Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll podcast brought to you by
The Adventure Archive. My name is Ryan.
And I'm Kirby. Hello.
And today we are going to be going over the rules.
Light, horror, TTRPG, squishy. This is from Emmitt Kiernan with
art from Mike Wassian and designed from dye Sugars, whose
name is on a lot of stuff that I've been finding recently.
So they do a fantastic job. So this is this is a fun one.
Yeah, for sure. I think we every time you come
on, we we chat a little bit about like, you know, like what
the heck are we going to do? And we decided to do a horror
episode this time because we're also going to be chatting about
what else are we chatting about today.
Dead Horse magazine, but well, I'll just leave it there so
everybody can have their, their, I don't want to say dirty things
on your stream, so. There you go.
And that's that's good. So yeah, so we're we're going to
we're going to hop into Squishy. My phone just said reminder
you're supposed to be doing this right now.
So thank you for letting me know we're going to hop into that
Squishy. Squishy is fun.
It's really fucking fun. This is, this is one of the ones
that was put out from Exalted funeral.
Got the little exalter funeral tag in the back here but there's
been some I think. I think there's three adventures
and I I know that two have been printed because I I have them
And there's a third one on on emit itch.
Fuck. I can't remember what it what
what the itch is now. We'll find it at the end but
it's like sugar render or something like that.
We'll make sure we send that link out.
But two of them are really fun. The first one they're all really
fun is called Dance till You're Dead.
This is a big gorgeous Zine. Very different art style.
And then then the squishy Zine itself.
It definitely has like this kind of amalgamation of like
different things, but it's really neat, very artsy.
And then we were just talking about Halloween babysitter.
These are both, yeah, these are all exalted, really, really fun
little scene. The Halloween babysitter is
like. I said this before we started
the stream, but this is one of my favorite game books that I
own because just because of how fun it is to just look at like
it's like a comic book for like a 12 year old.
Yeah, but like, but like murder like.
Oh yeah, yeah. For Murder is 12 year old,
obviously. Yeah, it's really, really neat,
really interesting. It's got a lot of fantastic
arts, really cool spreads. But the beginning really is a
comic. Like there literally is.
I got comic in the in the beginning of it, so.
Really cool. Really neat.
This is a fun game. This is definitely going on the
list of games that fuck. If I could just start one, then
we'll get a series going, but this is one of the ones that is
absolutely going to be going. Yeah.
Maybe if I start talking about it, if I start talking about it
on here, maybe it'll force me to actually do it.
I have a plan to start a series called Side Quests, which is a
lot of these, especially rules like games we've gone over where
we get to review them. But maybe a lot of people
haven't played them or there's not like in a lot of Ap's for
them really want to have like a one to two sessions for each one
and bounce through a lot of the games that when we review them
we're like, fuck, I want to play this super bad or I've read this
a bunch of times and haven't had the opportunity really want to
do that. This is definitely going to go
on that because it's so light, so easy, super quick.
So why don't we just stop into it and we'll get crack a
lacking. Boom.
So this is Squishy, a quick start horror game.
First of all, Vibes. Immaculate.
Love it. Yeah, this is my this is my shit
right here. Like the the art style of this.
I'm already. I'm already trying to I'm
already trying to contact MM Wazion about doing art for dead
horse. So good.
And I mean I already have. I have a I don't know if you can
see this but. A little crypt keeper head
tattoo on my arm and as I was looking through this I was
reminded of that tattoo. I was like this is like very
similar art style. I love it.
Yeah, well, they're on Twitter at Corpsemonger.
I found them earlier, so definitely, definitely check out
there. But their style is definitely
that, that very far out there. Gross like.
Punk. I don't know.
I don't. I don't.
I don't know well, the punk, I'm not going to get into that.
But like, it's there. There's a genre of this kind of
art that's really I love the shit out of.
I know that some people. Repugnant got similar stuff.
Yeah, yeah, repugnant has that. There's a lot of the stuff from
below dwelling sewer mutants is that kind of like slime gorness
to it. So really, really fantastic art
and it really suits this game incredibly well.
And because the game itself is super fucking light, the rules
are like only just a couple of pages and the rest of it is just
more addons to it. But hopping into it, I really
love the design of it all the way through as well.
I will say one thing that I that is in the PDF but that is also
on here that I I would I would have liked a little bit
differently but it's not a big deal.
The table of contents is the back cover.
Would have really liked actually to see this page which is kind
of like a this kind of like hex comb grid over the interior art
or the cover art on the back and maybe this replaced by the table
of contents. But that's about, that's about
the only bit that was a little bit different for me.
It is a short of Zine that it does have bookmarks but it
doesn't have hyperlinks. But again it's it's literally
like you know 20-30 pages. So that's not a huge drop off on
a short Zine like this. But again, overall really really
love the layout in graphic design of this mixed with the
the art style. So hopping in quick let's play a
horror game. A rules like system for those
who want to run a survival horror scenario on a pinch
Squishy is good for players who want a challenging experience
without a lot of number crunching.
For TRBG newbies and veterans for large groups if you want,
it's a D10 system and most important, the system is super
quick. Character creation is very
abstracted. If you are one of those
grognards that really likes to just, you know, jerk off with
your fucking dice, this is not the game for you.
This is extremely abstracted and I really enjoy that for a lot of
the rules, light style stuff. Yeah, this, this.
When I was reading through it earlier today, I I realized how
how different this is than a lot of the other games that I have
that are extremely rules. Like even what was the last one
we did together I can remember. You're like, man, that would
make a whole game for this. Like, I don't know.
But no, the last one was. I wish I could remember that May
because I don't want to wait, I don't want to just sit here
thinking about it. But the I remember thinking
like, wow, this game is so cool because it's so it's so just
simplistic. Like everything is just so easy
and simple and the numbers just make sense.
But like, I love this even more because of how the numbers are
basically irrelevant. Like it's literally like, yeah,
just you know, just get like if it works, then you just say it's
a 10 like if like some of the shit's like that.
And I love that. Yeah, I'm, I'm completely
blanking on what we did for the last one because the one we did
prior to that, which was one of the first times you were on
that, we really, really did like a really deep dive I think was
when we did a slip gate Check Point.
We did, yeah, we did that. We did packs and blades dead.
Oh. Packs and blades.
Yeah, and then? It must have been packs and
blades. Maybe it was packs and blades.
Was that the last? I mean, I don't want to.
I'm talking about it. But yeah, I'm just trying to
remember like that. I was just thinking about that
how I I love the games that are so, so simple.
But then this one just takes that on a different in a
different direction, where it's like, it's so simple that you
could just make shit up, make the rules up while you play,
like make the numbers up. It doesn't fucking matter, like.
Well that's The thing is like the numbers for them for a lot
of the time don't matter and it's a really interesting way to
to run a game especially for like it specifically says this
is for people that don't want to do a whole lot of number
crunching and that's that's really cool so so character
creation really expounds on that and again man I just I love the
graphic design throughout this. I think that if this is I
believe it was dye that did a lot of this, the mix of their
graphic design with Mike Watson's art throughout this
entire thing. Is is just perfect.
Like perfect. I even really love this texture
that they put on all the pages. So it's not just like a plain
white. It's so much nicer on the eyes
and so much nicer in the design that it's really cool.
So this is character creation. We got a couple of big pieces
with like, I don't know, weird to form, children rotting with
needles in their heads and stuff.
A lot of the, yeah, a lot of the Zine has this kind of like
green. Like, almost like a dark
chartreuse color throughout That's really, really beautiful.
And yeah, so character creation. Jump into a world.
Survival horror in six simple steps.
Love when we get a list of steps.
Skate Wizards. Thank you Ozo.
Skate. Wizards.
Yeah. Love that shit.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So damn you.
You're almost getting double digits on some of these
episodes, man. That is why you are a R de facto
third host. So step one, the GM lets the
players know what time period and basic saving the game plays.
The game takes place in and gives him a moment to come up
with a character idea and name. That's it.
So I could be like, hey, we're doing Jack the Ripper era,
Victorian England. Think of a name and a character
idea and you could be like, okay.
Well then I'm going to be some, you know, I'll be like a
detective or whatever and boom, there's your whole fucking shit,
yeah. Step 2.
The GM asks players to write down the following list on a
piece of paper. Why don't you make a fucking
character while you do this? Are you down for that or do you
wanna? All right, So okay.
So then why don't we stick with? Why don't we just stick with?
Like, let's just do nineties, 90s, small America, You know,
classic. Kind of like nightmare for.
Halloween. There you go, Yeah, let's do,
let's do that. So that's that is the time
period and basic setting we're we're talking about suburban,
suburban America, mid-october, Halloween creeping up,
decorations are already out in the mid mid 90s we'll say.
So that's. Hollingswood, Indiana.
That's where we're going to go, Hollingswood.
Perfect. So what is?
What is the character idea that you want to have for that?
You want to be like a teenager? You want to be like the?
Let's say I'm going to be the the mechanic's daughter.
She's going to be like super, super beefy and super, like
technical but extremely not savvy with like, you know, her
attitude going real tomboy, tomboy I was.
Going to say So what we used to call Tomboy in the 90s.
Yeah, yeah. Back in the 90s we called them
Tomboys, yeah. Yeah.
Versus, you know. Anyway, so Step 2, the G massive
players to write down the following list on a piece of
paper. So I need you to write down on
that same paper. There are 12345.
There are 6 stats right? The 1st is Brains, the 2nd is
Braun, the third is Moxie, the 4th is Handiness.
The 5th is combat, and the final one is survival.
Those are your stats. That's it.
You got 6 stats, 6 stats system, and that's what it is.
And then step three, the GM asks the players to write the
following descriptors next to each stat, matching them in a
way that best describes how that character might play.
What I think would be really fun with this would be like almost
like a like a serial killer like.
Letter cut from a magazine character sheet where I
literally hand a little package to players and these are
actually cut out already and then they can just like do the
lines and shit. I think you need some disaster
tourism supplemental material. There you go.
So I would have the six there and then I would have the other
ones and you would literally and I would hand a glue stick to you
and you would literally just glue stick and you would slap
these like these descriptions next to the the stat, so.
So these are the descriptors you put next to each of yours.
You've got shit kind of bad, kind of good, OK, great and
superstar. So you match those with your
stats and that's, that's that is how that is how that works.
There are numbers there are, there are numbers.
But that is as far as you like it.
It determines like what you need to roll for this D10 system, so.
Once you have all those down, tell me in order which which
ones you went with. Which ones Like what?
Which stat got what I'm. Going to go superstar for Braun
and great for handiness. Brains Okay.
Combat kind of good. Survival kind of bad.
And then moxie is shit. And that sounds like the the
buff tomboy mechanics daughter. That's a good one.
I like that. So in the next section we'll
break down what this means numbers wise, but it should be
enough to keep the casual players happy.
And so see page four for the descriptor table.
So this will just kind of explain on the next page what
all of that means I I really love the next page and and just
first of all, again, how it's laid out, which is gorgeous.
But the descriptors here, So Step 4, the GM asset players who
write something that they are especially good at or especially
bad at relating to each descriptor.
So this can be written in brackets next to the descriptor.
So the examples here they have handiness, combat, and brains.
So for handiness it says it could mean arts or mechanical
engineering or hacking. Which I assume for yours, since
we're the mechanics solder, it's going to be like machine
tinkering or something like that could yeah.
Machines. Yeah.
So combat could be hand to hand or a specific gun or mainly.
So it is, it's more specific. You're basically picking your
like if these are your abilities, you're picking the
skills that associated with it and you get like one really good
one, right. So brains could be wit,
toughness, medical knowledge or even psychic powers.
So again you could have like the mechanical handiness bit to it.
And if you want for the brains, you could have that be like the
the actual know how like whatever if if that's a or
something like that, yeah. So especially good at or
especially bad at relating to each descriptor.
So if you have like shit and stuff like that, you should put
like what you're super shit at for for each one as well.
So there's a section here that says hey GM, so this is talking
to the gym. It says let them know that they
will get bonuses when they try to carry out actions related to
their specialty, right? But if they try to roll for
something related to a stat that is too far removed from their
chosen specialty? It won't be quite as good a
margin for success. This is called a stray roll.
The bonus debuff effects for specialty and stray rolls are
reversed for the negative descriptors, right, so that
stray rolls are the ones that That's the only part that I was
a little bit like I had to reread.
Yeah, somebody said brains equals toughness.
I think that might be in the sense of like being smart enough
to like evade or something like that.
Being smart in combat as opposed to like your physical like
toughness or more like a will thing like as opposed to
physically being tough. I think will probably is a is a
good interpretation for that. So the stray roles are the only
ones that when we get to it we'll we'll chat about a lot
because I just want to make sure I have that correct in my mind.
So what did you what did you want to go through all of yours,
or are you good with just going through just the first couple?
So what what what did you pick for your for your specialties in
each one? So brains I had.
OK, so my specialty is problem solving.
Braun was my superstar. So that one is heavy lifting,
lifting, engine blocks and shit. Moxie is my shit.
So flirting. Handiness I am great at, so I
chose machines and machine parts, that kind of thing.
Combat, I'm kind of good at. So I chose baseball bat as like
just a standard thing. Swing hitting, that kind of
shit. And then survival was kind of
bad and that would be planning ahead.
I like that. Those are great.
That's fantastic. So those are your.
The your specialties that go with your stats, that go with
your descriptors that go with with all of that.
So that's great. So that's most of character
creation right there. So Step 5 is the first dice
roll, each player rolls D100 and that is your luck.
So hit me with that D100. Shit, I don't have a D100 now.
You're going to have to do it. I don't have to do 100 handy.
No worries. I will throw a Actually, you
know what? Just do exclamation point D100
in chat. I do believe that I have 6262.
Boom. I also while we're rolling dice
and stuff, I'll show off this real quick.
I just got this from Critical Machines.
This is my new Electronic Dice Roller.
That is really dope. I'll unplug this real quick and
throw it in. So basically when you have like
the dice that you need a roll, I could just hit D100 and it'll
give me a D100. So really, really fun little
thing I got here from critical machines across the pond.
Anyway, so you got a 62. So this is your luck.
This is your stay alive money. This is points that you can
spend to pass roles that you missed, or if you straight up
die from one of the GM's more deadly monsters, you can choose
to set your luck to zero and continue onward.
In a game, be sure to describe in detail what would have
happened if they didn't burn their luck.
So basically when you this is you have 62 points to make roles
successes or to not die with. That's what luck is.
And then step 6. Get them to write down HP next
to their name and draw a box next to it if that box.
In that box they can fill in how much HP they have.
If you want this to be more of an an action oriented D&D style,
smack the monster set game. You might want to let them take
their bronze stat as their HP or even roll the D100 and take
whatever they get. But seeing as this game is
called a squishy, I recommend giving them all a flat starting
HP of 16. Make a death only be one or two
hits away. It always makes combat more
interesting like that. We'll just say HP16 you get with
that, and that's mostly. And so essentially that's sort
of it. And then there's a really cool,
extraordinarily gruesome piece of art here, which is just like
a face, but it's like almost like a shotgun blast into it.
But it's got like a 3D Ness to the gore.
That's fantastic. And then there is a stat table
on this page, I think in the context of the Zine itself in
spreads. This page, yeah, ties right into
the next one, which it says another basically full page
piece, but it just says beyond the six steps.
So if that's all you wanted to do, you could play the game like
that. There's a whole section here
where it's like full page art, full page art, full page art.
It's a nice, nice batch right in the middle.
Of a lot of really good art, but there is more that you can do.
What did you pick for your name? For your character?
Shit, I didn't pick a name. Let me see.
I think there's a name generator in the back, isn't there?
Or no, it's not. It's not a name generator.
No, it's. It's.
Other stuff Generator. Random tables, yeah.
Let's see. I'm going to pick the name of
the person who wrote the Halloween babysitter Valkyrie T
Love Crew. I'm going to say my name is
Valkyrie. There you go.
Friends call you Val. Yes.
Boom, thumbs up. So you got Val.
All right, so that is that's the core of the game right there.
And then there's more, which I which I really like.
I like the extra little nitty gritty bits here so you can peep
the next section to see how all of the stat descriptors
function. When it comes to dice rolls and
then start playing. So these are necessary parts.
Actually. There are some ideas for how to
run monsters just ahead on page 8 too.
And some ideas for different kinds of magic systems on page
18. I'm going to get, I'm going to.
I'm going to with some of these smaller ones.
I'm just going to start hyperlinking shit.
So Oh my God, dude. Yeah, this is the piece I used
for for the socials. Like yeah, it's just it's.
The maggots. Really.
Eyes and stuff. Oh my God.
It's fantastic. Yeah, I actually, I'm just going
to go ahead and turn the zoom off and and really, really get
this one in there for people. It's like look how gruesome that
is. It's so good and the art color
is so vibrant. Yeah, I love again, like this is
the kind of stuff for small zines that really hits that vibe
stat that we're going to be talking about later.
Because with a lot of the small zines, I know there's a little
bit of discourse around arts and tabletop role-playing games, but
it's really nice to have something.
It's really nice to have something that really pulls you
into the game when you have a thing that is as small.
So mods and mechanics. There are also extra mods you
can add to character creation and game play related to what
your ideal play style and tone is.
There's sanity and fear, experience and leveling and psy
slash magic. I love sanity and fear for sure.
And the psy magic one, you know, experience and leveling is
really if you want to do more than just one shot.
And the psy magic is if you want to have, you know psychic and
magic stuff in your game, which you know I think in a lot of
horror I wouldn't but it would depend on like the setting if I
was really going to lean into something more like Lovecrafty
and or like put this more into like a quasi, you know,
medieval. You know our sword and sorcery?
Kind of like black Odds kiss setting.
I would definitely have that. But if it's like 90s, you know
Suburbia, I don't know if I'd have like Sigh and Magic, but
it's I like that there are options that both have it and
not have it and it doesn't break the game either way.
Yeah, and they do. They do go over a couple of
different options of each of those too Later on as well, in
different ways, you can incorporate them.
Low magic, high magic, that kind of shit too.
So. Absolutely.
So we'll we'll we'll hit all that as we get there.
So these will add extra steps to character creation.
Although some of these can be brought up mid game and they say
that will explicitly point out when this is applicable.
Those who don't worry and of course feel free to add any
hacks or mods. Another great piece of art in
the bottom left of the page here it's got a very gosh, like I
don't even. Know how to describe?
Swim from the 90s like that, kind of.
Shit, this is like the 90s this is screams 90s, right?
This is the kind of shit that you would see from like like
someone in like 11th grade who's rocking like smells like
children, shirt like on the back of their fucking notebook, you
know what I mean? So dice rolls when a player in
PC or Monster has to take an action.
Such as attacking, fleeing, boarding up a window, or driving
a vehicle, so pretty much anything they might be called on
to roll a dice. To pass a dice roll, a player
must roll a D100, and if the number they roll is under the
number associated with their descriptor, they succeed.
If they roll over the number but less than 15 points over, the GM
might find it in their heart to grant them either a light
failure or a mixed success, depending on contacts and if
they roll under 10% on anything other than shit.
They get a critical success. If they roll over 90% on
anything other than a superstar skill, they create fail.
So this is the only part that does get like a tiny bit
crunchy. It's like you actually, you
really do need to look at this table and bounce the math off of
it. So I want to do a couple of
example roles just to see where we're at with stuff.
So real quick first, so helpful tip in the sake.
Of the flow the game requires. Don't be afraid to let a player
pass a roll for something they're good at automatically.
If they only fail by a few points let them off of the light
fail. So I like that there is a buffer
for make success. Make success is one of my
favorite mechanics and table dog games so always love and that's
in a game. But we we see automatic we see
right away that the core for this is a D100 roll under system
right And then the stats that you had really the number
doesn't matter. As much as the percentage based
on what you chose, which is interesting.
So you don't ever have a flat number, right?
Right. Am I wrong?
No, I mean it is kind of always a flat number.
It's, it's the, it's basically always going to be a flat
number. You're always going to be doing
something except for if you're using the specialty in in that
specific instance. So you if I'm using my bra on to
do do some bullshit. Right.
Like push open a door or something.
I could probably apply my specialty to that because it's
lifting heavy objects. I can make an argument for that.
So I'd be rolling under 85, whereas if it was going to be, I
don't know, pulling a rope or climbing a wall, that might be
just a regular base, which would only be 75.
So that's I think that's and the stray is like, I think what
that's like the the hardest one, right?
Yeah, that's if so, like if you for example, like if you're if
you have to roll a survival role and specifically related to like
planning ahead or something and that's the shit that you had,
then you get stray. Or like if your specialty was
like mechanical tinkering or whatever for handiness.
But the actual skill is maybe like what's something that's the
polar opposite of like mechanical tinkering, like PC
hacking or something. That would be like a brain scale
or something. Like you would, you would
potentially roll a stray on that you would you would be gone for
stray. But see this is the part where
I'm like I really want to go over something and so you don't
have so super, so like you're never going to write down for
example or I guess maybe you could always write down for
example like the numbers next to it.
But let's say that what you just did for an example, right.
So we get to a door that you have to push open, right.
So you're going to do a Braun roll.
Right. And what's your specialty in
Braun? My specialty is heavy lifting.
Heavy lifting. So we would say pushing the door
open, right. So we're saying, so you are
saying that will probably fit your specialty.
So you roll a D100 and you just have to get less than 85.
Yeah. Right.
So but if you get within 10 of 85, you get a critical success.
A mixed success. You're right.
Sorry, I missed that last part.
Yeah. Yeah.
So you're within 10 points of of
the actual thing. See this.
Is other than superstar right? You can't roll hold.
On Oh yeah, because you can't wait.
So this is what I'm saying. This is the only part that gets
a tiny bit confusing if they roll over the number, but less
than 15 points over, you get a mixed success, right?
If they roll under 10%. Oh no, no, no.
That's literally under 10. So you would have to roll under
10 on anything less than shit. It's a critical success.
And if you roll over 90 on anything other than superstar to
crip fail. So that is, those are flat
numbers. You roll under 10 or 10%, you
roll over 90. So if you go under, if you were
to roll an 80, you succeed, right?
But if you were to roll a 87? You would fail, but I could
potentially give you a mixed success because you're within 15
points of rolling over and then say that you're rolling
something. What is the stuff that you're
kind of good at? Kind of good is my combat.
So like baseball bat. OK, so whenever you're trying to
attack a monster with your baseball bat, right, you have to
roll under 40%. Well, no, no, because it's your
specialty under 45. But say you picked up a crowbar
instead or something. You would then have to roll
under a 40%. Or if it was a dagger or like
something lightweight that's super like, you know, fast.
I would holding a 30 problem under 30.
Right. Yes.
I would definitely say stray would be, yeah, like us a pokey
thing versus a baseball bat. Yeah, you, you pick up a dagger
and yeah, you would have to roll under a 30%.
So, OK. So that makes sense just talking
through it. So basically the these, this
graph here gives you the flat numbers for everything that you
want. You could theoretically also
just write these down. To your your stats too on your
character sheet to just say what your very specialty is.
But I guess you don't even really need to.
You could just have this sitting out for players and they would
just always know what it is. Like I would a quick reference
card or something. Just yeah, I was going to say
that just that that page, you could have this little quick
reference card on the table. I'm just printing that hold it
over. Yeah, even that like doesn't
really matter because you just like ask them what it is.
You reference it on the roll and you you're good.
Like, you know, because it's really irrelevant to the players
what the number is. It's all on the GM side to
decide, you know, does this number match the thing good,
done. You know, like that.
I really I I. I love that a lot.
You know what I think could be a fun way to GM this too is to go
full like quasi narrative with it for the for the players.
And literally just have the GM roll all of these behind a
screen and just have the players say, like, well, what do you
want to do? And then I would hit my button
on my new critical machine or whatever for a 100 and I'll say
ooh, like that's what you try to do.
Like this was the outcome of it. And they could just go with
never having to roll dice on their own at all if they really
didn't want to. Because as a GM, all you have to
do is hit do 100, do 100, do 100, do 100 for everything.
That'd be really fun to do too. Because in that lets the
players, yeah. And it lets the players stay
completely immersed the entire time.
They never have it broken up by by dice, and they never have to
be like, ooh wait, did I hit a 35?
Did I hit a 32 or whatever? It could just be like, here's
what you tried, here's what what worked when it didn't.
That'd be really fun, a way to play this game.
Yeah. Okay.
So that's the core mechanic. You assign all of your stuff.
You get a number when you attempt something.
You have to roll under based on if it was your specialty, your
base skill, or a stray roll if you're really bad at that thing.
And then that's the whole game. Next we get into the monsters,
which are also, you know, somewhat abstracted to jog your
imagination. We're going to break monsters
into four categories. I love the four categories of
monsters. What are your thoughts on this?
Yeah, no, I think it's cool. It's it's like a super easy way
to. You know, now I'm thinking about
I I kind of did something similar with with Guild, but
it's just a super easy way to just categorize your Beastiere
and then when you get your supplements, people just
reference the category, add their own bonuses to it, and
then you know you end up with the phasing hunter or something
like that, right? Like, you know, it's I I love
that concept. I think that.
Like core core rule books that have extremely extensive
beastiaries and magic spell lists and all that stuff I think
are kind of just over like it. It's not necessary.
Let let people use their their creativity to come up with that
kind of stuff. I I mean, I agree to a point on
that. But what I really like from a
court rule book is like an OK beast theory because I like to
know the context of what the creators were thinking when they
write monsters and stuff. What I really, what I really
love to see is a page on how to build their own beasts like
Fallen has that. I'm pretty sure Pax and Blades
had one where like here's how to quickly do one or whatever.
I really really like that a lot where it specifically says like
to make a quick monster pick the level pick.
Yes, pick that. You know when we when we looked
at just yesterday when we went over Vaults of Arne from Leo
Hunt, there was a whole page on how the Adversary worked and
adversary types and I really like that.
And then like a decent sized B series, but not too much.
It's definitely not, you know fucking 5E.
And yeah, anyway, so the the four monsters are broken down
into the Horde, the Stalker, the Overlord and a special monster.
So going over those real quick, the Horde is the lowest tier.
They come with a lot of different varieties or they add
variety to the game. They are lethal, but they have
low HP, maybe even dying after one or two hits.
So they're almost like kind of like minion style depending on
the weapon used. And they should be relatively
numerous and give the oppression of being relentless.
Have you ever seen Wonder? Wonder Egg Priority The anime?
No. For anyone out there who has
seen Wonder a priority, first of all, good job, and 2nd the
bouncy, the bouncy things the first time she goes in there,
that's what I imagine. No, I'm just kidding.
I love anime. So yeah, so I love the horde.
They're basically supposed to be super low level.
Not a whole lot of hit power, but just a shit load of them.
And that's why they're called the Horde and I love, I love
that where you run into maybe one or two, you think it's easy,
you turn the corner and then there's like 10 more and then
behind you there's like 10 more. And then to your right there's
like 10 more and you're like fuck, you know?
I love that, that vibe and there's cool little piece of art
next to it. The next is the STALKER monster,
and it says the STALKER should haunt the players over multiple
encounters to provide a counterpoint to the challenge of
the Horde. If the Horde is fast and small,
the Stalker should be tall and slow.
If the Horde is dimwitted, the Stalker should be terrifyingly
intelligent, and the Stalkers attack should be lethal, and it
should be extremely hard to kill.
So it's literally supposed to be the direct opposite of the
Horde, and it's. I feel like it's one of the ones
that should hop in, take a big strike, and then like, bounce
out and the players should constantly fear that it's going
to drop in on them. Again, the Overlord is the
Commander of the Horde, the main manifestation of evil.
And an unknowable ancient horror and is the ultimate bioweapon
whatever it is. And if you're playing with
sanity, witnessing the Overlord should be a huge danger to the
mental and emotional wellbeing of non monster characters.
And attack should be fatal and should either require a special
weapon, ritual, or trap to defeat or be completely
unstoppable. The aim should drop hints and
tease your words present throughout the game.
So this is literally the BBEG. This is the final thing.
This is the the worst of the worst and literally just looking
at it fucks you up. And then there is the special.
The special is a monster that looks, acts, and plays
differently to any other creature in the session.
It might be a spiritual entity that attacks a player's sanity
and fear. Could be invisible or gigantic
or have a projectile attack. Could be spreading fungus or
disease. It could be hallucination or
alien implant trying to overcome the player's personalities.
Feel like the players want to have the rug pulled out from
underneath them bring out the special.
So that's the four core monsters and I love.
That spread for all games, but also for like horror games
specifically. I think it's really dope.
That top bar all the way across that just says monsters.
It's just, yeah, it's great. So cool, this whole thing is
really great. Is this actually viewable in two
page grilling spreads? No RLC.
I hate this when and that's why I don't do it in spreads a lot
because it doesn't break off the first one, the first page.
But anyway, yes I completely agree it looks.
It's really again, the graphic design throughout.
This is really fucking good, but what are your thoughts on these
four monster types? I think they're great.
I I I love, like I said before I love the way that I think a lot
of games are kind of moving into using categorized like monsters
and and weapons and other things like that.
Like I just feel like that's the best way to go but they do a
great job of explaining. In the description, the various
ways that you can use these, which is good because it's also
kind of like feeding examples to the people reading, like this is
how you do it without telling you how to do it, right?
Yeah, so I like that. I, I, I, I do really feel like
if there's an interesting move in tabletop games and stuff in
general, that's kind of like often like on Unsaid.
Almost like on like it on Unsaid.
Dealing with it, I can describe it where everyone hated 4th
edition D&D and now. A lot of people are putting
stuff in their game that is literally just 4th edition D&D,
like having more gamey bits to it, having minion monsters,
having like once per like encounter powers and things like
that. I I think it's really
interesting that everyone shit on 40 so hard and now they're
basically saying everything wrong with 5E they should just
fix it by doing. X&X is just 40, so these kind of
speak to me a little bit in the way that that does, where
there's literally just like minion monsters and stuff.
And the spread of the monsters here is really fantastic.
I love that The Horde is going to be your base bad guys, and
there's a ton of them. The stalker is going to be, you
know, the the mid level Batty that's going to come for you all
the time. There's the final Overlord boss
and then like just the weirdo special and that's going to pop
out a bunch. It's really, really cool.
Yeah, and there's enough flexibility in there too where
you can just be like, you know, I I might I might mix mix some
of the overlords like not powers, but like concept of
like. Being whatever it is into the
stalker or even into the Horde. Like maybe the Horde has one guy
that's like slightly bigger and more mutated than the rest and
he's like an offshoot of the of the Overlord's like, you know,
appendix. It like fell out of his stomach
and became his own thing or something.
You know, you could do weird stuff like that.
And you know the the rules are so, so simple and and and open
that it's very easy to do that with.
Absolutely. Next is the section of how to
run monsters and combat which is really great.
That is one thing that Zine does really well is it tells you like
how easy it is to do it and it gives you plenty of examples.
But like when we get into the the other the right after this.
I love that they do examples here, but basically monsters
have three main stats. They have speed, horror, and
Ferocity. Speed could be rolled with a
chase within chase or combat for dodging right if the monsters
very fat. Fast horror could be rolled
against a player's brains or survival to try and frighten
them, and then Ferocity is like a combination of their combat
survival step. So again, pretty broad, pretty
abstracted. Definitely gives you enough
information for running those three, but gives you a ton of
freedom in the way that you build your creature and the way
that you want them to run in combat hit points, they also
have them. A good quick way of running hit
points is to give the monsters a small pool of HP that is
difficult to whittle down. I really like this part.
This is interesting. A horrid monster can have one to
three HP, and every time a player succeeds a combat role
against a creature, the GM should tell them to roll a
number of D10 depending on how they feel.
The strength of the weapon used and success of the attack would
be to indicate damage. For every multiple of 10 the
creature loses 1HP. Every multiple of 5 dictates how
staggered by the attack the enemy is, and the staggered is
highlighted, so we're going to know that this is interesting.
I think there are, in my opinion, there might be like
easier ways to to do this. One way if they're going to have
one to three HP and then there is like you're rolling a number
of D 10s or whatever for damage. Honestly, for a lot of these I
would just have no damage roles at all and just say like a
successful combat role just takes away one of the creature's
Hp's. I think that's it.
So like it would take one if your if your horn monster has
2HP2 successful combat roles would kill it like and I would
not worry about damage. I think that's a really super
easy way to do it. But that does kind of take away
the the stagger thing. So this basically says like
because the part that really I think is maybe it's a little too
abstracted, I think a little too hand WAVY is this part here
where it says. If the player succeeds against
the creature of the gym should tell them to roll a number of
D10 depending on how they feel the strength of the weapon used
and success of the attack would be.
So like you're hitting with a baseball bat and I'm like, well,
I feel like you did maybe 2 D 10s worth of damage with a
baseball bat on that hit. But then later I'll be like,
well now I feel like you maybe did 4 D 10s worth of damage.
Like that's a little maybe like for rules light, that's a little
bit too hand WAVY for me, like I do like a little bit more
structure than we'll. Yeah, tell me how hard you think
you feel like you hit. You know, that's just a bit too
abstracted for me. I actually read this the
opposite way. I read this that the GM should
tell the player to roll a number of D10 based on how many how
strong the player feels like their weapon is.
Yeah. And I don't know if maybe
that's, well, that wasn't what you were saying, right?
I thought you. Were saying oh.
OK, I thought you were saying. That either way, either way,
yeah. I was thinking I read it and I
thought the play and I was reading it as the player making
that determination. I actually really like that
because it kind of gives that like it kind of takes that
narrative control back away from the GMA little bit where like
the player, you know, which is for me, I'm fine with that in
some in some cases. And I kind of like it because
it's like, I don't know sometimes I feel like the
players should have a little more control and sometimes I
feel like they shouldn't and. I don't know, Maybe it doesn't
work. It doesn't work in a lot of
games. But I don't know, maybe it
would. Maybe it works well on this one.
I guess we'll find out when we play it on Cyclist.
I think the only, I think, I think the only thing that I
would really need to make that just a little bit less hand WAVY
is context. You know what I mean?
Like like what? How would you say that you
picked gun right and the other person picked bat, like as a
player or a GM? If you're letting the player
decide they're choosing how well their gun did versus another
player who's choosing how well their bat did, and their context
of the D 10s could be like a little bit different, so then
the GM is at least that center point for for whatever, for
consistency at least. So I think that's all it's
missing is context of like what? How many D 10s is considered a
really hard hit and how many D 10s is considered like a weak
hit. If that had, if there's a line
in here that basically said like 4010 is considered really
strong, then I would go, OK. Based on just that one line.
I can say contextually I know what a baseball bat versus a
bazooka is and then I can understand a little bit more.
That's the part where I feel like is maybe just a little bit
too handy with me, I. Feel like might have a 30%
chance of 1 shotting a creature with 3HP if you had 3D 10.
Potentially, Yeah. Yeah, potentially.
Yeah. Yeah.
So, yeah, I would say that two or 3D 10 really would be a
strong hit or. Well, well, wait a second, wait
a second. Yeah, I was going to say average
because it literally says they should have low HP, maybe even
dying from one to two attacks. So if IF3D10 would be like kind
of like an average age attack because the odds of you rolling.
You know, 30 are pretty low, right?
Because it says every multiple of 10.
So if you roll 3D ten and get 20, that's 2HP down, but if you
roll 15, that's 1HP down. And they're staggered.
That feels about, that feels OK, yes.
But again, we're still talking about like we're sitting down
and having to figure all of that out here instead of having
something just say like 3D ten is an average hit.
You know what I mean? So.
You know what, the more the more you talk about it, the more I
actually kind of like it. Because it's like, wait, hold
on, If I roll 2D10 and I roll A-15, I get 1HP and it's
staggered. Like, I think that's actually
kind of cool. Yeah, no, I do think that you're
right. I I do think it is maybe just a
tad it it needs just a little something, but.
Yeah, yeah, just just not. Not a ton.
And it could be. So it could be individualized to
your to your table. But this is this is that fine
line in rules light that goes from abstracted to hand WAVY.
And I love abstracted, but hand WAVY is where, like it starts to
get a little too blurry for me. But yeah, so retreat if the
combat role goes under the creature's ferocity.
The creature might make a ferocity saving throw to avoid
being forced to retreat. This only counts if the creature
isn't mindless, so you can actually make like the stalk or
retreat or something if you get a combat roll and and force them
away. I I like this page too how it's
split into like the black and white and then it has these like
cards of like different monsters across the bottom.
Really love that great piece of art here with like a a house
with those cards kind of in the windows.
And then this like gruesome just horrific Eldridge creature and
like creatures coming up over the top of the house.
Yeah and this is an example of a block of monsters for a game of
squishy. I love this entire section here
as the both it this is a really great way.
It has an example of monsters. It also has an example kind of
adventure that it does like this is one of the best ways I've
seen. To describe this kind of like
abstracted rules light to give all of the contacts that we're
we're just talking about going through it.
I really loved all of this. So it says example of a block of
monsters for a game of Squishy. And so Kelsey, the GM, was able
to convince their friends to allow them to run a game of
Squishy. Their setting is a Haunted
Mansion run by an insane, immoral Dr. They quickly get to
work creating the horrors that will plague their players.
I, I, the pronoun you said here is really nice.
So this literally walks through as if you are from the mind of
the GM, Kelsey. Creating the characters and why
you would create them the way you did.
So clever, right? So the horde is the melon heads.
If we Scroll down, it is these children that look like they've
been turned inside out with these giant fucking heads.
Like it's it's yeah, it's got a very kind of, like disgusting
what what are the gross cabbage Patch Kids?
Garbage pail kids. It looks like a garbage pail
kid's been turned inside out. So Kelsey the gym decides to use
the urban legend the melon heads to inspire the mentions horde.
The description is a gaggle of children who have been
experimented on, their heads becoming bulbous, their flesh
rotting away, their hunger becoming insatiable.
And Kelsey has decided to make them fast, hard to hit but weak
to damage, cowardly and weak without a weapon.
So she stats them, but so yeah, so they stat them.
Thusly, they have 1HP. By the end of the game they'll
be attacking in fairly large groups, so Kelsey reckons
there's no sense making them too hard to kill.
Because the melon heads innocent child like looks, Kelsey makes a
mental note to have the players make a fear save anytime they
kill one because they look like little kids, so it's going to
fuck you up. The speed of the monsters is set
to 65% because they're supposed to be fast, but not insanely
fast. The horror is 50% because he
figures over time they become less frightening.
And they said the modifier 2 -, 5% horror for each following
encounter. So it's 50% to start and then
each time you encounter them you reduce it by 5:00 and then
ferocity is 45% because yeah, if they have a kitchen knife or
whatever Kelsey thinks shouting down that without weapons their
ferocity is 30%. As well as they do 1D10 damaged,
armed and armed and unarmed. So there's a little bit of
context right there for D10 damage.
So a slash by a little melon head, kid with a dagger or with
their fist, or whatever. There's only one D10 damage, so
there comes in a little bit of the context.
Next is the Stalker, which is the crawler.
They're small. They're they're supposed to be
small. No, the melon heads are small
and fast. So this should be slow and
heavy. It's an early experiment.
It's a scionic crawler that drags itself around and moans in
pain. She's going to make it slow,
relentless, high HP, and can break down doors and use psychic
powers. So it's got HP5.
Slow to attack, slow to maneuver, not great at sneaking
up on players. Soaks a lot of damage, so it's a
lot higher than the kids. Kelsey reckons though, that if
the players can blow up the brain.
Or turn the brain, or set the brain on fire.
It'll drop TO1HP, so the speed is 25% because it's slow, the
horror is 65% because it is more scary, and the ferocity is 75%
because it's harder to kill. It's been attacked as an instant
kill, but it takes two turns to complete.
It picks up a victim and then either slams them on the ground
or tears them apart. So again, you are squishy.
It can kill you in two hits. Jesus.
Right, so polar opposite of the melon heads.
Really cool. Overlord is a Doctor.
Great piece of art here. I feel like that's almost like
the guy from the the the art from the main page we showed
earlier. The Doctor is the villain.
They're half rotten, half embalmed, corporeal, revenant,
they The HP is not applicable, so we talked about it being more
than just HP. To kill it you have to do
something special. And the Doctor can be staggered,
but can only be defeated by burning its original remains,
which are buried in the woods. Did we did we touch on what
staggered means? I know it's been highlighted a
couple times. I don't remember if you saw what
that means. I don't think we've gotten
there. Yeah, I think that might be at
the end of this section. Gotcha.
This the speed? Well, we'll we'll control F it
and try to find it in a second. So the speed is 25%, which means
it's slow, but it can teleport. The horde is 75%.
Because it exudes raw horror and radiates the sound of crying
children, and it can temporarily convert players into its
acolytes, and the ferocity is 55%.
The doctor can attack with its scalpel for one D10 damage, or
vomit acidic bile for 2D10 damage.
So I think that an average attack is liberty is just one
D10, and then everything above that it gets harsher and harsher
and harsher. So vomiting acidic bile from the
big bad is only two D 10. It seems like one D 10 is pretty
average hit and you just kind of go up from there so 3D ten might
actually be like a pretty pretty brutal hit.
So but if you hit the bat with your specialty and get really
good I would give 2D10 for a specialty hit.
One D 10 for base hit, 2D10 for specialty hit is what it feels
like for me feels good and then a crit maybe even throws a
little more and then those are the three monsters and then the
special one. I love this piece of art here
too where there's this like. I don't even know what the fuck.
It's the melon head being disemboweled.
Yeah, and like all of. It's like, it's like squirting
juice from everywhere. I want this as a tattoo.
That's pretty fucking disgusting and dope.
I love it. Get it?
Get it right on them cheeks. Creeping spawn is the special.
It's some other horror stalking the mansion but growing inside
of it. So it's a diabolical mold that
absorbs living flesh, creating hybrids of human and animal
flesh. It scrabbles at doors of
quarantine rooms with which contain key items.
The spawn will be largely immobile, but can spit out
multiple limbed freaks which crawl around in search of
creatures to infect. HP is one of three, speed is 0
to 30%, the whore is 55%, and the frosty is 45%.
So again, I really And then another gorgeous huge.
Page piece of art here that ties in with the other spread, which
is great. I love the context of everything
that they just did for creating an adventure, walking through
from the context of the GM and writing it as if you were
writing it. That is such a clever way to
give context for rules like Teen.
I think it's fantastic and actually answer the question
that we had just a bit ago among What's an average hit?
Yeah, yeah, this that that whole section right there is like,
honestly, just amazing and it. You know, even with the the page
before it, with the the little chapter title page or whatever,
with the haunted house on it, like I just love that because I
immediately was like you just you just instantly can come up
with all kinds of ideas for like I don't even need to populate
this with anything. It's just a fucking nasty house
that these people, I don't know did they get kid, bunch of
people got kidnapped and they're going to turn be turned into
melon heads or something. Now they escaped and now they
have to get out. Like you know, it's just super
easy, quick, fast, just throw it on the table, go like I love it.
I love that. Yeah, Fear insanity.
This is the section for that. We're we're we're so we're we're
past all the monsters and these are the bonus stuff that you can
add to it. So fear insanity.
Most. Most horror RPG's have fear or
sanity's system to represent emotional and psychological
toll. Sometimes it can be really fun
and squishy. It's an optional mod.
Some people don't like that, so it makes sense.
This is kind of one of those like talk to your place
beforehand. Some people might be down for
like gross stuff, but not might might not be down for like
sanity and things like that depending on, you know, whatever
they feel like. So this is it's nice to have as
an optional mod and something you can talk to your players
about. So the brain dain the downward
brain drain downward spiral of insanity.
This is not something you can spring on your players mid game.
It's an extra step in creation. Basically the GM asks the
players to pick which stat brains mocks your survival.
So which of your three stats brains mocks your survival are
you going to pick for your sanity?
I mean, it would probably be. I assume it would be my
superstar, which would be oh sorry no, my brains monster.
It would be my highest one on that would be brains which is my
OK. So brains.
So you they have the highest. So yeah, whichever one has the
highest, the gym will tell you to set that number as your
sanity. So your sanity is also OK.
When you witness a new creature or horrific event, like seeing
the BBEG for the first time, you must make a Sanity save attempts
to roll under your existing sanity score.
If you fail, you lose 1D10 Sanity at a minimum.
So if you're just OK at brains, which would be what?
Like a I don't remember what the what the table for for that stat
was, you would have your you said you're OK.
That's a 55% so. Yeah, every time you fail to
save, you roll one to 10 and reduce your save by that.
But you can regain sanity by killing monsters, sleeping,
eating, or whatever. When sanity drops to zero, you
become insane or an NPC and it's essentially death.
But you can be cured if you get decent therapy, yeah.
I have a decent therapist, so I think it'll be all right.
There you go. So there's actually two ways to
do insanity. That's the first one is
basically like a a a constant reduction in your insanity over
time. The second one is the freak out
meter. This is called the pressure
cooker. It's something that GM can
spring on the players mid game. The GM simply needs to tell them
to take X Points of fear when they fail a horror check or
witness something awful. When a situation reaches A
suitable crisis point, the GM asks players to roll 2D10.
If the player rolls under their current fear, they freak out.
The GM will then give the player three tough choices of how
they're going to freak out and the player will pick one.
Fear can be shed by killing monsters sleeping in a minute,
so this is more of like a a panic mothership table.
So if these were your two options as a GM, would you do
more of the brain drain or would you do more of like the freak
out panic? Porque no Los dos.
I mean, I guess theoretically you could do both, but.
No, I would probably do the freak out meter.
Obviously I would, I would let them know ahead of time if
that's the thing I'm going to have in the game.
But I I would prefer that one just because I feel like it
would be more fun to pop. But I but I definitely think
that. If you were planning to play a
longer term game, then the brain drain would probably be
something that would be interesting to see happen over
several sessions. Well, I guess you can do.
I guess you can do both. One is sanity.
And one is 1. Is 1 is sanity and one is fear.
So you absolutely can do both I guess.
Yeah. This definitely would though add
a I think like a much a big like level to your rules like game to
have both. Insanity and Fear having two
more stats on top of everything that you're doing, I think that
would. I don't know if I would use
these for one shots, but I would use this for like arcs or longer
campaigns for sure. I would probably use the freak
out meter for a one shot if I. Felt.
It was chunky enough of like a spooky thing, you know, because
it's just a quick one off kind of event, but yeah.
Yeah, I think, yeah, I think, I think freak out meter definitely
reminds me of like the kind of like jump scare movies and the
brain drain Definitely reminds me more of like the slow burn,
like ratcheted up tension like in the background kind of thing
too. Yeah.
Cool. Yeah.
Then we have XP and leveling up if you want to continue your
quick start, squishy one shot into campaign.
We're gonna have to let the players get stronger over time.
They're proposing 2 methods for gaining XP and leveling up.
First is just the XP increase. It's the straightforward, simple
method, getting more capable over time passing milestones.
And I love milestone over XP leveling.
Unless XP is gold or pulling off impressive feats, IE scoring A
headshot with a rifle or something like that, players
gain a point of XP which they can spend.
To increase one of their stats by 5%, capping at 85, I I think
that's clever. I really like that.
And then the. Yeah, the B the B movie Nitro.
This is Mechanic. This one says, Am I quoting?
This is mechanic I'm really proud of.
That's one of the main mechanisms in a more in depth
RPG system I have in the works called Legends of the Video
Wasteland. Where is Legends of the Video
Wasteland? Because.
I don't know. Emit.
Let's come on. Up.
So it is intended to mechanically illustrate the
process of how heroes and genre movies become increasingly
unkillable and unrealistically capable as their sequels
progress. Think Ash from Evil Dead.
How it works is that when a player pulls off a risky
maneuver or one liner or something just straight up
cinematically badass, the game awards them a Nitro point.
Point of Nitro can be spent to automatically pass any role or
shrug off any damage. If you save up five Points of
Nitro, you can burn them to bring one stat up one level.
i.e. from kind of good to OK. Doing this one will allow your
character to take on a character class from the upcoming Legends
of the Video Wasteland game and two of their feats.
Come on man, Give us this Legend of the Video Wasteland then.
So watch the space. So I so both are really
interesting. I think that the the Nitro movie
one obviously requires you to have Legend of the Video
Wasteland associated with it because it specifically says
that you get to take a character class from that game.
So you need that game to do it. So I guess XP increases a way to
go from there. Sty and Magic is an X1.
It adds another stat to the game similar to Sanity.
Can be used for psi or magic. The GM can have this in play
from the start or spring it mid game.
You can set your survival brains or moxie as your psi or magic
point. So survival brains or moxie If
we're already using sanity, which is your brains.
What are you going to do for For psi?
I guess it could also be brains, but.
Yeah, I would probably use psi. I wouldn't want to use moxie or
moxie. See a survival.
Possibly, but I would probably just go with brains.
Gotcha Failed magic costs 1D10 Sanity slash Fear.
So every time you fail magic you you you reduce your sanity or
fear stat by 10%, which I love. I love magical failures.
I think they're really fantastic.
I I love the idea of magic being innately dangerous and anyone
who chooses to walk around with it can hurt themselves as much
as help themselves. So.
There's low magic, high magic, and and psy in here which is
cool. Low magic is mainly used on
ritual and creation of sigils and talismans.
Players tell the GM what the intent of the magic is and the
GM makes a secret role to see if they pass.
Talked about secret roles earlier, essentially the player
making a monkey's Paul style wish that can affect the course
of events but not directly break the laws of physics and the
starting threshold to pass is 15%.
So the players can spend magic points to raise their odds and
XP to raise the base. Damn magic is hard in a low
magic setting. 15% roll in your yeah and you're spending XP to
to increase it. And it may not even be the thing
you want. I love that.
And and you're gonna and every time.
And if you fail it, you're taking sanity damage.
Damn, that is. That is.
That is how I love magic. That is literally exactly how I
love magic. Really great Psy Psychic players
can pick up one type of psychic specialty per and can add other
specialties per level of Nitro. Again, we're getting to this
Nitro thing, but it really ties into a game that I don't.
I don't see. I don't know if you saw it on
their itch page, but we'll have to look into that.
So to use roll against the stat chosen to run Psy and take one D
10 point sanity fear when they use it.
Failures cause a misfire. Where the powers go wrong and
blast out uncontrollably. So same thing like you're just
rolling under the staff that you chose for it and it talks about
pyrokinesis, telekinesis, cryokinesis, electrokinesis,
telepathy, and remote viewing. And then there is oh shit,
there's literally a weapon damage table.
So all that bitching and Mona. Was doing earlier.
I noticed that earlier, but I didn't want to say anything.
We should just maybe that should be up where it talks about
weapon damage. It probably should be quite
earlier in here because this is about magic and weapon damage
just kind of feels like tacked onto this page.
Yeah, it should definitely be in the combat section.
Yeah, for sure. And then I wouldn't have had to
complain so much. Hi, Magic.
They say I'm under the opinion that high magic you should feel.
Well, magical. Duh.
So while maybe at some point I will put out a grim or of
interesting prompts for rituals or spells, I really don't think
it reads a list of this kind of projectile.
Does this kind of number of damage is very exciting.
So if you want to play a wizard you can do magic.
Any magic you tell the gym what kind of magic you want to do,
the gyms it's OK, make a magic roll and the GM decides where
this falls on the difficulty table, so it gives the table
here Impossible is 95%, very hard is 80.
Hard 75, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Simple as 25% to the player can spend magic points to raise
their odds and XP to raise the base by 5% per point.
So shouldn't this be reversed? Am I wrong?
Is it? Do you suddenly do like A roll
over? Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
So impossible. Should be 25% and simple should
be 95%, unless suddenly they they go backwards on it.
So and basically they're like they they're basically saying
hi, magic. I I I'm addressing it, but I I'm
not really caring a whole lot. Which means you could have just
not had it in here. You could have just had low
magic be magic and get rid of this.
I'm fine with that. I could see.
I could see a reason why they might want to include it,
because there's plenty of plenty of great horror movies that
include High Magic, like Wishmaster and what is it, Lord
of Darkness or something like that.
There there's a lot of really good 80s.
Horror movies with like high magic but but you think.
Wishmaster is this version of High Magic where a character is
a wizard, as opposed to the Low Magic where they get like one
wish but it's not what they want.
Kind of. Lord of Illusions, Thank you.
Insane as a I guess it's probably actually more low
magic. Lord of Illusions I think maybe
might be more high magic. But then again, it is only one
character and I'm trying to think.
I know that there's more I can't think off the top of my head
with. Leprechaun, Right Where you get
one wish but till they fuck you, yeah.
Yeah. I think there's a valid reason
to include this. I do think that, and I don't
hate the way that he wrote it. Honestly.
Like, I kind of like agree with what he said.
I do think that maybe it just needed to be more.
Yeah, maybe just like I I feel like there was less effort put
into this specific section than there was for the low magic
like. Yeah, that's right.
Well, and it specifically says that they put less effort into
it. And I just think that at that
point, if you're just gonna be like, man, let me slap it in.
This is where a TTRPG could just say, then the core doesn't need
it and I'll just have it in the expansion.
You know what I mean? Yeah.
L Razor absolutely would be high
magic, yeah. For sure, yeah.
I think, yeah. Cybernetics.
The player wants to be a Cyborg? No problem.
Add a new stat energy or even just a lightning bolt mark will
do. Set your bra on as your energy,
pick a way to charge your cybernetic batteries, power
grid, whatever. And every time you want to use
your augmentation you have to roll against your current
energy. Success or failure reduces the
energy by D10. See that I think is a like super
quick smart sticks with it that I really I love that.
Again, weapon damage should be up at the top.
In the combat section where it talks about doing damage, so the
list here says suggested weapon damage.
Knives and hammers do D10 plus D10 per turn of bleeding club.
Swords and machetes do 2D10 so plus D10 per turn of bleed if
bleeding. Small arms do 3D ten.
So literally your your baseball bat would do 2D10 and the gun
would do 3D10. Rifles and shotgun do 3D10.
I have a 20% chance of 1 shotting and 2HP.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because Well, 10 if it's ten,
yeah, rifles and shotguns 3D. Ten instant kill slash monster
HP loss up close. And then explosives are instant
kill slash reduce monsters TO1HP.
And claymores and giant clubs are instant kills.
And that's funny, there's two random.
That's funny, when I when I read Claymore under explosive, I
thought Claymore mine. And I was like, why is that?
Not under the explosive section? But then I remembered that it's
also a sword. A giant sword?
Yeah, random tables. There's two of them exploring a
mystery shrouded town. So there's a D20 table.
So let's just say #9. It says the bourbon kids are
reporting an old lady knocking on their window at night,
beckoning them towards the woods.
There you go. And then there's a random table
for exploring A sinister mansion.
Blue #9 again. A room encrusted with slugs and
snails. A crepid figure sits in the
center of the room on a wooden chair.
It looks like a human sized doll, but seems to be breathing
something much larger than a slug, if you heard moving around
the cluttered furniture just out of sight.
And then there is exploring oppressive underground tunnels,
#9 says. The walls are lined with spikes
and below, rickety floorboards live more sharp into cruelty, A
terrible place for an enemy to suddenly appear.
And then I love this. There's an art, index by page.
So it literally has page by page all art by Mike Wasion and it
has the name of each piece of art on it, which is really
fantastic. I love that they gave a whole
page to the artist and then the back.
Cover. The only problem is, I think
that the pages are actually. Misnumbered.
Only because I think. It might be the old yeah, yeah,
because. The Zine only goes to page 2120
and 21 but the. Art.
Yeah, because art shows down to page 23, but the Zine only goes
to page 21. So yeah, just a little typo
there. But still regardless.
I I I do really like that they that they have a whole page
dedicated to the the artist, which is really cool.
And then like we said, the back cover is the table of contents,
which again I would have much preferred to be instead of the
back cover to just be the in pages on the on the inside cover
here. I think that would have been a
better place to put it, maybe have something like this on the
back or or something. But that's it.
That is squishy. Why don't we do a Zine review of
this real quick and then we're gonna talk about we're going
back dead or a little bit. Dude, I really like this fucking
game though. Like, I and you know, I've been
talking to Kristen about putting out This House is Haunted
another another edition of that book this year.
And I was just realizing how good that would go for something
like this because the random tables in the back are perfect.
Like, that's all you know? That's like stuff I included in
that in that book last year. I would love to, I should get in
contact with this guy and see if we could we can work together,
because I think that'd be really cool.
The itch page and I because I I did say earlier that we were
gonna do the we were gonna make sure we talk about the squishy
ptrbg their itch page is sugary head you know dot H dot io let
me throw that into the the chat here real quick and I'll pin
that up there so sugary head and I did want to see what else is
on the page to see if they. There is indwelling Malevolent,
which is a buyer, Terror reigns and Survival TTRPG.
There is some some point, some point and click adventures which
look really, really cool. There is Phobophobia, which is
the point and click. There is the squishy oh squishy
campfire carnage. You will die before the fire
does. There is, so there's another
adventure besides. Halloween Babysitter and dance
to your dead for squishy. So I got to snag that it's only
4 bucks and then the terrazon of the Astro Creep and Squishy.
So I do not see the game that they were referencing.
But hopefully it will be coming out because if this is the quick
start and the next one maybe is like this but expanded into a
full game, I would love to see that because I really enjoyed
this game a lot. Yeah, I really, I really do.
This is such a cool, such a cool game.
I've been wanting to play this for a long time.
You know what? When we get to when we get to
the side quests, yeah, listen, for those out there listening,
try to hold me accountable, message me or drop a comment and
follow on our stuff and say hey, don't forget to start side
quests. So here we go.
This is squishy, this is a Zine. When we do most of our views for
a for a full size game, we usually do 5 metrics.
For zines, we have squished it down to three metrics.
So it is visuals. We're all set and.
So what those means are Visuals is the arts, the which is the
style, the quality everything. Visuals also represents all of
the like graphic design, the the layout, the readability, the all
the functionality, all that stuff.
Basically when you look at any aspect of this, that's visuals,
right? Rule set is if it is a new rule
set, is it good? Do we enjoy it subjectively or
objectively? And if it is an adapted rule
set, how well is it adapted and have they made of their own?
And vibes are a mix of like originality and just like how
bad you want to play it, why you want to play it so bad and just
overall, like does the Zine itself.
Speak to what the Zine is and what it wanted to be.
And even like does description of the game feel like what it
was like Once you finish reading it Do you feel like you
understand the game and does it make you want to play the game?
That is what vibes are. So visually just thoughts
overall before we get to the score, what are your thoughts
overall? Visually talking about quality,
quantity, layout, everything for the art and everything.
I mean. Visually, it's it's fucking
fabulous. This is like my shit, like the
gory, gory, sludgy flesh intestines being like torn apart
and asunder. Like that's the stuff I love.
The layout is incredible. Die like, absolutely fucks.
Seriously. Like this is just unbelievable.
Artwork is just amazing. Yeah.
I mean, I I I just, I love it. Yeah, I I think it's fantastic.
I think like you said, the art in general by Mike Lassian, like
like you said is absolutely stunning.
There's a lot of full page pieces of art for a Zine this
small 2, which is really fantastic.
But the layout too, you know, Merck Borg had kind of got a bad
rap for people being like I can't read it.
It is an incredibly readable book.
When you really look at it. There's never a time where
there's like a lot of texture behind font and stuff like that.
And this layout is kind of similar.
There's no really white pages, but there's never a time where
the font where the text isn't really black on white or white
on black. It's very, very readable for
still being very like graphically designed and art
heavy. Yeah, visually I think at the
end of the day, like gruesome, gross horror.
Is what the whole thing visually screams the entire time, and I
think that's exactly what it wanted to be.
So visually, I think it's really, really, really well
done. I think.
I think it really kind of the one that it's going to really
mirror for me as far as comparing it to other scores is
going to be below dwellings or mutants.
I think visually it really hits the same thing.
I mean, it's the same. That one's a little bit more
sludge than gore, but it still hits the same thing.
So what are you thinking for? For, For art?
For blood dwelling supermutants? We we did give a nine for the
visuals on that because for all the reasons that we said right
now. Stickers left from that book.
You know what you gave BDSMAA nine.
I mean, honestly, I'm flipping through it right now.
I I would. I would.
I would match that honestly. I think that the art is not not
to knock the art in BDSM at all, but I think that the art in
Squishy is is is much better or much more.
I shouldn't say better, but much more visually like shocking, I
guess to me. In a good way.
Where that makes me go, Oh fuck yeah, you know, I mean.
Yeah, I I definitely think it's a different vibe.
I love the fucking. Art in media?
Yeah, absolutely. But I definitely think, I think.
I think there's more art in this as well too.
I mean, it like it jumps off the page like it.
Is. I'm still trying to say art is a
good art, obviously. Right, right.
Just a little different. Speaks to you a little more.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm happy with a nine.
I really think visually what what I want from a Zine.
This gives me artistically. So I I can't think.
Of anything better as far as quality, quantity, layout, all
those kind of things. There's not really a loss at all
visually and all of that rule set, rule set.
OK, so it is ultra light and although I do like that, like I
said, I think there are some parts that are I think hand WAVY
in both a good way and a bad way.
I do really enjoy the how simple it is.
So but that's always kind of like a double edged sword a
little bit. Where do I feel like it's too
simple at times where like I wouldn't mind like a little bit
more to bite into it. Really this is this is where it
gets hard to do both to be a little bit objective as opposed
to subjective in this because it's really going to come down
to how you feel about rule sets, if you like something this
simple or if you want something a little bit more.
Personally I really enjoy it, but I wouldn't mind just a
little bit more like I do feel like.
When it's slightly, there's parts of it that are a little
bit hand WAVY that I feel like it's this war in my mind where
it's saying is it hand WAVY or is it under designed a little
bit. So I feel like maybe there is
maybe like 10% of this in a couple areas, maybe a little bit
less that is maybe a little bit under designed that could have
been maybe like I think high magic could have been a little
bit even though they say like and my other issue too is where
it specifically references a game that doesn't exist yet.
I think you're you're creating rules for something that you
can't use. So that kind of yeah.
So I think there's about 10% of the game that's a little bit
underdeveloped but and I think it was because the game it's a
it's a quick start and I think it does this does feel like once
you hear about that other game maybe this is supposed to like
lead into that but then that kind of takes away from the game
being standalone. So I I like I said I really
enjoy the game but I do feel like maybe it is just like a
little bit undercooked on the edges just a smidge.
What do you think? Yeah no, I totally agree.
I I especially the the parts that mention his future game.
I was kind of a little bit like you know you you didn't have to
especially for the V movie Nitro section for experience and
leveling up. I feel like you could just have
explained how it works and kind of left it at that tying a game
that. Doesn't exist yet into here,
kind of like drags me out of out of the space a little bit.
The rules overall though, I I like the, I like the vagueness
to a degree. I think I agree with you.
I think that some of some of it is a bit too empty.
However, I do also think that some of that had to do with just
like a layout choice. Which I don't know if it's
necessary layout choice on the on the graphic design end as
much as layout in the actual writing of the game like the
weapon damage. That section could have
clarified so much for us if it was way earlier on in the book,
right So. Just yeah, that's if we were in,
if we were in, if we were in like a full like 5 metric game,
that would definitely fall into like the functionality layout
section, because that's a big beef we have sometimes where
it's just like why did you put this section?
Here when if it was 20 pages earlier, you would answer a lot
of questions completely agree with that 100%.
Yeah. So I like for me like that that
kind of like doesn't knock points away, but that just kind
of made it a little bit difficult to like parse like OK,
am I just guessing at this? And then like all the last page
of the book you're like, oh wait, that's that's how it
works. But overall, I feel like the
system is, is extremely simple for a.
The rule set is extremely simple for especially for players who
are like you come over to watch a movie and then your fucking
power goes out of some shit. Like you have a bunch of people
over to watch fucking Friday, Friday the 13th or something.
You know, whatever. You could throw this on the
table and make characters in literally like 10 seconds and
then lay Friday the 13th real quick.
Like I just feel like that would be you could do that.
So I kind of like that. But I do agree that some of the
things are just a little too little, too hand WAVY.
Yeah, like I said, I think it's just a little bit just a just a
touch undercooked and it like it's like it does feel like
maybe it's because it is the quick start for maybe something
more, but I wish it was just a little bit more standalone.
Not to say it's not great like you said, I'd love.
I probably my favorite part really is how how abstracted the
character creation part is. I really enjoy that.
It's just yeah, like I wouldn't mind just a little bit more in
this maybe another page or two. So what are what are you
thinking for for this? I'd probably go with like a mid
7. Yeah, I think 7 is exactly where
it was because SO55 is bang average.
But this is also kind of like, I feel like we say 5 is bang
average, but we don't do bad games, we don't really get to 5.
So this almost feels a little bit like.
Like high school, a little bit like 100% on a paper versus 90%
on a paper versus 70% of the paper still passing still
average like that's fine. But if you got 50% on the paper,
like I mean you didn't get a 0, but but yeah, I I, I think 7
feels good for this vibes. I mean, I I like it a lot.
I I I definitely want to play it.
Very soon I actually am in a horror creators tick tock
creators Discord that. With some really cool people who
are like filmmakers and all kinds of stuff.
And I've been talking about running liminal horror in there,
but now I'm kind of like I kind of want to run this in there
instead because it like liminal horror.
Obviously Fucking fantastic game.
I love it and I definitely want to run it, but most of these
people are extremely busy and have a lot of stuff going on.
So running the mall or the Bureau is not really.
Something I could really do, unless I just like cranked out
the story really fast and made everything working within like a
two hour session. But like this, I feel like I
could just pick up, just do a quick pickup game for like an
hour and a half and just like you know, once everybody dies,
the game's over. Like fuck it.
You know that, like, I feel like that's great.
It would be the perfect kind of game for that kind of situation.
So I definitely am excited to try and run this.
The artwork really just drags me in like.
Like it? This is one of the games that
like, fuck the I don't fucking know what the discourse is, but
fuck the discourse like I I you know, if you tell me that this
doesn't give you the vibes of what the game is telling you,
telling you the vibes are supposed to be, or that that's
not relevant or important like I you can go fuck yourself.
I couldn't agree more. I I I really do.
I think. I think the vibes are super high
on this. So so vibes in general is
really, it really comes down to like once you once you finish
the Zine, once you've read the rules, once you've looked at the
visuals like you know, really like originalities tossed in
this too. Have you played a lot of other
like super gore horror games? That's kind of tossed in here
too. It's also kind of like the
default like if there's something that really stands out
that doesn't fit in the other two, it goes in here.
I think it's I think it's really good.
I think it's high vibes. I want to play it.
I want to be honest like when we are comparing this to something
like below dwelling Superman. So when I finished that I did
want to play that one a little bit more than this.
I really enjoy this, but I think I felt like the the my issue
with this is the rule set for me does kind of.
It it does, I don't know drag it down just a little before me,
like the feeling how it's a little bit like underdeveloped
as you finish the scene kind of makes me like slightly less
excited for playing it. So it takes it down just like a
notch for me. But this is definitely one that
I want to play super bad. Like that's not to say that this
isn't fantastic that I think this is a wonderful game with
fantastic art, but just objectively and when comparing
it to other things. So I'm probably, I mean we gave,
we gave BDSM a nine. This is not a nine for me, which
is like almost perfect. This is, I don't know, this is.
Between A7 and an 8 for me. That's kind of where I was at.
I was thinking, I was thinking 8 because of the because it is
kind of perfect for like my situation.
But I could definitely see A7 working just because of the.
I mean having that kind of fading rules at the end of the
book kind of kind of diminishes the excitement just a tiny bit,
but not too much. No, But then, but then you flip
through it and you see this page that I brought up like a million
times and you're just like. Fuck.
You know, that's. Going to be my whole back.
My whole back piece is going to be that.
It's so fucking good. Just just they.
I think they liked our tweet. Just reach out to Mike Wasson.
Really fantastic. Really, really awesome.
You should definitely get them a dead horse too.
But yeah, where are you at 7:00 or an 8?
I'm going to. I'm going to.
Be I'm going to be harsh this week and say 7.
OK, I'm down with that. I was OK being a little bit
harsh too, so not very. Very not harsh.
You are, you are. You're like, well, I'm going to
give it all 10s. We're like.
We. Can't.
We can't do that. But yeah, so this is a it's 14 +
9 is a 23 overall, and that puts it at the same score.
That actually gives it the same score as Skate Wizards.
Which I think is which is good because I do think that shines
in different ways comparatively. So I think that feels really,
really good. Packs and blades was 21 as far
as when we're talking about Z and scores and stuff.
So I do, I do think that the art really elevated it above and
beyond that, but but yeah, I think this feels good and that
is that is squishy so. Another reason that our de facto
third host is here tonight is to talk about Dead Horse issue 1.
So I'm going to, I'm going to kick over to this page here and
what, pray tell, is Dead Horse? All right, Dead Horse is our for
our new, I guess, horror anthology magazine that Disaster
Tourism is publishing. Kind of started as a.
Something else. And then I just kind of moved
into it being a horror anthology after I don't even know like
maybe like four or five days of kicking around as an idea.
But I I'm, I'm just so fucking happy with this magazine.
It is just so good we've got. 30 plus contributors in this
magazine. There's fiction, short fiction.
There's game entries. There's solo games.
There's game gameable material, There's poetry.
There is a lot of artwork from a bunch of different artists.
It's just it it's fucking fantastic.
I I'm I'm. This is like one of the coolest
things I think that I've ever done.
Like, I'm just and I didn't even actually do anything in the
magazine. I just, I just have been like
the project manager and like kind of like doing all the
financial stuff and like marketing and all that stuff
behind the scenes. But like I, you know, I am.
This is literally the coolest thing that I've ever put
together and I'm so happy with it.
It's so cool. They asked me questions about
it. I don't know what else to say.
Yeah, I mean, So what what was the impetus for starting the the
magazine in the 1st place? Like what?
What is? Well, like why did you want to
do first of all, why dead horse? Dead Horse was the name of my my
disaster tourism newsletter. Still is, but I.
And that started as me beating a dead horse and talking about
discourse. And then I was like, I shouldn't
do that, but I just like the name because the name was cool.
So I stuck with it. And then it just kind of turned
into that after a little bit. I I I wanted to I wanted to do
like a a game magazine that focused on, like creators of
games and then like, featured. Like entries from a bunch of
different contributors, like kind of around that topic of
that game. But, and so I, you know, I have
a Nick from Goblin archives. We did an interview with him in
this first issue and so our topic was uncanny or unsettling
horror. After I kind of set that up, I
was like, you know what, fuck this.
It's not going to be a tabletop game exclusive thing.
It's just going to be a horror magazine because I just love
horror. It's like my favorite fucking
thing in the world. So I just want it to be a horror
magazine. I talked to Christian, Christian
Sorrel, Meat Castle, game Wear. We got a lovely tshirt there.
They're they're our editor in chief and my partner Kristen is
the art director for the magazine.
And we just kind of decided, you know what, fuck, it's it's a
horror magazine. Like, we'll just go crazy with
it and see what happens next time.
But we got a lot of good submissions in here.
Wasps by David Garrett is just incredible.
It's probably one of the fucking weirdest things, Weirdest, most
uncomfortable stories. I actually did a voice over
recording for it that I'm going to eventually put on the website
here. And then yeah, we've got a
really cool solo game from Exit and press called Music and it's
Roar. We've got a comic and a solo
game about giant mutant cockroaches from Novacento,
Manfredi. Yeah, there's like tables.
There's little tiny mini games. There's short fiction, longer
fiction with like. Like Christians, Christians
entry here, Can you keep a secret?
Has like actual like stats for you to include the fictional
creature in his entry in your various RPG games if you wanted
to do that. We got a couple entries kind of
like that. Just really cool stuff.
And I really want to do more stuff like this but expand that
more focus more on like the writing aspect of it, but still
leave it open for gameable materials because I feel like.
There's a lot of stuff in in both camps, but there's not
really anything that's kind of in the middle, right?
There's a lot of game stuff. There's a lot of fiction and
poetry, but there's not like anything that really just like
his, all of it. And so that's, yeah, that's what
that is. I just talked a lot about it.
It's good stuff. Yeah, no, it's really fantastic.
I love that. It's the, the progression from
it being like a TTRPG magazine to kind of like a TTRPG adjacent
magazine, I think is really fantastic because yeah, I mean a
lot of, I mean you are a a fantastic.
Role-playing game designer. So to completely divorce
yourself from that I think would would almost be like a
disservice. And also a lot of the people
that we that we all that we know.
I think a lot of people that are your friends and stuff like that
are also in the scene. So to have something that can
bridge that gap like you just said between fiction and still
having gamable material, I think not only speaks to the people
that are going to be reading it, but I also think speaks to a lot
of incredibly talented, creative people that you and I know.
That want to write for it. So I mean I think there are
plenty of people that have fantastic probes but also like
you just said here have a little bit of gamable material that
could be thrown in that it's absolutely fantastic.
I mean is the plan going forward I mean.
It sounds like it's going to constantly evolve.
As of right now, it is a horror magazine, but the plan is to
kind of keep it as that bridge, right to be able to have like
some gamable material mixed in with with all the fiction going
forward. So it's never going to be
completely divorced from the from the scene.
I don't think so. I mean, I I I really think it's
very interesting to see people that I only know of writing
game. Entries and game books and
things to submit, just short fiction and it's like, wow,
these people like you had said wow, they really actually have
some chops. Like with their pros, like this
is actually good shit. Or we had like two or three
poems. I think submitted that one of
them I we really wanted to include, but we just couldn't.
And I was just like, you know, these are really good.
Like these people are actually. Really good writers like this
is, you know, it's not surprising but like when you're
writing game rules, it's not the same as writing like just
fiction or you know, so it's it's interesting expanding on
the magazine in the future is it's going to be whatever it
turns out to be. But I will.
I'm never going to turn down game entries like I I think that
the the ones we got for this, this specific.
Issue our first issue, we got way more than I wanted, to be
honest, just because I was like, I wanted like maybe like 30%
that, 30% art, 30% fiction and poetry kind of thing.
And we ended up with probably like 60% game entries and
probably like 20% fiction and like 15 or 20% artwork, which
I'm not complaining. We got a lot of fucking really
good stuff and it was really hard to pick everything but.
I do hope to kind of hit like a balance with that in the future
where as we spread out and get bigger and get more people to
submit things, we can get a really good, like really like
difficult to choose from pool of material from all over the
writing spectrum and art spectrum too.
But yeah, I mean, I don't know it'll evolve, we'll see what
happens, but. I mean the game, the game entry
is like there's no reason not to include them if they're fun and
and creepy and cool like. You know what what happens?
So I, I, I, I'm not a magazine editor and what not.
What happens to the entries that aren't chosen?
Do they just the the person that created them just just has them
or is there going to be like a dead horse besides that?
Just like they get put to somewhere that people can have
like downloads for it or something or like what's what's
the what happens with with with that?
For anybody that didn't get chosen for this issue, I mean,
they're welcome to submit this. If they want to submit the same
piece again for the next one, they're welcome to do that.
They're also everybody, so the magazine is profit chair, so
everybody retains full rights of their work.
So a lot of people may choose to go on and publish their own
thing, like if they wrote a little game for the magazine and
it didn't get published, didn't get chosen, they can put it on
their edge and sell it like the people who did get chosen.
They can also put it on their itch and sell it.
They can print it in their own book if they want.
They can send it to another anthology.
If their fiction is good enough and they want it to print
another anthology. It's all that doesn't.
None of that is relevant to me. I don't care what they do with
their work. The only thing I care about is
trying to get people to buy this magazine so that everybody can
make more money off of their work.
Because, you know, the more issues that sell, the more that
person gets paid out based on their share, you know?
Yeah, but So what So talk about that that that model a little
bit with the the whole profit share thing and everything that
which is also I think different than a lot of what magazines do.
So just you know why did you go with that model and and and I,
you know I'm in your discord as well.
So there's been a lot of transparency with a lot of that
stuff. Just gonna talk about that a
little bit. Yeah, well, I'm fucking
communist, so that's what that's one.
Or do them. But you know, I I.
As as enticing as it is even now, looking at the numbers of
sales, like I'm to be like, oh man, that would be so nice to
have that money as profit. And like, you know, scrubbing my
dirty little greedy hands together, I'm still like, no,
like this. It doesn't have to be like these
people submitted work to something that I organized, but
this is their work. They deserve to be paid like an
equal. Share of like the the labor that
they put into it. You know we put a lot of Labor
into the into the magazine. Kristen and I and Christian put
a lot of work into this like a lot.
But that doesn't mean that the people who submitted their
written work didn't also put in. You know, they may not have put,
I wouldn't necessarily say on a meter that they put in the same
amount of Labor as me and Christian and Christian because
we had a lot more things to hand.
We, you know, Christian had to edit every single, every single
written entry. And Kristen had to do all of the
art direction, all the layout for the entire magazine.
Go over several things, dozens of times, you know, dozens of
hours on that on that front. And me, I've just been, you
know, making spreadsheets like crazy and figuring out all these
financial things and. Kind of you know find the best
printers and all the all the numbers is is not easy.
But that all that to say like these people still submitted
work that they deserve to be paid for and a lot of anthology
magazines and stuff, they might pay you like 20 or 30 bucks if
it's a smaller one and you know good for them that's that's
fine. If that works for them, that's
great, but I would hope that. I can provide a lot more than
that with whatever little reach I have through this magazine.
And it also helps because if somebody is is really excited
about their entry being chosen and the magazine is, is really
cool, they're going to want to sell it.
It's not just like thanks for my $25, I'll take a comp copy, have
fun. It's like thanks for my comp
copy. Everybody should go buy this
because the more you buy, the more I get paid for my work.
Like, I just think that's cool, you know?
I just, I want everybody to work that way.
I think it's awesome. Yeah, I mean you know it's it's
about labor getting the the fruits of that labor as opposed
to 1 fucking robber Baron just using to take all of it.
But yeah, I mean, the magazine seems fantastic.
I'm really excited for it. Maybe one day I'll pull the
entry into it. Maybe there's a little something
in there. Because above and beyond just
all that, there's ads in here too.
Yes. Yeah, some really, really
fantastic cool stuff from some some some cool people or.
Something called like the adventure archive and the weekly
scroll or something. Something something's in there.
Yeah. But and then yeah, just, I mean
when you go through the actual the the list of contributors,
it's it's absolutely fantastic. I mean I don't want to it's up
here on the screen for those that see it.
But I mean and without you know, not.
Listing everybody but you know people that we we speak with a
lot of exit and press who put your your the video together.
That's been the playing on here. I mean like you said Christian
Cassie Mothwin is even in here who is like one of the sweetest
people ever but is also written some like really dark horse
stuff which is which is interesting with the the grope
man and whatnot. There are two names missing from
this list that I just actually added in tonight to the actual
magazine because I spaced on them, but that is WH Arthur and.
And Richard Kelly, I just want to make sure I mention them
because they're not on the screen.
So if if they're happening to be watching, know that I remembered
your names. There we go.
But yeah, really great list. I mean, still like Andre too.
Like this is. It's a fantastic list of of
writers and artists, you know, Gene Byrne, Tony Jaguar, like
just a fantastic list across all of this.
I'm super excited for it. It's in preorder right now,
right? Yeah, it's in preorder on our
website you can get the. So the preorder is $20.00 for
the physical print. And if you buy it in preorder,
you'll get a free copy of the PDF as soon as it's ready, which
will be next Monday and after the preorder's over.
It'll still be 20 bucks for the print, but it'll be $10.00 for
the digital, $20.00 for the print, and $25 for print and
digital. So if you want the digital for
free, and you want to get it a little bit in advance, pick up
the preorder now. And all of the that.
One thing I did want to mention is talking about the profit
share thing, all the financials. I'm keeping an open record of
that in a public spreadsheet that I have on the website that
you can click and you can look and you can see every
contributor's name, every person on the staff, the people who
worked on it, how many shares everybody gets.
How many wholesale sales we have, how many retail preorder
sales we have and and in the future how much they all cost,
what the cost of the book was, how much the share sale is, all
that stuff. Everything is completely public.
I'm trying to keep myself extremely transparent with this
because I want people to be encouraged to also submit
because they know that I am doing my best to be as
transparent as possible with the financials in all the profit.
The actual like final as net profit of this is going to be
divided out. Equally for everyone like that's
you know, it's my goal so. Fantastic.
I mean, I'm super excited to get this physically in hand.
You said the digital will be ready next Monday, so how long
are preorders open for it? I don't know if you said it.
Until Monday, yeah. So the digital as soon as
preorders close, everybody that preordered is should be getting
an e-mail like that day or the next day whenever I get the time
to actually sit down and do it to send out the preorder
download links and. You'll get the the PDF.
I'm trying to figure out if I can get an actual like mobi or
epub version of this that can like go on to an e-reader.
Eventually I'd like to to put this on on Amazon's Kindle
things so I can get some sales on there too, but I'm having
some issues with the transference of that.
But so it'll likely be PDF Monday or Tuesday of next week
and that that is when preorders will close.
Gotcha. So that would be July 10th or
11th next week. If you were listening to this in
the future, you missed out. But if you're hearing it anytime
soon, definitely go snag that it's going to be absolutely
worth it. I see oh oh two is already
listed on the website at least. So if that's already in the
works, very excited for #2 to go and for this issue.
That will open next week as well.
And so they're going to be open for like 6 months, though it's
not going to be any. There's not going to be any rush
for that, but it's going to be open starting next week.
And then physicals get into our hands roughly if all things go
perfectly. End of July, hopefully.
End of July as long as the. Income isn't too slow, but we'll
see. Fantastic.
So mix and print magazine $20.00 right now on preorder to get the
print when it prints and then the PDF next week.
For free. And then after next week you're
going to do 25 for print and digital.
You definitely want to get this. You definitely want to not only
read all the amazing stuff from these fantastic creators, but
also go check the rest of their stuff.
Really excited for that. Really excited for more projects
like this. I think you're doing a fantastic
job. I think it's really, really
amazing for the industry and the space to really, you know, like
each other instead of just talking shit.
On the on on the hell site. So really cool, really
fantastic. And again, check out everything
from Kirby including a couple of their new tshirts that that have
come out recently. Let's talk about this one.
Although I do, I do. I'm not a fan of the old the old
cats here. Give me one second.
Ryan hates cats. I do.
They're terrible. But the the shirt is fucking
dope. Disaster tourism, yeah.
And then and also I convinced Kirby to to add the comfort
colors, the Hanes comfort color shirt to the to the collection.
And I highly recommend it. It's a heavyweight, just it's
the comfiest shirt ever. And now I get a bunch of them
because of course I'm going to grab this one and I don't know
what this could possibly be a reference to.
Here. It's this, it's this
interesting, like Logitech game controller.
It's a weird controller talking about some kind of disaster
tourism thing. I'm not really sure, but.
Really, really interesting. So a couple of couple of dope
shirts on disaster tourism dot games.
If you want to find the dead horse it is.
What is the site that goes regularly that Dead Horse dot
pub? Dead Horse dot Pub.
Yep. Yep, and you'll find all the
links of that also takes you to disaster tourism games for
everything like that. So listen, that was squishy.
This was dead horse Kirby. Always fantastic.
You know this is our once again our our de facto third host
here. You'll be seeing, you'll be
seeing them. I think I got to talk to you
about another another one and maybe a couple of weeks we'll
talk about something and and we'll we'll see what's going on
with that. But Kirby once again thank you
so much for being here and thank you everyone for being in chat.
And if you are listening like we said you can find Kirby's all
their stuff at disaster tourism dot games.
You can find us at the dot weekly dot scroll on Instagram.
My goal tonight is to finally update it and I finally I did
all the socials. I just have to post them.
You can find us on YouTube at the Adventure Archive.
We are we are climbing higher and higher on that and may
eventually switch our streaming from Twitch all the way to
YouTube, so we'll talk about that.
But if you are listening and want to just hit that subscribe
button, that would actually be fantastic for us.
And you can find us as long as it still exists on Twitter at
weekly under score scroll. So you guys all have a wonderful
night and we'll see you later. Bye.