Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll Podcast.
My name is Ryan. And I'm the kind of bloke that
cut off your feet and watch you hobble around for a bit before
shoving you in the river, if you know what I mean.
Think I think I do know what you mean.
And today, today we are going to be reviewing Swivers.
Swivers from Luke Gearing and David Hoskins.
This is a fun, interesting game. Anyone that's a fan of Luke
Gearing's writing, which you all should be, will enjoy this one.
And the art from David Hoskins is insane.
So this is going to be a fun one.
Yeah, we had Luke and David on a while ago when this was printing
or or like run the Kickstarter was going or whatever, and both
of them are awesome people. Luke obviously an insanely
prolific and and and genius in my opinion, I think in our
opinion creator in the indie space, big Clifford lover, you
know, and and David Hoskins is just an insane incredible
artist. So this is going to be a really
fun one to go over. What does the back of saw ever
say? Swipers is a game about
bastards. You and your gang of criminals
scarper through heists and sewers, stalk through the filth
of the smoke, and if you're lucky you'll make it out with a
few extra shillings. The whole of this city is your
filthy, sickly oyster. Fun game.
This is from Milsonian Arts Council, Troika, and all of the
various things Troika related and more.
It feels like a very Milsonian Arts Council game, which I mean
it is. So I guess that makes sense
there. Yeah, I do.
There are a couple additions that came out.
I did set up the down camera today, so let's take a peek the.
Down camera the. Down camera.
That's what I at least I called it in my in my my thing.
I'm a Bob here. So let's let's take a peek.
So this is the game book. Those in podcast land watch the
YouTube. So this is the book.
This is the normal cover. It's very black, white and red
swipers on the top. And then below there is a a a
bastard swiper person kind of behind a a fence ish situation,
all chained up, still smirking with the city behind them very
red. As I said, black on the back is
the the part that I read before the little Mostonian piggies
logos, and there's a really cool border around the entire thing
that's got crossbows and all sorts of stuff.
And in the in the tops there are these.
It's like a hogs head and like a person yelling.
So this is the standard edition. Don't really need to flip too
much in the inside. I love the end papers.
I don't know if you saw they actually put them in the PDF
too. But this design, I don't know
why. Yeah, I just get lost in it.
And I know on the PDF that has it, I don't know in the book if
it prints it, but on some of the pages you can see what a giant
version of the design in the background a tiny bit.
I don't think it comes through on the printing, but in the oh,
it doesn't. In the PDF you can see a little
bit though, but so that's the regular version, right?
And then there was also the Super fancy.
Deluxe. Deluxe edition, which is this
one right here I just threw on top.
They golded a bunch of stuff. So the black area behind the
swiver, the bastard person is all golded out.
And then when you go to the back, you can see that some of
this part is golded here in his little hat and and this part
here. I am kind of bummed though that
there was there was an issue where some other stuff was
supposed to be gold and it didn't quite work out.
So they didn't do it. So the whole swivers logo that's
white here was supposed to be gold.
And I believe these these guys in the corners here were
supposed to be gold too. I actually have a graphic of the
the mock up and obviously it still looks great but I think I
think with the white against the gold I actually like the black
and red one better. I would say it's unfortunate
because without those that go see changes the the basic or
regular edition is definitely more visually my favorite.
Yeah. So this I believe is this is the
mock up of the original 1 and you can see how something's
changed a little bit. Yeah.
The extra designs on the side are great for the the current
one, but not having this area gold and not having those guys
in the corner, I think that really sets the whole thing off.
So having just the gold there kind of, I don't know.
I mean, it's still nice. It's still deluxe.
I still enjoy it, but I do think that the IT makes me enjoy the
regular one maybe a touch more. Also it came with it was this
adventure Marlo docs and I also got this coin.
I do believe maybe it's a pence or a shilling, but this is part
of it as well. I got that.
Did you get the coin situation? I did not get the coin it.
Might have come with just the deluxe.
Did you get Marlo docs? Yeah, I did.
I was actually just looking for it.
It was, I was using it for a bookmark, but I actually think
it's on my night stand because I was reading this and that the
other day, so. So the coin, yeah, why wouldn't
you? So the coin is pretty cool.
I enjoy it. It's got a a rat with a crown on
it on the back and then the queen ish person on the front.
You know, God save the queen, or as I like to say, down with the
aristocracy. But to each their own.
That's the book. It's nice, it's enjoyable.
It's hardback. It's super big.
I don't know why I love thin hardback.
You know, like the job. It's like not a lot of pain.
The job is like the job is like real thin but.
Yeah, real thin. This is still like regular book
thickness, you know, girth. Yeah.
But is it a weird size? Am I?
Do I just feel like it's a weird size because it's not?
It's larger than a 5 because there's an A5, right?
But it's not 8 1/2 by 11, is it? Do I have an 8 1/2 by 11 book
floating around? I mean, I have a billion books
behind me. Let me see if I have an 8 1/2 by
11. Please hold listeners.
Do do do do do do do do do do. Oh, he's back.
So this is an 8 1/2 by 11. I guess it is an interesting
size. It is an interesting size, yeah.
I. Mean you enjoy it.
It's on my bookshelf fine, so I guess I didn't really think
about it so. It's neat.
Random, random Luka Rescheck art version of New Glasgow Geek
Revival. We'll talk about that one day,
maybe. So some of the shots it looks
like maybe Crown Quarto. I don't know that.
Size. So.
So, yeah, so that is a quick peek at Swivers and for those
who like to hear a little bit about some other stuff.
Gosh, I feel like we haven't done this in so long and I feel
like I forgot everything. But Swivers was on Kickstarter.
It funded on some time ago. There's been 26 updates.
Let's scroll to the beginning and find out the exact day it
funded. But it funded with 2126 backers
for 72,441 lbs. And I don't know what that is in
American, but it ain't a small amount of money.
So successful project I think for for a little game.
And it funded successfully on March 7th, 2024.
Is it really just, oh, we're in 2025 now?
I was like, yeah, so a little bit less than a year ago.
So it's great. I mean, we got this weeks ago at
this point. So it came out it, it funded,
made, printed, shipped and and got to people in in, in under a
year, which for Kickstarter. Good job.
For the record, it is it did fund for.
For those looking for the USD number, it is about 88,000 USD.
Crazy 88,000 USD. Pretty admirable amount for a
project. Yeah, that's great.
So let's let's stop hamming and hawing.
Let's just hop in here. Oh, I'm not done hawing.
Oh, do I need to him more or Yeah.
This cover This cover gets better the closer you get to.
Like it looks great. From far away, but when you get
really close to the cover, you're like, Oh yeah, this is
like the like the fire in the background.
Yeah. It really pops out, you know
like the texture of like this. The like speckles in the back
looks really good. It's really interesting how much
texture they put onto the PDF cover.
You actually scroll into it, there is a paper texture over
the PDF cover, but there isn't one on the print version,
obviously. Why would you print a texture
onto it, right. But even all the little designs
in the side, like you said, the more you look at it, the, the
greater gets. And again, every piece of this
is David Hoskins art and David Hoskins art is insane.
So it's it's enjoyable to to look through the whole way.
But yeah. There's not a lot of like page
art in this, but there are these really awesome massive panels of
like, really like fanatically epic art that I really enjoyed
going through this. And it was like, every time you
came across when you're like, this is a nice little treat, you
know? Yeah, yeah.
They don't use a lot of spot art, which I think they could
have tweaked the layout a tiny bit.
Now that a little bit more spot art, which would have been nice,
but. Yeah, I don't know.
For some reason, even though usually I'm the one that is like
they could use my spot art, it didn't really bother me as much
in this one. Maybe because like obviously
every time we talk about Lou Gehring, I talk about my
experience with Lou Gehring stuff, which is Wolves Upon the
Coast, which I'm a Are you showing off your mug for the
latency? Mug the triangle latency mug.
Just yeah, while you're talking. Yeah, I just always go back to
Wolves Upon the Coast. And while this isn't like a
sequel to that in any way, but there's definitely like a some
DNA of it in here. And maybe that's why I was just
clicked into the mode that this is written very much like that
in structural like book, you know?
Yeah, yeah, like it. Yeah, it does.
This definitely bothers me. Less so, but also because the
layout I think suits it. And we'll we'll we'll scroll
through. That lamp and yeah.
I think I'm a good fit, but again, yeah, the the cover is
absolutely fantastic. I love the smirk and bastard on
the front and just gets me. Here is the in papers that I was
talking about and I don't know why this design just makes me
want to get lost in it, but I really did get a whole lot.
Couple edibles, just stare at it.
Just stare, man. It just moves, you know, it's
definitely that kind of design that is, do you see faces?
Is it looking at you? Is it looking into you?
Like what? What is happening So well,
certainly an Arts Council, there's some, all the rights
stuff is here printed. Their font used is Misses Eve's
play testers are here. And then you got swipers.
This is written by Luke Gearing. Additional writing by Daniel
Boyle, art by David Hoskins, editing and development budget
Crater layout by Cade Crates, art direction by Christian
Kessler. Those are all names we've seen
before because they're. All good, yeah.
Solid, solid batch of names there.
So a couple of things here. I do like this part.
I will. I do want to read some of this
part. Here it says what is Swivers?
Swivers is a lightweight set of rules married to a full set of
tools and tables for running a game and the chaotic sprawl of
the Smoke capital. The Smoke it's many districts,
and the Midden all caps. What a city it is.
Corrupt officials, looming war, Rogue Sorcerer's monsters below
and knobs above. Violence rests as thick as the
smog. Nothing is sacred and it's
always bloody raining. And then the author's note is a
great part to read here as well. The socio economic factors that
are involved in criminality are not to be ignored.
Not to mention who defines criminality and why?
Which political aims are served by these definitions.
This game replicates many of the inequalities, inequities of the
world, past and present, that we might examine them.
When we do this, we must ensure we have considered the safety
and enjoyment of our players first and foremost.
I do not know your players nor your table.
I couldn't tell you which tools are suitable, but I can assist
you think on it and take appropriate action.
Swipers is a game about bastards.
You when you were a gang of criminals Scarper through heist.
I've read that part before. So the whole city is filthy
sickly oyster. There you go, that.
I like that. I I love the acknowledgement in
the beginning of just being like, hey, crime is really just
the powerful protecting their interests.
What is crime? Yeah.
I mean, and the the desperate seeking to survive because of a
situation that they've been put in by those in power.
Yeah, I think it's great. Socio economic forces.
Yeah, yeah. I, I, I really enjoy the.
I can't tell you what tools are suitable, but I insist that you
think on it and take appropriate action.
You know and. That's how easy it is to be
safety tools, man. That's literally all it has to
be is she's be like, hey, I don't know what works for your
table. Just think about what works for
your table. And and that's fantastic.
I mean, those that need them, use them.
Those that don't, you know, go watch over those.
So so getting into the table of contents here, 2 tables the book
runs to about what is it about 100 ish pages.
It's 94 before the quick reference maps it comes out to
95 pages. It's very light though for, you
know, for a night 5 page book. I mean, it was just like, not
that there's not a ton in here, like there's some really awesome
tables. There's it's fun all the way
through, but it feels very easy to get through this, you know?
Well, I mean because part of it, I mean the, the explanation here
in the beginning, it couldn't be more apartment.
It says that it is a lightweight is a lightweight rule set
married to a full set of tools and tables.
So realistically, rules in this game you could fit on 6, maybe 8
pages, right? Maybe it maybe less than 10.
And then the vast majority of the rest of it is tables until
you get to some of the later bits.
But the tables are fantastic. I mean, Luke Gear's writing
shines, obviously through all of this stuff.
I mean, because he wrote it, all of it shines because it's.
Really great, like tongue in cheek and also like dry Luke
Gearing sense of humor. Yeah, fuck you with the smirk.
Finds so hysterical. That's really good.
So there is yeah, right. Squirrely going.
No. So no, I'm I'm kidding.
So there are there are hyperlinks.
We're working on the table of contents.
Now there's sections Swiber creation, character creation.
First we'll have thoughts, this and that, general rules running
Swivers. OK, this one says stop yelling.
So I'm going to work on that one right now because I know I'm
yelling. Running Swivers are schools and
adversaries magic, and then Blue cheese.
Left to Rot is the adventure in the back of the book, which is
awesome. I will say there are hyperlinks
on the table of contents, which is great, but there are no
bookmarks. There are no bookmarks.
I didn't know this. Bookmarks.
Yeah, there's no bookmarks table of contents hyperlink though.
That's cool. And then I don't know.
So this is what I'm talking about on the PDF you can see
blown to like 100 times. You can see the in paper design
on the background of the paper on the Swiber creation page,
which I think is a fantastic touch.
It's transparency is like 2, but it it's it looks really, really
nice. And then I also do like, I'm
sure you noticed that in the book and I'm sure in the PDF two
there are the little tabs on the side so you can get tabulated to
different sections. Eco mobiles did that
color-coded, which is really nice.
But I do like that there are the tabs on the side.
It makes me really think about how I want to like do game stuff
in that way where like it's it's great that you can just quick
flip to it's a third section. Let me just flip to there.
I really like that a lot. So then we have a full page
piece of art. Let me full page this for those
looking zoom to page levels of a bunch of bastards.
Here we got a person with a a spear harpoon situation, a
crossbow, dagger, sword. Very bastard looking bastards,
very dynamic postering. No, no, they all, they all, they
all, they all, you know, they all look like what I imagine a
swiper to look like. And the, the, you know, one of
the things that's just insane about David Hoskins art is the
shading and the line work and the cross hatching and
everything. Insane.
Incredible and I love. Listening to this as a podcast,
like really this is another one. I mean, we say this, I feel like
so many absence, but you really should maybe just drop in this
on YouTube and just look at some of the art pieces.
They're really just a joy to look at.
I wish I had this one as a poster, you know?
Dude, I say that about like every piece in this book though,
you know, like so true. It's crazy the.
Pieces in this book are incredible.
Incredible. And it's just there's something
about how bright everything, the way that David draws, it's
almost like there's a spotlight on things so that there's more
shad shadings or shadows. And then the shadows are so
cross hatched. It looks really, really neat.
And then the textures and like the hair and everything are are
are fantastic. So really amazing piece of art.
And then I can say everything in this book is all David Hoskins
art and it's great. So we immediately, the very
first thing you see is Swiver's creation, character creation.
So we have thoughts on that. Our, our, our, our personal
preference is brief, small intro to the rules, right?
Even just like here's the normal die, whatever.
And then characterization and then general rules.
This goes straight into character creation, which is a
thing that's fine. And it's very small.
Some might say too small. Swiber creation.
You're the scum of the streets. Wait, you're you're character
creation guy? This is all you buddy.
Yeah, you're the scum of the streets and you'd have it no
other way. So I would start with three
attributes, rolling 3D6 for each attribute that is Constitution.
How much of A beating you take? Dexterity, how agile and
slippery you are, Strength how much of A bruiser you are, and
Swiber have hit points equal to their Constitution.
I love this part. Actually.
This part is great. Swirers have a 25% chance of
being literate for on the D4. A reason for literacy must be
determined in under 5 seconds or else literacy is lost.
And the example is a mouse taught me.
So really, you can have anything as your reason, and I think
that's fucking hysterical. I also think that if you're just
not quick enough on the ball, Nope, you're not literate
anymore buddy. Hey, if you're not quick on the
ball, you're not quick on. That might be why you're fucking
illiterate, you know? It's been too funny.
So I will start with D 10 + 10 shillings, a ropey Shank and
some Ored rags. So I will start with one item
from the following table. I should pull up a dice roller
because these fucking. Yeah, you're going to be rolling
a lot, buddy. You're you're going.
To be. Designated roller, so it is AD
100 table that fills the rest of that page and the following
page. So the very first spread of the
game is the character creation rules and then AD 100 spread
trinket table of the shit. How many how many times you get
on it? One.
All right, so what's your 1? I rolled 25 A thief's hand.
Just just a hand. That's that's that's that's a
thing. Such classics as a trained crow,
a stupid dog, an awkwardly sized riding saddle, a flamboyant
handkerchief, huge bag of nuts. Spoiled milk.
Spoiled milk's a good one. Quote UN quote.
Poetry. And then and then you're.
And then special sauce is a good one too.
Yeah, and then a sense of pride and accomplishment.
You can also additionally you may roll once on the trait table
below to give some ideas of the Swipers personality and it's AD
20 trait table. So that is that is also on the
this spread here is that D20 trade table.
So 19 is familiar, but what is? What did you roll on AD 20?
I got. Proper bricky.
Your your proper bricky. You bricked up some might say,
but man, I kind of want to roll on some of these two.
I'm going to pull up a. Yeah, they're good.
Yeah, these tables are a lot of fun to go through.
Yeah, you know what I should just do?
I'm going to. I'm just going to plug in plug
in my electric dice roller here. It's so much easier than pulling
up the pulling up the other thing.
I do think it's funny because like British slang is like
incredibly unique and I don't ever use it.
But also it's like fairly self-evident.
Like later on there's talking about backy wizard and slowly
talking about tobacco and proper bricky is like bricky, like
brick. You know I should, you know,
funny. Yeah, no, it's great.
I wish we, I wish Americans were interesting at all, but we're
not. All we do is steal all of our
slang from people that we, in turn, keep down.
But, you know, I rolled A4, so I got away with the fairies.
Not away with the fairies as in like having a way with fair.
It's away with the fairies as they know I'm away with them.
Yeah. Mcleod's type.
Yeah, got the morbs always fuming fucking weird.
Dude eager the please a geezer is the best one.
And that is character creation rules.
That's what you get, that's how you get.
So there are three alternate basically like pre generated
classes kind of beyond just a basic driver so.
Yeah, so the alternate starts, these are for carrier players
who don't want to take the the bog standard scum.
All of these all change the game significantly, so use with
caution, which I think is really especially true about the second
one to use. No trying to start, follow the
procedures given below rather than the procedures above.
They still start with a trinket from the table above though.
So you have a ruined knob. So you were like a noble proper
knob. Your house is fallen and you
must mingle with the mock. So be it.
So this one you start with the higher constitution.
Well I guess it's not technically true.
You roll 4D6 instead of three, but you take the lowest 3 so you
know that is probably what much worse.
And then strengths the same way. And dexterity is just three D6.
You do have some special rules. You have a weak claim to a minor
title of nobility. Can only retire once this title
is claimed. Has a non transferable right to
bear arms, which in the smoke. You do have to have a license to
bear arms. You can't buy one.
This one starts with a non transferable one, but you're
always literate. You start with more more
showings. 2 D 10 + 20 and you may not roll on the trait table
preceding must roll on the ability trait table.
So if you're looking for a trait for your character that has its
own trait table consisting of such classics as absolutely
incapable of caring for others, couldn't conceive of performing
hard labor, being painfully patronizing towards the lower
classes, it's it's good. The next one of our alternative
chart is the rat man exiled. That's right.
There are rat men in this world. Yeah, you are a rat man ejected
from their clan. The bounty on your tail is still
very appealing. And you start with less
constitution. That's starting with 2D6.
Less strength, 2D6, but more dexterity starts.
You roll 4D6. And here your special rules.
You killed on side above a surface.
If discovered to be a cheese thief.
Never begin lyric those D4 fellow exiles starts with D4
Pence and a hooded ragged robe can attack with claws for D6
damage plus the chance of inflicting disease.
Determine this disease randomly at the beginning of play.
See page 30, which is hyperlinked.
You are immune. That's right, inline hyperlink.
You are immune to this disease and you may roll on the trait
table as normal. Shall inline hyperlinking.
Boom boom. And the last of the alternative
starts, I believe. Yes, it is is.
Oh. Roll over the word SWIVORS at
the top. Oh my God, to take you back to
the. Table of contents, baby.
I love Melsonia. I love Melsonia.
The clapping on the YouTube is my mic cuts it out, but I'm
clapping right now. Clap clap, clap, clap clap
isn't. Fun that you can talk and clap
and it still just cuts out the clap.
It's insane that I could yeah, because this is you're talking
right now pretty loud. Yeah, and and it cuts it out.
NVIDIA baby, pretty, pretty AI Fuck the 50s seventies.
Anyway, we were at. Edgewaver any old twat from out
of town so you're. Bro bro bro honestly might be
the best line in the entire fucking book.
Every time I read it I literally laugh out loud.
It is fucking fantastic. So Constitution you roll 4D6B,
take the higher of the three roles.
Strength and decks work the same.
Your special rules you never begin literate in the language
of the smoke I guess Meaning you could be literate in a not the
smoke language. You start with three D10
shillings. Start with an accent.
Amazing amazing that it's in here because I genuinely if I
the player take this and be like OK, come up with an accent knows
nothing of the smoke may roll on the treat table as normal.
We'll note here this start captures anything from a visitor
from across the sea to a country bumpkin.
The big city use the starting wealth as a guide.
I love that that like, however much wealth you roll as kind of
you can use as an implication to what your character actually is.
If you roll really low, you could be a country bumpkin,
which I think also fits with the Constitution being higher if you
were like a country boy. Like, yeah, of course it's
higher. You work on a farm or whatever.
Yeah. What do you think in B means?
What is? What is in B?
I'm sure it's something. Yeah.
What's noda? It's the Latin phrase noda
benet, which means note. Well, it's just interesting.
It's just a note. There's another thing like the
IE and the EG. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice.
Somewhere in the vein. I love the art at the bottom of
all three of these. The insane.
There's some small. Art right here, you know.
Yeah, actually I flipped through and there's like there's a ton
and in places there's only a couple pages really where
there's not and not enough that it matters in 100 page book.
Like realistically because a lot of the columns go super low.
I just I feel like I looked through this.
Table and I looked through this book and I see the tables.
You know, I've been very invested in the tables because
they're good. Yeah, but the art on these is
great, even to the point where it's so it's pictures of all the
the people, the knob with an amazing expression like it.
Oh, what was me kind of thing the the rat man and then the
person, the person that's like not from here being like with
the with the hand up, like they're looking.
But the frames that are drawn around them too are fantastic.
The the gym, the little wrapping at the top and then and then the
the frame for the other guy. That's a neat design.
I don't know. It's it's really fantastic.
Really enjoy that there's rat men in this, but when you look
at the picture, it's obvious they still look like fairly
human, like they have big teeth and long claws and point of the
ears and like, you know, like a longer nose.
But like, they still look like they're not like furry rat like
where rat people, you know? Yeah, they're like 8590% human.
Yes, yeah. Which is good.
Yeah, I I think that's awesome having just having it be pretty
historic ish and then just tweaking it a little bit in a
direction like that, which also makes great sense for the smoke
and the whole vibe of the bastard stuff.
Yeah, you're right. It's it's it's really, it's
really great addition. So starting kits, which I
believe is next. Let me read one thing real
quick. OK, cool.
Starting kits. Yeah, so for newer players or
speed of play, basically just for easy entry into playing a
game, whether that be it's your first time making a character in
this or you your character died and you want to get back in the
game really quickly. You can use your shillings that
you've rolled a character creation to buy equipment,
obviously, although I don't think it says that before this
actually, but the here are some pre made kits that you can
immediately buy with your money and then just drop in with this
stuff. They do make entry into the game
a lot easier. They're also I love the I think
the false beggar one's my favorite.
Like you're just like you're just you're just the piece of
shit like Baker beggar. You know you have crutches and
eye patch, Oid rags, oid blanket, a decent Shank, 3 pints
of of gutter liquor, a bucket, cheap pipe, 10 doses of Browns
tobacco. I think Browns tobacco is the
better tobacco, isn't it? Oh.
You read the table is deeper than I did, if you know that,
yeah. Yeah, 'cause I think maybe it's
not. I think the the Backy Wizard 1
is. I don't know.
We'll see you later. And then 48 eggs and a back. 48
eggs and a backpack. You got 48 eggs, bro.
You can cook them. I also really love that it's
really whatever you roll as you're starting, you're like,
well, I rolled, I rolled, you know, 10 shillings.
Well, then all you get is a pickpocket 1.
And that's a great way to just be like, well, I guess I'm a
fucking pickpocket now. Like you don't really need to do
a lot more than that. Or and the.
Or you could be a false back. I mean, if you have 10
shillings, you know you can. Have three leftover.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I also like that without
saying it, this also kind of which I wouldn't mind if they
also did say it, this also kind of goes, well, there is no
classes really, right? So you can build a class kind of
based on your equipment that you pick, right?
Like if you want to be a pickpocket, if you want to be a
mugger, if you want to do this or that, just like be like,
well, I want to be a teacher or whatever.
And it's like, well, then take like classes in a book or you
know what I mean? Like I like that you can like
build a personality for your class around that.
It's really neat. Here, I'm going to do that thing
again and compare it to Wolves upon the Coast, just because
that's the thing that I'm most familiar with from Lou Gehrig
and say like that was how that was my favorite part about
Wolves upon the Coast. It had like you rolled money and
if you, you bought equipment with that money and then it went
away immediately as the game starts, you had to use that
money or it had starter kits like that.
So whatever class you wanted to be was 100% based on equipment.
And I, I really enjoy that, you know?
Yeah, yeah, especially when you have something like this, which
is very much like an OSR. It's a framework, right?
And that's what a lot of the OSR games realistically are,
especially the ones that are very much like not 5 E, AKA not
hand holding you through a pre written story.
A lot of them are frameworks where you can build on or add on
the rules and or bits and pieces that you want for your table and
gives you the opportunity to customize a little bit.
So having that as an option is really, really great.
And then another insanely stunning piece.
You know, one of the things that the thing about Dave of of David
Hoskins art too, is the movement in it and, and all the pieces.
Nothing is just like, just like looking straight ahead at you,
right? The the lady laughing in the
background with the eye pinching his nose like every part of it
has this really incredible movement and and again, the line
work is insane. Going from the background to the
brick on the side. Ridiculous.
Although I was on grounds, tobacco is the worst one.
It's Richard's reserve which I was thinking of got.
To get there's a proper. Backy wizard, Yeah.
But yeah, so we're moving on to this and that, and this is just
well. There's the character sheet.
We got the. Oh, I forgot what the character.
Sheet I'm sorry sheet. I wonder if this will let me two
view this if it's on the same it is.
It is. It's on the same little Becky
back so it's a two page character sheet.
Love it. Yeah.
I love the criminal record. It's pretty long.
There's a whole long section for that I do like the IT is it is
pretty sparse character sheet. There's no there's beside from
the little designs around the stats, there's no it's not like
a crazy art sheet. I love crazy art sheets, don't
get me wrong. I also don't mind a simple
little character sheet too Let. Me tell you, the more games that
I run with my table, the more different games, the more often
I'm like, man, the crazy art character sheets are really cool
visually to look at but they're really inconvenient for those
things that you want to notate on the character sheet.
They're outside of what you're like the prescribed things on
the character sheet which happens in the game.
Like you stuff happens you want to add little things to
character sheet. This has a lot of open face,
which I really appreciate because I my characters take
notes on the character sheets about stuff that happens to
them, you know. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, completely agree.
It it is a pretty bare bones sheet, but it it I like you just
said, I think there's a lot of space to do a lot of interesting
stuff with it, which is really cool.
I like the fences part. You can keep a list of who you
can fence to either standard or a cult.
I'm like oh good info. Yeah, well, I mean, even the
list for like prismatics and and or prosthetics and ambulance on
the bottom is fantastic. So yeah, everything.
And then the inventory, it tells you straight up like I love that
it only gives you the obviously, I mean, why wouldn't it only the
set of the amount that you can Max out all of the different
things you can have. But we don't know that because
we haven't got to the rule section for that yet.
Yeah, right. All right, moving.
On interesting it's not at the end of the book.
I mean, yes, I agree. I there's.
I think I care. I'm just saying it's, you know,
as opposed to what everyone else does, I guess.
Yeah. I mean, yeah, because it's nice
to have it at the end because then you can just, I guess,
print the last two pages. But like if you have APDF
reader, you can just export these to, yeah?
Yeah. You can print anything you want.
I don't know if if I don't. I don't remember.
If anything, I think, and I could be mistaken because you
back. Did you back?
Did you back fibers? Yeah.
Did you? You just got APDF, right?
There's no like character sheet. There's no nothing else, right?
It was just the PDF. Probably, but I'm going to be
honest, I have to reorganize my files for tabletop games my
computer, so maybe don't quote me on that.
Yeah, yeah, this and that. Yeah, this and that another
really great art piece. I also like that some of these
art pieces really inform you how how they commit crimes in the
game. Like this guy is like has his
cloak open. He's he's offering to sell
things to, to this one guy, to another person.
And behind that person is 1/3 woman assumably pickpocketing
him while he's distracted by this like seller of cheap
things. It's a really great piece also.
And I would try to recreate this end game and be like, Oh yeah,
like I hey, look at all the stuff I got inside my coat, all
my buddies rifles through his drawers.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, it's a great piece. Sorry, just got to but gorgeous
piece. So going into this and that So
this is interesting that this is the next section in the book and
we had we we briefly kind of been like, it's interesting that
that's there. So what is do you want to go
through this and that? Yeah, I'm going.
To do this next, this is another, I think, section of the
book that I really actually read through pretty deeply because I
like these tables. I also just like the way they
look. I like how it's not like
straight lines. I like that it's like little
dotted lines to divide each thing on the table.
I think I just enjoyed going through this.
I mean, they're nice. Looking tables.
They're nice looking tables, they don't feel heavy on the
page, you know what I mean? Yes, I do think it makes a
difference. There's enough delineation
between each thing that you know where it is on the table.
But it's not like I don't know. I agree.
It's visually lighter for some reason.
Yeah. So for when you got a penny to
spend. The asterisk denotes a large
item that requires 2 slots. Page 35 The little I think it's
a dagger marks an item which must be held or strapped in
place. The # sign or hashtag items can
be stacked in a single you good. Yeah, I love that we're old
enough to call it a pound sign. Hey, it's still called a pound
sign. Sometimes if you call a place,
they'll say hit hashtag to do whatever they say hit.
Yeah, actually that's so true. When players sell items, most
merchants will pay 50% of the value.
In the case of illegal traceable goods such as jewelry, red
books, family heirlooms, etcetera, a fence will be
required. Page 35 and yeah, cash 1 LB is
equal to 20 shillings is equal to 240 pence.
One shilling is equal to 12 pence, 1 LB eight shillings and
4 pence is denoted as 1L or L18S4D.
So a little cipher right there for you to figure out the
currency. Fuck you, British.
Fuck yeah. I mean, I think these tables are
very sufficient and they're also interesting.
I think the ones where they really shine is like food and
drink odds and ends prescribed goods.
So maybe we'll I mean food and drink is there's just funny.
Like there's gutter liquor and there's good liquor.
There's there's pretty much a delineation for like products
that you can buy from like the absolute fucking trash to what
nobles have, you know, but what's good?
Oh God, you have something. Well, I mean, the best part of a
lot of these tables is that with a lot of them, it's not just
ale. There's a descriptor for all of
them. Afters and the.
Descriptors are freaking hysterical.
Yeah, gutter liquor rots your teeth and your belly.
That is, You're spelled yer. Yeah, I think.
Yeah. Once again, going through this
is very much Lou Gehring's like, very funny sense of, like,
riding humor. Oh, yeah, 24 eggs is on there.
That's so funny 20. Four eggs.
You can eat these instead of a rat rash and but that's far too
many eggs. So fucking stupid.
I think we should read prescribed goods because I think
this has a lot of lower implication to it, right?
So there's a lot of that A. Lot of it is is is random little
stuff. But then there's also like, oh
shit like this is huge. You know, if you if you get this
book, in which I think you should I really do like this
book. I like this game.
You should read all the items in here because they it really in a
very good way, tell the lore of this world without having to
read the deep lore of like the smoke, which is not like it's
not like there's a whole fucking Bible in here of it.
But it's very much that like Dark Souls thing where you read
item descriptions, you learn about the world even more.
You know, you know that game. You love Dark Souls.
I love Dark Souls lore and stuff.
There we go. So prescribed goods.
The first one you have is the forged mayoral seal.
This is worth 50 whatever the highest amount of money was.
Pounds 50 lbs. I knew that.
Yeah. It's a mayoral seal, force
wardens and garments to let you get what?
Get away with it. 50% chance of being discovered each time it's
used after the first. I like that you use it the first
time and it works, and after that you can keep trying to use
it. But each time you got to kind of
roll to see whether or not it it takes.
You have a forge warden seal only useful in one district, so
the mayoral seal, anywhere forged warden seal is going to
be whatever district that warden is over it can save your skin.
Guardsmen have got to let it slide when you flash it.
And once again 50% chance of being caught after the first
time you use it. And then the you have the forge
permit to carry a weapon only good from one district.
But Lord Permissible is known for his many agents and the
weapons they carry. Cheers to them.
And then the last one is prepared.
Corpse. Don't cross people you sell
these to. Just don't.
I love that it's forged thing, forged thing, forged thing, dead
body. Yeah.
It's great, yeah. BSO there are there's a mayor
over all the smoke. There are wardens over at
separate districts. You need a hermit to carry a
weapon within a district. It's just good information about
the world and how the game is going to work as you play it.
Yeah, Yeah. From there.
I mean, there's a lot of tables I think.
Yeah, light and fuel odds and sods smoking.
So when I first started reading armor, I was like why is armor
here? But then I do like that it all
says as seen on this other page, as seen on this other page.
So you this isn't the only place you get armor, but it's
interesting that it's not the same armor page.
So really to get all of the armor information, you need to
read this armor page and the other armor page, which this is
like the item list armor, and that's like the rules armor.
And you know, a quick reference when you're like out shopping,
where your characters are out shopping like this is all
together. It's very convenient for that.
It's just not the the rules necessarily for all of it.
Yeah, but I mean the writing on this is I love this stuff.
The shield, big and clumsy but keeps you one piece helmet,
keeps your brain box together. And then the cobbled together
breastplate, if you squint, it looks sturdy.
Only some sort of popper knight would wear this.
Like again, the descriptions through all of the lists make
this book realistically. I mean, the writing is
hysterical, But as you said, there's there's lore on so much
of it. Even even as you were talking
with the this, there's a whole thing about smoking and the good
tobacco and the bad tobacco and the bad tobaccos and the starter
kit and like all the rest of that.
There this is this is like in this is environmental
storytelling it through lists and and and things like that.
Like, and like you said, there there is a section about the
smoke and I think it's like half a page as far as like the lore
of the smoke. Yeah.
And there's so much world building in these parts and it's
amazing. I think we're often critical of
like shopping lists in games. Yeah, especially you.
I think this is the how you do that and you make it really
incredibly high value. Is that like there's a
description for every item there?
All the descriptions are written like in universe, like Lauren
language. I mean, obviously it's just
incredibly brothers, but that's in universe still.
It makes going through it like it's not just like a fucking
long list of how much gold everything costs.
It's like an actual information. Yeah, because my, my issue with
just a shopping list, right, oftentimes is you're giving a
value for a thing, but a value of anything is, is supply and
demand, right? If if you really need a fucking
shovel, that's going to cost and and someone knows you really
need a shovel, that's going to cost you more, right?
Like if you're a prospector going to go mine for gold, a
pickaxe is going to cost a ton of money, right?
But if you're just some dude in the middle of like in a pickaxe
could cost nothing because they don't need because they have a
million pickaxes. So just give me a list of how
much things cost. Like, I prefer those lists where
we see like this is cheap and then here's a bunch of stuff.
This is middle, here's a bunch of stuff.
This is expensive. Here's a bunch of stuff.
Just determine what that means for you.
But but as you said, this where you get the the in language
Lorne stuff. If you're going to give me a
list of stuff with values, make it funny and interesting and
full of great information and it's perfect.
Yeah, I agree. Yeah, moving, moving on to
weapons, because there's a little bit of a note on weapons.
I mean, there's a note on armor too, but it's just there's
several different kinds of armor, like how good it is.
But I do really like in the weapons the kind of speaking
again to what we've been talking about.
The very first one is Shank, right.
And every man in the smoke carries a Shank.
That's just the way it is immediately.
I know that every man that would come across in that city is
armed with a Shank of some kind. Most of them that they're poor,
they're probably going to be a ropey Shank.
Maybe they'll have a decent Shank.
A noble would have a mint Shank because of the three classes of
weapon. Yeah.
It's just more, more good, you know?
I like, I like the the notion to the all weapons are assumed to
be wearable in a belt or something unless they have an
asterisk. So it's basically like you're
going to strap this on unless it's too big and all you have to
do is see the asterisk because obviously a pull axe ain't
getting a strapped to your belt. You know, a crossbow, a a poon
poon ain't fitting on your belt. You got to go.
You got to when you, when you're looking for some poon, it's too
handed, you know? Yeah, the Whalers sling them
about, you know, got a rope attached to them, those pooms,
you know. I like the crossbow.
A small and powerful. Shame the Continentals invented
it. Yeah, well, the the bigger
crossbow says less small, more powerful.
So yeah, the the the writing the self right for again, we could
just talk about this could literally just be a stream about
how fucking funny Lou Gearing's writing is, right?
But still, like, it's not just humor, right?
It's fantastic. And then like the humor and the
dry humor just adds such a, a great level to it.
And you just do it all day. Yeah.
And moving. Forward there is a Do you want
to go over weapons specials or no?
Oh, it's going to come up in, it's going to come up in the
general, so we can do it there. There's a hired list, like a
hireling list. There's prosthetics, a lot of
really good stuff here. I would like to point out.
The very last thing on prosthetics though is, is big
sideburns free with patients? Just cover it up with some big
old sideburns mate. Just fucking oh you lost an ear.
Big sideburns. They will see it.
Yeah. Burned.
You got burned. Yeah.
There you go. Big sideburns.
Yeah. The free with patients thing.
It kills me. It kills me.
Yeah, it's a, it's a, It's so fucking dumb.
God damn fucking I love it. It's the prostate section is
incredibly robust. And long you know what the giant
prosthetic section tells me? That you're going to need it.
You got to fucking need it. No, it's literally, I mean the
feet one. The lead boot got me.
You can get a feet a foot prosthetic as a lead boot.
Hope you're not planning on getting anywhere quick.
Guess you could take a shortcut by kicking down every door in
the way. Anyway, yeah, it's really great
and and there's still more. Yeah, there's this section, goes
on for Yeah. The animals.
Animals and then the The Gentleman's Guide to Pet
Discipline or the Geezer's Guide to School in your hound and
basically just tells you what hounds can do and what you can
do with them. And then there's an incredibly
great and long list of breeds of hounds, ignoble and noble that
gives you more information on dogs.
You can absolutely have dogs. I would do it after that I
believe is investments. Yeah, it's AD 20.
Table of freaking dogs. I rolled A-15.
I got the ankle, ankle biter pancake.
It hides very well and always trained to attack at the drawing
of a weapon. Short legged and quite flat. 15
silver are shillings. They're evil eyed mush muncher.
Great. They're great.
Yeah.
Yeah, After that you have investments, you can invest in
stuff. It does give you a certain
amount of clout and currency, but does not represent
ownership. You can't own property.
It's a there's AI mean there's pretty much everything you need
for like a fairly robust game. Yeah, again small rule set like
full set of tools, full set of tools.
Yeah, it really is. Cut No, I was going to say you
can make a small like a one shot from this or a multi year
campaign from this very easily. Absolutely.
And then you have improvements that you can do to whatever
property you buy and then do you want to go over one?
We get to general rules, then we.
Get to general rules. Then we get to general rules.
So I, I have mixed feelings about this Nat being where it
was. I still do.
I think having a giant shopping list before you even get to the
general rules. The general rules being on what
page? Like 2024 or something like
that. 2022 of the book that starts on like page 4 is
interesting as opposed to the general rules being earlier.
You know, the one argument is that it's a book.
You can always flip back to the other parts.
My argument is always, you know, first read, first impressions
are important. If someone bounces off your
stuff like it should be, it should be a good read on the 1st
read because someone might put it down.
There's a million games. And then I kept thinking, why
would you put the shopping list and stuff after character
creation? But it's like, because that's
all the stuff the character needs, I guess.
Yeah, the character, the character starts with some
shillings to buy stuff. So feasibly a lot of that is
some of it is going to be what you buy.
I feel like, you know, property and investment stuff are just
there by the fact that that's it's already where the shopping
list is. So it makes sense for them to go
together. I don't know.
I didn't love that it was before general rules, but I don't hate
it, you know? I mean, I, I, there is, there's
a, there's obviously a logic to it.
Character creations, you have money, you need to buy stuff.
So let's put all the stuff that you buy and then get to the
rules. The the counterpoint to that
would be armor is listed and then you list that you can see
armor stuff later. So why not just say you can find
all of this and that to buy stuff with later and then put it
later, You know, before adversaries and assholes and
stuff. Like it could have just been a
reference to a later page. I would character creation with
like the trinkets and stuff followed by general rules and
then get to the shopping stop and the rest in my mind seems
more logical because you're deep.
Again, you're getting a lot of information for how the world
works without understanding how the game works.
Yeah, but so all of the armor that you could possibly buy is
in that section. The armor section later on in
the book is just the rules for how armor works.
That was just that was just I'm sorry, that was just a that was
just like an example, right? Like, but like even even even
you know, smoking stuff and stuff you're like, well, I want
to start with this or that like it.
Well, it's because it's called this and that right?
It's it makes sense. There's a logic to why it's
there. I wouldn't mind if it was later.
I I personally would prefer the rules before getting to that
because then I'll understand a little bit more of why I want
the things I want totally. You know, I wouldn't mind
knowing how armor works before I get to armor and how weapons
work before I get to weapons and so.
That's probably fair. So general rules, there's not a
whole lot. Another fantastic page of a dude
died and a lady looking nonplussed.
Yeah. OK.
So a lady is not getting fucked. What?
Oh yeah, because I said and there's a lady and you would
getting anyway. So there's a lady in a tower who
maybe this person was coming to see or whatever, and I not only
do I love that there's a million arrows hitting this guy, there's
a million more coming in, but it's the dude in the window
pushing him down with like a spear that really.
Gets me stabbing down to them. Yeah, this guy obviously got
cornered into a trap, you know, And yeah, he's got, I just
counted the arrows in my arrow for a guy, he's got 20 something
arrows either in him or flying at him.
I think he's dead. I think that man's dead.
Yeah, well, he's got literally the one that's sticking out of
his head. I feel like that one might have
done it and then the other one, two.
Yeah. The four that are in his chest
might also do it. The one in his leg and then.
Yeah, the other, the other many, many that are going to hit him.
And then that Lady in the window, that's just.
I don't know. She seems nonplussed.
I can't tell if she's. Yeah.
Just like. Well, OK.
So general rules. Here we go.
So this is the rules of the game we talked about.
The book states that it is a very light rule set attached to
a full toolbox of stuff. And I agree, it is a very light
rule set. And as I said before, I think
it's light to the point of maybe missing some things.
We're going to talk about that a little bit right now.
So this is the game. So two, there are two main types
of roles in Swipers. There's competing roles, what it
sounds like, right? You roll against people and try
to roll higher and then there's a roll under where you attempt
to roll lower than a target number, often based on your
attributes, but sometimes not. And that's, and that's
representing the difficulty, right?
Some people, I hear a lot of people call Swivers like a like
a like, like Blades in the Dark. They compare it to Blades in the
Dark. I, I really genuinely think it's
just like Thief City kind of stuff if there's no real because
I mean, that's what Blades in the Dark is, right?
You play thieves in a city, right?
Yeah, yeah, but and there is like a dice pool, but not really
because the dice that you is a difficulty, not based on
activity. There's no real comparison.
No, there's no, there's not. It's not at all.
I would. Just say yeah, you play yeah,
you play thieves in A1 specific city, which is what Blaze is.
You play thieves in whatever they.
Call this like a Blades in the Dark type of game.
That's but it doesn't work the same.
Yeah, again, I think I think it's mostly themes or maybe a
misconception of the of a quote UN quote dice pool because you
do Q can rule 345 D 6 and stuff like that.
But there's no aspect of this that would be blades and again,
cut 100 and 5200 pages off a blaze and great game, you know,
So general rules, skills and saves.
I'm going to we're going to wax. I'm going to get pedantic key or
point out to you when we talk about skills and saves.
So skills and saves, it's on the player to decide whether their
Swiber attempts to do a skill or a save.
The difference being that a skill represents an action you
take and a save represents a reaction to something.
I love that. It's how I like to play games,
it's how I talk about skills and saves.
So hearing it written out very obviously that way is great and
the player can decide whether they're acting or being acted
upon. Obviously the GM2, obviously
it's a discussion, right? If a Swiber has an appropriate
attribute, it is used as the target number to roll equal to
or under right? So it you roll 3D6 in the
beginning, if your stat is 9 right, you're rolling under 9,
right? What are you rolling?
We don't know yet. They don't say it in this
section. I didn't even.
Realize they don't say it in this section.
I wish they would. No.
Yeah, I wish they would. And then if there is no suitable
attribute, the GM sets a target number based on how difficult
they believe the task to be. And the difficulty is determined
either by the number of dice used when checking against an
attribute or the value set by the GM never built.
So there's two different ways that you can set difficulty of a
skill checker safe, and that really is determined by whether
you have an appropriate attribute or not, right?
I, I'm curious why they say attribute, because there are
only three attributes. I'm curious if maybe that was
supposed to be skill because everything can fit into
realistically one of those 3 attributes, right?
But we, I'm going to talk about skills a little bit more.
But but yeah, we'll get into the issues kind of that I have here.
So skills takes all kinds, all kinds of skills to get by here.
So a skill role is used when a swiper attempts an action with
no guaranteed success, right? Standard OSR terminology, right?
It should only be used if discussion and negotiation
cannot determine the outcome. And I like, I do like the
explanation here in the way that Luke explains this.
Good candidates for skills and skill roles are generally
actions requiring training, actions which rely on
information that the swipers might have access to, actions
relying on a swipers physique or abilities alone.
And then things which can parentheses and in the author's
opinion, should parentheses be resolved without skill.
Roles are conversations with NPCS searching locations.
Stop doing fucking perception like hiding or being selfie
noticing hidden objects and details.
Players should be asking the GM. Don't hide important information
behind skill checks because the players will inevitably be
failed when you want them to have information.
Bro like you see a you see a room.
OK I I explore it thoroughly all right.
Give me ADC 15 perception, fuck off.
I will, I will always. First off, great part, amazing
part. This part should be in more
games, but I always point to the time I played 5 E with a group
and I jumped over a massive wall using a spell I can't remember.
Who the fuck cares? And I looked over the wall and I
was like, do I see anything? He's like, make a perception
rule, like, no fucker, I'm looking over a goddamn wall.
There's no fog or anything. And later on, the GM, the GM was
like, man, I really wish you had seen what was over that wall.
I'm like, then why'd you make me roll for it?
He's like, Oh yeah. Like, yeah. 5E coded brain.
Yeah anyway, so where possible a suitable attribute is chosen.
See Uncertain skills and saves and then for competing roles,
both so, but there's a different role for competing roles versus
the regular role, which has two different kinds of difficulty.
For for competing roles, both parties roll AD 12, adding the
most relevant attribute and any relevant skills.
The highest total value wins. So this is the first time we
know what dice to roll, and that's for competing roles,
right? So then we get to the top here.
It says when leveling up, Swiper may choose to improve a skill by
one. This means that the related
attribute value or target value is treated as one higher for the
purposes of determining success. These skills should be
relatively narrow, discreet, and not related to and not related
to combat. This will come back not related
to combat. Some good examples include.
There's a huge list here. They're great.
Lock picking, which is rolling against decks.
Acrobats for decks, pickpocketing decks, scaling
walls, strength bending things, strength, smashing doors down,
strength drinking contest. Con disguise based on specific
specificity of disguise. First aid, appraisal of goods.
Historical knowledge. Forgery, right?
Those are good skills that you can have, right?
And there's an example here, two different examples.
I'm going to come back to the examples after I explain the
next two parts, right? So now we're going to get to how
you roll dice when it is not a competing, when it is a skill or
save, it is foolish, but it's just because you are trying to
roll below a certain number. So the more dice you're rolling,
you're not taking like the lowest two, you're rolling all
of the dice. Yeah, to get below a number.
So obviously it's. Potentially harder as you add
dice to the pool. Which is a really interesting
I've not seen. If this isn't something else,
bully for them. I've not seen a roll under
system where you keep adding more dice.
It's to stay under a number. It's on walls.
It's in walls upon the coast. So, so Luke, so other Luke's
hearing the other big thing. So, so 2D6.
An average bloke could do this probably, or something else
under pressure, smashing down a rickety door, climbing over a
short wall. So basically the answer to what
dice do you roll is never is, is always just.
It fucking depends apparently right?
Like there is no standard I guess.
The lowest difficulty skill is 2D6 right?
But it's never 2D6 and add more right?
It's always you're setting a difficulty with the number of
dice are rolling. SO2D6 average average.
Anybody can do this stuff. 3D6 and average.
Broke bloke probably couldn't do this.
Climbing out of a pit deeper than you are tall.
Picking a lock so that becomes like a little bit more
specialized. 46 attempting this is pretty unhinged.
Leaping between distant buildings.
Smashing down a good wall with your fists and then 5D6.
An amazing feat. Dragging a dead cow single
handed. Catching arrows out of the air.
I like if people stick to this and I feel like people are going
to slide down this though, but basically in that like, oh this
seems hardish. I'm going to make it 5D6, but
5D6 is literally like. That's the.
Impossible. Yeah.
You should never be. In my opinion, for most things
you should never be rolling over 3D6.
No most. Like actually fairly challenging
things. I would say probably hover
around A3. Yes.
Like anything above mundanes. I mean, I think it's laid out
perfectly. I I definitely would not be
sliding to. I mean also I know how dice work
so I would not be sliding to the harder ones on this.
I'd be like, you're going to be holding steady at the lower 2
probably. For most things.
But because here's the thing too right?
Say that your attribute is and because you're rolling against
an attribute on this, if you're if you're increasing dice, it is
against an attribute number, right?
So if your DEX is 4 or a DEX IS92D6 to roll under 9, OK,
right, average 7 you're close 3D6 under 9 average is 9, right
46 you're what, 5D6? The odds of you rolling 5D6 you
have to roll 4 ones and like like 1-2, you know, and and
that's a six right there. That's crazy.
So. 3D6 for your stats. Like I rolled a couple for this
and I rolled like A5 for a stat you know I rolled.
I just rolled 4 for one and a 10 for another.
See, you could potentially have a 10 for a stat, maybe, but
you're more likely not. I rolled A10, A 13 and a nine.
You rolled better than I did. I rolled from my guy last night.
I rolled a like a 4A5 and A10 that.
Sounds, yeah, which is that sounds great.
Right. You know.
Yeah, and that's why seals come in and we'll we'll talk about
skills here in a second. So then we'll get to saves.
So saves is a little bit different.
Sometimes you're the one in the shit.
Saves you used to avoid something usually when you're
when you fucked up. I love that it is on the IT is
on the player to decide quickly how they attempt to avoid a
hazard by rolling under an appropriate skill.
It does not say roll under or equal to.
It does not but. In the in the other section it
says if you have an appropriate, it is used as a target number to
roll equal to or under. So in the skills and save
section it does say equal to or under, right?
We're going to pause for a moment because Hunter walked
away, right? So in the skills and save
section, it says if it's fiber have an appropriate attribute,
it is used as a target to roll equal to or under.
But then you get to the save section because that's the skill
and save section. The save says it just says roll
under. It doesn't say equal to or
under. So there's a little bit of.
So it's slightly. It's a slightly harder roll.
No, no, what I'm saying is this is not the skills section.
It says skills and saves and then under skills and saves it
says if they have an appropriate attribute you roll equal to or
under. It's not separating skill or
save them. You're right.
That is the skills. Yeah, OK.
And then when you get to the save section, it just says roll
under, doesn't say the equal to. And that like seems like a small
thing, but it's, I mean, that's kind of important to know
whether it's equal to or under because that one thing could
make a big difference. So there are examples here of
the attributes and why you would save.
Constitution is toughing it out usually means taking reduced
damage rather than avoidance, Dexterity, seeing something and
dodging out of the way, grabbing something, falling.
And Strength is hauling yourself or someone out, someone else out
of the way, leaping over something.
Pretty standard, right? Again, saves our reactions to
things and skills are actions towards a thing, right?
So there are there's another example over here.
I do want to before I touch on all of the examples, I want to
hit uncertain skills and saves. So book learning and studying is
only good for knobs probably. So in the case of a skill role
or say which does not have an obvious attribute, use 3D6 and
consult the table below for a rough guideline of suitable
numbers to roll equal to or below.
So this is again a section where it says equal to or below.
But in the same section, I think they're just missing the equal
to there right as a subject to any skill bonuses.
So the there's a table here and this is basically a target
number table, right? So there's difficulty
description and the value to match a role below.
So there's easy but under pressure specialist knowledge,
quite difficult, very hard and nearly impossible.
Easy under pressure is a 17. It says something else normally,
but tricky under pressure, mounting a horse, hopping a
short wall, pretty easy. 17 is a a crazy.
That's a high number to roll under if you go down to mid
right, quite difficult. Advanced students might know a
little properties of a rare and unusual flower or a good
forgery. That's a 10.
The lowest, nearly impossible is a six.
So no one but the most learned sages, an entirely novel insight
into the obscure forgery more convincing than the real thing.
So those are the examples of of those are the values you can do.
So I want to go back and read through.
There's two sets of examples of play here based on for skills
and saves and how they work right.
So they're good because when I first read this, it took like,
it did take me a second to be like, so wait.
There are really two very distinct ways to set a difficult
to hear, but I'm still trying. Like, so Big Dave is attempting
to smash down a door. This is clearly strength.
Their strength is 14, meaning that's your target number.
He also has +2 and smashing down doors from his skills because he
has skills. Somehow we'll get there,
increasing the value to 16. The door itself is huge.
Sturdy thing of oak. The GM sets the difficulty to
3D6 right? So it's a giant door, so the
difficulty is a little bit harder.
So he has to roll 3D6 under 16 because he has a 14 and then +2
for knocking down doors. They roll an 8, Boom, you did it
right. The next one, Harry Needle
Jenkins wants to see if the fence is cheating with his offer
of some paintings they borrowed. There's no obvious attribute for
this check. Makes sense, right?
That is, that is a good example of something that doesn't really
fit under Constitution, strength or decks.
Is like, can I tell if this dude is lying?
Right. I want to see if he's cheating
me. Absolutely great example that
made it super clear to me for the stuff that doesn't fall
under attribute because there is no wisdom, there is no intellect
or anything like that, right? It's con strength and index,
very bodily skills. So it seems like with a lot of
or very bodily attributes. So a lot of the skills are going
to be more of your social and intellectual things or the the,
the non attribute ones. That's where you can say
difficulty a lot, which I thought was interesting too,
because if you look at difficulty, those are all
physical. The difficulty dice roll one.
But if you look at difficulty of setting a number one, those are
all almost all mental, right? Hopping a short wall, but like
make doing a forgery, knowing a trade secret, those are all
relatively mental. So that also helped me kind of
realize that a lot of your setting a target numbers are
going to be more of your social and intellectual stuff.
And a lot of your attribute role under attribute stuff is going
to be more physical because obviously your attributes are
mostly physical. So this one says they want to
see if the fence is cheating them.
There's no obvious attributes. So the GM checks the notes on
the painting. They're pretty obscure.
So he sets the target number at 12, which is, which is
relatively low. It's quite near the middle of
like the the hard difficulty. They don't.
Yeah. They don't know much about
anything else. So he attempts to beat a 12 on
three D6 because 3D6 is the average.
If you don't have it's what you always roll on uncertain skills
and saves. So as a non attribute skill
they're always rolling under 3D6.
He gets a 14 and fails. You can't ask this again.
He just doesn't know if the dudes cheating him.
Sucks to suck. Great examples there.
I think of the of the two ways to set difficulty in two
different ways. The other one is saves.
I'll only do one of these. There's four of them.
There's 4 examples for saves which are great.
Big Dave being a huge group Back to Dave attempts to jump the
edge. Oh, so this is a this is a whole
story, so let's do the whole thing real quick.
The group failed to check the path ahead and have walked
straight into a pit trap. The combined way to Big Dave,
Sharp, Larry and Gasser Burt caused the false floor to begin
collapsing. So they failed at something.
Here's how each of them is going to deal with it.
Right, right. The pit trap is falling, and as
the floor collapses, here's what they do Big Dave, Big Dave, Big
Dude attempts to jump from the edge of the bridge using
strength. He's pretty close to the edge.
It's hard, but they set it to a 3D6DS to roll under.
Right? Physical Sharp Harry attempts to
use decks to Sprint off the to Sprint off the false floor, but
he's towards the back of the group or he's towards the the
back of the group where it didn't collapse.
It's not too difficult, sets a 2D6, but Goss Gasser Burt also
tries to run using his decks to cross all the way to the other
side, but he's further from the edge.
So they set it to 46. So different ways to set it.
That works great. I'm going to go through just the
beginning of fighting, and then let's talk about the issue that
I kind of talked about with skills.
So fighting a fight means something's gone wrong for
somebody. Why else would you bring?
Why else would you be trying to kill someone?
Makes sense. It should be pretty obvious when
a fight's starting. Ambushing someone means they
won't get a chance to react. Ignore them in the initiative
line in the first round. Great to hit you, roll 2D10,
which has nothing to do with skills and save roles.
It's an entirely different role, which is also different than the
competing roles, which is AD 12, right?
Gotcha. And then you add your fighting
skill, OK, if you roll equal to or higher than the the defense
value you hit, we're going to take a pause.
We're going to take a pause real quick on fighting and come back
to it. Where What does fighting skill
derive from? I don't have any idea because I
think if you go back up to skills it says to do, to do, to
do. No very top of page right 24 on
the right. It's a very top right OK you
read it but I can't find. Yeah, this skill should be
relatively narrow, discrete and not related to combat, so OK.
Let's So where did the fighting skill come from?
I didn't even fucking tell you, right?
And let's just talk about my only real gripe of this game
realistically is what we're going to talk about right now.
How many skills do you start with, right?
We know how to advance a skill. It says at the top there when
leveling up, a Swiber may choose to improve a skill by 1.
Where do you get the skill to begin with?
Yeah, I think my, I agree with what you're saying.
I think the way that I internally like logic this out
is that you don't start with any skills and when you level up,
you get what you get, a skill to one which is not quite improved.
I mean, I guess there's improving a skill, just a skill
you didn't have. You gain a skill, I guess.
I think it's how it's run. Let's say that is how it's run.
Then realistically what what should be the book, right?
That line that says you don't start with the skills the first
time you level up, you can pick one right?
And then that means if you buy level 5 you should have 5
skills. But then also, where does this?
Where does fighting skill drive from?
Yeah, that one, that one I straight up don't know.
So. There's just no, all the rules
make sense. We're going to keep going.
I like, I like the rules. It's really interesting.
I even like how fucking why we're using 18 different dice to
do 10 different fucking things, right?
Yeah, I do think it's pretty funny, actually.
But there's a complete lack of explanation on like I know how
to do a skill roll, but I don't know where they come from, where
they, what they're derived from, when I can get them, how many I
start with, or fighting skills derived from nothing.
It doesn't say start with three. It doesn't say you get your
first skill on level up. It doesn't say it says no
explanation whatsoever on how many you have when you have them
or or anything. It just says if there's a list
of like picking them right, which ones are good ones?
But does that mean how many do I get to start the game with, you
know? See, I think for me, I think the
the first part's more forgivable, right?
You, we went to character creation.
You start with what you start with.
You don't start with these skills.
When you level up, you improve the skill.
I'm willing to concede that. Could it be worded better?
Absolutely. The part that actually bothers
me. Worded it all.
Word it all right, Could that be put in there better than saying
you improve a skill like yeah, you improve or gain a skill,
yes, I think that'd be much, much better.
But the one that does actually bother me is the fighting skill
is because what the fuck is a fighting skill bro?
Yeah, it does. I read.
Something reading this. No, I have scoured back and
forth. I have, I have.
I have control FT skill to try to find more if it's in there.
My God I don't know how I missed it.
I would love someone to explain it a little bit better, but as
far as I can tell on reading this book like three times and
really trying to dig, there is no explanation on how many
skills you start with or when. Like you can improve a skill,
but when can you take one, right?
We can intuit parts, we can guess at parts, right?
But that's not you really shouldn't be guessing in the
rules. The rules should tell you.
And then there's no explanation what's wrong or what the
fighting skill is derived from at all.
Is it from your decks? Is it from your range to the
change based on the weapon type? Because we do.
We do understand how the defense works because defense is part of
your initiative. But like fighting skill again,
unless I'm like a completely miss it maybe did have we did we
dig through the weapon section is like somehow the weapons
related? To the fight Weapons.
Right now, weapons are only they only denote damage lengths, how
many hands they take to wield, anything special about them.
Yeah, so we. Have to miss something.
There has to be. Something if we missed it, you
know, fuck us, right? But from what I can tell
specifically you, yeah, right, me specifically, fuck me.
But it just seems as if it's just missing, like it's just
missing there, there. There's no that we can find
explanation on how many skills you start with when you can take
them. Other than that you can improve
them at level up or what your fighting skill is or what it's
derived from. Because when you go back to the
character creation section, the only derived number it gives you
is what your your constitution, right?
Is that what it it says that your hit points equal to
constitution? Yeah.
It doesn't say like fighting scale equal to strength or
something like that. You know I did use the the quick
tool to go back to the table of contents to go back to the.
I did too. I've used.
It's so good. It's really.
Good. Please, everybody do this.
Everybody. Everyone.
Do this. There's no reason to not do it.
It's amazing. It's crazy, yeah.
If you're going to hyperlink your table of contents, having
just A1 little button on the page that also takes you back to
the table of contents makes the it's infinitely more navigable.
It's so great. And I assume that hyperlink can
just be like copy pasted through.
I mean, we'll see anyway. So that is the big ripe that we
have for the game. Other than that, that that's
pretty much it and we're going to go through the.
Rest of the rules OK what is binding scale?
Right, so then we get let's go back to fighting real quick, run
through that again. So basically when you fight,
right to fight, you roll 2D10, you add your fighting skill,
don't know what that is. And then if you roll equal to or
higher than the defense value, you hit.
That's easy. So fighting is equal to or
higher and skills and saves is equal to or lower.
But fighting is 2D10 and skills are D6D62 D 63646, right?
And then there's a table here for critical miss.
If you go to the top of the next page it says when a player roles
2 results of 10 on an attack role they instantly slay the
target if possible. Love that if you crit on 2D10
they're fucking dead. I enjoy that.
I like non bullet spongy stuff. If the PCs roll double 10s it's
just it. Whatever, Fuck them.
Rolling 2 results of a one in your attack means you fumble.
Not only do you miss, but you might have really cocked up.
You roll in the critical miss table, it's really cocked up.
Yeah. So if it's a melee it's AD 8 and
if it's range is AD 4. So hit me AD 8 and AD four and
let's see how bad you fucked up. Sorry if I got distracted, my
dad just text me. They're 20.
He's 20 miles West of the Palisades fire right now, so.
Oh, he shouldn't move away from there.
I'm like you should leave dude. Like a real double ones.
Oh sick couldn't, I mean honestly couldn't ask for more.
So one just an appalling miss, thankfully for a melee, and then
the some of the later ones you trip and fall like a big dumb
idiot. Counting is prone until you get
up again. The swing connects with the
nearest ally. The weapon isn't just damaged,
you've gone and bloody broken it.
Love it, it's a great list. And then D4 the ranged 1.
I'll check that in just one second.
The weapon snaps has a mechanical function, it's
broken. You managed to ricochet the shot
back at yourself. Rolled the weapon snaps as a
mechanical function. It's broken, right?
Yeah, I saw. That message in chat now and now
I'm interested as well. And do I have like a not do I
have like a non updated version of the PDF that I will get the
most recent version? Yeah, I don't know.
So some of the chat just yeah, just kind of just listed us a
thing here. Maybe maybe that we just have
like an older version of the PDF.
I thought I got the one that was marked final.
And if not do that page 32, then we will get to it in just a
minute. So damage, this is how damage
works. You roll damage.
The defender rolls armor because armor and this, and we'll get to
it in a little bit is is like Mark Borg.
You have a a dicey roll for your armor and then the armor value
is deducted from the damage. If it's zero, it's zero.
Boom, there you go. Actions in a round.
So this has kind of like a, a, a, a Warhammer fantasy RP role
play thing. You have full actions and half
actions each set. Each round is 6 seconds.
It may take one full action or two half actions.
So full actions is engaging in melee combat, disengaging from
melee combat, aiming at shooting and grabbing an item from your
belt and using it, casting a spell, fetching something from
your Packer sack, full action. That's all you can do in a
round. And then half actions is running
away. You'll go further if you do
nothing, snapping off a quick shot out of -4 penalty.
Which I think is really interesting to just be able.
Like I didn't even aim. I just thought shouted out there
drawing an item from a bag but not using it and then passing an
item to someone else. I like that.
And I like that it gives you that's obviously not everything
you can do right, right. I like that it gives you the the
enough that it's a vibe and basically like doing a big thing
is a full action and doing a small thing is half action is
wrong with that. And I and I do love the full
action to half action thing. It's a it's something to think
about with all of the games as opposed to the you get an action
and a move situation. You know, it's, it's
interesting. Defense is an initiative.
So this is interesting. I don't remember what version of
older, you know, D&D used this. I need to dig into the older
stuff more. But basically the defense is
based on your weapon, as is your initiative.
And nobody wants to get hit. So being armed is the best way
to stop that. So there's a, there's a list
here of, of how that how, how it works, right.
And it goes, you begin casting a spell that finishes at the end
of the round, and that's the first round, right?
Like first in the round is whoever's casting a spell and
their defense value is 6. So that is your initiative.
No one rolls initiative or do whatever.
If someone's casting a spell, they go 1st and their defense is
at six, and you have to roll over that right equal to or over
to get hit, right? If you're shooting something,
your defense value is a six and you go next.
Then if you're unarmed, it's a six.
Short weapon is an 8. Medium weapon is A10 short
weapon plus shield is A10. Long weapon is A10.
Medium weapon plus shield is a 12, and then long weapon plus
shield is a 12. And they go very last in the
round. So it really goes from casting a
spell to the bulkiest shit you can be carrying in that order
every round, right? Nice.
And then there's some explanation of that, too.
You resolve actions down from the top of the table, except on
the first round of combat where the order is reversed.
Why? I had my guess.
My guess my what I thought in my head, what made sense is that
two groups are coming together right Then the longest weapon
would hit the the the closest person 1st and vice versa.
Like until you get to the lowest weapon and people shooting would
probably be farther back. So it kind of makes sense on the
first round of combat. But there's no, there's no it
didn't say that anywhere. I just I'm just guessing that
that might be it. I'm fine with that.
Internal logic, you know, I wouldn't mind.
I wouldn't mind an explanation of why I don't mind it.
That's cool. So actions are resolved in the
initiative order outlined at the left.
This is another reminder to people, don't put directions to
your tables, just put the name of the table.
Because I'm reading APDF and pages so the left is checked,
just name the table. Elections are resolved in
initiative order with the announcement of spells being
cast and we'll get to magic later and then I'll going down.
Ties with NPCS are resolved with an opposed D6 roll.
Ties between 5 is negotiated monsters that do not use weapons
are given an initiative value in their stat block.
Boom. I I like this a lot.
I like being like don't worry about when your initiative order
is what kind of weapon you has just tells you because after the
first round you know what the other people have and it's
interesting very easy yeah. And then there's a difference
for when defending against ranged attacks.
So when defending against range attacks, the above values are
placed with no shield was 12, shield is 16.
Basically like that's good for you cover ads +2 charging is a
thing you can do. Which when I read set on weapons
before and the and the item stuff made no fucking sense to
me. So I had to recharging to
understand setting weapon which we'll get to in a second.
But basically you can charge and combatant to charge reverse the
initiative order for those involved in combat with them,
meaning longer weapons strike first if you're charging.
Which is also what made me think, OK maybe that's why it's
reversed on the first round because longer weapon you'd hit
them first. You know Swiber who charge
obtraps 2 from their defense value.
If they're successful, they roll twice the usual number of
damage. Cool attacks against prone
automatically hit, but plus forward against missiles.
Flanking is interesting because there's two different things you
get for it. So different angles of flanking
do more. So if you're attacking are made
against the unarmed defense value if you're directly behind
them, so it's like a six. But if you're attacking or from
the flanks, which I guess is the angles that are still kind of
behind but not directly behind, you get a + 2 bonus to hit.
I like that. I think that's interesting.
It gives it gives more variety for your ability because I hate
being like, oh man, I'm only one block away from being able to
flank them, but it's like, Oh no, you're still behind them
ish. Give them a little bonus.
I think that's interesting. Yeah, I think that's good.
I I appreciate the distinction between those things.
Yeah, OK, weapons real quick. Three varieties, ropy, average
and mint right, Very British way of saying shitty, OK and great,
right. Ropy rolls damage twice and
takes a lower decent roll once and mint rolls damage twice and
takes a higher. I love that.
I I love when, especially if a game is just like AD 6 game and
like instead of like light, medium and two handed, whatever
is just D6 disadvantaged D6 and D6 advantage.
I love that. And this is a way to do that.
So they have 3 qualities and three links.
Short, long, short, medium and long, right?
Short you can use while grappling, which is interesting.
Medium nothing special. And long are very awkward in
current quarters. So if you're in a tight space,
you have a -, 4 penalty and then set.
This is the one that like fucked me up for a little bit till I
realized what setting a weapon meant because I, I in my head, I
kept seeing a crossbow like setting the crossbow right, but
it's more of like setting the pole arm against your boot so
that something running actually runs into it because it says
weapons which can be set can receive a charge.
And in my head, when I first saw that, I was like.
You receive a charge of something, yeah, but it's
actually. Like charging on my weapon.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You shut your weapons, you can
receive their charge and they take damage.
Yes, yes. So it is more explained in that
could be explained a tiny bit better.
But like in the context of once you read the charging and get to
it, you get there, you get there.
Setting to receive comes in the shooting phase.
Blah, blah, blah, reach weapons. There's there's bonuses.
I'm not going to go over all of them by the fucking book.
So reach weapons mean that you can reach farther half sorting
means it can be wielded in a shortened form.
So instead of having that long weapon that you can't use up
tight, you can you can grab it halfway and and still poke Armor
piercing. Yeah, armor piercing.
Guess what it does thrusting. Guess what you do right?
I would say combat in this game pretty fun.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, yeah.
It sounds like you can do a lot of stuff, all of it.
Like there's a lot of rules packed in right here.
All of them are fairly like maybe not intuitive mind.
That would be the word I'm looking for.
But there is a like a logic, a through line of logic that makes
total sense as you go through and you're like, yeah, that
makes sense. If you can charge in this game,
in real life, if I charge at somebody who has a halberd out
and they're set like they're, they're braced for me to charge
like I'm going to fucking get hit.
So it makes sense that that would work the same in this game
and. So it makes sense.
And, and, and I mean, we see a lot of rules.
We feel like 2 pages. Again, this is not a heavy
system, but there is a decent amount of like extras and one of
the other things that I love about this comment system we're
going to keep going over a little bit more is none of it is
hidden behind a feet wall. Like I don't need a heroic feat
to fucking set a charge. Like I don't need to to to do
something special to get the ability to to also stab someone
with my weapon while I'm grappling.
I fucking hate when games hide things that you should just be
able to do behind a heroic feat or feats in general or anything
like that. And yes, I'm talking about 5E
and Dragon band. It really irritates me when like
I can just logically be like, but I just stabbed them.
So we're we're getting to armor. Armor is soaked, right?
We've already talked about this a tiny bit.
So there's different varieties, different types, everything.
The die size listed is the damage absorbed and basically
the rest being applied to the HP.
Yeah, it's soaked, but you roll for it exactly in the other one.
So you get multiple types of armor.
You get Patrick armor, rolls soaked twice and uses the lower
decent roll soaked once and then Swank rolls twice and rolls
higher, which is the same way weapons work.
And I love that there's a cohesiveness to it.
There's a list of armors here and there's a bigger list on the
this and that for that, right? Shields exist.
They basically are one time use, take all your damage and then
they're broken and then helmets heavy armor.
Yeah, helmets heavy armor and broken bones is interesting
because you when you get hit, you break a lot of bones and
shit gets fucked up really hard. But what heavy armor does, the
benefit it gives you is you roll A3 plus on your death and
dismemberment table, which we'll go over in just a second.
So each time it rolls a three over and when we get to the
three over, you'll see that it breaks bones.
It instead doesn't and just breaks the piece of armor.
So every piece you have a piece of heavy armor can take one hit
that would break a bone before breaking a bone.
And then the helmet always goes. If you have heavy armor, you
always have a helmet and that covers your head.
I like that. It's a way you add a whole new
level of the game with that without really adding too much
weight to the to the system at all.
And I really enjoy that a lot. All right, death and
dismemberment table. I love this damage represents a
weakening of defenses over time. It's not just like a specific
wound. Once you are reduced TO0HP,
though, you roll AD 26 and AD 12 because these blows tell a give
you a serious injury. And while you remain AT0HP, all
successive strikes cause another roll on the table, right?
So HP is not it's damaged over time.
It's not, it's not like you hit zero when suddenly you're dead.
You have to roll death on the death and dismemberment table to
die. You just get the shit kicked out
of you over and over and over again into your HP until you get
some HP back. Right?
All successful strikes cause another roll on the table below
with a plus one bonus per previous roll on the DSEC table.
So if you've already rolled twice on the table, whatever you
roll you add +2 to and once you roll 3 on the table you add +32
so that you will die. Like it's not like a matter of
if, it's when. I do enjoy that about HP, that
it's not just like you're suddenly at zero, you're dead.
It's no, you are now rolling for serious injuries every time you
do it. So D6 and D12, why don't you
roll me AD 12 and AD 6 and we'll hit this table and and do a
couple of these and then run through it and then keep moving
on. I rolled A6 on AD 6:00 and 9:00
on AD 12. Well, any 6 is death.
Yeah, so you got hit in the left arm and somehow it killed you.
Right. I bled out, you know?
You bled out, so the locations are left leg, right leg, torso,
left arm, right arm, head. How about this first?
I rolled a three and a nine. Broken and useless.
OK, so you are broken and useless.
You're, you're just broken and you are useless.
So the, the torso is broken and useless.
So you basically your ribs are shattered, right?
You can barely breathe. That sucks.
But if you had a heavy piece of armor on instead, your
breastplate would be broken, but you would not be broken and
useless. And that's why anything three or
more is protected by the heavy armor, because that's when
things break. Because if you look at #1 it
says like for legs, it says tripped, not prone.
And #2 it says as one plus a penalty.
And the same thing with beyond three, it says broken and
useless. And #4 is as three plus you're
knocked out. So after three, you're always
getting broken. The thing is breaking or you're
getting dismembered because yes, there's limb dismembering.
Why don't you roll me AD 6 and AD 4 for your facial and limb
dismemberment? So for my facial dismemberment I
lost my right eye, and then for my limb dismemberment I've lost
either fingers or toes, I guess depending where we're at.
Sick. And then there is a whole
section up here. There's a note on dismemberment.
There's no attribute loss or other mechanical effect, right?
However, the dismemberment should be considered when the
swiper does something. So if you lost all your toes
then you're trying to tightrope walk.
You should think about that in the scale check, right?
Clever planning and careful descriptions and prosthetics
ensure no activity is disallowed.
Don't be disrespectful to real people with limb loss like that.
Big shout out. Big shout out love that and then
that's we're going on fight like a swiber.
There's more stuff you can do right, You can grapple, you can
grapple from behind, you can knock down.
I like that. It basically says like here are
a list of some mechanics to give you an example.
But this list is not everything you can do.
It's just inspiration. Use your imagination.
That's what the rules say. And the grappling, grappling
from behind, knocking down, those are all in there and
that's great. And they also.
Like the delineations like the the attacking from behind but
also flanking or hitting prone and then like grappling his
thing but also grappling from behind is different because it's
different in that situation. It also implies that if a care
if a player character came up with situation like I would know
how to make a rule for that delineation of this because it's
like, oh, it's a + 2 normally for some things or you know, it
just makes it very easy to understand the system and expand
upon it in your own table, you know?
Yeah, it's a good outside of the skills thing.
It's a really great framework, yeah, in the way that OSR is
often good frameworks for those skills that.
Are by the way, we both missed it so.
Oh well, we will look and then I will apologize when I see it.
Healing. Healing is slow.
The assistance of a Barber surgeon helps.
So basically if you if you are above 0 HP, one day's rest, it
all comes back. If you are below 0 HP, you get,
what is it, half 0HP recover half their HP after a day's
rest. A Barber surgeon speeds that up,
great. But if you have broken bones,
that's when you're really fucked.
HP can come back in a day or two.
But if you're a broken bones, an arm takes 3 weeks, a leg takes
six weeks, a rib takes 4 weeks, and a skull takes 9 weeks.
But if you have a Barber surgeon, you can pay them to
make that faster, but you have to pay them like every time to
keep making it faster. And I love that.
And then there's funeral rites. He was a good lad all right,
scumbag. And he'd want us to spend it all
on a piss up so you can actually take your dead friend's XP
penny. I assume that means pence, which
is the thing that's in the game, right?
I think. I assume a penny is a pence.
Yeah. OK.
Yeah. And then?
Americans don't have pennies. We have scents.
Even though we call the scent a penny, that's actually what a
pence is, so. Interesting.
Yeah, we're dumb. God, can we just get rid of the
penny anyway? So recovering the corpus of the
Swiber allows the XP to be purchased in a straight penny
for XP conversion. The money is spent on the
funeral for the dead, and the XP is divided up against the other
Swivers and only those involved in the campaign with him or
whatever have claimed to the to the stiffs XPI like that.
That's really interesting that the XP wall game together can
still be yours. You just buy it from the dead
body. And this might be one of my
favorite pieces of the entire book.
The big fight. Bro, the movement on this page,
every single person except that this, this smiling fucker here
with the sword is getting fucked up.
He is the only one that seems to be not really getting hurt, but
he is stabbing a dude. And that dude is in turn getting
kicked in the face by another guy.
And that guy is in turn, not only is a rat flying at his
face, but he's being choked out by a giant guy.
The giant guy. So is it a cat I saw?
I saw it as a giant rat, but what the same thing the giant
guy choking, the guy that's kicking, the guy that's getting
stabbed is stabbing another dude through the hand through the
face while that guy has his thumb in big guy's eye.
And dude getting choked is actually getting like thrown
down onto another dude who's like trying to hold him up.
It's insane. This piece is incredible.
The everything that's happening, the interconnectedness of it and
it's crazy. And then, and then dude, gang
kick and face has like a bat, but a dog is biting it like
crazy crazy. There's a disease table.
There are diseases. They're great.
Slobby cobbler or soggy, soggy clobber, flawed in flu, the Stew
smoke slurry, They're great. There's a whole section here
about diseases. There's a great piece of art.
We're not going to dig deep into this.
There's a faction. There's cost.
Come on. Wait on the diseases though.
You missed the best 1. Todd's face.
Incredible hair growth on face. Can't smoke.
Eating is a challenge. What's the the the cost success.
None. Just have a shave there.
You go. No.
OK, let's talk about the best one then.
I'm sorry. It's the beef sweats.
Incredible fever with pungent sweat.
Cannot wear armor due to heat and the hungry dogs will attack
you. One constitution role on four
day, whichever comes first. And there is no cost.
You just get the beef sweat. Yeah, we'll move on from there.
There's even more STD's of the smoke.
Yeah, there's an STD table. Got to get that hot smoke or hot
soup, the thud, the frog legs. Anyway, there's a morale section
here which is interesting with some modifiers to that.
Adversaries have a morale value, so we'll go over that a little
bit later, but we're not going to dig too deep into this.
There's a chase mechanic here that's pretty straightforward
and it there's modifiers based on heavy armor, light armor.
But if you're carrying somebody, if at least one party member
knows the area, it's great. It's a really clean, great chase
system. We're not going to dig into
deeply, but it's cool. And now we're going to get to
the place where I'm going to have to apologize if I need to.
So there is random chase interference section.
So there's ADA table of random chase interferences.
Time keeping a turn is a 10 minute span of time, 6 seconds
is a whatever illumination. It tells you that a Lantern is
30 feet, a torch is 30 feet and burns for an hour, etcetera,
etcetera. There's light and there's ways
to use it. So let's get to advancement and
let's talk about talk about this and if it's here.
Yes. It's a terrible spot for it.
It's way too late. And I did read advancement.
Yeah. So advancement is achieved
through accumulation of XP experience points.
The main source of XP is the sale of loot and expenditure.
XP is gained from the value of all loot sold.
Until the loot is sold, no XP is gained.
Good fence is essential. The value in pence is also
etcetera etcetera. So you sell stuff, and then
however good your fence and stuff is, determines how much
you sell it for and how much you sell it for.
It gives you XP. So straight up loot for gold
baby. Old school.
Yeah. The right way, A goal for XP,
right? The correct and proper way to do
XP. Right, if if what you want is to
people to to to steal stuff. I'm a dungeon crawling piece of
shit. If your game uses narrative XP,
good for you. I'm not dissing it, I'm just
being a piece of shit. So yeah.
Yeah, I love both. It just depends on Yeah, here's
a great thing about goal for XP. 10 seconds is tangent motivation
built into the game. That's what it is, right?
You're you're a dungeon Dover. You want to bring back loot.
So make loot the XP, not monster XP, because then you're looking
for loot, not to kill monsters. Yeah.
And in this game, you're a you're a crook thief who's
trying to make their way in the world and and grab every cent
they can't penny they can. So yeah, it makes sense that
that's how it works for this one.
No, I am right and this only complicates the issue chat so
we're moving on. So if swipers are hired for a
specific job, they get XP equal to the amount etcetera.
Illegal hot goods required, discerning buyer, etcetera.
A swiver can only gain XP and a half required to gain a single
level as a result of a single heist.
So XP levels are 001 is 302 is 603 is 12104 is 24105 plus is
twice the previous with two previous times too.
Which is exactly how they all are right?
600 is 3312, hundred is 66. Makes sense.
Very fucking easy 5 great experience table.
Fuck are you doing? Do we have to add like +5 to
that shit at this point? So what that's saying is no
matter how much loot you get, you can only ever gain a level
and a half of money right? So if it's 600 to 1200, that
means the only that you can only ever get what, like 1800?
Because that would give you one level and a halfway to the next
one Max, right? OK so here though it says in
advancement when leveling the swivers gained 2 of the
following and there's three things listed.
A + 1 to fighting skill still doesn't tell you what it's
derived from. Still doesn't tell you how it
starts. You can just take a + 1 to a
maximum of +6. So still doesn't answer what
it's derived from where it comes from.
So still I am I'm I'm I am not. I'm not saying that I'm right.
I'm just saying that it's still not clear or #2 you get plus one
HP to a maximum of 20 dope and then #3 you get plus one to an
existing or new skill may be chosen twice.
So this is one where there's a possibility of some clarity
here, which means, but I think that said that a little bit in
the character Part 2, right, You can improve a skill by one,
right? So this is saying you can
improve a skill by one or take a new skill.
Which I could have just put that in the Part 2.
It could have just put it in it is.
Interesting because again I will reference what was Palm Coast
because the character creation is very similar, at least in
worlds. You start with a + 1 to hit,
which is the fight skill essentially in this right?
And but it says that and it says when you boast you can take
another plus one, but you start with plus one.
It'd be, I mean, I think The thing is my impression of Luke's
writing is that the implications of rules, I mean, writing things
out is good. This is not a, this is not a
one-on-one game. If this is your first game, this
will be more challenging for you to parse out the rules.
There's a little, there's a little more intuition of like
knowledge of past games and stuff that that that would be
very helpful. From the scientific like the
character creation says everything you start with.
So I know everything I start with.
I know I don't start with any fighting skill.
I know I don't start with any skill.
But I know now if I advance that I can take it.
I can get plus one in a new skill, or I can gain plus one to
the fighting skill which I know I don't currently have.
I but here's here's this is a. Scaffolding discussion.
A little bit, yeah, a little bit.
It's more. I just think it's not even the
scaffolding. It's a lack of clarity in my
opinion. Because if the intent is you
start with no skills and once but the problem then right is
the rules say add your fighting skill to fighting.
But if you if you and you can only take one new skill or two,
it says you can take the you can take this thing twice, it may be
chosen twice. So you can take 2 new skills on
a level if that's all you want to do, right?
You don't advance to take two new ones.
That means that until if you start at level 0, until you hit
level 1, you don't have a fighting skill.
And the only way to get a fighting skill is to choose
fighting skill as an option. But in the book that very
clearly says add fighting skill, it doesn't say if you've chosen
the fighting skill. It doesn't say anything.
There's a complete lack of clarity.
And I don't if if that is the the intent, I am a OK with that.
Say it somewhere in the book, like if you have to intuit
across the creation page and then the general rules page and
then go like 12 pages deeper to get to advancement, which is for
some reason buried between illumination and money
expenditure for some God forsaken reason.
This is the worst located rule in the entire book.
Why is advancement of all things literally on the page that it
has on the page? It's it's a chase complication
table time keeping, money expenditures and illumination
has tucked in the middle of all that advancement, which if we're
saying that this is the way to clear stuff up, should probably
be in a better spot. Yeah, advancement should be in a
better spot. I will definitely agree with
that. It's in a very weird spot.
You think it'd be higher up near the character rules?
You would think, you know where I would put advancement in
character creation, yeah. Well, yeah.
Before I would put like the kind of dogs I can have, right?
Yeah, I actually think that's fair.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean?
Like if you're going to put it there.
So here's the thing again, and not to harp on it because this
is the honestly my only gripe with these this entire book.
It's just a lack of clarity on when you get a fighting skill,
what is derived from and when you take your first skills.
And if that means you don't take you have no skills until you hit
level one, that's fine. Just say you have no skills
until you hit level 1. Like you could clear this whole
thing up in probably 1 sentence, maybe 2.
Your fighting skill is derived from X and you start with no
skills. Could 15 like 12 words, 12 words
could make the entire thing completely different.
And that's all I want. That's all I want.
I mean I would just play it like you said.
I would honestly let people start with a + 1 and as a
fighting skill and then you have no skills until level 1 based on
what I see in the book right now.
But I would appreciate some clarity.
And that's it. And then we'll cruise through
some more. So carousing consequences is an
option because in the expenditure section is basically
how to spend that sums of money, right?
And that includes carousing out based on the district that
you're in, in a quiet district, in a heavy district and normal
district, you carouse and there are consequences to your
carousing, which is AD 20 table. The consequences of that could
be the law. So there's crime and sentences
and fines and stuff. This is the hilarious section.
I love the part of the top. The system of law is applied
inconsistently. In the case of drunks, the fine
to avoid this and it's never seems to match up.
If the fine isn't paid within the next two days, they suffer
punishment or and here's more crimes like a theft is 3 days
consorting with which is is 8 days.
Speaking I'll of our greatest crown 2 weeks and then there's a
fine as well as it goes and then also I love this part.
A random spouse. 50% chance that this was more than a shag for
them. So you could be randomly hooking
up with someone's husband or wife and oops sorry, that is the
child of the warden that you just shagged.
They might not like you very much.
A random affair? Yeah.
Oh, with a Duchess, with a with a Duke, With with Big Dave.
Big Dave is Big Dave. Coming through again?
Big Dave jumping out of pit traps, busting down doors and
having affairs, you know, So there's a lot of stuff on that.
Revenge of the Spurned Putterer. So putterers are an interesting
thing. They're basically you can take
under your wing like what is kind of a hireling, but it's
more like a trainee on whatever you want to do with that.
And there's a whole section here on the cost that you're doing to
train them, how to treat them, how lewd is spread with them.
But if you treat your putterer poorly as in use them as trap
bait, don't feed them, mistreat them in different ways.
So the D6 table on what your putterer will do as a fuck you
basically. Like if you piss off your
student they're going to key your car when they leave kind of
thing you know or doesn't. Burn all your shit down, yeah?
It goes from simple theft to arson to manslaughter where they
will literally attempt to kill you.
Yeah, or or kill someone else and blame you for it.
So don't piss off your trainee. So there's loyalty, there's
incumbrance, which is an interesting part to put
Incumbrance. Encumbrance rules again, isn't a
weird spot because I would put that maybe with items more
there's a fences section. I don't I I would also put the
fences stuff maybe closer to where items are instead of after
putterers and things and regular buy the buyers occult, occult
versus regular buyers for the fences.
That's what those are in these different types.
There's AD 8 for each of those for the different kinds of of
buyers you can have. And then we've we're out of
general rules. Boom, we did it.
So we'll talk about the rule site later.
That's, that's it for that. So running Swivers, we can, we
can pretty much just jaw it through this section, right?
Yeah, let's touch on magic though.
I think for we should do that. But we have like 3 sections
before magic but the smoke. This is basically a quick
breakdown of the smoke, the midden, the city, how to build
it out for a campaign. So there's a paragraph here on
the smoke. What is the greatest city in the
world? You build it on your own right
beneath the smoke is the midden as an interconnected passage of
built over streets, basement, tombs, layers.
It's the underground. So the smoke is this is this
massive city and the Midden is the underground and it says that
you are basically at most maybe like 10-15 minutes from an
interest into the Midden at any given time.
There's a section here about being in the smoke.
It's always wet, foggy, smoky, dirty, everything.
The only clean buildings are the royal buildings and and that's
it. Every district has a warden who
reports to a mayor who reports to the Crown.
So this is where your lore is. And I like that realistically it
comes out to six or eight paragraphs and that's pretty
much it section on being in the midden.
It stinks, it's gross. And then the whole giant thing
about building the smoke here. So palaces, jails, districts,
expanding the smoke. There's a section, a little part
here where it talks about mapping the smoke and it talks
about how to map the smoke the first time.
So as you go, you can just be like, oh, I need another
district. Already have the map.
Boom, it's this. And you can just roll on it.
It's great. So expanding the smoke power of
the rulers, power of the church, what war's going on, how old the
districts are, all the general information about districts,
average house and carried wealth of a district.
This is literally building your city.
Another great shot here of the three characters, one of which
is little doggo, oh little pup, oh puper.
And that's what this is tons of tables, tons of great arts of of
different location types, rich and affluent locations.
D1 hundreds. Hit me with AD 100 for the
street name though. I got 96. 36 What'd?
You get. 36 is. Thumb lane, boom boom.
Yeah. So D100 street names.
That's dope. Whole section here on more
crimes, Crime and punishment. Rock is brawling, theft, arson,
murder, all that stuff. Bribes.
The very big section on bribes, which I really enjoy how how you
can bribe people, how much the percentage of stuff, but also if
you spurn the person you bribed, the likelihood that they're
going to try to like come fucking kill you and the.
Leverage. There'd be a lot of bribing,
there's a lot of criminal activity.
So this is a great part to have, like a very expanded section.
Yeah, I mean the bribe stuff and and the consequences of are like
3-4 pages long, which I love because there's also it
basically says you can just like bullshit and fake stuff or you
can have leverage over somebody. So you can have your the
leverage you have can reduce the amount you have to bribe and
then change the percentage of chance of things to happen.
So a quick one, snitching on someone or or thing less
serious, a little bit of leverage, half value of bribe
required at that level, seriousness of bribe, a 3D
reduction of petty crime, right. And then notes on usage.
So it's a 30% chance of being identified as the snitch and
haunted by the criminal underworld at large.
So I love that it's it's, it's what leverage you're using, how
much it reduces a bribe, the consequences of using that
leverage. Great, great.
Appealing to sympathy, there's a 20% chance they decide to mug
you instead. The art of rat shite.
Basically when all that goes bad and shit goes wrong, the
betrayed Watchmen will literally be hunting for you, Captains
will pull strings and entire neighborhoods will hunt for you.
They might even call in the detectives and detectives and
literally talked about them like building a case to come after
you and stuff. It's great.
I love how much goes into the criminal, the chronicle,
criminals interaction with the law and all the various
consequences and arrays and stuff that that could take.
It makes sense. This is like a Blades in the
Dark game. So.
Yeah, I mean, it's basically the same thing.
It's it's about the same page count too, right?
For Chapter 1 and Blades, Yeah. Chapter 1 and Blades, yeah.
No, there's literally even like a table to build out the
detective for weakness, appearance, mannerism and
methodology. So you got to build Colombo to
build your detective. I mean, the I, if anything is I
just love that I don't know if I would have thought nearly as
much if I was making a game like this on how deep to go into the
criminal interaction with the law.
And they did just it's so good. It's so good.
Even even the stuff that's on the table.
I remember 1 like one of the weaknesses was like there's
witches in their past, which is crazy because like witches in
this game, obviously, like if you go through the crime
section, that's basically the only thing worse than witches is
basically treason. So it's crazy that it's like
somehow in the past or witches. That's so cool.
Additional motivations is crazy. So then there's all section on
generating the midden, which is all the same kind of shit that
we just went over. So I'm not going to go.
They're deep midden, all that kind of stuff.
We're just scrolling. We're scrolling a sick piece of
art of people. Going through the midden man
jumping down with a fucking long sword.
Yeah, incredible. And you can tell that they're
like they're in the mid obviously they're in like they
have a torch, they're in like an archway.
I love the sunken giant statue, which is like another cool piece
of like hidden lower in there of like what giant statue was this
for? You know, I don't know.
It's great. More men stuff, more men stuff
arseholes and adversaries arseholes.
Another great shot. This was actually one of the
this was one of the kind of like promo pieces that first shot of
all the swivers going going left and then the shot of all of
these guys going right, the swivers versus the adversaries
right great piece, fantastic piece.
Actually it's so fantastic. I want to toss it up here real
quick. This was actually a color
gradient version transform fit to screen.
Look at, look at that incredible piece.
Incredible piece. That's a fucking thought.
Well, it's on the T-shirt. Did you get the T-shirt?
I did not get a T-shirt. I just got the book.
There's a T-shirt, man, but yeah, great piece of the swipers
versus the arseholes. Yes, I want to remove it.
All right, and we're back. So I will say my other, I guess
small beef is, is right here and we're going to go over like one
bad guy and we're going to move on from this.
So cool. There's a primer at the top of
how to read the stat blocks. OK, it says HD are D sixes.
Anyone that knows HD in games, a lot of times D fours, D sixes,
whatever. Like that's how you roll your
bag, right? If your HD has three and it's D
sixes, you roll 3D6 and add whatever modifier.
That's how you generate different hit points for for
things, right? Those in 5 E, that's how they
work there too. Humans have 3 HD for reference
obviously because remember because we rolled 3 for
Constitution and that's drive from area.
So stat block explained in order.
It says HD is number, D6 is rolled.
Attack is the first value is bonus to hit followed by damage.
Defense is the number required to successfully strike them.
Armor is the armor value. Expresses an armor variety.
Movement describes how the creature moves in a speed
initiative. When in the turn of the creature
moves morale, the morale score of the creature and appearing
the number appearing right. So my my only real beef is that
that is the order in which it explains the stat block.
Oh, and they're not in that order within the actual stat
block. And the stat blocks are not in
that order. It's not.
That big a deal, But I'm like, why wouldn't you explain it in
the order of how the stat block is written?
Because the stat blocks are written, the the explanation is
HD attack, defense, armor, movement, initiative, morale
appearing. And the stat blocks are written
HD, defense, armor, morale, attack, initiative, movement
appearing. So they're it.
There's just no reason that they're not in the same order
like. Close to the same order.
There's all. They're close, so.
Kind of like except defense is second and attack is like 5th.
Like it's just it's a weird. The only things that are the
same is is HD at the beginning and appearing at the end.
But I mean, again, that's it's whatever.
Like it's just a list explaining it.
But to me, I'm just like in my head, I'm just like, well, why
wouldn't they just be the same? It doesn't matter.
So real quick, only like 1 unless there's one that jumps
out to you. I'm just going over the agent of
the church. HD is 3 + 1 defenses as weapon,
+2 boil leather morale 11 Attack is +2 damages weapon Initiative
is weapon movement as man and in two D4 appearing right?
A dentist. I fucking love this.
Dentists are the church regularly oversteps the bounds
of their authority in the smoke. They just try to do it in a
deniable manner. Dentists quote UN quote are how
they achieve this. Clerics driven to serve in any
manner asked of them some would say, especially when it involves
hurting people. Generally they are engaged in
abduction and destruction of evidence rather than murder.
And they're called dentist, I assume, because they knock out
your fucking teeth. That would be my assumption as
well. That's so first of all, I love
that. That's very church ish right?
But also just calling them dentists is so fucking vibe to
me for some reason. It like when I read this I
literally was just like oh man like threw my head back like the
whole 9 I was like this is so good like Lucas just bro.
There is there is one enemy I want to cover.
Yeah, go for it. Where are we at?
Cluster. Canine cluster.
Canine. He's on 65.
Yeah. Stink pup.
So foul fluids and strays.
A conglomerate of lost dogs trapped in the midden and now
fused A canine rat king with abandoned issues about the size
of a wagon, treats or a loving home will just piss it off.
Limbs and snapping heads jut out of the center mass.
It totters about the tunnels and eats its erstwhile masters.
It has fleas, so it doesn't have hit dice, which I think means
that you can't really kill this whole thing.
That's what I was just going to say.
Did they just forget a number here or do you?
Think this is a you run from this.
So my only issue then also with that is just fucking write that
you can't kill it. Like I don't like to the the the
need to intuit something like that makes like makes you just
go. There's no HD here.
I guess I'll just use normal dog stuff.
Or yeah, maybe you just do normal dog times 10.
You know, I would just write it as like, no, it's a big, the
conglomerate mass of several dogs.
You can take swipes at it and you might hit something, but
there's so much going on. There's no really killing this
thing. You need to run away.
Yeah, but I mean, why can't you just kill a bunch of dogs?
I don't know. I it's the way.
This also is so indicative of Luke's writing, though, and I
love so much of it. Treats our loving home will just
piss it off. It has fleas.
Like it's so fucking I don't know.
I don't know what. I don't even know how to
describe just how like I. Think it's interesting too.
It's like so there's D4 cluster Kingdom appearing plus D8 normal
dogs. Yeah, there's no way you can't
not kill it. I genuinely think they just
missed a number there, dude. Like D4 of them coming at you
plus normal dogs, that's a that's an that's an encounter.
Maybe, maybe this is how the other one is my game.
So D4 of these things are coming at you and they're unkillable.
Yeah, you gotta kill the dogs. I don't think they.
Can get away. I don't I don't want to play any
game because Arachnid appeased. Has 10 HD.
So like, I mean how much harder? I mean how much harder you're
going you just make it 20 and just make it unkillable.
You know what I mean? That's crazy, yeah.
That's fair. But Arachnid appeased.
I'm not going to read a whole bunch of it, but the the the
little like it's always like the creature name and then like an
example name of that creature and arachnid appease is Annie. 8
legs just cracks me up. I don't know. 8 limbs wrapped
about with a discarded escorts garments all sprouting from the
body of a young paramour. Yeah, it reminds me of the
beginning of what is that anime where the dude is it?
It's not Berserk. No where the dude is like
hooking up with that Lady and suddenly she like is like wraps
her arms around him. Is it?
Oh yeah, I've seen. I haven't seen.
There's the bills of it. So yeah, I can't remember what
anime that is, but that's exactly what this reminded me of
is like. Or maybe maybe it's the
beginning of a ninja scroll, I don't remember.
But you're hooking up with some some lady and becomes like a
spider demon. Yeah.
Anyway, also the Tom, Dick and Harry for the average human.
That cracked me the fuck up so hard.
That's so fucking hard. Yeah, the average human, Tom,
Dick and Harry and that's it. But so many of these are so
vibey and there's so much lore in.
I love when people put lore in their monster books.
Like, it gets me because even like these are nicknames for
things. And the nicknames are important.
Like the Ash Dweller are called ghosts because they're ghostly
pale. Everyone just calls them ghosts
and that just cracks. I don't know why.
Like it's the vibes are Immaculate and incredible and I
love it. Giant pig thing on on the bottom
of Oh my God, dude. It's so gross and cool.
Do you see the hand? The fucking hand?
And obviously like the the the fucking like large intestine
that's being munched on right here too.
Yeah, it's great. Good job drawing that large
intestine too. So magic, Mr. Magic Man.
Yeah, it's fucking blackjack, guys.
So yeah, to play this game, it does say that you do need the
deck of cards and Oh yeah, wait, it's not art piece.
It's really what the fuck is this art piece?
It's terrifying. The spider in the back, the
dudes I know it's literally. Well then let's we'll talk about
it then. Is it 1 spell or is it like 3?
Yeah. Oh, no, it's the the guy with
his organs coming out. It's it's a spell, so OK.
Sick, sick. All right, talk to me about
magic and it's very, this is honestly, before you even get
going, one of my favorite magic systems I've ever fucking read.
Oh yeah, It's a great magic system.
So a big, a big thing here is that, you know, originally we
were like, I was like, before I started this section.
Why is the magic section so far away from the player character
information? And that's because this is not
for player characters. This is for the What's the GM
called in this game? Jim, I don't even think this
game was given. Whoever's running the fucking
game. Smoker.
There we go.
This is for a smoker. Your characters don't know shit
about magic until they encounter it.
It is not a known factor for the vast majority of the denizens of
the smoke, rumors of which is abound, but specifics are thin
on the ground. Yeah, so basically none of this
information should be shared with the Slivers.
But to cast a spell, the player attempts to get between 17 and
21. So they're playing blackjack.
They're pulling cards. The Casper plays blackjack.
Doing so successfully means the spell is cast correctly.
The attended effect occurs. Scoring below A-17 means that
nothing happens. It kind of just fizzles out.
Scoring 21. Exactly provides a more powerful
effect for the spell. Scoring over 21 means the spell
goes wildly out of control, requiring A roll on the mishap
table. There are deeper levels to Magic
which can be revealed progressively through play.
The Shores, the Waves, the Depths, which it go we'll go
through in this section. At the beginning of the in game
day, you shuffle all the cards barring jokers into the deck.
Spells are written in arcane tones and scrolls just like I
like them, which must be consulted to cast spell.
Any such items are highly illegal and ownership is
evidence of heresy and witchcraft because that is
illegal in this game. When player announces they are
casting a spell, they are dealt 2 cards from this deck.
These two cards are their current hand.
The spell casting. These two cards are their
current hand. The spell casting process is
then split into rounds, with the player making one choice per
round. The process continues until the
player stands big. Capitalize S or the value of the
hand exceeds 21. Cards are worth their printed
value, with face cards being worth 10 and aces worth either 1
or 11, as determined by the player.
Like that? Like blackjack?
Yeah, like blackjack. I wouldn't know that he's never
played blackjack. I just know you're hey man, I'm
trying. I know you're trying to get as
close to 21 as possible. I didn't realize that you could
pick what an ace is worth for you.
Yeah. So, yeah, because if you get
like a king in and an ace 21, right, Because it's an 11.
But if you have a 17 already and you get an ace, that's great
because it's just an 18. One to our 11th, Yeah.
Makes sense, yeah. In each round of player can take
one of the following choices, hit a beat, Dalton of the card
face up. That's all being added to their
current hand. Stand.
You take no more cards. In that this Capital S standard
was referred to before, You take no more cards, ending the
attempt to cast a spell accepting the current value of
the hand. So if you immediately get like
an 18 or 19 or 21, you stand, you're done.
You don't want to draw another card, you'll bust once the
player what? Once player chooses to stand,
their final score is determined determines the result of the
attempt. Like I said, 16 or lower is a
failure. The caster debilitate Lee allow
deliberately allows the magic to falter and die.
Results of the failure of the spell 7026 as it works how you
intended 21 the empowered success.
The Castor barely controls a wild gust in the flow, resulting
in an empowered version spell being woven.
Follow the empowered procedure as listed in the spell
description and then 22 plus is a crit failure.
The flow overwhelms the caster and they lose all control,
resulting in a wild and chaotic release of energies.
Roll on the critical failure table.
Once the results determined, discard these cards.
They are not shuffled back into the deck until the beginning of
the end game day. This represents the depletion of
magic from the surroundings. Love that caster are free to
examine their current discard pile.
This represents them tasting the currents of magic around them.
I also just really like that. Very vibey you know.
Yeah, so vibey, but when when the spell thing came out before
and when I saw this, I was like, man, spells are going to take
forever. But then no, because you you
start the round casting spells, right?
And you get a card once per round.
So basically everyone's doing shit and then the the the smoker
comes back to you and goes basically you hit or used to eat
like do you want to hit? And you're just like, Yep, hit
and you go boom. And then you just keep going And
that's casting magic is just go Yep, hit me baby.
Like actually. Super, really lightweight.
It's like a little mini game that you're playing as everyone
else is attacking, but makes sense.
You're like gathering the magic around you.
Exactly. And the spells can be fairly
significant and some of them are not like overbearingly so, but
like they're fun and cool, but they can be really significant
to anything happening around you.
So it makes sense. That's like you're sitting there
while everyone else is doing stuff.
It's crazy. You want to roll on the crit
fail table. Sure, what I think is
interesting with a magic system and if you if you wanted to
tweak it all, I don't think you need to.
But if you wanted to tweak it all, you could have a magic
skill and the magic skill could reduce 17.
So if you have a if you have a skill of one, it could be 16 to
20. If you have a skill of two, it
could be 15 to 20. You could widen your parameter
when you could when you could do it.
That would be an interesting hack.
If you wanted to play like, all magic, that would be cool.
Yeah. I would love to roll the
critical flow table. What is it?
D20D20. Let me use my thing here because
I can just click D20 and I got a one.
How nice, What's 1? Or one or you.
Yeah, go for. It no go for.
It all right, Magic Crystal. The magic, rather than being
directed by the spell, forms a beautiful glowing crystal in the
air. The crystal then explodes, and
each of the swipers in the room slash area must save or be
struck by D for shards, dealing D for damage.
That to me reads each Shard deals D4 damage, so if you're
hit by multiple shards. D4 shards ceiling, D4 damage
each. Yeah, that fucking if you roll 4
four, you're get 16 damage, baby.
Like yeah, you're not having a good time.
I rolled 18, which is transportation coma.
The castor's mind is whisked away by a whimsical entity
traveling the Sea of Chaos. Their body collapses entirely
comatose if the body is kept alive for D4 weeks, which we
hope your friends are that friendly.
The caster returns a bound wizard, their brain etched with
D4 spells. The player may choose which of
the despots page 76 they now serve.
You know, like bound to something.
Stick so many of these. So first of all, flesh of glass
is great, but like the ignition of the necrotizing flesh,
obviously my edge Lord has love that one.
Your flesh begins to necrotize horribly as it corrupts you like
and you lose your HP permanently.
It's gone. You necrotize and it's gone.
Limb of insects. Like one of the castor's limbs
is just true on Friday to insects, dude.
But yeah, the the the the flesh of glass one gets me because
it's your your Constitution's automatically set to 18 as the
flesh is replaced by flexiglass like substance, you basically
become like the the white queen, right?
For Marvel, for those Marvel Hud's ether, they gain an
additional D4 damage soap from their tough body, but any damage
exceeding 2 smashes them into 1000 pieces and you die and
there's no healing. Like you're you're literally a
glass cannon. Yeah, literally a glass cannon
that like, thank you looking again for making a literal glass
cannon. Great.
Yeah. So moving on, we get into kind
of the depths of magic where magic.
Can be revealed how how amazing is what is it the shores, the
waves and the depths or whatever for names for how do you go with
Oh my God, yeah. Yeah.
So the Shores, which is like the kind of first level of like
magical discovery, which is spell alignments.
And at this level of initiation, the caster understands all
spells are aligned to at least one of the four Hippocratic
humors as represented by the four suits of card.
By matching their indications, additional effects can be coaxed
forth. And basically this is saying if
you in your hands that you stand with and you successfully cast
with, if you have a card in that hand that matches the suit,
essentially the humor of that spell, it can create an
additional effect to the spell, which is written in the spell
descriptions. It's amazing.
It's a, it's a layer of complexity you can add on as
your character learns more about spell casting that isn't
overwhelming. And it's also built to be added
on gradually. So it's not like you get
everything up front and you're like, fuck, I have all these
details. It's it's amazing.
It's so clever. It's so fucking clever.
It's like. Oh, it's the highest card in
your card in your hand. Not just a card in your hand,
it's the highest card in your hand.
Matches that suit. So we have the suits, humor,
element, temperaments and qualities table, which is very
funny and good. But yeah, there's hearts,
diamonds, spades and clubs and they match the humors, elements,
temper, temperament and qualities.
We don't need to go through all of them.
You know what humor is? Like this is literally what they
thought that people used to be, Bro, the fuck it, the flame and
the biles and shit, like flame. Pretty dry black, bro, bro, like
it's so give me some of that yellow bile.
I want to be dry and warm, a little bit choleric, you know?
Anyway, and the art piece here is also fantastic.
They're like blowing out the smoke.
Oh yeah, like the gesture? Yeah, insane for this, for the
art and this are like amazing. And it's it elevates everything
to like an insane level because not only are they blowing the
smoke out, but they're also like pouring over like this, this
thing. And there's like a dove coming
out of the smoke that's like pouring down, but it's like
water And it like, and like the other bottle has like another
bird coming out of it. What the fuck, David?
Like insane. It's really incredibly good.
Yeah. Moving on to the waves, which
are spell components. I actually don't know if I read
this section, did I not? I must have.
I was reading this really late at night one night when I should
have been asleep. So at.
This level I can go through it. If you want me to take over, you
can keep. Going I'm cruising at this level
of initiation, the caster understands the latent power
hidden within certain items. Oh yeah, I do remember this.
By sacrificing such an item during spell casting, the
corresponding card is played from the deck rather than the
one being dealt. Gaining knowledge of these mad
of these makes Magic significantly easier, but the
knowledge alone is a closely guarded secret.
Acquiring many of the components in the venture is an adventure
unto itself. So you have these components and
so you can pull the cards from the deck and play those cards
instead as well. I'm how I'm gaining that right?
They understand the main power, but sacrificing such an item so
the corresponding card is played from the deck rather than being
dealt. Yeah.
So if you have the item, you can just choose to play that, which
is great if you can get like the ace items and stuff like that.
But they're insane items. But if you know you're at like a
17 and you have a like one of the four items, you can be like
damn, 21 boom, dunzo. Very cool.
Yeah. There's a list for each of the
suits and what the items are. One like Ace of Hearts is like
heart of a mourning monarch, you know, And it looks to me like
the lower in like numerical value other than the ace,
because the ace is like a flex, the easier the things are to
get. Like the heart of a Tolus pigeon
is much easier to get than like let's let's do the diseased
bladder of a tiger. Pigeons are fucking.
Everywhere, you know? Yeah.
And then take the heart. I mean, there you go.
Yeah, Ace of Diamonds is a Dragon's bile burnt and inhaled.
It's it's really a it's pretty cool.
So also like the idea of like you have one person who's become
like a bound wizard or just like has taken up spell casting by
consorting with witches or whatever, and they then start
generating their own like, hey, here's some stuff.
Like I learned about this item. We, I want to get it.
So we have to have an adventure to go get this item, you know?
Yeah, well, what's what's interesting about this too is
when you get to the next section, because you notice what
all these cards are. Yeah, they're non face cards.
Yeah, they're just number cards, Yes, because yeah, of what's
next. The depth.
So this is the deepest level of magical knowledge, but the
caster has learnt of the demonic forces which stand behind magic
and may have contact with one of their many cults.
Each of the face cards associated with a demonic entity
using their card in an attempt to cast a spell represents bar
bargaining with them or their representatives for a small
fraction of power. Those who pledge themselves to
the service of a despot may always start with despots, card
in hand. Crazy crazy also I like it.
They may start with that. So you can choose to forego this
if you're worried about the consequence of it.
But you can also just start. You could just start with the
king of fucking nave of diamonds in your hand or whatever.
What was I? Demons are not known to be
understanding masters. Each the despots has elements of
their associated humor slash suit.
A little note here. The historical term nave has
been used in place of Jack. You want to just hit like one of
these, like which one do you think is like the coolest demon
or which one that you thought that you saw?
Let's go. I don't know.
You pick one. King of Hearts is dope as fuck,
obviously because I'm a piece of shit.
Yeah. Yeah, so King of Hearts is ball
of the open wound. It's BHAL.
So again, every suit of every face card has a demon despot
Lord, right? And this is the King of Hearts,
the raw, vibrant wound that vibrates throughout the world,
the first injury that drives life forward.
Hurts, yes, but an essential reminder of living.
Open to experience, open to further injury.
To become bound to ball, one must deliberately strike a
mortal wound upon themselves, slowly dying over 24 hours.
In the final moment, this gaping wound will act as a lips of ball
and Baal will offer sucker Sukor Sukor from death if only one
serves. Baal speaks to their followers
in all manner of injuries, whether they are physical or
mental. Baal only wishes to see more
wounds and more life, but requires one or the other to be
advanced every day, right? Every day you got to be making
more wounds or more life, right? Like it, it, it, it's, it's,
that's so that that's the whole thing.
That's the whole thing, right? And then you get to just hold a
king in your hand when you're casting a spell, which is
insane. It's a 10 already.
You literally can't you know it's impossible for you to bust
because you and the odds of a Jack of of of getting basically
all you need to get is A7 or higher if you're if you're
allied to one of these demon Lords, right.
But I love the vibes here explaining who it is, how they
interact with you. Like it literally is basically
like for those that watch JJK anime, please, I'm not even
going to get into it. I can't even get to talk about
Juju. What a fucking disappointment.
Anyway, it, it looks like I, I imagine Sukh and his mouths, how
they pop up all over fucking UG all the time.
Like that's literally what this says is like he uses mouths and
wounds as mouths to speak. Insane, Luke, you're crazy.
This is so fucking insane. And they're all this good there.
There's twelve of these and they're incredible.
Anyway, so spells, let's hit spells and be done.
We're 2 1/2 hours. I'm proud of us.
Let's just do a spell, yeah? And let me find what is.
It does list the things at the top, so spades is black bile,
phlegm is clubs, blood is hearts, and yellow bile is
diamonds. OK, I think I found it.
Hold on, no that's not it. There's some really good ones.
Sorry, I'm looking for the 1 specifically.
The the art they're out here is also incredible, like this
person with their face like like aging away from them is
incredible. All of us.
Some spell names while you're doing that because the vibe is
hell. To bind the mirrored self, to
exchange mortal shells, to coax the fear of the mind, to make a
slave of the dead, to reveal the secrets of the anatomy.
Some of them have multiple humor is associated with them too.
To reveal the secrets of the anatomy is both hearts and
diamonds, which is interesting. To inflamed the hateful
passions, to speak with the regretful dead, to spring forth
wisp flame, to utter binding thorns, to vomit yourself forth,
to wear the face of another. That's all of them what you're
looking for, buddy. I'm looking.
I found it. It's on page 79.
You already passed it. It's to reveal the secrets of
the anatomy. Oh that's one.
I literally just talked about having 2.
Oh yes, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha all.
Right. Yeah, so to reveal the secrets
of anatomy, the caster calls the innards of a living thing to
cease their hiding. Any witnessing this for the
first time must roll Constitution. 3D6 are like a
difficult role. Or spend D4 rounds of vomiting
and jibbering. So if you roll, yes, it does
have two, two suits, two different humors.
If you roll 1720 cautiously, the organs respond to this call.
The target is gently turned inside out over D6 rounds,
taking D4 damage per round. They are unable to do anything
other than shriek. If they do not drop any weapon,
this damage is doubled. They remain as such for D6
hours. The return to normal normality
is painless if they're still alive at that point, which they
might not be 21 you if you get 21 on this.
Overcome with emotion, the organs leap to answer their
summons. The target is violently turned
inside out. There shrieks muffled beneath
tearing of 10 sapping of bones and skin.
They expire after D4 rounds of crawling around.
So if your highest card that you draw in your order that you have
in your hand is a heart suit, the call is both joy into light
and conversation. The organs wave happily in the
air, which I think is what's happening in that the art piece.
Any close associates of the target witnessing this must make
a constitution or strength check.
That's three D6. Or have their own organs sprout
forth, enjoy, or sprout forth to join them.
If your highest card in your hand is diamonds, the call is
one of cowardice and violence. And sorry, cowardice, violence
and spite. The organs fly to challenge such
claim, the pressure of this causing explosion of gore and
bone shards. Any adjacent individual must
save or take 2D6 damage. It's such a.
Horrifying fucking spell. It's.
It's insane. You know what's interesting
about this, too, is that the face cards have suits.
Yeah, and it's a 10 that could easily you could easily auto
have the the demon card in your hand.
And so if I have the king of hearts, I and I get a 17 with a
king and A7, I can just auto do the heart on this because I have
the king in my hand and just basically choose the spell
Insane, insane. This is one of the most
interesting. In depth, clever, cool, just
badass, disgusting, awesome fucking magic systems I've ever
read. Yeah, it's so absurd.
It's also, I did the and you've already just spoke about this,
but like the varying levels of the depth and how that like
slowly adds to your ability to successfully cast powerful
spells or to like, yeah, almost guarantee that you'll get a
certain extended effect from the spell.
It's really great. It's, it's a thing that it's a
level of depth that magic systems never fucking have.
And this is great. Makes magic feel magical, you
know? And once again, I'll refer to
Wolves Upon the Coast because I'm a piece of shit like that.
But the spell casting there gives me a similar feeling.
Not that it works the same at all, but that it's arcane and
you need components for that one.
And there's a whole like system to it that feels very magical.
This one also like as you grow and you're like where in your
initiation you are into the system, it changes how powerful
or the depth of magic you you've plumbed.
That's great. It's very.
Good. I also I also love that there's
no like spell slots and shit right?
It just says they're in tomes and scrolls.
If you find one, you have it and that's it and that's the
craziest thing. So if you do have this one
right, and that's the only tome you have, this is the only magic
you're casting. So your odds of trying to if you
get to the waves right, the shore, the the what is it?
What are they again? I don't know why my brain.
Keeps saying no to this. So if you get to the depths
right and you actually are going for a bro, if you have if you
have all three and you have the item, you can literally have
your demon card pull your item and just auto cast the fucking
spell. Crazy.
Anyway, that's Oh my God, it's so clever.
Remember that there isn't spell slots necessarily, but once you
use a card to cast. It's gone.
Yeah, Card. Until the next day.
Right, right, right, right. But it's I just mean like to
actually like if you have 10 tones, you have 10 spells,
right, Like the odds of having more than one realistically in a
campaign is crazy. But what I'm saying is like, if
you find one and it is a spell that is hearts, your odds of not
going for the you're you're probably going to try to get to
the waves with for the king of Queen of Hearts.
So you already are kind of like, Oh, I'm going to try to find
that demon kind of thing. And that's just crazy.
That's such a good through line of like narrative with that.
I don't know, it's so good. It's so good.
Anyway, that's the game. The last thing is blue cheese
left to rot, which is an adventure.
And guess what? Read the fucking adventures by
the game. It's really cool.
I'm not even going to give you any spoilers, not even not even
going to scroll over it because there's fun stuff right off the
bat. Boom, we're done.
And this is the Backpage with the with the piece of art on the
back and what I was talking about before and that's the
game. We did it.
We did it in like 2 1/2 hours. So let's go to the review
scores. So Swivers, this is obviously a
book that's 95 pages. So we do quantify our terrible
opinions with numbers on metrics real quick run through for those
that might not have heard them before.
Art and layout is the visuals of the book.
It is the art of the book, quality, quantity, usage,
everything like that. And the visual layout of the
book, just how it looks, right? If it flows, is it readable?
You know, big gaps, things like that.
Whatever usability is, the usability of that layout, plus
hyperlinks and bookmarks and and if things are in what we
consider to be a, a good order, it's how easy it is to take the
book and use it at the table or read it in a, in a consistent
flowing way, right? Rule set is the rule set of the
game. It is the rules.
It is. If it's an adapted rule set, how
well is it adapted? If it's a unique rule set, how,
how do we fucking like it? Because don't forget, this is
our opinions, right? Originality are terrible fucking
opinions. We need to put that on a shirt.
Originality is the original originality in any of these
aspects, right? Is it an original setting?
Is it original rule system, original lore?
All that kind of crap. And then value is bang for your
buck. It is not just the cost of the
thing, but the associated stuff you get with it, right?
Do you get a bunch of adventures?
Do you get a bunch of is there a third party license?
Is there, is there more than just what's written in the book?
How long can you play this game based on what's written in the
book, etcetera, etcetera. So 10 points each up to 50 art
and layout. What are your thoughts?
I enjoy, I mean, the arts fucking insane.
Like the arts actually crazy, the arts insane.
It's really good. And I like layout.
I like a lot of choices made with how things are delineated.
I think it's really easy to skim through it.
I do think when we get into the rules section, the IT starts to
feel a touch more cramped on certain pages, but not so much
that I really even think I'd count off for that.
I, I, I think it's an overwhelming success in.
This area I agree, but I will say I will say that the
adventure the Marlow docks that comes with.
Adventure. Not the adventure in the book.
It came with another adventure too.
Another adventure. I will say I do like the layout
on this a little bit more in that it's got more colors as in
there's like red to to differentiate some of the
sections and which I enjoy. It's a little, it does have a
little bit more space. It does change font sizes in
some areas to to allow for a little bit more room.
You're right, it does get a little cramped because there are
sections in the in the rule specifically where the headers
just become like a thin capital thing.
But there's no spaces in between.
Especially when you look at like the armor page, which in the
this and that section, it gets really, really tight.
Boom, there it is. So I actually really enjoy this.
I think I think mostly because like you said, this, this
specifically does allow for a little bit more room.
But I mean, you got to give a little bit of a little bit of
leeway with some of the layout with the way that like pages
work and shit. Like I didn't know for the
longest time that your page count has to be like divisible
by 4 or something like that because of the way that like
books get bound and stuff like that.
So to be like, oh, let's add one more page, you fucking can't.
So when things get a little tight at the bottom to keep it
consistent, it it it's it's if we're like, if we're being as
pedantic as we are because we are, it can bother us, but I can
understand it. So.
So what are your thoughts? I mean, the art, the art is
insane. And I know we said at the
beginning, oh, like, could use more spot art, but honestly,
when I flipped through, I was like, yeah.
I changed my opinion after I flipped through.
I'm like, no, you know what I'm. Wrong very few pages.
I think maybe like the occult fences has like half a page of
empty that I wouldn't have minded a little bit of something
on. But other than that, like most
of the most of the pages that have big empty gaps are filled.
And then I immediately filmed the one that's not.
But it doesn't bother me. I think the layout fits a page.
And you know, what also helps a little bit too is at least in
the book, it's the paper isn't white.
It's like a it's like a like an eggshell kind of.
So it's not crisp against your eyes and it's got a, it's got a,
hey, let me just let me just go here real quick.
So in the book you can see that it has like an ink kind of
texture on the paper a little bit, you know what I mean?
And the paper is not super crisp white.
It's much softer white on the eyes.
But all the black flecks and stuff, I got to say, it is a
small thing, but having white paper that's not completely
white and having just a little bit of texture on it, it saves
the eyes when you're trying to read something like this, right?
And it also adds just a little bit of flavor.
Himbos does the same thing where they have a little bit of
texture to the paper and it's a little bit, it's not white.
It's like a very light tannish like off white color.
Yeah. I mean, I think great choice.
This might be great for me. You know, I think, I think.
This is. Man, I'm thinking maybe it's
actually probably about 7 you. Think it's really good?
You think it's really good? It's it's branching on.
Great. So here's the thing.
I think the layout. I think the layout is good and I
think that the art is really. Great.
I think the art is great and I think if you mix good and great,
I think you are really good, yeah.
Yeah. I'm good with I don't know, I
bro, I don't. Here's the thing.
The art is really good. There's also the page texture
and like just to look at the book as you go through.
What's great on PDF is fine, but reading in the book you're like
this is truly a delight to go through.
Yes, I think it's great. Cool, I'm right.
So are. You good with great.
Yeah, absolutely. That was my original call, yeah.
And now you all listening. All the clever people listening
will figure out where our new internal metric is.
How would you say that out loud? So art layout 8 usability OK.
Yeah, so this is where it's going to suffer.
I think so for multiple reasons you go.
It's in a peculiar order. Sometimes I think it works and
there's an internal logic. Other parts of it I'm like, I
don't think that works. There is details missing that
we've discussed that are kind of explained later on, but I think
they needed to be a little more front loaded and actually maybe
explained a little bit better. You're able to if you've read a
bunch of books, especially if you've read a bunch of like old
school stuff or OSR shit. You're able to glean what is
meant by things. But you you're able to.
Guess you're able to have a good guess like.
I don't think you can with any certainty give a concrete
answer, but I think you can. You can guess what the possible
intent was in a better way than people that haven't, but.
This is a hard, that's a hard one for me because I am of the
of the I prefer you actually not like, let me just glean some
stuff from this, like the implications of things.
I'm fine. I'll run this game at my table
how I think it should be run, which I think is at least part
of the intent. Yeah, it's if you're going into
this with any less experience than me, who's now overview 200
something games like it will will, you will have a harder
time understanding it. I I agreed to a point and then
disagree with some of the latter part that somehow there was like
an intent to just intuit the rules because it is a rule book.
Give me the fucking rules, right?
But and I also think like I genuinely think the skills thing
is just missing. Like I do generally think it's
just missing. I think there's like a line or
two that somehow was like, fuck, I didn't tell them what skills
they start with. And if they start with none, I
didn't tell them they don't start with any.
Like that is not a thing that you should, if that is the
intended to just figure it out on your own is not a good thing.
Like that's not good to me. Like tell people how to play the
game. If I'm guessing by literally
going to three different sections, right?
So if we look at, if we look at, you know, the page numbers, I
mean, I'm going from character creation on page 4 to then
jumping to skills on page 24, to then jumping to advancement on
page 32 to just to try to figure out if I start with any skills.
If that is somehow the intent, which I do not believe it is,
that's crazy. And if it's not the intent, then
there is literally maybe like 15 words that could clarify both
where you're fighting skills come from and at.
But but is that a usability or is that a rule set?
Because I think we're just going to come up in both, but I think
it's my biggest. I think it's a usability.
Yeah, I think my biggest beef is, is the order of things as
far as you build usability. Yeah, I mean, I'm fine to put
punt off that would just talk to you onto a rule set and talk
about the mostly the order of things in this one.
Because yeah, I do think it's in the weird order.
I think we were able to logic out some of the choices from
like that bit like the the pick not pick list but the the this
and that section. But I mean, even if you go
through the table of contents, right, you got character
creation and then under general rules, advancement is between
healing and fences. It's a very weird spot to put
your advancement because this it is character creation stuff, but
it's not even then with like the skills and save, which is the
whole point of the advancement, right.
So it it's just AI don't know. It's a weird order, I think, I
think, but it here's the thing. As far as other usability tools
we have, we have. I'm not even worried about the
bookmarks because specifically because of that hyperlink.
Yeah, the hyperlink thing is back.
To the table of content. Yeah, that's actually.
Great table of contents, hyperlinks, inline hyperlinks,
everything is every page is linked back to the table of
contents. Honestly, that's all I want.
From a fucking PDF. Give me that, Give me that.
Give me that. From your PDFs.
Yeah, just give me that. So I think this is good.
I think it's, yeah, I think I would probably, probably give
this one like a six. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Boom. All right.
Rule set. This is a weird one.
I love the rule set. I love the rule set.
The rule set's crazy good. The I love all the rules in it.
I love how magic works. Like I like that in this one
where you're rolling a certain amount of dice under right.
And it gives you context for why you would roll 3D six or four or
4D6 or 5D6, which they, it didn't have in wolves.
And so I was like, OK, well, what's the, what's the deciding
factor on each of those? I like that it's laid out more
plainly here, and I like how hard that potentially makes
things. Yeah, yeah.
And I so here's my thing. When I like games and all the
games that I've made that I've never put out and all the games
that I like, I like when it's very consistent.
Give me all D sixes, right? I just want to use AD 6 for
everything. So this game that uses D sixes
for skills and saves, but also has like a target number thing
for when it doesn't matter, but also then uses D twelves for
competing roles, which then also uses D 10s for fighting roles
and then uses D fours. D6 is D eights for fail tables,
D 20s, D one hundreds for like all the rest of that.
It uses like every freaking dice.
Yeah, it's it's a lot and I like it.
It's fucking weird. Honestly.
It's to me it's the most like Luke Gearing fucking thing to
just be like, I'm gonna make you use a bunch of fucking dice, you
assholes. I thought all of them so I might
as well use all of them so. It's good.
The magic is in and of itself. If you just gave me that as a
scene, it would blow me the fuck like in and of itself is insane.
The it's great, honestly. Like the biggest beef I have is,
is honestly what could be less than 15 words of clarity on what
and when you get the fighting skill and if you have any
starting skills, that's it. It would take honestly one
sentence, 11 message, so I'm not going to hold that much against
it. I genuinely I I love this.
I genuinely, genuinely love this.
Like this is I'm still boring on excellent.
Even with yeah, I must say, even with the stuff that's wrong with
this, I'm still like an 8-9 on this.
Easy, easy, easy like like like I want to be like a nine and
then the lack of clarity dropping it to an 8 for.
Me, I think and I think that's where we're at and I think it's
an 8. I think if it were the clarity
on a couple parts, it would be a nine.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
So originally it is a blaze in the dark hack.
I think that the setting of this game is wonderfully British in a
way that it really leans into as hard as possible that listen, I
I'm a big into the odd guy and I've run Bastion, you know, and
into the odd, which is a another.
Like it's supposed to be like an industrial revolution era, like
London ish kind of British place.
But this is feels different. This feels deeply more.
The slaying is a lot deeper, It is a lot more thematic.
It feels like a place. I really like the setting of
this. So that the magic system, to me,
the originality, the depth of that is insane, yeah.
Not only blackjack, but like blackjack with riffing on the
rules by being able to start with the card in your hand based
on the component that you have or like a deal you've made with
the devil and the levels. Not only that, casting the spell
and the spell having different effects based on what is in your
hand as you cast it. I, I think it's, I mean, it's
such a genius. I'm, I'm constantly trying to
work on a magic system that I like and they're never as good
as what the fuck in that, you know?
Nothing is going to be as good as this this is.
There's no way I'll write a magic.
There's just on magic that aren't as good as this.
Like that's insane. They're games Wizards with magic
that are as good, no? It's, and this one is basically
like, you might never use magic at all, but let me give you one
of the coolest magic systems that have been written.
It's insane. Insane.
And the rules, that's great. Like I really do like it is a
callback to like rule systems that I already enjoy.
But they're used well and they're they're kind of expanded
a little bit from what they were previously and they're explained
a little better in certain parts.
Yeah, I give this 1-2 Hunter thumbs up.
Yeah, what number does that? I mean to me this is an easy 8.
I think it's an easy 8. Are you thinking it's a It's a
It's a hard 9? It's almost a nine for me, man.
I don't know so. You're playing as a thief in a
scummy city that's been done before.
You are playing like I think an 8's good.
Yeah, I think an 8's good because again, I mean, we don't
need. Never mind, we've already made
the joke 18 times, so it doesn't matter.
I have no idea what the value is.
How do you even fucking buy this right now?
You go to. Melsonian hyphen arts hyphen
council dot H dot IO back slash swibers.
It is 12 USD for the PDF, which I don't think is bad.
I mean $12.00 PDF for this, I think that's that's pretty darn
good. It comes with an adventure in
there if I want to. I'm sure if you go to the
Masonian the demo is free too. There's a demo and then if you
go to the actual Masonian arts page.
I am slowly but surely. Right, we're getting there.
Is it even on here yet? Maybe not.
It's I don't think it's on here yet.
Oh, here it is. Swivers $38 USD.
It's not bad. No, not at all.
I think that's what that's fine. You are shipping if, if you're
not in the aisle, you are shipping from overseas, which is
going to add some money, $38. It's a good print.
It's 100 pages. I mean, it's, it's an average
price for a book, I think. I think that feels OK.
It's not a great deal. There's no bookmarks or anything
in it. I think it's a, it's a solid
deal. Do all you get is a book?
Does it come with the, the Marlow docks or anything?
Or is it just a straight book? I think it's just a straight
book hold. I want to say it too.
Confident when you're being wrong.
Oh. Shit, My shit's in dark mode, so
everything is like blocked out. Yeah, it's.
Just a book. OK, I mean, the book is great.
The book The book's great also being.
Able to all the tools to build out your and the midden.
It's like, I think that that's going to add an amount of life
that's hard to quantify. It'll really click with your
table or whatever. Yeah, well, I mean, that's
that's one of the reasons like something like Forgotten Ballot
got a really high score because it's it's endless.
You can build, you could build 50 different smoke cities and
stuff. You know, does I know that
there's a huge section in the beginning about usage.
Does it say anything about third party situations?
I don't think, I don't, I don't think so.
All rights reserved. Inquiries concerning
reproduction. Oh no no, here we go.
Masonian ARF Council grant explicit permission to publish
free or commercial material based upon and or declaring
compatibility with Swibers without express written consent.
You just write this shit. Third party license maybe.
Let's get some more Swibers. Shit.
So average price for the book, I mean, it's this is this is a
little, this is, I mean, average price of the book, right?
And then third party license add some points.
The depth of information you get from a a relatively thin book,
you get realistically endless play.
This is I think this is good. I think it's good.
Yeah, yeah. I I think for this I would, I
would say about a six. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
OK. So this is what we got and we
will wrap this up. So we got 8 + 6 + 8 + 8.
I didn't even do that anymore so it's 30 though.
But 36? O36 Wow I was way off Don't
listen. Bro this is This is why you
don't do the math anymore 36. I think 6.
Nevermind. I know I did.
I'm dumb idiot. So, so I will say this year we
did decide to have a more consistent, we adjusted our
internal metrics last year because so many fucking games
had eights as a rule set and then we give it an 8 for the
first rule set we do of the year.
So the scores this year overall are probably going to be a
little bit lower. 36. This might have been like a 38
or 39 maybe like a year, a year or two ago with us being a
little bit more. I think we've done this so much
at this point. We're trying to be a little bit
harsher this year. Not harsher, but it's more
consistent. This book is fucking amazing.
I think again, you can see it's it's average on value.
The, the, the area where it really suffered a little bit is
usability. Generally.
It's amazing. The art's amazing, the rule
set's amazing. It's lacking a little bit of
clarity and I think it's in a weird order.
And that's pretty much the critique I have.
Otherwise I would play this all day every fucking day.
Any day. I would run it, I would play it.
I would, I would play it fucking tomorrow.
It's it's great. I'm so glad I have this.
I would buy it if I didn't swipers Fox.
Like it's so good. That's it, that's all I got.
Do you have anything to say? You good?
Hey, thanks for listening. Make sure you click Like and
Subscribe on this video. Hey, because you're supposed to
call to action right? If we cared about growing.
Thank you Honestly they all for listening.
This is our first full book review of the year.
We are going to be trying to be more consistent and get you 4
reviews a month. We are not Cat Chats is going to
continue might be on a different day so we can continue with our
book reviews. Again, appreciate everybody.
Appreciate everyone that had kind words to say after a year
interview. Expect us back next week on
Friday for something. We have a plan never know.
I'm going to start trying to post more.
What do you want to say? What we're doing on Friday.
You can if you want. We're fucking reviewing, Kane
reviewing. One maybe?
By Tom Bloom That's right. 1.1. Very excited for that one.
It's cool. Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a rare
one we're going to do that is not in print.
I have no idea if it's ever going to be updated again.
It will never be in print, so. Yeah, which is crazy.
So we we rarely do those, but we are going to be doing that.
And yeah, that's what we're doing next week.
Once again, thank you for listening.
Thank you for tuning in. We will see you when we see you.
Have a good one. Bye, everybody.
Bye.