what you think
it is. Strength is strength, speed is
speed, and savvy is like you're clever and perception.
So I don't need to dig too much into that.
But like like you said for this game where you're literally just
like mowing through stuff, I think 3 is is fantastic.
I don't, I don't know why you would or what you would even do
for a fourth. And then the core system here
says whenever your hell grinder attempts something that risks
failure, decide how you're doing it, Choose the relevant stat and
roll that many 6 sided die. Pick the highest role as your
result you get. One to two means you fail and
there's a consequence. 3 to 4 means you succeed, but there's a
complication and five to six means you succeed with no
complication. So it's a it's a mixed success
dice pull system. You basically however many
stats. If you have 4, you have 4 savvy,
you're all 46. You take the highest number that
you rolled across those 46, you slap it on this, you know, tier
here for the mix success and that's what you get to do.
And I think going back to like. Things I think I missed like I'm
familiar with like mixed success from other games, you know,
notably like Fortunate Dark games.
I was playing some scumbag villain last night actually.
It's really fun. But I think one of the things
like I would have would like to see is like, I mean I know what
the word consequence means, but I would love to see some maybe
samples there of like well is it?
And sure, to some degree, like, it's up to the person running
the game to interpret. But like if someone suffers A
consequence, does that mean their character straight up dies
or does it mean they lose like a health, You know, like what is
the what could that, what could that look like?
And I think I have some ideas again from playing other games,
but like, like I'd love to see like what they envision that to
look like, you know? And again I think that comes
from that kind of like written as if you've played like Lumen,
other Luminia, especially noble before where you've seen the
consequences and they're better laid out in a different thing or
like not better laid out. They just are laid out in like a
different thing. So I mean I get like get that,
it's like a quick, you know, little hack.
But it's the same thing we did Dark Grail last week with
Christian Sorrell and it's one of those things where it's like
it's small and God, I wish it was just a little bit bigger,
you know what I mean? Like one or two more pages than
this. And I feel like it would be like
damn near perfect in my opinion for exactly what it's going for.
But I think, you know with that one it was really trying to be
like kind of like a one page thing.
So it was like really crunched by like the the spaces to do.
But this one is just like it's a it's a PDF, it's on itch.
You can just throw like one or two more pages in and just
clarify like one or two things. And I mean, I don't know why
this isn't all over everything. I'd play the shit out of this.
So like, I don't know, just a little bit more clarification
for exactly the thing you just said, Like I, you know, would
would really elevate this a lot more.
But yeah, that's the core of Lumen, right?
There is really just that dice pool make success, you know,
with the three stats kind of thing.
And I mean, I like it. It's super simple.
It's super easy. You know, we did, we did Blades
in the Dark. We weren't the hugest fan of the
way Blades in the Dark was working.
But you know a lot of the Forged in the Dark games we really
enjoy and this kind of has that similar, you know, mixed success
to ice pool thing. So So what.
So there's four classes here. We're not going to go with, you
know dig through every single individual class but you get the
you get the Gladiator which is and and I also do love that in
this line that I'm fixing to read here.
It talks. It really tells you, like, you
can be anyone through time, like it's hell, like, you know.
So it says, whether you served a Roman lanista or a feudal Lord,
you killed and maimed for the pleasure of someone who owned
you. Like, I like that.
It's not just like some dude that died like five years ago.
Like, you can be anyone there in history in the game.
And I really enjoy that. Yeah, I I don't know that I
consciously picked up on that there, but that's a great way to
introduce that as and like. I think.
I think that's one of the things this game does really well thus
far is it like, it introduces a kind of like world, but it like.
There's not a like the world section, you know what I mean?
It's like, it's kind of like introducing world building
through the mechanics and the like, the little blurbs here and
there. And that's, you know, really.
I love when any book could do that implying setting with rules
at, you know to bring up Dark Grail again last week, same
thing. Like it's almost entirely rules
text, but by the time you finish it, you really understand like
when and where you're playing something and it's so it is
really nice, like the headers for all of these are great.
So basically Gladiator is, in my opinion like this is your
striker, but it it basically tells you like you were owned by
someone before, you worked for somebody before and now you're
like brimming with fury. You're basically like that
barbarian kind of class and your your fuel is rage for the
gladiator. The next one is the marine.
So you are a warrior of the modern age, adept at the
delightful application of firearms.
So a lot of and your power is fueled by ammo.
So a lot of the stats are ammo based.
This one feels much more like the control character.
There's a lot of like hitting multiple people, moving yourself
around the the the field with with the character.
There's the priest, which is exactly what it sounds like and
what I would play. You rose to the highest and fell
the furthest. You were not a warrior, but your
faith has curdled into a hatred so intense it can wilt life as
surely as God's own wrath. Your zeal is the power that you
use, and the last one is the Bard says you are rebel from the
start, blowing minds and shredding reputations on your
instrument of choice, and your fuel is the beat.
So those are the four classes you can be.
Which one was your favorite? Or which one did you when you
were talking about a power before that you want to discuss
which one was that? Yeah, so like, I got a little
lost on the back, on the gladiator, on the Rampage power.
And I might just be reading it wrong, but like I looked at it a
few times and I'm like, you know, it's one of those moments
of like, well, why would anyone pick that type of thing right?
So. The Gladiator has four rage, and
that's their their that's what fuels their power is the rage.
So they have four rage and the Rampage power.
You can spend as much rage as you want in your Fury.
You are free for rage spent, divided in half, and rounded up
turns. All powers are free to use once
per turn, and I was. So the most expensive power here
is 2, right? Right.
So well, I guess if you I guess if you were to use that you
could spend too rage and do a well, you're still spending too
rage to use the too yeah. So here.
So here we'll jump forward and then we'll go back and go
through the whole gladiator. So people understand the concept
a little bit more, but if you go down to, we'll get to it in a
little bit. Where is it?
Basically at the end of each stage and we'll get to stages,
you increase your power, you can increase your power.
So like every stage and you go through the three stages of like
3 levels, you can pick new powers and increase the amount
of power you have. So you can add like 2 to your
rage and then add another two to your rage.
So by the end, you can have like 810-1214 rage.
So that makes a lot more sense when you have like 12 rage and
you can round that down to six and then use 6 rounds worth of
free powers. So we'll get to that.
But that's that the first time I read it.
It also didn't make sense, ma'am, like, why would you do
that? But it's because the level up
system in this is just adding more power to the abilities that
you get. So I'm still stuck a little
there, right? So if you have those six rounds
of using free powers, if you were to use like, the most
expensive power you have is 2 rage if you use A2 rage power
every turn. It would still equal 12.
Like there's there's not a savings there, you know what I
mean? So it's so Rampage X in your
fear you are free for it's the number of turns you have, not
the amount that it costs to spend after you started, right?
So say you say you have 12 power.
Say you have 12 rage, right. And then so in order to activate
Rampage, you can say, OK, I'm going to use all 12 which will
give me six turns. And so for six turns I can use
any power I want every turn for six turns.
So I could use Shatter one turn and obliterate the next turn and
and needs must the next turn. It doesn't matter the cost.
After you spent the cost for Rampage you get, it's the number
of turns you have in order to spend any power you want once
per turn. And I guess like so it again, I
might be missing something here like if you were to.
Not use rampage, but do the same succession of powers.
Like you shatter the first turn and obliterate the second turn
and just pay for them. One off, one off, one off.
I think it would probably come out cheaper, or at the very
least the same as if you kind of like got rage Rampage going all
at once, divide it in half and round it up.
Turns all powers, all powers are free to use once per turn.
Yeah, I mean I guess you're right.
I mean if you have like 8, well, I mean it might even be less
because if you have 8 rage, that only gives you four turns to
have free powers. But if you were just so that
would give you 4 turns to use obliterate which is 2 each,
which is like the highest one you can do with without so.
But if you just used which would be 8:00, so it would be the
exact same. Yeah, you're right, it kind of
doesn't make sense. Like if you just do it, if you
do half it ends up being basically the same.
Or even less if you want to use like a one one point power.
Right, right. You're then you're kind of
missing out. Oh you're yeah you're right.
I mean if you just half it and and the most anything cost is 2,
you're you're literally missing out on it.
I mean, yeah, I mean, I don't know.
If I guess if it's rounded up you could, then you might just
go back to 8, you spend 7 and you could potentially get eight
points worth of power. So you could like see 1.1 point.
Yeah, you're right. That doesn't really feel it.
It feels like, you know, Rob and Peter to pay Paul.
Like it's it's it's it doesn't. Yeah, Maybe.
Yeah, maybe we're missing them. So let's let's go through the
whole gladiator. We'll talk about it and then
we'll get back to Rampage. But yeah, I think you're right.
Like as soon as you round it down, you might be able to
squeeze one extra point out of it.
But like otherwise, it doesn't really make much of a difference
whether you're spending it or not because it always hits
anyway. Yeah, you're right.
So. So the Gladiator, like we said,
they you're owned by somebody. Now you're free.
You're waiting in the battle to turn to Monica armies in a field
of corpses. You wield A fearsome malee
weapon in your own fist. So the stats are all the
characters. You get health for each one.
So for this one, the health is a 10.
You get your energy. This one is rage.
You start with full rage, then you have your strength, speed,
and savvy. So you don't, you don't roll for
stats, You don't pick stats, You don't assign numbers when you
pick an archetype or you pick your role.
It's just there for you already. So you never have to worry about
really doing anything beyond, like, even as far as character
creation goes, outside of answering those questions, you'd
literally just have to be like, OK, this time I'm going to be a
gladiator. It's all laid out for you right
off the bat, which is neat. I do.
I do like that. Especially for this game to just
be like, fuck it, that one's mine, and I'll just build on it.
There's no reason to roll stats for that.
Yeah, yeah, Like, it seems in very much in the spirit of this
game to like. Have a beat, get up and go.
You know, like I literally feel like I can make a character in 5
minutes at maybe 6. If I had trouble answering what
I'd say to Demi urge when I see him.
But Oh my God, after you played it once or twice, Yeah, after
you played it once or twice a minute or two tops, you can
literally be like, alright, I'll be the gladiator this time and
I'm, I don't know, until the time, you know, like, you know
what I mean? Like you just go.
But as far as the stats go, strength to speed to savvy one,
all of them get 2 to one across the board for any of those.
So I guess technically if you wanted to make your own class,
you would just decide you know how much health and energy they
have and then you would just assign it to A2 and A1.
And it's just it's a variation for each class.
Which one? Which one gets one?
So the inherent abilities are two that you start with, and I
love. I love the first one on this.
Everything is a chainsaw. Everything is chainsaws.
Probably my favorite power in the whole little Zine here.
It's just it's so perfectly thematic.
Yeah every weapon you pick up has been modified with or simply
is chainsaw blades. Add 1 harm to all attacks it's
just like oh there's a sword over there.
Oh I didn't notice it has chainsaw blades.
Like just everything you pick up just has chainsaw blades.
I I It's so good. Yeah, it's it's silly.
It's pulpy. It's like it's, it's again, it
says it does what it says on the box right there.
It's perfect. You know what it reminds me of a
little bit is, I mean it's all video game stuff.
What was the one where they Gears of War?
Didn't they have like a a a chainsaw gun?
Wasn't that where they like shoot, you shoot and then like
buzz through the chainsaw? Anyone in chat let me know.
I think Gears Award did that, but a chainsaw?
It's a gun. It's a gun that shoots and
instead of for like instead of like a bayonet, it's like the
bottom half is just a chainsaw. So like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
something that would never work in real life.
That is really cool, right? Like where you don't ever pick
up fuel cells for your chainsaw. As long as I remember it, it's
just a chainsaw. But the second inherent ability
is gutted out. The anger that drives you pushes
you far beyond your limits. Heal.
One harm per one rage spent love that you know.
And especially, like with a rage cap before, that seems very
balanced. Yeah, and you got a high health
in this too, so even if you run out of your rage.
You still get to go a lot more than somebody like the priest or
something that has literally like I think they have to start
with they're the exact opposite health 4 Zeal 10.
So it definitely give you all the health and rages.
I've noticed like have if you add them together they come up
to 14. So I think each class is kind of
a split between them. There we go.
That works, yeah. And again, if you want to make a
new class, there you go, 14 between your health and energy
and then 2213 other ones. Yeah, easy peasy.
So you're the camera, what they're called the non inherent
abilities, the ones you have to pay for and I love that you pay
for them. It's great.
Bloody arc. You cleave enemies with great
bloody swings of your weapon, deal 1 harm to all near all near
enemies. So that's the first discussion
of distance at all. And again, if you played the
game before, you understand like there's there's close, there's
near, there's far right. But if you haven't, it's just
kind of like, oh, what's near and then needs must is also one,
your aim is as good as any marines.
Damn it. I love that because it's just
like, well, no it's not, but like, that's fine.
Pick up a near enemy and and throw them at another enemy
close or far. It deals 1 harm the target and
two to the unlikely projectile. Again, I love that.
Just pick somebody up and throw them into somebody else.
Shatter and Obliterator are the other two besides Rampage.
Shatter make the ground quake with the devastating attack that
destroys the environment around you.
Deal 2 harm to all near enemies and one harm to all close
enemies. First mention of close
Obliterate you concentrate all your might into one devastating
attack. Instantly destroy any near enemy
of harm 3 or less. That's great.
And then the rampage we discussed already in your fear,
you are free for rage, spent, divided and half and rounded up
turns. All powers are free to use once
per turn. So I all the way through.
I love the powers. I think they're so incredibly
well written. I think they're so thematic to
each individual character. I think there's a clear very
harsh, in a good way, delineation between each class.
It doesn't feel just like, oh, you're playing hell Grinders and
this one's got like a different flavor.
It literally feels like. You're playing like a whole
different set of things for it, you know?
Yeah. And it's again, just very video
video, very video gameesque, you know, especially like something
about chatter really caught me, where it's like make the ground
quick with a devastating attack that destroys the environment
around you. Like, that seems important, you
know what I mean? I'm just like thinking of the
fighting games where someone gets bashed through a ground to
a whole nother board type of thing and just seems very, yeah,
delightfully thematic there. Well, I think even that, you
know, like mechanically cool, you you stop and stuff happens,
But like, the ground quakes and stuff.
Like if you were doing more of like an emergent gameplay
narrative, like, you could definitely be like, oh, they're
on the edge of a Cliff. I just break the whole Cliff
off, you know what I mean? Like, there's a lot of cool
stuff you can do beyond the base mechanics or some of these.
That is really neat, right? Absolutely.
The marine is cool. I I again, we're not going to
dig through all these abilities. Some of them are really fun
though. There is the the Sprint one I
thought was interesting and again, this is what kind of
makes it feel controller, like a good soldier stays on the move.
You instantly materialize next to any closer far enemy and deal
one harm. So you're really bouncing around
the field with that, which is neat.
And each each one has one of those like X powers.
The the Marines is blaze of glory.
You don't quit until the job's done for.
Every health spent instantly slay one close enemy of three
harm or less. So this one's really about
dealing a lot of damage to multiple enemies.
And in Lumen, Spencer did a really, really good job too with
the core classes in Nova of making it feel like the kind of
like classic for like striker, leader, Controller, and and and
and whatnot. So I like that they continue to
through this as well. Enjoy a lot of the like the X
powers and things. And like, I just, I'd like to
know powers that are like, yeah, any enemy less than three harm
is done. Like it just it's set up to just
carve a swath of destruction, you know?
And it's unapologetic about that.
But you don't have to spend turns fighting a goblin like you
can just one and done it, because that's what's cool.
And even before it really spells it out, it kind of inherently
tells you, like, if you can just stamp and kill three dudes,
there's gonna be a lot more than three dudes.
You know what I mean? Right.
Yeah. So yeah, So Priest is great.
I really love their ex Power, the Master of Puppets.
Possess one enemy per zeal spent with holy fire, turning them
against one target. You pick for your turn for one
turn, so you can literally be like okay.
I spend 5 zeal and all five of those guys are possessed by holy
fire and they're gonna turn around and fight other people
for a turn. Love that one.
The Bard. The Bard.
I mean, the Bard is always going to be my least favorite, no
matter no matter what game it is.
It's just me as a person. My favorite D&D character is the
Death Cleric from the DMG, but the voice, like a horny Angel,
got me. That was great, with the little
pen marks above it. Nice.
Yeah, yeah. Like I I feel be mad.
Like, yeah, I feel thematically, you know, it's a game about
hell. So obviously rock'n'roll needs
to be involved, you know what I mean?
But I think I'd like, I just, I want it to be called something
other than Bard, you know? I think Bard just has this, like
because of 5E has so much attached to it that maybe we
don't need it. I mean, it's it's not like a
deal breaker for me or anything. It's just like I think it's hard
for me at this point to hear Bard in a gaming setting without
thinking of bards, 5E bards and all the things attached to them.
Well, the thing too is like, OK, so Priest is kind of generic,
but it's when you read the class, not really, but when you
read Gladiator, it's pretty specific about what it is.
It's not Warrior and especially when you read Marine like it's a
straight up modern Marine. So it's a very specific thing
like it, I feel like. If you're going to use something
that's like a very like broad open thing so that people can
like read their interpretation into it, that's fine.
Like if you just want to have like Warrior Clark and stuff
like that. But with Marine being so
specific. And when you read Bard, it says
you were a rubble from the start, blowing minds and
shredding reputation like. And and everything about it is
like you have like your mighty axe, which is obviously like you
know like guitar and like ride the lightning and like you have
my axe and all the rest of this stuff is very clearly about
guitar. So I didn't see any reason why
this couldn't just be rock star. You know what I mean?
Rocker. Yeah, yeah.
Like Rocker was for most of my mind.
Yeah, because again, Marine is very specific.
There's no reason that rocker or Rockstar or whatever couldn't
just be like a specific one. And you know, but that means,
like, you could have drums, you could have guitar, you could
have Kitar, whatever you want, you know, obviously Kitar.
Yeah, I mean who who wouldn't go with Kitar?
But yeah, I mean, but here's the thing, like, I wouldn't pick
Bard because that's just not me. But the Bard abilities are
really cool. Like actually like the right of
the lightning abilities really need.
Attack an enemy with your weapon or on a crate you roll an extra
dice. You may add the second roll onto
a new one. Like the actual abilities of the
Bard are pretty brutal as far as like kind of like a mix of like
what they do across there before the devil knows you're dead.
Is there X ability to negate a death blow against yourself or
an ally? Costs the same as the?
Of the killing strike can be invoked at any time.
I love that like, because whether it's ten or two like
you're not just like, oh, I have to use all of my energy.
Like if two really killed your friend all you have to just
spend 2 and then they're just not dead.
That's great, yeah. As far as like, buffing and
confusion and like, you know, the the blue dad barting.
Yeah, basically, yeah. The the set of powers is really
good for that. Yeah, yeah, I think you're
right. They just like a tweak on the
flavor. Bard thematically feels a little
bit off off base for the specificity of what the powers
and stuff are afterwards. Like if I if I saw a piece of
art on this page, like it's some 80s rocker wearing leather pants
with like feathered hair, you know what I mean?
Like I, it gives me a very specific vision.
And I will say that's the thing to to bring up right now too.
There is no art in this besides the scribbles and like, you
know, art. Art sells books and games and
stuff like that. With the way this is laid out,
and I obviously art would be awesome, but I don't necessarily
miss it at all, You know what I mean?
If that makes sense, yeah. I I was thinking about that
honestly. Like there.
Like, I I did not notice there was an art in it right away.
Like, eventually I caught up with it.
And like, would art be cool in this?
Yes, I use art, a barrier to get things published.
Yeah, absolutely. But like made excellent use of
formatting, of space and everything to like get by
without it. Like just what they did with
text. It's like, I think, you know,
art does a lot of things right? You see a good piece of art, it
tells you what the game's about. It sets your mind in motion.
Like if you think about something like looking through
some of your first RPG books, looking at the pictures, imagine
what kind of game you want to run or what kind of character
you want to play. Like super dope.
But one of the other things it does is it just like breaks up
the text and makes it easier to read.
It kind of gives you brain a break from just like seeing the
same thing over and over and over again.
And while like this doesn't have the formatting of like you know
like a more boardyard punky type thing where it's like you have
to like actively engage to read it in a certain way.
It's broken up enough that it like it if it feels that
function of the art. So there's even without the
pretty pictures, like, it does a great job of doing what it does
without that. And even just like the little
like I think on the next page, the level guide where it has the
kind of dagger dripping blood, like some of the pen things
really work for me, and that's one of them.
But yeah, it does really good with negative space.
Like it's still fun to read without the art.
And like, I think it's by quite all right without it.
Yeah, I know there was fucking discourse.
You know, on on Twitter. Or always and forever.
But one of the things was just like, oh, I can't do a book with
that art. And it's like, I'll I'll show
you five books right now that have little to no art at all.
But their layout is fantastic for this exact reason.
Because for all the reasons you just said that, like the what
really what you need a lot of art for is breaking up walls of
text. Because my ADHD brain will
bounce off shit so fast. But with the variations and
color in this, with the way it's laid out, with every page being
formatted slightly differently. And the way that it's written,
really pulling you to the next part, you can easily get away
with just really good layout. So if you if you if you can only
forward one in my opinion go for really fantastic really vibey
Thematic layout. With, you know, colors and
fonts, stuff like that. Then a standard black and white
fricking Cambria or or aerial font, you know in two columns
with like a great piece of art. You know what I mean?
The format is really going to pull you forward when the format
itself is incredibly artistic. Agreed.
And just, you know, a well laid outlook with no art is 100 times
more usable than like a terribly laid outlook with the best art.
Yeah, yeah, I mean. We also know that that book was
still sell, but no one's going to play it you know and that's
that's that's your choice. So the love of guy I.
So A complete game of Hell Grinders is 3 episodes long.
The first two episodes feature 3 stages and a final boss fight.
The final episode is 1 Epic Boss Fight.
The conquest of heaven itself, I love.
This idea, I think it's fantastic.
And again, we just, you know, talking about the layout, the
conquest of heaven itself. Like everything's black except
the conquest of heaven itself is red.
Like it really does a good job of like boom, you know, like
this is your end game right here.
And I I don't again, I'm not having read a lot of, well, any
of the Lumen games. I appreciate this like, episode
one, Episode 2, Episode 3. Like, it tells you exactly what
to expect. And I think there's something
really cool about that and the way like this structure it has
set up. Yeah, I'll say this is not that.
This is at least as far as I have read Nova and we read it on
the show like the whole like levels thing with the final boss
thing is not really a Lumen thing.
Like this is a really like a this game thing.
There's some stuff in Nova that definitely, you know lends
towards the way that you should do things.
But it's it's not quite it's not episodic the way this is and.
I think, I don't know. I love this so much to know that
like let's just go play 3, let's just three sessions, you know,
and we'll just do 123 and just be done.
Because honestly, like how how kind of felt this is, that's
about as much of A campaign as you're really going to get out
of this and and I guarantee you'll get very few characters
all the way through. Well, no, I guess, I mean
everyone just kind of comes back anyway whether you die or not
once you get to the end of the level, unless you just TPK.
But yeah, so there's a breakdown of the three episodes.
First is Hell on Earth. You tear into the rear flanks of
Hell's Legion, retaking human human civilization block by
bloody block until you confront and destroy one of Hell's
Generals for each stage role. Once on the maps table and once
on the complication table for the boss fight role to see which
fiend you face. I love the tables we get to
those. Episode 2 is where angels fear
so Hell may be decimated, but heavens armies are bent on
wiping their. Sorry, wiping the earth clean.
Due to them, what you did to their adversaries, including
their Archangel leader and the same thing you roll in the maps
complication table and then you fight an Archangel.
And then episode 3, the throne. Which I have the most to say
about but Earth won't be safe until the source of its woes is
destroyed. Raid heaven and kill the two
faced deity of good and evil known as the Deme Urge.
Should be easy, yeah? Like how this leans into, I
think a lot of games like there's almost like this.
I don't want to say there's a separation of mechanics and
fiction, but I think like there's a certain point where
most games dial back telling you like what type of game you want
to run and what it looks like. And I like how much just bought
into the opposite of like 3 episodes.
You were going to play three games of this, and here's what
each episode is going to look like, and it just like it's it
doesn't try away from providing a very specific play experience.
And for something that, like you want to play three games of,
that's great, you know? Yeah, I mean the structure is
fantastic and like you said, the scaffolding, it's weird.
It's a hard thing to really, I guess decide when you're when
you're making a game or you know with all the games that we've
read that exact thing where how much scaffolding do you want in
this adventure or in this game, like how?
How much is too much? And this one, like you said,
doesn't give a shit like you're going to do XYZ.
It feels very video gamey. It definitely still bought deep
into that video game. Like, I mean it's called episode
1-2 and three, but I almost wish it was just called level one,
Level 2, Level 3, you know, because that would be exactly
what it is. So I love this page too.
Your Descent Episode One. Hell on Earth 3 stages, One boss
fight, Arrow down Episode 2. Or Angels fear 3 stages, one
boss fight, episode down episode 3, the throne, one huge boss
battle with a toilet drawn next to it, and then at the end of
each stage. So this was the part I was
talking about before. That didn't matter because we
were talking about something different at the end of each
stage. Hell Grinders may re choose
their powers or bump a stat or health by 1.
So you can change your powers every stage, and there's three
stages per episode or per level until the final one.
And then at the end of each boss fight, hell grinders may add a
new power or bump a stat or health by two.
Well I guess you know. Here's the thing that I had a
question about too. I guess you never do increase
your energy. At least as far as that goes.
And how do you gain energy back? My assumption is like at least
after the boss fights everything resets.
But if you can re choose your powers after every stage, my
assumption is like everything resets after every stage.
But then does your does your like, when does your health and
energy and and stuff come back? Yeah.
Well, I think you, you can bump your energy because that you
could bump a stat and that would be a stat, right.
So you could raise that by one or two hosts.
I yeah, I guess, I mean I guess energy would have to be a stat
because you have like your three stats.
And then it just depends on how you read the way it's written
because before it talks about like you have this, I don't know
if it ever calls the energy you use a stat, but I would say that
that's that you could, you could, you could do that though
I would definitely throw that as a stat because.
As as we pointed out with Rampage, it makes even less
sense if you only have like if you can only literally do it
once, like you get like 222 turns and then you spent four
rage to use one power like twice and that's it.
So yeah, I think the assumption there, but the fact that we have
to say I think the assumption there is X shouldn't like like
including energy or something like that would have been nice
to see here. But also like you're right that
it does like it very specifically calls out strength,
speed and savvy as stats. And then it also mentions health
there, but without mentioning their like their 4th
classification be that rage or ammo, whatever.
It's not really like I I would have, like you said, it's and
it's not really spelled out like I'd imagine that's a stat, but
also it never explicitly says that.
Right. But also I kept asking myself,
like when do I get my energy back?
Like if I spin it all in stage 1.
Is it reset for stage two and then reset for stage 3 and then
reset for the boss fight? Like if I used all my rage?
When do I get my rage back? Or does that replenish after the
boss fight? Yeah and my assumption is right.
Well my assumption because you can re choose your powers or
bump a stat after each stage. If I'm being nice, I would say
after each stage, but if I'm not being nice, I think that at the
end of the boss fight. You can bump it by two, but that
technically is the same as after each stage you just get 2
instead of 1. So then if it's one then it has
to be the other. My assumption would be at the
end of each stage. That's how I would play because
why not? Because more power is more fun
and that seems to be the vibe it's going after.
Two you know the the best time to use your power is now type of
thing you mentioned. So like I would think it
replenishes often, but you're right.
Like it. We are guessing there for sure.
Do you do you happen to have two D sixes laying around, or a or a
generator? I do happen to have two D sixes,
so each each level you you roll 2D sixes.
So it's it's eleven options, two through 12 on the maps table, on
the Complications table. So why don't you roll?
Let let's do it twice, one for when episode, one when you're
hell on Earth. So roll 2D6 for the maps table
and. Again, like I mentioned fighting
games before. This is another instance where
I'm like, oh hell yeah. Okay, we got a nine.
We're going into subway tunnels, yeah.
And then what's the complication?
Let's see, 2D6 for complication 5 toxic fumes.
Perfect, right? That matches well together,
yeah, So that's when you're on hell on earth, when you're
fighting demons. So after you murder all the
devils and you go to where angels fear romy and other 2D6
and 2D6 and we'll see where you're fighting the angels.
But we are fighting angels in the movie in the movie studio
lot. And we are complicated by
radioactive waste. Dope.
Yeah, I some of these are are just everything's on fire and
everything's fine, or the top and bottom ends of the
complications. Planes, bombs, armed pastile
citizenry. Yeah, there's these are really
cool. I really like these so good
hellish bloodstorms. That's that's how you fight a
battle. I'm a little torn.
Right. Like there's part of me that
wants each entry to contain a little in parentheses, like
something mechanical to it, like something to tell me like.
All right, here's how you game master with hellish bloodstorms
going on. Like just a little sentence or
something. And then another part of me is
like, that could be fun to figure out.
Yeah, I mean, I'm OK without it. I I had never even thought about
it till you said that having a little bit of flavor would be
nice. But I also think that just
deciding, I don't know, because it's like, what would you do
with like, the Capitol Building? You know what I mean?
I guess if you had armed citizenry, you would just be
like the Secret Service but like, but some of them for sure
could, you know, could have a little something, you know.
What's interesting too is it's a 2D6 table, right?
Like, And the thing about the 2D6 table is there's a curve to
it, which is interesting here because to me this seems like it
would feel more like it should be random entirely.
But the fact that, like more times than not, you're going to
get speeding train, Army base, or small town and you're going
to get unpredictable earthquakes, hellish bloodstorms
and armed hostile citizenry on the table means you're going to
roll that a lot. It says reroll and repeat.
But like, mathematically you would do that.
Like, I wonder if instead it could have been like a different
variation of a D6 table. You know what I mean?
Like just do like, yeah, do like do 6:00 and 6:00.
Right, right. Roll one dice to choose which
table and then roll another dice on that table.
Because I imagine it was definitely like, well, we don't
want this to use anything other than D sixes at this point.
And D 66 is too much, you know? Yeah, yeah.
But. But having it be a curve means
you're going to roll the same thing statistically more
frequently. So yeah, I mean like like you
said, that's exactly what I do. I'd have one D6 that like evens
roll on table one, odds roll on Table 2 and then your second D6
like just picks which one it is. I think would make a little more
sense for it as far as like a like a mix, you know, instead of
having to re roll on the repeat, you know, potentially
frequently, but because you're rolling this for like every
stage, right? Or is it just.
Yeah, so. And I think that.
You know, I'm like looking at it like I I can't tell for sure,
but it looks like they have maybe, yeah.
For each stage, for all night they they take, taking that into
account, like when I'm looking at the complication tables, you
know, two is everything's on fire and 12 is everything is
fine. Or like 11 is planes dropping
bombs. And those are all things that
would come up that's frequently than, like total darkness or
armed hostile citizenry or hellish bloodstorms.
Like things that seem maybe a little more and I don't know,
more extreme skewed toward the edges.
Yeah, I think the two and the 12 is, but I think everything else
is roughly, I mean, three is radioactive waste, you know what
I mean? Like, I don't know how much
different that is than like toxic fumes or or something, you
know? Earthquakes, I guess, like
earthquakes can be pretty serious, right?
Yeah. So yeah, maybe you're right.
Yeah, I mean and the top one is suburbs and capitol building.
So I think the complication tables, it might do the far
extremes. But again, I mean whatever, if
you repeat it, just reroll. So like you can get any of them
any time. I just think that like one more
option on each and two separate tables would just make a little
bit less rolling because if you do this six times statistically
you're going to need a roll again for one that you've
already repeated. But anyway, so going down to
weapons hell grinders start with A1 harm weapon.
Others are drops at G m's discretion as are tags.
I I'm never going to like tags. Each boss will drop one random 3
harm weapon which I love. So harm 1 harm 2 harm 3 you got
harm one is fist may spear whip, shield which also grants one
health. I love when games give you armor
that's just more health because it means it's being gamey, not
being simulationist, which I really enjoy because what's the
point of health or of armor is to take less damage.
And having more health is kind of the same as like taking less
damage because you have more that you can take.
So I I really like when it's just like, oh, you have heavy
armor, cool. Add to health.
Like, it's a very like, what was the actual problem you were
trying to figure out and just do that, you know?
Especially if like H yeah, so many games make it a point to
say like HP isn't necessarily physical damage.
It's you know, like it makes even more sense then, but not
for any reasonable reason. I do love my armor soaks.
You know, I do. Oh yeah.
I mean, listen, I'm a soak guy too.
But I for games like this, I think that, I don't know, it's
one of those things, like, intellectually, I think it's
just really clever. The first time I saw like, oh,
wait a minute, armor just adds health.
I'm like, HM, why? And then you go, oh, it's
because like you're just solving like a game design problem, not
being simulationist. Like you're just saying what
does armor do game wise? I don't know.
It just. Yeah, yeah.
And as game is, this game is like yeah that's perfect yeah,
two harms, sword, axe, Flail, shotgun, Assault rifle, Tesla
Coil, Okay, Bolt, Stoner and then the three harm chainsaw.
Unless you're a gladiator cuz then everything is chainsaw.
Everything is chainsaw, gauntlets, chain gun, rocket
launcher, flame thrower, pulse rifle.
I love that bosses drop a three a three arm weapon, which means
two of you can have a three arm weapon by the time you get to
the demures. Interesting how much they put
into tags here with how light everything is.
There's 1-234-567-8910. There's 12 different weapon tags
and each one is mechanically different.
So for example like Blinding, afflicted enemies miss half
their attacks for rounds equal to the number of harm that it
did. It's interesting the amount of
mechanics that are stuck that are in these 12 tags.
Yeah, it definitely gets maybe a little more crunchy here than it
had been. I'm curious about your feelings
on tags. This is the first time I've kind
of experienced them. Myself and I was like, oh, I
kind of like this as an idea. They're modifiers for weapons,
but I have no like practical application here.
Tags, I mean tags is in like an overarching use of the words and
phrases and and stuff like that. Like there are other games where
it's like I don't know if it's just the word or the way it
can't comes off. Like for example like you could
have a game where you choose like A tag for your player so
like your player could have like the like the timid tag right.
And then what does that mean for your player or whatever.
I don't, I can't. I honestly would have to really
sit down and think about like what bothers me so much about
like tags. But I feel like it's a this is
this is how I like it. I just don't like the word tags
where it's like it gives you a specific bit, but like I feel
like sometimes a lot of people use tags to take something that
could be very broad and try to make it specific in a way that I
feel like would be better if it was stayed broad, if that makes
sense. Yeah, OK.
And I could be off here like, kind of like a mechanical
application of fiction that doesn't necessarily need to
exist. Yes, like, so.
Like if you have like the brave tag when you're doing something
brave, get like an extra dice or whatever like that.
And it's just like I feel like in the same way that I don't
like the base moves and and powered by the apocalypse, I
feel like it's a way for people to look at the thing and go, OK,
I get a dice for brave. So I need to do something brave
versus do what you want. And if it happens to fit, then
you get the extra bit, you know what I mean?
So that's like I there's a lot of times where I would prefer
not to have like A roll table. I would want just a list.
Because if you have like A roll table of examples, for example,
like say that you you make a new game and you can, there's no
classes. But here are three example
classes to go off. I guarantee you 80% of people
are going to pick one of those example classes, even though
your intent is for people to make their own.
You know what I mean? It's because when you give them
the thing, they the brain will just go, then I'm just going to
do that thing. Yeah, Tags is exactly that.
Where it's like, if you have a brave character, act brave and
be rewarded in some way, don't say brave and then be like,
well, how do I get the reward? I'd be brave.
It's kind of like backwards in my head.
I don't know. Yeah, it's completely wrong,
but. Well, I think you got something
there, like if you give people tools in a game, that's what
they're going to use. Like if you put big fucking guns
in your game, people are going to want to shoot big fucking
guns, you know? And if you put incentivize being
brave, people are going to want to be brave and well, you're
either going to be able to be brave or argue about what that
means so that they can get to bonus right?
But like if you say for example, say that I'm saying like you can
pick any weapon you want in the entire world, and my 3 examples
are Canon M16 handgun, right? But pick any weapon you want in
the entire world. Odds are someone's going to pick
like M16 or a handgun or be like, oh, gun, it's OK, shotgun.
You know what I mean? Even though you can pick any
weapon you want in the entire world, like, that's that's the
part that gets me. Where like, like when you give
too many examples that are two that are specific in a specific
way, there's a difference in my mind between like, trying to
reduce paralysis of choice and like, funneling people into a
specific thing for that exact reason.
I don't know. I don't know.
But yeah, whatever. It's probably just the word tag
at this point. But anyway, that's our
discussion on tags. You'll be producing a second
podcast of 13 episodes where we discussed tags.
So next is enemies. Mob.
So there's three types of enemies.
The 1st is mob and I love this. It's cosmic cannon fodder alone.
They're pitiful and numbers. They're lethal.
So for example, there's Inferno mobs and angelic mobs.
Love that, and the health of them go from one to three, three
being the most difficult. There's only one for each of
those, but there's three one health enemies, 1-2 Health
enemy, and then one three health enemies.
So easy peasy On the Inferno side is your Skele Boys.
It's good. They're called Skele Boys, and I
love that because that's what I call them, Skeleton armies
wielding archaic weapons, ineptly.
And love that. It's ineptly They also have
crossbows, which are too harm either near or far, and the
moves are charge, crawl, and rally.
It doesn't tell you what those mean, but make it up on your
own, and I'm fine with that. I love the white collar drones.
They're souls of the damned with no ambition beyond their career.
They're chained to the nearest elite enemy, and their ability
is a pencil stab. They can just stab you with the
pencil. I haven't really got me.
Yeah, that's pretty spot on for that.
Yeah. And then the angelic mobs.
Biblically accurate angels, Holy ghosts, Flagellant Moral
crusaders. I just love them.
They're great. I think, you know, going back to
moves, I got a little stuck there myself as well because to
me I'd like I not having any experience in looming games.
I'm like that just, is that just vibes?
Like does that have any mechanical effect at all?
So I mean I would have it make have a mechanical effect that I
would just like make up as I go a little bit.
But this is another one of those things where like it's it's
interesting where you could just say here's the thing, make it up
for your table. That's fine, except it doesn't
say that. Or you could have 4 pages where
it breaks down what every single one of these means mechanically.
And I would rather it be make it up for your own table.
But like here might be an example I would have, I would
have not minded that little bit like 2 lines right there to say,
oh, I'm not going to tell you what what Cast Web actually
does. But based on everything you've
read on the game and stuff like that, here might be an example
of what Cast Web does and just extrapolate that across
everything because I don't think that'd be difficult.
But a little bit more structure there I think would have been
nice. Yeah, yeah, indeed.
It also doesn't tell you how many bad guys.
How many is a lot? Yeah, because you, you want
those mobs. But I think it's a little hard
to, you know, if you're running your first game to how much mob
is a mob? You know how Mobby is it?
It is it. There's the elites.
These are divine lieutenants. So there's infernal and angelic
elites. You got fallen grinder.
I love that one. Basically you but the bad guy
now. Mother drone.
Skeletal dragon. The goat.
Goat. The greatest of all time goat.
I love that six legged Cyborg goat.
Big as a city bus. Yeah, so good.
Health's 6. So these guys are 4-5 and six.
They do like 3 harm, which is great, so these guys are
definitely step up. The angelic ones are a celestial
cyst which I love. Throbbing health sized heart of
Divine Dread. Ah so good.
The werewolf Cherub Blood Valkyrie.
That's just a great name, let's be honest. 12 foot tall warrior
Queens who love only war. Yeah, be still my heart, right?
And and then you got the fiend. So you actually roll for these.
This is like the boss that you roll for at the end.
So there's four Fiends, Mephistopheles, Baphmet, Dagon,
and Bell. So just picking one Baphmet.
Obviously Baphmet's domain is betrayal perversion and idolatry
not in his realm should trust their senses.
Health. 25 Goddamn they have a confusion ability and these are
specifically laid out. Which is interesting.
Grinders were a 1D6 on every attack.
A1 means they hit an ally. Duality 2 harm on 2 attacks.
Serene, Visage stun, random grinder every three turns and
the apple bull some 2D6 moral crusaders to defend it, which I
mean, it's 2D6 elites. The moral crusader is an elite,
right? No, no, no, no, no, no.
It's just a it's just a it's just a mob.
It's funny that Baphmet summons and jail like bad guys to defend
it because it's a moral crusader.
And maybe that gives us some kind of insight into how big
those mobs should be too, you know, I mean my my thought is
like one like mob one like unit of mobbing is like 6 in my head.
So like I would throw potentially like I would say
like, OK, what does one feel like?
OK, what does 2 feel like? OK, what does 3 feel like?
But 2D6 I feel like is like if the players walked into a room
and there was like 2D6 scaly boys going at them.
I think that feels good. Yeah, yeah.
And especially if like you know, you can use some of those powers
that just mow them down by the. Handful.
Well, yeah. The one is like stomp and like
you kill what? Like anything less than three
harm. So like you just run into a
group of like 10 of them. If they're like near, they're
all dead. So I wonder like how big a board
would you need to have sometimes?
Yeah, I am curious about that like that's that's one of the
things that you know, it doesn't really mention.
Anywhere It's like because like I don't know reading this like
something about it and I think maybe it's the video gameness of
it makes me want to break out the minis, you know.
But then I'd like I don't necessarily know like movement
how to translate that and everything or even if that was
the intent which isn't the worst thing ever.
But nothing I was having is you know we we're looking at this
one D4 table fiends is while. This game is like good for about
3 sessions it seems. I think it did.
Like I probably wouldn't want to play 2 campaigns of this
back-to-back, but like to come back to it and just roll through
another random group of enemies and like on the fiend table and
everything. I'm just, it seems like there's
some fun variation there about like who your bosses are, boss
monsters are, and things like that.
It's cool because when you get down to the demure, it literally
says like you get Angel and devil powers, but it's one you
didn't face yet, which is cool, even though the demure makes no
sense. And we'll get to that in just a
minute. But but yeah, there's a big
variation here that I really like because, I mean, if you go
with stages and really pick like one, like a whole stage could
just be skellies, you know? A whole stage could be something
else. I think there's a good mix.
There's a good beast area here which I really enjoy and enough
there to like make your own pretty easily based on it, so.
Yeah, totally. This would not be hard to hack
and add to archangels. We've got Michael, Gabriel,
Raphael and Muriel, which makes sense.
Those are the four archangels and each one has similar to the
other ones. They have, you know, 3
issubilities, 25 healthy each. They're cool.
And then the Demi urge makes OK, makes no sense to me.
Maybe you read it differently than I did, but I have no idea
what's going on here. So to read what the Dimmie urge
is, this is clearly got. But since the Dimm Urge and the
throne are referred to interchangeably, because they
are one in the same, heaven itself is the immense corpus of
the two faced Father of these bastard cosmos, lying comatose
or dreaming of death, blood, and praise.
So that tells me right there that heaven is the body of the
demiurge is the body of God, right?
Puncture organs as big as cities, break bones the size of
churches, swim through oceans of blood, and tear the demiurges
heart out with your own hands if you have to kill heaven itself,
and earth may at last know peace.
So that tells me. The Demi urge isn't a thing.
It's like the the the stage and you got to get to the heart and
rip the heart out, right? That's what I just read, Right?
But then it says the Demi urges. Powers are all angels and demons
are born from the throne's loins.
All their power is his. Give the Demi urges the power of
any one unused fiend and any one unused Archangel combined.
You may refresh your choices as often as you like, but you're
inside. The thing is like a corpse as a
stage. Where is the actual physical,
like demures, that you're fighting?
You know what I mean? So.
Like, yeah, you know, once it once it gets into the to jump
ahead just a little bit. Once it gets that down into the
Dem, I urges Downfall. A grotesque cathedral, flesh and
truly cosmic proportions. Hell grinders will need
something more than firepower to kill the Dem.
I urge. They need the devil's own luck.
The Hell Grinders will confront endless waves of enemies, mobs,
and the lights alike in the demiages, guts, hearts, and
brains. And all those are in red because
they're important in that order to progress from one stage to
the next. Have the Hell Grinders each roll
1D6 when to combine, total equals 13.
They destroy that part of the throne and move on to the next.
If there are only two Hell Grinders, did he ever roll with
them? There's a mercy roll.
Yada yada. So.
I'm like envisioning, I don't know why, but I'm going back to
any S Contra with this one, right?
Like, I'm envisioning a stage of like, there's a bunch of little
Doo doos running around taking potshots at you, which are like
the hordes that are running around.
But like, it's almost like the the demmeyer is just a whole
stage and this is my read into it.
Like there's nothing, there's not much to support what I'm
about to say, but this is like how I would run it, right?
So yeah, the demo arches the whole stage, but like, the gut
is the first boss battle. And so like that gut is there
gutting but also emanating those powers from it as you fight
through the hordes. And I kind of like, I kind of
wish it went more that direction.
And there was like, okay. Here's how much health the Guts
have instead of rolling the one D6 after each stage, because it
never seems like there's. Mechanically, it seems like you
are always fighting these hordes and never actually like
attacking the dem. I urge itself.
Like that just seems to happen through fiction at some point
when your dice happen to roll 13, you know?
But yeah, that's where I see the powers coming from.
If that made sense, yeah. I mean, if I had to pick that,
yeah, you would, you would fight to the guts and then, like, the
guts would have devil powers. And you're fighting this like
thing that's moving around, but it's the guts like kind of like
fucking blasphemous or something.
I get that. But like you said, like, but
also like, get to the heart and rip it out.
But brains is the last thing whatever anatomy but like yeah
the this weird like just fight and hope to live until you equal
13 on a die roll and then that just like gets you past the
thing. I feel like it makes it like I
don't know it feels like a massive cop out.
You could roll that on the first one and be like okay we defeated
the gut like but it never says narratively talk about and then
like the mercy rule like after six turns you still haven't
rolled 13. The hell grinders find some
other way to destroy and progress.
It'll cost harm, though. How much?
Destroy what? You know what I mean?
And like, I I don't know why I feel like just this whole page
makes zero sense to me. And like, the whole thing just
kind of falls apart from me. Like everything.
Until here I was like, fuck yeah, fuck yeah, fuck yeah.
Then I get to hear and I'm just like, like what?
Like just give me stats for guts, stats for heart and stats
for brains and let me just like fight endless hordes while also
fighting the guts. And like have the gut, Have
devil power, have the heart, have Angel power and have
brains, have both. And just give me give me some
stats for it and and just go. You know what I mean?
Yeah, I think that would feel a lot more satisfying, waiting
till the end of a stage of going through hordes and then rolling
dice and hoping to get 13. Yeah, I just don't know if it's
going to feel as good to like, oh, we got it, it's dead now.
As if like rolling that killing stroke against the heart.
In the normal mechanics, I feel like, I mean, this feels to me
as if, like in a boss fight, like usually when you get to
literally the final fight in a boss, you fight that guy like 3
steps. Like you fight the guy that kind
of looks like a guy and then you fight the guy that comes back
bigger and then you fight him when he's not even like a guy
anymore. Yeah, but his face is like
floating with some of like other shit all floating around and
doing stuff too. You know what I mean?
Like, give me that. I I would.
I would not run the Demi urge any part of this except for gut
heart and brains and like endless waves like other than
that I would just make up my own shit as I went.
Because this to me like if if archangels have like 25, make it
like 35 or 40 for the gut, heart and brains with endless waves
and exactly. I said I would give gut devil
powers. I would give heart Angel powers.
I would give brains both and I would give them like maybe 3035
and 40 respectively if you're going to go in order or you know
404550 and just go from there. And that's how I would, I would
do this at the end And to me like you said, like that would
feel more like I don't know, I I feel like just rolling a 13
feels so like anti climactic. I'm just like that.
I thought 36 stages of stuff to finally get here and I'll now I
just have to roll a 13, like I don't know.
And I I, you know at some point you got to call and be like
okay, this game is like I don't want to add more to this game.
That said, I could see the demo Irish almost being its own like
level complication table like rolling on a table and having it
like because there's some great there's some great flavor here.
Break bones the size of churches.
Swim through oceans of blood. Like if you roll the dice and
you're like, cool, this fight's taking place inside.
A rib cage the size of XY or Z, you know, like, because there's
some great stuff there and I would love that kind of to
transfer over, but you know, that would be like.
Probably another like 3 or 4 pages.
So, like, I get, you know, like, yeah, call it.
But still, come on. I mean, I feel like, I don't
know. I feel like I was on such a high
till the first time I read this on such a high.
And there was just going up and up and up and I get to the
Deming yards. And I just felt deflated.
I was just like, oh, come like, what?
This makes no sense. What?
Well, I don't even know what to do now.
This is literally the final boss fight of the whole thing.
Like you get to go kill God. And I have no idea how I'm
supposed to kill God inside God. And God has powers.
And then I just got to roll 13 a couple of times.
I don't know. It just doesn't.
I don't know. It just didn't do it for me.
Yeah, really. Unfortunately.
More from it Really. Yeah, last page of school cheat
codes. I dig these.
Playing by the rules is for suckers punching these codes to
activate extra bonuses, especially tough stretches of
hell grinder, or just because it looks fun.
So there's the priest wielding axe, the jumpstart weapon, the
repeating crossbow, the Starlight driver, the X card.
Look at the X card, but like just picking one of these, I
really love this. So like for example, you could
have a priest wielding an axe and it's a half mad priest who
will follow orders for one stage can be commanded to attack and
does 2 harm, close or defend, which absorbs up to six harm
before dying. And the code to do it is just to
recite the Lord's Prayer in one breath I love.
I think it's so clever. Yeah, they like the actual codes
themselves. I think are pretty cute.
You know, like Starlight Driver, yeah.
Sing the chorus to David Bowie star Man.
That's the code to activate Starlight Driver and Obsidian
Slate, with slots perfectly side for placing your big beefy
fingers inside, built for some kind of cosmic exo suit.
When you lean into it, your shoulder and arm down its
length, it fires a spiraling stream of concentrated
Starlight. So yeah, and that's just like a
I like when you know, and I don't want this for every game,
but when games can kind of break the mechanics to be like, OK,
we're not just rolling dice, players do this silly thing and
it has an in game consequence. I'm like, cool, I'm into that.
Yeah. When games can do meta well,
it's so good, you know. Yeah, and I feel it fits the
theme for this game. Like it doesn't take away from
it well and the cheat code thing fits so well into like the whole
video gaming aspect of it which is just great.
The last one is the X card, which I think is great.
This doesn't really mention safety tools anywhere.
And then you get to the very last thing and then here's the
safety tool and I like that you sidestep uncomfortable content
in the game that left unchecked can get extreme.
Visit tinyurl.com/X Card Dash RPG to learn more.
It's not hyperlinked, but basically like it's it's it's
safety tools and it's the effect is incident and the code just
tap the card. I like that.
Like I first of all, safety tools to be in every game.
I love them. We're huge proponents safety
tools here also. Like, I also don't necessarily
think you need like an entire page every single time.
I like this where it's like it's here, but it's thematic into the
thing. You get it.
It even gives you a link to somewhere else so you can read
more without having to put it all in the thing here.
I I really like the way that they put this in here.
It's here, but it fits and and I really enjoy it.
Yeah. Yeah, I I really enjoyed when I
read that little part. It gave me a little, gave me a
little giggle, like I'm it's awesome they included it and I
just love the way they did affect instant code.
Just tap the card like it really made it feel like it integrated
it well, you know? And then that's the game.
There's a back cover and it's cool.
So that is how grinders. Hell yeah.
We're going to kick over to the review score page.
We're going to go through this. I know that James is not a
reviewed game the way we reviewed here but we'll we'll
we'll work through it. But for we're going to we're
going to rate this as a Zine and Zine is rated differently than a
book. Book has five metrics.
This is 3. We give 10 points to up to 10
points to each visuals is all the visuals in the game.
So that's layout, that's art, that's everything.
It's how did the whole thing look?
Rule set is just the rule set all the way through.
Do we like it? How was it adapted?
All those kind of things and vibes.
It's basically how I describe it.
Is all of that together? And then how you feel at the end
of it. Like if you read this cover to
cover and then close it, put it down, like how badly do you want
to play the game? And then on top of that, like
the vibes themselves in the book.
Like how much is the book? Do what it says it does.
Like if you have a whole book about hell, then you never
really feel hell, then it's not really vibey, right?
But like if the whole way through everything makes you
feel like it integrates into itself and just really keeps
feeding on itself, those are those are good vibes.
So. So Max of 30 here 5 is
considered just paying average. Nothing good, nothing bad.
It's not bad. Five is just an average game.
So an average game is like 15. But we don't.
Here's the thing, I know on the show we can get a little picky,
especially me, but we don't review games we don't like.
So it's we're picking out of love, you know, we want we want
the best possible thing for you or for the game.
So visually, what are your thoughts, James?
So yeah, I think we talked a lot about the visualness of this
already and I so a lot of this is just going to be like
repeating some things we talked about.
I think they did, yeah. I think they did a great job of.
Their font choices or spacing and things like that.
And it's also just, it's very clean, like it's easy to read
even with the pen things in there like there's there's not
any visual choices that seem to really distract or anything like
that, you know? That said, it like it is an
artless game, which I don't think art is necessary for
games, but definitely. Spills into the visual aspect of
it there. But yeah, I like, again, I think
there's a lot of things they did well with the formatting, like
even just looking at the different class pages, the way
they have the stats like and their little block that's bigger
than the rest and their use of color and everything like.
So yeah, I think there's some good stuff going on I would go
with. I think I want to say A7.
I think that's about where I'm at, too.
I mean, there might be, yeah, yeah, I could probably talk my
way up to A7. I think what you said, like, you
don't have to have art in a book.
Obviously it's going to help no matter what.
I mean, I don't care who you are.
It's always nice to see, like if there was a piece of art here of
just like a gladiator, like punching a chainsaw through,
like you know, a moral crusader's face, you know, or
like the the desk Joan or whatever with like their pencils
stabbing them or whatever. Of course that would be awesome.
But for all the reasons you said, the whoever did the layout
on this did a fantastic job of keeping it interesting.
Keeping it fun. Keeping it extremely readable.
Never really giving you a wall of text without breaking it up
with color, without breaking it into the paragraph.
Really keeping the the the use of layout specifically fun and
new and really dragging you forward in a good way to the
next thing without you having to take a break to go.
OK, let me read read that paragraph again.
You know like it's just it's it's well done.
It's broken. I'm gonna really bite sized
pieces. So as far as layout goes for
something 22 pages, I mean I really really enjoy it.
I love the colors. I mean, I think the only thing
that could have made it any different is honestly if it was
maybe like like red and white on a black page might like increase
like a little bit, but like the legibility I think would would
suffer for that. I think I think 7 is good for
this. I think this is a really, really
fantastic example of what you can do without art, because I
honestly read this probably 2 times before I realized oh wait,
there's no art in this book and that's a really good thing to to
see. So I think 7 is a really great
score for this, especially for it being artless.
I mean, yeah, it's. Just very clean.
Yeah, super clean. Whoop.
Okay, Zen scores, Zen numbers seven.
There we go. Okay.
So rule set, just thoughts and we'll talk about the number
after. So it is, it is at its core a
lumen hack, although it does do a lot on its own.
I would really consider it just like the kind of the core like
you know, dice, pull, mix, success and maybe something like
the way that the classes are dying a little bit.
But outside of that, like what are your thoughts on on Real SO?
Yeah. So again a lot of this we talked
about like I I think there's things missing here for me.
You know you you talked a lot about the different distances
like missed some things there you know being kind of can't I I
I know it's just one power but I still can't really reconcile
Rampage for the. Gladiator and you know, like
the, I think the issue with the demo urge was not the fiction.
Like, there's some really cool stuff there.
I think it was mostly like the rules that going into fighting
it. So yeah, those are my criticisms
of the rules. But on the other hand, there's a
bunch of fun tables. And I think they are like
bursting with a lot of flavor there.
And I think that's like, yeah, the where the rules intersect,
the intersect, the fiction and do it well.
There's some really cool stuff going on here, like especially
in just like the powers of the different in the different Hell
Grinders. They're just like very thematic,
very fun. And yeah, they'd like, they
really make the game, you know. So I think there's some, like,
really cool things the rules do. It just feels like there's some
stuff. Mostly it feels like there's
some stuff missing. And then, in the case of the
demo urge, it's missing. So you feel a little
unsatisfying? Yeah.
No. Yeah.
I I feel the exact same way. I think what's there is really,
really great. But like you said, it's just
missing parts. Like I said, I I feel like they
wrote it with this, like probably unintentional.
Like knowledge of how Lumen works, which doesn't if you've
never read Lumen, translate to people that haven't.
I feel like you know, two more pages at most of a couple of
clarifications throughout. Like like we talked about when
you get your energy back, like when what distances means what
you can do on a turn. Some more examples of things a
couple of times. And then yeah, the dimmer is
just such a glaring just just black hole for me and the whole
thing. That really kind of deflates
some stuff for me because it's just like, all right, final boss
battle fighting God. And I just have no idea what I'm
supposed to do. Which is unfortunate and that
really, you know it it sucks to say that because like like you
said, I feel like everything else they do.
Fantastic characterizations. Fantastic.
The powers are fantastic. Super thematic.
The I love the stages. I love that it actually does
that. I love the cheat codes.
The map and complication tables are great.
So much of this is really fantastic and I feel like it's
let down by two things. It's the the missing parts and
the dimming urge is really it. And unfortunately you can get
away with the missing parts. If the dimming urge was like,
that's fucking cool, that's the final boss battle.
You fight God and this is a cool way to do it.
I feel like the missing parts, you could almost like kind of
wave a little bit, just be like I wish that was there, but we
could, we could work through it. But those combined really, you
know, do kind of bring it down for me a little bit.
I mean I would still figure it out.
I would still play the hell out of this game, but.
Only 100%, yeah. But specifically just on rule
set, yeah, I want, I want a little bit more clarification
and I want something better for the dumb marriage.
So what are you thinking? I mean, it's definitely higher
than A5. It's not a bang average to me at
all. I think it's got way too much
flavor and good mechanics in it for a 5.
But what are your thoughts? Yeah, agreed, agreed.
Like I'm thinking of 6 because it it does have way too much.
There's way too much cool stuff in there to be average for sure.
But you know, it's the same token.
Like yeah, for all the things we said, I I think it knocks it
down quite a bit. And again, none of that would
stop me from playing it at all or recommending it for that
matter. But yeah, I would have to Ding
it a bit there. Yeah, judging it specifically
just on this metric. Yeah.
I mean, I think it's not, it's not what is added, it's almost
like what subtracted because of of those things like and having
your final boss fight, in my opinion be like kind of a
disappointment is such a big part.
Like, it all leads up to that. And then it just kind of
falters, you know, It feels like the whole game, kind of like
lost steam. And they're just like, okay.
Roll 13 and then you win or whatever, which is unfortunate.
Of it sounds again. I just want to say the fiction
of it sounds really cool like dope.
There's this being that we're fighting on or in or whatever
and it just like I I think the the rules that fall short of the
fiction that like what the fiction set up there.
Yeah, yeah, vibes. So again, vibes are how you feel
reading it, how you feel when you're done with it, like the
language it uses, the themes throughout, how much the game
really sticks to. Like this is what the game is,
is what it says at the beginning.
And when you close the last book, is that what it is?
Like? What are your?
How are the How are the vibes for you vibe?
This game definitely gets, I don't want to say gets by on
vibes more than anything else because it's like definitely
solid elsewhere, but like. The the the vibes are definitely
the biggest attraction and I think the reason like what the
rules that did right was feed into those vibes really well.
Like I system is important. And so I think that a lot of
what this system does is feed into a type of game you want
where you're waiting through swaths of enemies, like cutting
them down left and right, just being like a gore drenched
badass. Who has come back from hell to
wreak their vengeance upon the angels and demons?
Like again, it does what it says on the box.
I know I keep saying that, but like it it does just that, you
know, from the cover to the first few pages of this was
first 2 pages up there of where it just kind of introduces to
fiction, which is like just enough and each one does it in a
different way in the sense of like.
You got those six not revelations, but whatever we are
calling them. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You get those 6 verses and you're like, OK, OK, I see
what's happening here. Like that would be like the back
cover blurb and then you get that end is here.
That would be the movie poster. Like those two of those set up
the game very nicely and it the rest of the game follows through
with that well. You know yeah I'll say yeah
fiction wise I mean the follow through that's that's shines
super hard like like you said like it it in my opinion it
keeps its promise like it promises in the beginning you're
going to get a boomer shooter where you fight your right
through hell and and kill devils and demons and and through your
lack of redemption like fight God or whatever and like you
fucking do And it's and you do it in a cool way where you
everything you pick up is chainsaws and you can just like
teleport around and stomp the ground and destroy people and
like you know like possess things with holy fire and you
know. And they want to match.
The Bowie, you know, dude, it does.
It does So, like to me, I mean, to me, vibes are super high on
this and I love it. I mean, that's the thing that
really, like you said, it carries it, but in a good way,
in the way that it should and like it, like I said it, it, it
states a promise and in my opinion keeps it all the way
through the Demi urge. But for vibes, we know I'm
gonna, I'm gonna let that slide just a little bit.
So what are your thought on vibes?
Yeah. And with that, yeah, I'm gonna
go with any on vibes. We were.
We were exactly all the way through of the same opinion,
yeah. Because I was a little, I was a
little iffy, but I was like, no, it does what it says it's at all
to do and it does it well, yeah, I mean I already had eight
plugged in there, so I'm glad that's all you went with 7 + 6 +
821, which is the same score that we gave dark grey last
week. But they were different.
They were like flipped in different in in different ways.
So yeah, 768 I think is really good for this for a total score
of 21 out of 30. I mean that's a that's a good
score for a Zine that's not not in print.
That does have some some some issues, you know, I mean this is
to to recap real quick. Hellgriders is a is an
illuminated by lumen game where you are where angels and devils
fought basically destroyed the earth and you are these people
left in hell that fight your way out to kill devils, kill angels
and kill God. And it does it well, you know,
visually, like we said, not no art, but the layout really pulls
it through with how great it looks.
The rule set is just missing some pieces and it's kind of a
disappointing ending. But the vibes are super, super
high all the way through it just over and over again through the
book. It's just like, man, I just
wanted to pick up a chainsaw and murder an Angel, you know, and
and that gives it a 21. But yeah, that's that's how
grinders, you know, despite, despite, you know its size,
despite some things that are missing.
I I want to play this game. Super bad.
Yeah, absolutely. Like this.
There's nothing about this that makes it feel anything other
than like it'd be worth the time you put into it, you know?
And you know, I think for like some of the things we we
criticized it about, like ultimately it's it's a game
you're playing for three sessions, you know what I mean?
Like and I absolutely think this rule set could carry a hell of a
time fun three sessions, you know.
Absolutely. Like I said, I mean I would just
rewrite the the Demi urge and and I mean again what I wanted
to do took me like 30 seconds to be like well I would just do
this. So that was that's exactly what
it is. But yeah, so yeah, great game.
I would definitely grab it. You definitely want to go to
Bannerless's itch page. I believe it's just bannerless
dot itch dot I/O. Let me say bannerless games dot
itch dot I/O. You want to snag this?
I don't remember. I actually think I got it as
part of like trans rights bundle a long time ago.
And then I my Dropbox is so big. I just wrote hell one time.
It was like, let me see what games have hell in it.
And I saw it. I'm glad I did.
I I love this game. It's really, really great.
So that is our episode at James. Where can people find you and
your stuff and marching order and news about what's coming up?
You know where. Where is all of that?
All right, so I got, I got some cool shit here.
So First off, you can go to crumblingkeep.com.
That's our website, web stores. On there you could if you Google
or not Google, if you do that, Google, if you search for
Crumbling Keep on any social media platform, yeah, I can't
think of any that you're not going to find us on.
So that's always a good place. The one of the cool things we
are doing right now, we actually are having a launch this coming
Tuesday, which will be what, October 10th.
We are launching a new thing. So that's why we're recording
this in just a few days. We are so our artist for
marching order, Mustafa Bakir, who is really was instrumental
in saying the tone for the game, like his art does so much for
it. He approached just a while ago
about like, hey, I have this idea for this Zine.
So we are creating a Mark Borg monster, Zine Alphabeticus,
Absurdicus of 26 plus creatures to bring into Mark Borg, each
one with like an alliterative title based on the art of
Mustafa Bakir. So that's going to be coming on
Tuesday, October 10th, but until that time to support it.
Because I'm a big fucking nerd, I created a solo Mark Borg
dungeon that takes place all within Facebook Messenger.
So if you go to freeadventure.net, it'll
redirect you there, a free adventure.net.
And there's we're doing one room a day of a solo Mark Borg
dungeon. You just need to make a little
Mark board character and take them through the rooms.
It's like a text based thing that you just kind of like click
your responses on, but it was a lot of fun to work on.
So that's going on right now. And also when the campaign
launches, we're going to have alphabetic is we're also going
to have some addon scenes, a few different adventures, a
pamphlet, creature creator. So it's going to be something
like it's, you know, honestly hands down, it's probably the
coolest crowdfunding campaign that we've done yet.
I think there's just a lot of fun things we put into it that
we haven't done before. So yeah, that's coming up.
And you can also follow that on any of the aforementioned social
media platforms. Our mailing list is really also
our e-mail list is a great place to stay on top of things, but I
don't have an easy link for that right now.
But we do RPG content every day on there, so that's all the cool
places to keep up with the crumbling keeps.
Yeah, you definitely want to check out Kremlin Keep.
I didn't pull it from the shelf, but I got a whole section down
here that's got marching order. It's got everything that comes
from that. It's got a bunch of the other
scenes that you guys have put out as far as like Dark Woods
and stuff like that. So really great content.
A lot of the daily stuff is, is all the daily stuff is cool and
trust me, you get it just about every single day.
So you always have something to read.
I appreciate the read time at the top.
That's always great. This takes like 56 seconds.
I'm like cool. I I got this is the bathroom
trip. I got 56 seconds and it's it's
it's great. Really enjoyable content.
The guys are coming to keep are fantastic.
As I said, go watch our marching order episode, Listen to the
interview. Just good.
People making really awesome stuff.
Definitely look forward to everything that they do.
And again, you'll be hearing more about marching order soon.
Not only this new Mercur project from Kremlin Keep, but some
other stuff going on eventually I'll get there.
But yeah. So that's it.
James, thank you so much for coming on.
Really, really appreciate it. That was really fun to go
through. Yeah.
Thanks so much for having me on Ryan.
This was a blast. Absolutely.
So for those listening, you can find all of our stuff at our
link tree. Just slash the weekly scroll
after the link dot TR or whatever.
And that's it. That's our episode.
You all have a wonderful day. Bye everybody.