Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan. And my werewolf sleeve is really
itchy. And, and today we're at, we're
actually going to go over hand baskets from, from Max Lander.
We we talked, we talked about talking about this yesterday or
in the previous episode for, for those that weren't here with us
yesterday, but we had Max on the show on had a really fun
discussion that lasted longer than we expected.
And we just said, fuck it, let's keep talking and we'll review
this next time. So we are going to do that.
So the I think 2 episodes prior to that we had reviewed the
other side of this book. This was the low res Futures
Kickstarter put out by the the wonderful people over at the
RTFM podcast, Aaron motherfucking King and Max
Lander. It is a flip book, half and
half. One is one, one is the other.
So Aaron was on for an interview and we did the review of
Intermere brightly 2 episodes three episodes ago and then.
I think you're right with two, probably.
Well, we did shorts. I think we did short sword in
between, yeah. Oh, we did.
You're right. Yeah, yeah.
Fun game. Short Sword.
It's cool. Oh, I don't know if you saw the
creator for Short Sword commented on that on YouTube and
said that a new edition of Brave Zenith is going to be coming
out. We're excited for that.
That's on the list. That'll be fun.
So today, hand baskets, we're going over hand baskets.
Yesterday when we had this up, I'd actually brought up the itch
page for Handbaskets, and I'm going to be doing that now while
I fill dead Air and type so that you're not just sitting here.
And so Handbaskets. Handbaskets is a digitally
enhanced cyberwitch demon summoning battle Royale game
from Max Lander. Players try to maximize their
reputation, take out the competition and stay alive.
But death isn't the end. Those who fall are re sleeved
into strange and entertaining new bodies to continue the
entertainment. I think I just read what's going
to be in the book, so we'll just repeat up on that.
But what else? What else?
What else do we got? Is there anything else going on?
Are we doing anything? I think that might be it.
It's weird. I feel like we both kind of kick
back to this part of our brain where it's like, remember we
used to open the show with 30 minutes of Kickstarters, you
know? And as somebody who still
actively looks at Kickstarter even though I'm trying to save
money right now, like there's not even that many projects like
there were in 2021 because of that.
Yeah, it was that like COVID time period, but thank God.
My wallet is very appreciative of people's lack of creativity.
Yeah, I think the first year that we did this, I checked it
as well as the working as a director for that series of gyms
and I spent like 2 grand on Kickstarter's site here, bro.
And. How much do you think I spent?
Yeah, way more than that, No. So I don't think there's
anything running right now by anyone that we are fans of to
talk about. No, that's not true.
I I should bring up the page. Actually, let me.
Let me. Let's do it.
Let's do Society has one day left.
OK, also the forbidden psalms, endless horrors from between the
stars kick charter is out. Oh yeah, yeah, that it.
So we'll we'll, let's plan to actually dig through that page a
little bit more next week. But for those listening now, it
it's funded already. I think they wanted hit almost
20 grand, but they you know, they deserve much more of your
money. Psycho dungeon from Kayla dice.
We did. I did a whole interview with
her. The new double adventure for OSC
from the Mary Mushman his house. Oh yeah, I'm see, I'm an idiot.
I was like, there's nothing. It's like, Oh no, there's
actually like 5 things. Happy 99 is going on Expendable
employees from Alex Vela. Alexei Vela.
There's a cool one called Killing Chimera that neat.
Check it out on Kickstarter. We're not going to dig too deep
into it, but I'm I'm just looking at all the projects, but
I wanted to see God damn it, bro, how many Kickstarters do
you think it backed? Oh, I don't know more than me.
Yeah. How many give me 6?
108. Holy shit I'm like man, I backed
a bunch. I backed like 120.
Listen, half the reason we do this podcast, right is so that I
actually read all of these and we can promote people's fun,
cool, interesting shit. I I love I love fun, neat little
indie games and I'm back to a shoot load of them, obviously.
Anyway, so we'll talk. We'll talk about one or two of
these a little bit more next time, but definitely check out
the new forbidden. PS It looks amazing.
Just just I think it was maybe not catch hats three.
We did like a cover the cover reveal for it.
Oh, I believe so. Yeah, but just the name Endless
Horrors from Between the Stars tells you a great one.
And the cover fucks like so hard.
It's so good. Oh Revolt is another good
looking project out right now. A little box set with all froggy
guy on it and stuff. It's a cool one.
I haven't seen that one. Yeah, it's a good one.
It reminds me a lot of Beat All Night.
You should check it out. Anyways, we'll go over some of
that stuff a little bit more next time.
We're not doing that. We're gonna have a nice, we're
gonna have a nice little short episode.
Bro, did you know our short story episode was literally like
45 minutes? It was crazy.
It was nice little breezy. It's it's offsetting.
We're like comically offsetting the three hour episodes we did
at the beginning of the year or beginning of the show, you know?
Yeah. Very much so, yeah.
Yeah. I when I look back and look at
like the 2 1/2 to three of our episodes every single week, I
can't believe we did that shit for like a while.
Yeah. It's funny 'cause actually I
feel like a lot of weeks we still do that much of episodes,
but usually it's split over several, like two to three
episodes. We end up hitting the same time
mark, but it just doesn't feel the same.
Yeah, but I mean, we literally does.
We were literally doing 45 minutes of Kickstarter every
fucking episode. And we're dumb as.
Fuck and and reading like every word.
Like we've definitely, we've definitely narrowed this in like
I feel bad for people that start our podcast before the 1st like
10 episodes. That's why I'm going to read.
That's why I'm going to go back and revisit some of the really
good ones. Like I almost want to go over
Mark Borg's like bare bones edition.
Just we could do Mark Borg again.
And I definitely think we should do the new Troika version so we
can do Troika again. Oh.
I'd love to talk about the new Troika version because I have
opinions about it. Yeah, I think it's yes.
Let's keep our opinions to it. I I yeah, it's interesting.
But also Troika to E at some point is going to come out.
So anyone that follows that patron stuff, you get a little
tidbits of that and anything Milsonia is one of those people
or anything. I don't care what they make, if
they put shit in a box, I'll buy it because it's Milsonia, even
that little, even that little pig logo and I'm down.
But they'll find a way to make it interesting, you know?
Anyway, so handbaskets, let's let's hop into this.
This is the sideways book, which is only driving me a little bit
crazy because there's going to be a border at the top and
bottom of our screen. But it is like A5 or American
A5, but sideways, exactly the same size as cyber metal, which
is is inspired by. First of all, how about that
cover? Great.
Visually, I really love this one.
It's very it's only because, you know, going through through a
mirror or in a mirror brightly, it's much more like bright and
almost neon esque, not quite neon college, but you know what
I mean? And this one has that much more
like cyber metal fire and black and red and some purple.
Yeah. Love the colors on this.
Yeah. Yeah, it slaps and the cover,
like with the black and the red is great.
The people jumping over the fire and stuff like it look like it
really speaks what the game is. Once you know what the game is
about, because that looks like competitive, but there's fire.
But then there's like those like very occult, esoteric symbols
and then as seen on TV stamp. It's just it like it it says
what the game is in a really good way, while also being
incredibly under understandable. But Handbasket's competition
rule book too. You're just like, what is this?
It's really good cover slaps. I like it.
And you know me, you know me. I love I love the the black
darkness of of this half the book too.
So yeah, I also love. Max's name on the front of this,
because it's like Max Velzebub Landerificus or something like
that, yeah. Like the devil name?
Yeah, I will say one little thing about this that I noticed
going to the next page. This is the the, you know, CCBY
license and it's not it's it's based on with Adam Vas and like
inspired by cyber metal and kismet from Caesar Capital, I
believe is what we decided the name was pronounced.
As I looked up Kismet. I, I I found the next page.
I got to check it out. I might just buy the PDF on Dr.
thru because you can't just get the PDF on itch.
You can get the PDF with the POD code.
But I think, and maybe I'm wrong, I think what Caesar does
or Cesar, sorry if I'm saying it wrong.
A lot of times they do stuff from the what's that what's
that? What's that one website, the
board game factory or like whatever.
I don't remember what it is, but it's POD.
But their shipping. Their shipping is so insanely
expensive. It's really difficult to.
Are they not American based? Are they like a European based
company? Is that why the ship?
They're somewhere not American, but you'll get a $10 in and pay
$25 for shipping and it's just not something Oh my God, I'll
just stack the POD codes by 4 at a time and get a bunch of stuff
from them. But anyway, so here's our
capital. I hope I'm saying that right.
Also a fucking amazing game designer.
You should take out everything that they do.
It's they do like really, really fun, interesting, cool games
like Push the Push SRD. Remember when we reviewed?
Yeah. From Adam?
Yeah. So a lot of really cool stuff, a
lot of really great frameworks and interesting little things to
do with games that are and games on their own that are really,
really, really good as well. I did not realize that they made
the push SRD, That's really interesting.
Yeah, yeah, they do a lot of really good stuff.
And Kismet is also kind of more of like a framework or things
you could do a little different things with too.
So really cool, really interesting.
So the two very good things base a book on Cyber Metal 2012 and
Kismet. So hand baskets.
So this thing, even though it is only 30 something pages, it is
completely completely. Booked.
And it has a hyperlink to book contents.
It's a 10, you know it's. It's 30, it's 34 pages.
You have no excuse, I guess if it's, I guess if you have a 300
page book, A, that's your first mistake, but B, if something
this small can use them, something bigger can.
So lots of stuff here, omens, fallout, specialty, etcetera,
etcetera. We'll go through the the
background in this is a lot of torn black paper and flames.
I really like the brightness of a lot of the colors.
So hand baskets by Max liners in a very, very bright red.
I will say one thing I noticed specifically, like the first
time you noticed it on the previous page, the purple in the
PDF pops like crazy, but the purple in the book is difficult
to read. It does not have that same level
of brightness to it. So there's some things that are
written all in purple on black that it makes it a little bit
difficult to read it. It really digs in.
So I mean, that's just a print thing.
I mean, it's not illegible at all by any stretch, but it is
much less bright in the printed version.
Just just something I'm honest. So our hand baskets is
everything I said right at the beginning about the digitally
enhanced, every which thing in the race leaving, that's that.
It says that right here. So I'm not going to repeat that.
Good job. Yep, it was made for three to
six players, one of whom would be the GM.
It's a series of puzzles and mini games that pit players
against each other and everyone else to see who can outwit and
outlast. The game contains no solutions
for the puzzles and assumes the GM is roll is willing to roll
with the unknown and reward player creativity.
It is set in a nameless feature city that contains magic demons
in a world that blends digital and the physical.
This is such an interesting game.
We talked about it a little bit. The interesting thing is we had
Max on to talk about this and we talked about it like 2% of our
conversation yesterday. But this is such an interesting.
High level theory discussion the rest of the time.
Yeah, and how how game design is not art, but oh, let's get this
out of the way. But it's really interesting
because this is such a, a, a weird mix and I wish more games
did mixes like this because the rule set is very clearly deeply
OSR. You know what I mean?
Or, or, or the, the blanket term we call every, every like
standard dungeons dragon game. That's not Dungeons Dragons, the
OSR. The OSR is dead by the way.
Please let it die. You just brought it up.
I know, but it's it's a marketing term at this point.
It's just a regular fucking dungeon game AKAOSR, but it's
it's very OSR mechanically or trad or whatever the fuck we're
calling shit now. But the games are incredibly
story gaming. Yeah, absolutely.
It's a it's an interesting mix of the two together, especially
when you run across something that's like there are no
solutions that GM just creatively figures it out with
the players. Like that's, that's, that's, you
know. I love that.
I like, Yeah. I mean, you didn't go for it,
y'all. How are you going to solve this
puzzle? Yeah, that's great.
I love that. It's really cool.
The barrier between hell and earth has been shattered,
Everything is hot and bloody and sticky.
Witchcraft is real and you can have a lunch with a demon any
day of the week. Technology advanced to allow
sleaving and re sleaving of human consciousness into
anybody, vessel or vehicle with the right hardware.
It's a far from perfect technology and there are no
guarantees on what you're waking up in.
Overlaid upon the broken and battered reality of the city is
an ever present digital world. At times that it's hard to
distinguish between the two handbaskets.
With death having lost all meaning thanks to the
technological development of sleeves, the number one
entertainment of the times is a series of extreme blood sports
referred to as the Handbaskets. I always meant to ask and I we
didn't get a chance to what the Handbaskets references.
Oh yeah, I just accepted it as it is.
It just is, you know. Yeah, it is.
Referred to as the Handbaskets, but intended to appease the
gods, the devilish ones through bloody sacrifice.
In an ever increasing body count, the player or players
that accumulate the most Rep over the course of the game are
granted the prestigious title Lord of Hell.
But the but the the three is an E.
Yeah, but but it's like, it's like a black letter 3 where it's
like like the bottom half goes below in weird way that I hate a
proverbial skeleton key to the city's back rooms and upper
echelons and in some cases a literal position.
So that's the world. That's the world you're living
in. It's, it's A, and I, what I love
about that is it feels so viable that if we suddenly got to a
point where we could just like pump our cautiousness into
bodies and be able to just like one of the first thing that
people would do is just start killing each other.
Yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah, this this game
should be real. So I also think like this is
inspired by cyber metal and can be slid into cyber metal as like
a little mini as collection of mini games.
And I could totally see this as like a good extended offshoot
adventure because that's how I that's the frame in which I like
was thinking about this like, Oh yeah, my cyberpunk party is
like, yeah, they know about this game show that goes on on their
local TV network. And this is the game show they
get on the game show, you know? Yeah, it's very, you can tell.
And Max said that they were watching a lot of Alice in
Borderland when they were writing.
This. Oh dude it fucks it's so good
it's so worth it. I really enjoyed a lot like I
want to read the manga and I think they came out with this
season 2 that I haven't watched because I know that the manga
has a season 2. I think they did.
I think I was, yeah. There's two seasons now.
Yeah, yeah. I really, really enjoyed it a
lot. I think it came out, or at least
I it came to Netflix and I watched it around the time Squid
Games was like the big fucking thing because it's like kind of
similar in a very but not real way, like not really in my
personal opinion, very, very much worth watching.
I really like that. Like it definitely hits a fun
like battle Royale thing. There's a, there's a whole
little genre of like death game animes and mangas too that are
really enjoyable, like Darwin's game and stuff like that.
So yeah. So, so one thing that you just
said, it says the handbaskets were originally designed to be
played with Cyber Metal 2012. So if you're playing Cyber Metal
2012, you can skip like the majority of the book, the rules
and just use the handbaskets, which are a series of games.
But all the stuff leading up to the handbaskets is a rule set
that you can use is a rule set that you can use as a substitute
for Cyber Metal or to to make this your own thing.
So getting into that, it says, what's it say here?
If, however, you do not have cyber metal 2012 or want
something a little lighter, below are the rules.
So the first two are your omen. The Omen is the core rule of the
game and this is a fun designed page here.
I like the graphic design all throughout.
There's a bunch of different colors, like a bunch of
different it's lots of purples on like a white paper
background, Reds, all sorts of stuff.
The graphic design through this is very much like black letter
mixed with digital and and fire and torn paper.
It's cool so. I love the little purple like
waves. Kind of thing.
Yeah, swirlies. They're just kind of randomly
placed in. I love them.
It works, it feels, it feels. This is what I'm talking about
when we talk about the blank space on pages, right?
Like it's not bad, that blank space on pages.
Another perfect example is a himbos from Max.
The way that they place the words on the page, there could
be 10 words on the page and it feels good, right?
But this instead of a giant empty, not giant, it would be
fine, I think without that swirly, but it fills a good
space. You don't need art, just do a
little bit of design. And like you could literally
scribble a shape. I don't remember what book or
PDF I was reading through the other day, but they had like a
lot of empty space towards the bottom.
And they just put this one random little like kind of like
icon design halfway in that space.
And it was even the most tiny little thing, It made it feel
like it was full in a, in a, in an interesting way without
having to pay an artist. You know what I mean?
You don't have to fill your game with art, but you also shouldn't
fill your game with like space that is so empty it feels like
something should be there and something is missing.
You know what I mean? Like there's a, there's a vast
difference. Like you're allowed to
graphically design your things to make it actually approachable
and readable. If I want a textbook, I'll pay
$1000 for a fucking textbook I'll use for three months.
You know omen. Every character is an omen score
and I love how this works. So it fluctuates between 0 and
100 throughout the course of play to determine the character
starting OMEN. You roll AD 100 and that's your
starting OMEN. So if you roll 69, you're almost
scores a 69. And then every time you try to
do something that requires you to roll, which is the whole
classic, like you know if if shits on, you know, if it's up
in the air roll, that is your target number, right?
And so roll me D100. Roll me D100.
Let's do this 1210 however you want to do it.
However you want to do it. Well, it's all always 2D10I
rolled A12. A 12.
So your starting OMEN score is 12?
Yeah. Yeah.
The odds of you succeeding on your first roll are low, but OK,
roll me So so say you, you, you. You got you, you got you got to
murder someone roll. Me a Murder someone roll which
is just another D1. 104. You fail right because you went
over the number right, because this is a roll under game.
OK, but your new omen score is now 44.
So next time you roll you just have to go 44.
I fucking love that. And and Max said that they came.
Matt said that came from Kismet from from Cesar Capitol.
I'm again, I hope I'm saying that right.
That's such a good mechanic because it balances your
successes and failures in such an interesting way where you
could constantly just be like success or failure, success,
failure. But if your row really high, you
could get a couple failure, a couple successes in a row and
then a couple failures in a row. Like it's a such a a fun clean,
no modifiers, no fucking nothing.
Like, you know, it's good. It's so good.
I love it. And I think for like what this
is is, which is kind of like, I mean, you could definitely sit
down and play this as your game of the session.
That's like a mini game where your character is like very
fluid and you're re sleeving all the time.
What a great way to deal with like stats.
You know, it's like, yeah, throw that shit out.
This is how we're doing it. So good, it's so good.
So that's that's how you do an omen.
So in addition to success and failure actions have potential
damage and fallout. When you succeed and it's
applicable, which means you're trying to do damage, select one
of your die results as damage done to your target.
When you fail and the risk is damaged, this is done to you as
a curse. We'll get to that.
The other die is your fallout. When there's no risk of damage,
players can choose either die as their fallout.
That's a very, that's cyber metal.
Like the damage and fallout thing is is very cyber metal.
It says a note to rolling 2D10. Is it zero or is it 100?
Your choice because the nature of damage and fallout reading
the D 10s as zeros or 10s can be very strange results in the
game. Fry them both out.
I never remember. I've looked it up 1000 times.
How it actually works might be one of the reasons I don't use
D1 hundreds because I don't want to know which ones are on.
Depends how the person running the game or the game you're
playing explains it. Because both are like, yeah,
like just said, it's like both are very valid.
I run it as one to 100. Not zero to 99 all.
Zeros is 100 but that's just me. Yeah.
So like if you roll, So what if you roll A10 and A10?
Oh on my on my D 10s the 10s are zero.
So A10 and A10 is a is 100. So how do you roll the 10?
You roll A1 and A0 or by one in a ten.
I listen. This is also confusing because
my all of my D 10s don't have a 10.
They have a zero on them for the 10.
I would legitimately just get percentile dice to have 40-50,
sixty, 7080, ninety 00 and then a single die that has 00.
But what happens if you roll 000?
That's 100. Yeah, yeah, all zeros is 100.
But what if you roll A10 in a 0? It's a 10.
That's ten, yeah. Well, no the. 10 the 10 is a
zero, there isn't 0 and 10 on the die.
So no. You're saying if you have here
on the. Die if you have like if you have
a percentile, die where one says 1020, thirty, 4050 and one says.
Oh, you're now rolling percentile die.
Well, 10 to 0 is, yeah, I add those here.
So that'd be 10 for me now. So 00 on one and then a zero is
what? See, here's the thing.
How do you how do you read your dice?
You know, even the. Exactly.
There's a right way anyway. Doesn't matter.
So fallout. So Fallout is an indicator of
how the world changes in response to your actions.
Generally this will be zoomed in or zoomed out view of the
circumstances of the world represented by.
There's a default Fallout table here, but there's constant ways
to change your curses, other fallout, all sorts of stuff.
Certain parts of the game have their own.
That's cool. So the default fallout table has
a one which is shit is fucked. Describe what happens to make
you lose 1 reputation or take damage.
Two to four of the situation deteriorates, Someone else is
hurt who you don't really want to be.
I feel like that could be worded slightly differently.
The situation deteriorates and someone that you don't want to
be hurt, get hurt. Who is it and what happened?
Five to seven. Tensions are rising.
You see trouble coming in. Name it.
Eight to 10. It's all coming up.
Hunter. The situation is better than
expected. Boom.
Romeo wanted to Romeo D10 real quick.
We're gonna roll up. I rolled an 8.
Boom. So it's coming up, Hunter, it's.
All coming up, Hunter, we're doing great.
I I hit that threshold just barely too.
Boom, Get it? Get that threshold Specialties.
Talk to me about specialties. Specialties A character
creation. Each player selects 1 specialty
Witchcraft, Hack, Ultraviolence, or Melodramatics.
When a character takes damage, they will select from the
associated list for their curses.
Try now. So witchcraft.
All things are called unseen powers, spells, magical forces
communing with spirits. The veil is thin, and there are
many entities on the other side just waiting for you to make
your ask of them. Curses, a demon you owe a debt
to calls it in energy. Your choice erupts forth from
you, damaging you and everybody nearby.
The next one is tear the fabric, open a rift between the world
and pull something out. That's a good one.
And the next one is curse into the player.
Use this number to do damage to another player, like next one
Wrath of the Gods. Any role with this number is
considered a failure in Reversal.
Damage done on the failure applies to your target as well
as yourself, and they're all the specialties on here.
I love this this specific page here because it's such a an
interesting mix of stuff, but it still works.
Like half the page is this like Gray texture and then half the
page is this black torn paper. And again, it's all very like
black letter, but then like the curses one is like a black
letter pixel art font, which is beautiful.
So it like it all works. The only thing I'll say about
this is my my assumption is that this is first because there's a
full spread across both pages, but having the curses before
having the page that tells you what curses do.
I wouldn't have minded the curses being on the previous
page, but it's just the next page, so it's really not that
big of a deal. If it was a longer book, like it
would bother me more, but it's a very next page and it does it.
But yeah. So we also have hack
ultraviolence and melodramatics. They are a lot what they sound
like if like, which one should? I'm going to read the blurbs for
each. I'm going to read at least one
of the curses for each of them. So everyone gets an idea.
The hack. When you specialize in all
things cyber, you can interpret calls, crack codes.
I'm sorry, intercept calls, crack codes and find backends.
Ha ha. The world is constant is a
constantly shifting web of signals, communications, beeps
and boops, and you can tap into them all, weaving and warping
reality into your augmentation of choice.
I think for the the we'll read, yeah, hack the leaderboard.
You can execute a free cheat code, which we'll come to you
later. Ultraviolence when all you have
is a hammer, et cetera, et cetera.
Blood, guts, shits, piss, intestines, bones, marrow.
You specialize in making people's inside bits into
outside bits. Never settle for a break when
you shatter is available, and for the curses of this one we'll
read I think the first one you overextend your attack.
Any damage done is also done to another random person.
Here's. The it's so good.
I do like the last one that though, too, like someone dies
random is one and then someone dies.
Your choice is another, like they're all all the curses are
really good. I will say, OK, do a
melodramatics and then I'll say something.
All right, melodramatics, You know how to put on a show
drawing on the sold out theater in your mind.
You get to the root emotion in any scene and then overdo it.
Did you have a curse that you want me to read for this one?
Is that what? You.
Oh yeah. Let's do a piece of mass is a
good one. You just gain Rep.
The first one. A contestant is using an old
body of yours. You know its weakness is also a
good one. Really good one is the last one
is a really good one. One of your deepest fears is
manifested. That is a really good one.
That's a really good one, I really love these.
I am curious why witchcraft get 6 and all the rest of them have
5. Oh.
Yeah. Oh, I even knows that.
It doesn't matter that much because they're not, they're not
used in a way in that way that it matters.
The thing with the curses is like, you could come up with a
meal. You could come up with a whole
supplement of just more curses for each of these.
If you, if you, if you were going to pick your first
archetype, which one are you going with?
Oh, witchcraft. Yeah.
And which, yeah, that was a dumb question.
Which one am I going with? Witchcraft.
Now, which one would I go with? Ultraviolence, of course.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Love these.
I think they're so it's such a good mix of like what this game
is, is like witchcraft, hacking, ultraviolence and melodramatics.
I'm like that you. That's such a that's it's it's
perfect. It's so perfect for like what
the game is and what I want it to be damage, so, so.
I actually. Dump Yeah.
Dimage and the Chrisettes chatted with Max a little bit
before this room yesterday to get a little clarification on
this because. And it's really interesting.
Again, this is, I don't know, I just love the way Max thinks
about games. Max and Iron together are just
such. I want to be Max and Aaron when
I grow up, you know, so damn. And Demolish and Chris says each
character has five cursed boxes on their character sheets.
We'll we'll look at the character sheet on, but there's
five boxes on the screen there you can look at for for
reference if you need to know a five boxes look like this
represents how much damage the character takes before they die.
When damage is taken, you write the damage number in an
available curse box. The number has been cursed.
Select one of the curse events from a character's specialty to
associate with that number. When you roll that curse number,
the associated events overrides the rules fall out.
So what that means is like, say you, you take damage from
somebody and it's 3 damage. OK, you would in one of your
five boxes, you would write a three, OK, you would then also
on witchcraft, right? Pick one of the witchcraft
curses. Just pick one of them.
OK, I pick. Oops, I sorry, I scrolled down
quite a bit. Yeah, energy of your choice
erupts forth from you, damaging you and everybody around.
You. So that means then that every
time you roll a three, that happens?
Yeah. And I asked Max about this
because there's a apparently there's a generous way and a
more mean way to look at it. I.
Vaguely remember this conversation.
Yeah. One is that if the fallout you
roll is a three, then this happens.
The more difficult way, the more fuck you way is.
Anytime you roll A3 no matter what on the dice, this happens.
That's fucked up. It's fucked up.
Yeah, it's fucked up. I would do a little bit of both,
but I would I would I would want to see how often people are
dying and Max said very often, which is fine because you just
get re sleeped. But I do I do like the idea of
like this is just replacing your fallout also because of a rule
that's coming up the next page too.
But the next part is damage. Your damage you mark maxes out
at 10 as damage is almost always done through the role of AD 10.
If extra image is done, such as an instance of double damage, it
becomes a second instance with a second curse and a second role.
If a number would be cursed but the number of questions already
cursed, the player simply blocks out an available curse box and
ignores the number. That's crazy.
So like if you get three and three is already in a box, you
mark out a box and then you just keep going because you're not
going to get cursed again, but you're going to use up the box
because it's your health. Your health is curses, right?
So there's a whole page here on death, and this is part of the
reason I was saying what I said earlier.
So there's a couple rules here for death.
Specifically, it says when a character receives their 5th
curse, they die. That means any all of your
numbers, all of your five boxes either filled with curse numbers
or XS, I'm going to skip one. When their reputation hits zero,
they are irrelevant to the world and they die just like real
life. And then there's one that says
when both of the numbers they roll are cursed, they die.
So if you have in your 5 cursed boxes you have a three and a
one. If you roll 2D6 and roll A3 and
A1, you just die. Oh my God, Yeah, yeah, that's
amazing. I love, I love that.
Yeah, I mean. I I'm so I, I really have been I
mean, I think since we talked about in a mirror, I've really
been going back through cyber metal and I really want to run
something in cyber metal and I would love to like slide this in
and be like, yeah, you know, like there's a popular game show
where it's just like, yeah, you get put into a another body and
you fight to the death over and over.
And it's the entertainment for the masses in this, you know,
demonic city of Grand Rapids, MI.
Let's. Do it.
You should put it on that list of games we have for a thing
that we're we're going to do one day when we read the book.
Yeah, Death page. When a player dies, they aren't
eliminated from the game, they are restored from their backup
and drop back in. They lose their belongings,
reset their reputation and their body and any progress they have
on a clock. Because clocks too.
Because not only does this game have story game bits and OSR
bits and like weird cool mechanics, it has clocks
because. I do love clocks, so I do.
I do. I know people have opinions
about clocks and if it's that they don't like them then
they're wrong. It's just such a convenient way
to track stuff. And also, like, for me, there's
a lot of like, downtime stuff, like, or like crossing stuff
that I'm like, yeah, here's a clock.
Like, how are you crossing this difficult terrain?
You know, like when you guys fill the clock, you and players
love that shit. You know, they're like, oh, it's
fun. I get to have my moment to
shine. Yeah.
See, so I actually don't like clocks in the way that you just
said, which is interesting because I think that's why
people like, I like to. The way that I really like
clocks is behind the scenes. Like I really like them as a GM
way of tracking things. Yeah, for player tracking stuff.
I feel like I don't mind when games get gamey but like I do
like to keep. Them to the players.
So cool. All right.
Well then yeah, then I don't hate you.
So when you die, roll on each table to respond with your new
body. So do me a solid roll AD 6 and
AD 20 and this will be your new body.
AD 6 and AD 20. Where'd my dice roller go,
Brian? Did you hide my dice roller?
I did. I went through the Internet and
said dice roller. D6 and D20.
I got a four on the 6:00 and 12:00 on the 20.
Damn bro you got lucky. Add 30 to your current omen sick
and then what? What did you get on the other?
One, it's a bog body. It's a.
Bog body? That's funny because it wasn't
there. Just like a Twitter thing going
around about bog bodies. Did you see the bog bodies?
No, I didn't see that. Oh dude, do you know what bog
bodies are? Right.
No. Dude, they're bodies that are
like preserved in bogs because the bog will like.
I guess like literally preserves like.
Yeah. Yeah, so happens to mobsters,
you know, I gotta get, they're thrown in the boss.
How you get a Solomon Grundy, you know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're basically Solomon, a
lucky Solomon Grundy. That's you.
Nice. That's you, the bog body.
There's a lot of really good ones.
So in the D6 side, it's all like famous plus one Rep cursed like
it it it's it's like almost modifiers for situation.
So there's like progress clock stuff, there's cursed stuff,
there's rap stuff. But then the D20 is all
descriptors, very large, very slimy, lacks rhythm, has fur, is
a machine, lacks a mouth. It has an extra appendage.
You got 2 Dicks brah. Nice, just like real life.
Yeah. The record is actually I think
like 7. That's a condition, yeah.
Want to talk to me about reputation and cheat codes?
Yeah, absolutely. So Rep your Rep.
Reputation is a player's strongest resource.
Its primary use is active in cheat codes, but it can be saved
and hoarded for personal gain in longer games.
Players start with two reputation and reset to two when
they die, gaining and losing Rep for each game completed.
Yeah. So this is a list of like of
gaining, losing and games completed death that you're
responsible for. I have a question for death that
you're responsible for. Would that include if you
created your own death? Well, I guess I mean you're when
you die your reputation resets, so it doesn't.
Oh, that is so true. Just said that.
Yeah, like, yeah, I guess you're right.
I don't know. I might still give it to them.
It resets, but they still get one because, like, you caused a
cool death. Depends on the death I guess.
When the player shows mercy, it decreases.
When the player does something particularly flashy or over the
top and does not violate the other rules, it's an increase by
one. Now the player helps other
player, it's a decrease. Pretty much.
If you're doing anything nice for anybody else, it decreases.
Or if you show cowardice. Because fuck them.
And then players can spend 1 reputation to activate a cheat
code. Cheat codes operate outside of
the normal way of things. They might be unfair and they
might break the game. There's no role required for
activating a cheat code. They just happen.
So the various sheets are creating an item, getting a
clue, Invert a role, That's a good one.
Scan a person, twist the knife, fudge the math, call a friend or
protect role. There are various ones.
They're they're all fairly useful.
I don't know if there's not useful one in there.
No, they're all good. And I mean, let's keep let's
keep talking about this, this this light game that's literally
just a series of amazing mechanics.
I mean, the Omen role is fantastic.
Again, it's OSRE story gaming. It's got clocks, it's got a
reputation system that gives you basically a token system for
spending effects and stuff. I mean, what more do you fucking
want from a game? Yeah, I would still say I It's
nice. This game has some cool
mechanics, but still very lightweight.
Like I they're still not in this.
It still feels very easy to take in.
Yeah, but what? I'm saying is like this isn't,
you know, I, I think Max said this before and we've talked
about this before, like, you know how easy it is to make an
OSR game. You literally just like pick any
mechanic and then write like this is how long a round is.
This is how long a watch is. And then like a little bit of
like some type of encumbrance and you have one of 1000 fucking
OSR games that exist out there. And this doesn't do any of that
shit. Like all of these systems, like
all feel good, purposeful, like unique and interesting and it
they're all like the core of a different game, but feel like
they all go together in this one in a really fun, interesting
way, which is which is really enjoyable.
Hell yeah. The offerings.
The offerings of the world stat. It represents how pleased the
Lords of the Underworld are with the progression of the game and
how likely they are to get involved and help players.
It starts at 0 and resets for each handbasket.
Each individual mini game with any death occur.
When any death occurs in the world, add five to the
offerings. Entreat the Lords.
This is very reminds me very much of like The Hunger Games.
You know they'd send them a little packages if they were
performing well. Yeah, and it feels like a mix
of, I feel it feels like a mix of The Hunger Games and also
like the cleric ability in 5E where like you literally like
entreat the God. You get the role.
Under like a like a fucking D10 or some shit that's so that'll
actually help you, but. Fuck 5E.
Yeah, intrigue the Lords. Yeah, there you go.
Players can ask the Lords of Hell to assist in their actions
to do so. Rule D100.
If the rule is under the current offering, it will help, but the
rule fails. They'll most certainly exact a
price that at minimum will claim the life of the character asking
for help. Murders committed by the Lords
count towards the players who summoned them's reputation.
This is intentionally abstract and open as it often functions
as a player's last resort. Help is in this context does not
mean do whatever the player asks.
This would definitely for me be a monkey paw situation and the
GM should have the Lord's assist in a way that is fun and
flavored to their characters. Bro.
You know what movie I thought was always like so good, but
like I don't know if it's like underrated or not in like the
fucking weird horror thing. Fucking Leprechaun Where?
Like they would No, wait a minute.
Is it Leprechaun or is it Wishmatcher?
Is it Yeah, where you like they they wish for something, but
they make it like true in the worst possible way.
Oh my God, it's so good. If you haven't seen Wishmaster,
amazing. Like B/C level horror flick that
is hilarious and incredibly underrated.
Yeah, the leprechaun's also fucked if you haven't seen that
either. Who plays the Leprechaun?
Is it a? Is it a person?
I don't even remember. I watched it so long ago.
Warwick Davis I. Love him dude, he's the best.
He's in Willow, he has some Star Wars parts, a ton of other
stuff. Yeah, movies fucked tracking
time and progress. Since each handbasket is a
contest between players, we need to track player progress.
It's done through clocks. Here we go.
There's a clocks represented by clock.
Each handbasket has a difficulty rating rating represented by
clock segments. Each player divides their
progress clock on the player tracker by this number while
they are competing in the handbasket.
When a player rolls a successful action, they fill in one section
of the clock, progressing themselves towards the goal of
that game. So every player gets like we'll,
we'll go over the clocks and everything a little bit later
because the character sheet has clock segments and there's like
a scorecard that exists that we'll see at some point.
When a player completes their clock, they've completed the
goal of that handbasket. This usually means they win or
are in the group of winners like Fall guys.
Sometimes you can have more than one.
Each handbasket also has a general time tracking clock.
These functions differently such as countdown and stuff,
etcetera, etcetera. Turns happening in groups of
rounds. At the end of the round, the
time clock for the game increases by one like that and
then initiative randomly determined each round.
The progress tracker is designed to have small initiative
trackers and they can be shoveled and handed out.
I we were told by Max that they exist and it does not currently
in the itch. The scorecards and stuff are not
currently in the itch. Stuff you get, but maybe they'll
be in there at some point. And then the player versus
player interactions. It's APVP game.
You're going to murder each other.
That's great. Do that thing and there's a
sabotage. PvP game like death doesn't
really matter, it does feel like a score, but like you can kill
your friends and like laugh about it 'cause you're going to
come back as some fucking weirdo like I, I, this is such a
brilliant, I love this. Yeah, because even if you do
drop it into cyber metals 2012, you go in murder and get re
sleeped a bunch and then just come out and keep going.
You know what I mean? Like there are no lasting
consequences for the most part. I mean obviously like, you know,
there could be and here's the thing.
I mean, Can you imagine a world where you can just like die over
and over again re sleeped into something new over and over and
over again psychologically how that's going to affect you?
Because even people that think it's fun, like the amount of
just dysmorphia you're going to have by constantly having a new
face, but also just being murdered over and over like it
still hurts. I bet like, like we already like
even just like having too much phone time is fucking our brains
and stuff. Can you imagine like death time,
you know what I mean? And just like, like interacting
with, like being murdered so much just how broken people
would be and just the inability to feel like at all more so than
now. You can still feel things.
No, I generally feel nothing. It would hurt if I could feel
that. So this can be done through.
So it says sabotage, interrupt, hurt, kill people, all this
stuff. This is done through open rolls
with the target is the damage. It could be the use of a cheat
code, all that kind of stuff. In order to avoid unnecessary
complications and back and forth, players can only use one
cheat code in PvP per in a PvP way per turn.
So you can't be cheat coding all over the place just once per
turn. However, they can be the target
of cheat codes from any number of players, so players can all
align in order to take out a single player.
So like, you know, a survivor and a note on consent.
Basically it says all of those things happen, people can be
manipulated, backstabbed, all that stuff.
Long story short, be OK with that, have a zero session, make
sure you get good with that as far as like what people are able
to do and if something's like too extreme and someone doesn't
want it to happen, it just fucking doesn't.
You just move on because we're adult human beings.
Actually respect other people and being shitty is not a good
character trait. Yeah, this is a tabletop game,
so yeah, don't. Don't permanently hurt your
friendships because you feel like you need to for some.
Right. Also also that applies to real
life. Like being a shitty troll is not
a personality, it's a flaw. So Tony, what a mess for the
games. Yeah, the master of the games.
Running a game of handbaskets is about embracing chaos.
Mechanically, the game is simple but also designed to be broken.
It shines when both players and GM lean into the broken nature
of the in game reality. Things don't have to make sense.
There is a digital world blending with everything, Demons
erupting forth from hell and witches casting spells in
abundance. Excuse me?
Blame anything you want on the circumstances of the world.
The game is often player versus player versus environment and
you will mostly be responsible for the E of the environment.
Demolishing and building glitch networks, light light things on
fire, follow the wild story and actions the players are trying
to tell, and do a little bit of record keeping through the
scorecard and you'll be great. Mechanically, most of the rules
live within the details of the individual.
Hey, I'm sorry, individual handbaskets.
I'm getting worse at reading as we're going for some reason.
Detailed in this book or within one you design yourself?
Also, yeah, handbaskets would be very easy to design yourself.
It's a cool framework they give and yeah, also fuck the rules.
It also says on. That's not just me saying that
like I would often do. It says that on the bottom of
this page, which I respect. Great, yes, yeah, moving on to
NPCS and bad tings. Bad tings.
Yeah, yeah. For the most part, all creatures
and characters in handbaskets that aren't played by characters
require only a single mechanical elements health.
Adrenally, this will be a number that is five or less, as death
should be easy and this makes a single attack kill relatively
common. For larger, more challenging or
noteworthy opponents, this could be quite a large number.
But also remember you could always bring them back through
the power of hell or the digital afterlife.
Enemy health is simple decreased by damage till they hit zero.
Each handbasket has a suggested number of contestants.
This can these can function as nameless bodies father to be
brutalized and sacrificed as the at the hands of the players.
Sometimes, however, it is fun and useful to have named
characters to hinder help and heard you the PCs.
The chart below can help you make some harangue.
By the way, how's the word that I didn't read and I just
skipped? Over The very first thing I
noticed on this page is that Feud is spelled wrong in Blood
Feud. But that's just me.
It is where. It says it's #3 under
motivation. I'm going to let's let's roll up
some characters. So what do we need?
12345 D Twelves. This is very table.
Yeah, yeah, like this. 5D twelves all right, I got bro I
rolled 121231111. If I was rolling twelves I would
be so happy with that 49. So 1212 that's pizza Crash is
the name. What was the next one?
A3. A3 Pizza Pizza crash They have a
sharp look to them. Yeah, I look sharp.
And then 11:11. And their their motivation is
competition and their morality is dominance.
That's right. Pizza crash, Sharp and dominant.
Pizza crash sharp and dominant. Yeah, like a, like a, like a,
like a pizza cutter. That's what I would.
That's why I wasn't a choice. Yeah, anyway.
Yeah, there's some really good ones on here.
I like the trashy and metallic look like just like fucking
C3PO, you know? It's like different colored
panels and shit. No dude the the the like the
look #2 cliche but hot. But some of the last names are
so fucking funny. Like literally the last name is
just 69 but. First name XX.
Yeah, so good. Even Gloom, the first name has
like capital G, capital L and then it's like OO and then A
capital M like it's AS. Opposed to loom the first one,
which is capital LOO, capital M. So good.
So for good carpe loops, like so good.
All right, we're getting to the handbaskets.
Hand baskets are small, brutal games and puzzles that are the
heart of this game. Each one has a few mechanical
and narrative elements, so this is actually what the handbaskets
are. Everything prior to this is
optional, as in you could just use Cyber Metal 2012 rules with
these handbaskets, or you could use the system given.
Either works. I love the system given though.
It's it's a really fun, light, like unique, interesting system
that uses a lot of really fun elements to put it all together.
And also like kind of only has the things you need.
Like there's not really, there's no like inventory system and
shit because you don't need that.
You're going to die and get tucked into a new body.
So there are we'll go over that. We'll go over this page.
So each handbasket has the description, a goal, a
difficulty in time rule, secrets and complications and a custom
fallout. So the description is just read
aloud text, read aloud friendly text if you want.
The goal is the goal like you know what?
You know what that means. The difficulty in time are both
numbers representing how many segments of the clock.
We talked about the clock segments earlier.
Difficulty is a clock that each player will progress
individually and the time is an additional world clock.
So difficulty is like if the difficulty is four, players get
4 segments. If the time is 8, the that means
like 8 rounds or however the time goes forward, but at least
8 rounds because every round ticks the clock, right?
That's how that works. The rule secrets and
complications are a list of optional details to help run the
game. It's basically the the the
little bit of the the stuff that gives you GM tools like secrets.
Most of this is narrative. There again, there is no
solution per SE. Just roll with it and when it's
done, it's done, you know? And when a secret is used,
players roll with advantage. So if they figure out the
sequence, you can do that. And complications are optional
events that cause problems. And then a custom fallout is a
list of context specific fallout options that can be used in
place the defaults. So you can have the default
fallout table, you can use the custom fallout table.
Your curses can take the place of fallout.
Lots of different ways for you to get fucked.
And it's basically what it comes down to.
So the first we're we said there's eight, right, 1234 fuck
678 yeah, there's 8. And then the the example
scorecard. So we're just going to go over I
think like three, I think we're going to go over the first one
because there's a scorecard example.
Then we each picked 1. So we don't need to go over all
eight of these by the fucking book, right?
So the Skuzz motel and suites right So.
Great name, yeah. Right, so the description, the
scuzz is a classic. Anyone's who's who's anyone has
woken up in one of its rooms next to a new friend or 6
covered in some kind of previously unclassified
substance. 4 stories, 48 rooms. Shag carpet that runs halfway up
the walls. That's so gross.
A classic. The motel forms a you around a
square pool. It's 4 tiled in the shape of a
whale, full of dark water, muck and grime.
A small wooden table sits poolside.
On it rests a postcard. Everyone's AR kit beeps and a
new display appears in front of them.
So don't forget like there's like an overlay over the world,
like, and then you also have like a kit that the game kind of
can like adapt to the overlay and shit too.
I AR is definitely how things are going to go.
And we're going to be more bombarded by like ads all over
the sky and shit. But you know, it's whatever.
I have AR ad blocker. Right, everyone's AR kit beeps
and a new display appears in front of them.
Your goal is to survive, quote UN quote flashes before your
eyes before a clock appears at the edges of your vision,
counting down for 20 minutes. So goal is to survive.
The difficulty is 4. That means each player has four
segments. The time is 6.
That means the world clock is 6 segments.
And then the time event, right, means time's up.
Game over. Everyone who is it dies.
What does that mean? Let's look at it.
So rule secrets and complications, this is actually
one of the more dense pages of like rule secrets and
complications of like all of them.
There's a lot to go with this one.
So the first player to pick up the postcard can choose to share
what's written on it. What's written on it says you
are it. When you touch someone, they
will become it. In 20 minutes, it will die.
So it's basically tag and whoever is it at the end dies.
But there's ways to have multiple.
It's so a player who is it will be outlined in a red glow for
other players. That's dope.
There's 20 contestants. Any touch, accidental or other
counts more than one person can be it, but not through touch.
If two players touch who are both it, a digital reality
distortion occurs, causing those players to swap one detail.
I think they missed the L in detail in purpley.
Yeah, they swap one detail from the character sheet.
Roll AD 6 to determine what is swapped.
I love this one. So one to two is your omen score
gets swapped, three to four your reputation gets swapped.
Five to six your curses get swapped including powers.
That's cool. Some rooms have unlocked doors.
There's a three in 10 chance and an unlocked room has a working
lock. Three in 10, a hacker demon has
taken up residence in the last room on the top floor.
They can get one player out of their next death with their
memories and reputation intact for a fee.
And you roll AD 4. So one is a debt to a demon.
Good, good, that's great. Two is a warm sacrifice. 3 is
your body claimable at your next natural death?
And four is membership in your gang.
Dude, I would just you want to be, you want to roll with us,
hacker demon? Let's fucking go.
And then the last one says the pool shed contains 1.
Yeah. Water walking ball.
It's a weird spot I I couldn't read it in the book.
Either I can't read it on mine. Yeah, I see in the book
actually. Keep going and then the fallout
your clit glitch that your clit your your kit glitches out.
You're it. That sucks.
That's a way that you can become it is just you roll a shitty
fallout and you're it. Something bursts out of a room
and catches you off guard. Describe what it is and how it
causes you damage or the world overlay glitches out.
Choose one. You can see each character's
location for one round. You gain 1 reputation or you are
no longer it and someone random is.
So multiple ways you can be it, one of which is Fallout 20
players survive to the end. The way the game works as far as
the time goes, that means you need to get 4 successes on your
turns before six time segments run out in the four story 48
rooms Cosmotel and suites love. It.
Cool. And that's it.
That's it. There's no, there's no map,
there's no, there's no nothing. It's very broad.
It's very open narrative. Just just fuck around and find
out as how it works. And then just to jump to the
scorecard at the end, we'll look at it real quick.
So it says example scorecard, the Scuzz motel and suites.
There's offerings which are marked off.
So this is like an example of one that's partially used,
right? The six segments are there, so
four are already done. And then you can see the four
characters underneath with your initiative tags on them and they
have 4 segments. So one has three, one has one,
one has two. Some of them have curses
already. Don't forget like any damage you
take takes up a curse box. So basically you can take damage
roughly five times before you're dead.
But re rolling the rolling of those damage numbers causes
different fall. It's it's so good.
Anyway, so this is an example scorecard and I love the bottom
right says no one will leave. Yeah.
So which which one is your? Which one did you want to go
with? Now let's do Ye Olde laser
quest. All right, you can read the.
Question in the beginning, but that's what I'm doing now, so.
Yeah, I think that's why there's a Minotaur 1.
Yeah, OK, cool. A handful of steps lead down
into a massive underground arena.
The walls are painted black and littered with layers of neon
graffiti built up over decades and decades.
A radiant history of disses and curses.
Wall disses and curses. Walls about 12 feet tall, making
labyrinth through the open space.
They appear made of black glossy stone, stacked in a traditional
looking brick, but when the overlay cracks you can see the
temporary walls wrapped in gridded plastic, the kind they
use they used to use for augment registration.
A mass of muscle and horns stalks the corridor, shifting in
forms from humanoid to quadrupedal, tensectoid and
backed. You can't see its source, but
there's sound, a crunch like ancient bone snapping every time
one of its feet connects with the floor.
From your vantage point on the stairs, you can see the endpoint
marked with a large neon X soon to disappear behind the walls as
you continue your descent. So the goal here is to survive
the labyrinth and make it to the other end.
The difficulty is four time is 8 and time event replication
double the amount of Ventors in the labyrinth.
Yeah, that's a that's a, you know, that's that's one rule.
Secrets and complications. There's one winner.
Could just be, could just be PCs, as in there's oh, there's
no NPCS and as it could just be the PCs running through the
labyrinth. Physical contact with Minotaur
results in double damage. The walls are inflated, the
floor is lined with carcasses, many of their spirits still
trapped here. The mentor loves fables and tall
tales and all lasers do damage. In the laser quest fallout, a
piece of wall has become deflated and has hindered your
progress. Lose 1 progress step.
That's what the spirits speak to you, warning you of coming
problems. What do they say?
A good simple one, just navigating the labyrinth.
The cool thing about it too is like you don't need a map
because it doesn't matter. Like you're either successfully
making turns or you're not, you know?
I do like the time event thing because basically like the goal
is to get to the other end so it doesn't matter how long it
takes. So every time you fill 8 spots,
replication happens and then you do it again.
So like if you if it takes you fucking forever and you keep
running into the fallout where like it deflates and shit, you'd
have like four of these fucking minitars running around all
over. That sucks.
That is a good one. That is a good clean fun one.
I really enjoy that one a lot. It's.
That one's really light. It's like you could run it
immediately. I do like that the scuzz has
more to it, you know, Like I feel like that'd be like a later
level that they're getting to, but I like this one that it's
just like you could pop in right now.
It'd be a fairly easy. Oh, I don't want to give any
Alice in Borderlands stuff. No, I'll let you watch Alice in
Borderlands and you can figure it out for yourself.
There's some fun. There's a fun mechanic to the,
the different types of death games and and hardness of the
death games in Alice in Borderlands, which is really
good. OK, the last one we're going to
go over is the Web Cafe. And I think, I think I meant to
ask Max about this too. Maybe, maybe it'll tell us.
I think this is this is some fun pokey pokes at some people that
you know, deserve it. So the Wizards Tower Web Cafe
shut down long ago, before the web was not only everywhere, but
not even in every home. Its owner, a man who goes by
Geiga, refused to acknowledge the tides of progress and set
out to corrupt the over air networks.
Hoping to ensure the continued need for the cafe, they called
upon the help of a demon who, through some lack of specificity
in the wording of the request, instead bound the spirit of the
cafe owner into their machines. Stuck for everything, the local
network of the building contained within his domain.
The cafe owner has built a fortress around himself.
A digital castle complete with ramparts, turrets, and of
course, a Moat. The wizard resides in his tower,
surrounded on all sides by defensive programs and
counteract protocols. The cafe sits in a state beyond
disarray. Computer parts, ancient snacks,
gunk everywhere. 6 clean new serious Jack cables run out from
mass of junk placed carefully just outside the front door.
And there's a giant going out of business sign in the next one.
I love that. So the goal is infiltrate the
fortress and defeat Gaiga. The difficulty is 4.
That means 4 progress slots for the players.
The time is 10, so 10 clock segments for the time.
The time event is self destruct. Gaiga will detonate the entire
network including any host still online causing ATPK.
So 10 rounds basically and you've either defeated Gaiga or
you're dead. The the rule secret and
complications. There's only six there's six
contestants. It takes place completely in
virtual snot AR or anything. That's what you're you're
jacking in stylized like a 90s RPG video game.
My assumption is like I'd be I would turn on the fuck out of
this or or would you do like a like an 8 bit like like one hop,
like, you know, kind? Of I would do, yeah, I was.
I was also thinking like early Doom.
Yeah, like, yeah, yeah. Going around corners and stuff,
yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's always a rogue in
PC who knows the secret way in Geiger has fashioned himself as
an ancient wizard. Spells hat and all dead
characters of Respawn in the castle dungeon.
Geiger's defensive programs. There's one through 6.
This is dope. I like this.
So one is a pixel goblin, 2 is a two is laser Knights, three is
Sonic overwhelm, 4 is FPS slow, 5IS natural disaster, and six is
weird catapults. No descriptions, no stop blocks,
no nothing. A because you don't really need
them because you roll your damage.
But it's it's I really like that.
And then the fallouts are you've triggered a defensive program
that causes you damage and you think you see a way in if you're
fast enough to get to it. What is it?
Yeah, and there's five more of these handbaskets that are
really good. Another one that I that I
thought was really interesting was the interludes by by the PDF
by the book and go check it out, Max said yesterday.
So last page, real quick. Inspirations, TV and movies, The
Hunger Games, Alice in Borderland, The Mole, The
Matrix, Strange Days, and Dread. Dred is such an underrated
movie. Man I love that fucking movie.
Which one is sorry Dred? Oh Dred.
It's like the newer Dred movie. It's kind of like the rated.
I don't know why that movie didn't blow up.
It's an amazing. Because people are terrible.
And honestly, like Karl Urban is
such an underrated fucking act. Like oh, I'm so glad that he got
more famous with the boys because he deserves it.
But he's done so many amazing roles.
You know that fun fact, because of the filming in New Zealand
and New Zealand not having great like worker protection, he does
not get residuals for Lord of the Rings.
Oh. That sucks.
Yeah, yeah, all of the the New Zealand actors actually don't
so. Come on Kiwis, get on your shit.
Music, Sneaker Pimps, Crystal method, Scientific, The Prodigy,
Underworld, Orbital, Julia Bondar, Delirium, the Medieval
Babes, Medieval Babes and Hybrid games, several metal 2012 kismet
and DCC and other stuff. Sleep no more in Berserk,
because Berserk inspires everything.
Yeah, everyone should inspire. By Berserk a little bit.
Yeah, so that's the game I do believe.
Listen, if you want to find this book in physical, go listen to
the last episode and Max will give you a website that will
link you to it. And I will check with, I'll
check with Max and see if it's OK that I put that in the
descriptions of the last episode and this episode so that you're
able to get this book in physical.
There are a couple of hardbacks left and there are some
softbacks for people to purchase.
And you can also find it on their Itch page for $10.
It's Maxwell MAXWELLANDER dot H dot IL, Maxwell Lander.
But like the L's are it's, it's 1L and 1L, so it's 2L's, not
three. So, yeah, reviews, because we're
going to review this, this review, the last one.
Yeah. Yeah, it's a scene.
It's a scene. Yeah, it's a scene.
So visuals, rule set, vibes. That's only three metrics, so or
Max of 30 points. Visuals are all the visuals, the
layout, the art, everything, how it looks.
The rule set is, if it's an adapted rule set, how well is it
adapted? If it's a new rule set, how much
do we like it? How good do we think it is?
And vibes are basically like, how bad do we want to play the
game? Does it got good vibes?
Is it what it says it is and what it wants to be?
When you when you when you look at the visuals and the rural
sets, how bad you want to play it?
So, visuals, Thoughts. I'm thinking, you know, I've got
thoughts. I love the way this looks.
I think it looks great. I, I love the fonts.
I love the colors. It is unfortunate the purple's
so much harder to read in the book because I was going through
it like on and off as we were going through in the purple.
While it's fairly sparse, it is much harder to read in the
physical. Looks great on digital, except
that one part that has the weird fingerprint like back graphic
over the under the purple word. But yeah, I, I, I really enjoy
the way this comes off visually. Yeah.
What do you, what are you thinking?
What do you do? You tell me your thought.
And it's so I, I, I really enjoy it.
Obviously, like, you know, black letter and black I mean, was
written, it'd be in black letter font.
I I also think it's really interesting how it's like could
not be more polar opposite than in a mirror brightly absolutely
like you. You literally could not.
Get to more different vibes that still give you like visually
that still give you like a similar game, you know what I
mean? Like a, a digital witchcraft
game, you know, but I love it. I mean, I love obviously, I love
black paper and fire and, and, and black letter.
You know what I mean? Like I, I really, I really enjoy
it a lot. I think it's good.
I think the layout's really well done.
There's, you know, never really any sparseness.
There's no giant empty spots. And if there are, it's always
filled with something that adds vibe.
Again, that's not expensive. You don't need to pay a bunch of
money for art to have a good looking book.
Yeah, I think it's good. I think it's good.
Yeah, I love like the tared page effect and.
Then there's like some kind of real world photography like in a
lot of the pages. I think it it, it really, this
one feels very cyber metal 2012 to me.
And I think that's good. I think you're right, yeah.
What are you thinking I where? The fuck are my scores?
Oh, here it is. I'm looking at what we gave in
Amir brightly. So I mean, I pretty feel the
same way. I I'm, I'm probably like an 8.
I'm probably I might be almost. To a nine for this.
I think there's a couple of like little issues that might bump it
down to an 8 for me. So I think 8 will work OK.
I think the. Little issues I mentioned at the
front of this. Whole segment of visuals.
Oh, the little, the little spot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree with you.
Rule set. Oh, dude, it's great.
It's so good. I mean, it's unbelievably, it's
a great adaptation. Like I, I'm really excited to
read Kismet now because I haven't read it, but now I'm
very interested. It fits really well within like
this like pseudo hack of cyber metal, which I'll keep bringing
up because that's like the original intention.
Although you could run this completely separately and it'd
be, it'd be great. And you could also run this as a
mini game within Cyber Metal, which would also work incredibly
well. Yeah, so.
So I dude, I think I'm a nine set for this.
Yeah, I think I'm too. It's such a good, like I said,
it's such a good mix of so many things because each one of these
individually, like a lot of the systems in it are kind of like
the core of like a different system.
So it's like really putting together a bunch of like like
some of my favorite parts of other games, like together into
one game. But also in such a way where you
don't need a lot of the baggage, like I said, like you don't need
to worry about stats, you don't need to worry about encumbrance.
You don't need to worry about so much of what a lot of games are
because that's not how it you're just murdering your friends.
Like that's just you don't need to fuck with that.
So, yeah, I really like it a lot.
I think it's great. I think, I think I can imagine a
time where someone dies, gets re sleeved instantly dies, gets re
sleeved, instantly dies, skin gets re sleeved and it's just
like pissed sitting at the table like what with their 4th, 5th re
sleeve in a row without having to do anything.
And that makes that makes that tickles my soul in fun,
enjoyable ways. Yeah, I'm probably a dime for
this too. Yeah, yeah, and vibes, I think
vibes are a nine for me, man. I think like.
I like I can't wait to like play this or slide this in somewhere
like I love this. I mean not even just for cyber
metal. You could slide this into like a
lot of different games and systems where like it could be a
different dice mechanic and just be like, hey, you guys are
playing a like you're on like this famous TV show that you
guys all watch and you're playing the game.
That's why I'm friends. Listen, we're this game is all.
About sliding it in, you know, Yeah, absolutely.
That's what we're, that's what we're doing.
So that'll be a 26 total for handbaskets, which I believe
that's one point higher than any mirror bright light.
But if you combine the two together, that's crazy.
Yeah. That you know, it would
basically be like across the board the book would be visually
an 8, the rule set would be like an 8.5 and the vibes would be a
nine for like what 25.5 out of 30 like this.
I mean, the one of the things that I love the most about this
is how the different, the incredibly different takes.
We're like, let's do something inspired by several model 2012
and you get these two games, you know what I mean?
And they really couldn't be more different, even though, but also
at the same time, there's a very clean through line through both,
obviously, like yes, the cyber aspect of it, the the occult
aspects of it, the hacking aspect, like just the digital
fucky hellness. You know what I mean?
Touch of sexy, you know, so just a little smidge of sexy in
there. I am shocked that this isn't
like way way. Bigger than it is like to people
because like it's so cool. It's so playable, like if you
were listening to this and you like any of the stuff that we
like, this is really very top of the list.
And if you can't get the physical, which I know they're
limited on and they're going to run out, get the PDF.
It's super worth it. I, I, yeah, both sides in the
mirror probably. And handbaskets, both are like,
I mean, so amazingly well done. It should be huge, you know?
Yeah, I feel like that. It's like cyber metal.
Cyber metal should be huge. Should be massive.
It should be, yeah. I honestly think like it.
Just it. Just it's one of those things
that I think, I think it was on game Found, which we've talked
to a lot of people and kind of fuck game found is what it
sounds like. But I think it was at the time
when Kickstarter was being more fucky than they always are.
And it was like, we're going to switch to like Web 3 blockchain
shit. And so the project, if this was
on Kickstarter, I think it would have blown up like way bigger.
I mean, segmental 2012 and and and then just this in general is
the handbaskets and the the the low res futures book here.
Like you said, it's incredible. Again, both games, they're so
disparate, like they're so different from each other, but
have such a solid through line. Both like visually or fantastic.
Both are incredibly well thought out, light, fun games.
I would love to play both. I think when we were originally
talking about this, we were talking about trying to have
Aaron and Max on to like we review it, then we'd also play
it, but our schedules just like never really aligned.
So I'm glad that we actually got to have them on to chat at
least. And then I got to review both.
This is something I wanted to go over for a very long time.
Both of us have and really excited to go through it.
Like these are are fantastic games from people who make
fantastic stuff and have incredible thoughts about THRPG.
We've said this over and over again the Read the Fucking
Manual podcast. RTFM.
Go check them out. I, I love the way they think
about games all over the way they talk about games.
It is a, it's a book club podcast.
They really discuss the books in a very different ways.
Like we, we are very much like a systems and product podcast and
they're very much like a like a book, like a book club podcast
and they talk about so much more about the like themes and, and
things like that. Then then like a product review,
you know, so I really like when we like there's a couple things
that we've both done and it's fun to have done it and then
hear their opposite take. Like I think they did bloody
Badlands and we did as well. So it's, it was really fun to do
that episode and then listen to them.
So if you, if you like this shit that we do, you should
definitely go check out the RTFM podcast.
Aaron and Max, like I said, are amazing.
They will be on the show again. We're talking about doing some
type of Round table or, or something.
And yeah, check out the previous episodes where we went over
Intermere Brightly and Childhood with Aaron, and then yesterday's
conversation with Max at Ran ran long in a very fun way.
I'll get that episode out soon. If you're listening to this one,
I put the one out for it, but if you're watching it, it's not
yet. But that's it.
That's where we're at. I don't know what we're going to
do next week. We'll let you know next week.
And that's been handbaskets. That's been the entire Lord of
the Features book across multiple episodes.
Check it out. We'll send you all the links to
their itches and to RTFM and to everything.
And you know where our links are.