Hello and welcome to the Weekly Scroll podcast.
My name is Ryan and I'm. King Jeel.
Today on the Weekly Scroll podcast, we are going over Cloud
Empress, which I said like three times I was gonna go grab my
copies of and I didn't. So at some point I will do that.
Yeah, Cloud Empress by what? As I'm pulling up the notes that
I also didn't pull up initial thoughts.
Give me one, two lines. Nothing crazy.
Cool weird science fantasy giant bugs that eat bones.
Yeah so we've had we've we've we've had Watt on twice now the
creator of the game wants to do a creator cut before the the
campaign dropped and blown away. It's amazing right.
And then we had, then we had them on more recently post
campaign to do kind of like a post mortem and a look forward
fantastic episode Loves everything that they did with
anyone that's gonna run a Kickstarter, please go watch
that episode or listen to what. Like, I think they're all such a
great job of very good lessons if you're gonna run a project
like what did everything like really incredibly well.
Yeah, as like as correctly as you can with like as you can
plan for and then when things came up handle that extremely
well also. Open communication, yeah.
I mean, expectations were set like appropriately and they were
moved appropriately through communication as small things
change. Yeah, I mean, great project.
I'm super happy with it. I've read some criticisms of it
online and like a lot of them I don't actually really agree
with. I like and I was incredibly
happy with this project. I think it's that there's a
bunch of little books, so. Well, we talked about why there
is a bunch of little books like what I what I Will Would I love
this? Eventually.
OK, I'm gonna and stop yelling. So I'm gonna put that right in
the center right there. For those in podcast land.
I have little signs to remind myself.
Stop yelling. Well, I have.
Well, I have a sexier voice when I don't yell, so listen, yes, we
need to do the podcast, so stop yelling.
So I said and then yelled it. So I failed immediately.
Anyway, we were talking about what?
They rock. The game is sick.
Oh, we talked about why it's a bunch of little books, because
honestly, it would just cost a lot more if it was one giant
hard book. Totally.
And I and I'm also, I like that it's so like if I'm running
this, I don't really need to bring all the books to the table
every single time. I just need to bring the main
call and whatever hex is closest to hit and that's it.
And I don't want to bring big book every time.
I don't. I don't want to bring a big book
every time to the table, so. Here's The thing is, of course I
want a big hardback special edition, but that's for like the
3rd or 4th Kickstarter. You know what I.
Mean. I super agree.
Yeah, there's other projects that are currently trying to
fund right now that have too many bits and bobs and have too
high a goal. And I think that what what what
did with Cloud Empress was extremely, we randomly just got
into such a random side tangent. Sorry for all those listening.
Anyway, what's been on a couple of times we've talked about
Cloud Empress a bunch. We're finally going to review it
today on stream my outer all wore off.
So we're focusing in here. Here's the thing.
Do you have the rest of your box set with you?
Do you have? Everything except the patches.
The patches are in my patch container, but I can get them if
I need to. So fantastic.
So if you got the full deluxe edition of Cloud Empress, you
got what is the main book, the rule book, The land of Cicadas,
which is the lore book and like the all the hex map stuff.
Yeah, and then that's a bunch of adventures.
Yeah, a bunch of adventures by a bunch of amazing content,
content creators. Content is fine.
Word people, amazing writers. And each one got their own
little pamphlet, which was super cool in the map.
That's right. So we will talk about the maps a
little bit Anyway, so focusing in.
We're doing Cloud Empress today, people.
So I took fucking notes for this.
I have a whole intro and write up.
This is we're prepared because we've talked about this game a
bunch. We can talk about it some more.
We've. Talked about this game a lot,
Cloud. Empress, let me, let me I'm
gonna, I'm gonna put this here and we're gonna go through this.
So Cloud Empress is an ecological science fantasy RPG
with a Nasika Inspire fantasy setting built on the bones of
the Mothership RPG, the writing, graphic design and layout
Whereby what editing and development was by Roz Leahy
with additional editing and development by Meet Castle Game,
Where's Christian Sorrell who we just spoke with recently.
Yeah. Who's we spoke with originally,
Who is ITCH funding Tacticians of OM, A game, a tactical game
they created that is fantastic right now, if you're listening
Google or ITCH or whatever, Go to Itch, Find Christian Sorrell
back. Tacticians of OM.
It blew past its initial goal. It's already on the second goal.
That's great. Also random side note,
Greenhorns from very good friend of the show Spicy Tuna AKA
Marcus Serrano dropped this morning and one baby typical and
so go back that too because it it rocks.
We already did part one on the show and Part 2 is coming up
Back to the notes. The project we're talking about,
Cloud Empress now, was successfully funded on
Kickstarter on February 9th, 2023 with 2088 backers raising
$98,257. And on January 9th of this year,
fulfillment was declared complete and the first
expansion, the Life and Death expansion, was announced.
That'll be dropping April 2nd, I believe.
And it is the two different books.
I'll say this again at the end because that's where it is.
In the notes, there's The Land of the Living and Land of the
Dead. Each is a 50 page hex crawl
expansion coming in April And who knows, maybe we'll see what
again we will. They'll be here.
They will call their press episode #5.
Yes, we're. Literally gonna have a whole
playlist of just Cloud Oppress because we fucking enjoy this
game. It's it's good.
I'm really into this game, like thematically, it's very much a a
hunter game, you know? Yeah.
It's AU game hard, like I really enjoy it.
It's not a Ryan game though at all, but it is a very much a
Hunter game and I can appreciate that.
Oh oh, the best part of that I wrote was this time we chatted
about and played Cloud Empress on creator Cuts episode #5,
which is betweens episode 62 and 63.
If you want to hear some initial like 30 minute interview with
Watt about Cloud Empress and then watch us play with Cloud
Empress running it. And then we also interviewed
Watt. We already talked about that on
episode 122 and did the post mortem and the campaign
fulfillment and the look forward there.
So that's that's the intro to cloud.
Empress. Mm hmm.
Mm hmm.
Great intro, honestly. I hate listen a little
scatterbrained not gonna lie. We we we we're in pre stream for
20 minutes for a reason because we couldn't focus in, but we're
here. It has been already a rough
morning, so. Hey, I'm awake feeling good with
a full belly. So we're we're getting there.
Anything you have to say before we hop into the game?
Read through. I think that this is a fantastic
project and I can't wait for more of it.
That's my, yeah, that's my, my. Take away I'm very excited for
the Land of the living, and obviously for the land of the
Dead. Yeah, so because Land of the
Dead's my shit. Boom Cloud, Empress ecological
science fantasy RPG, how about the freaking art all the way
through this entire thing? Incredible.
The art's really crazy, so there's three different artists
on here. It's PB Beta, Garen and Hwanji.
And let me tell you that, Oh no, it's 4 Cause images in here as
well. And the art is so contiguous all
the way through. Like it's it's all so
thematically correct and I think it fits in really well together
that I forget that there's multiple artists, honestly.
Yeah, it's it's there's like one page where it kind of stood out
to me a little bit. I think it's the rest page and
it's the only time where I was like oh huh, Other than that,
like, not that it's bad, it's just that I noticed a style
change, but it's a gorgeous page, so it doesn't matter.
I was just saying it's the only time that I, I I've even noticed
that there was a like 4 artists in the book, but the whole
style. I especially love the the this
like soft half tone orangy Ness that they do a lot like the
cover. So anyway, so do we.
Do we wanna come back to the tables in the beginning when we
hit them in the rules or? Yeah, I think so.
I think it's like they're really cool, but it's weird to do them
like outside of context. Right, but then there's
mothership. Yeah, especially like the cursed
rules. It's like, it'd be cool to talk
about curses and then go back to them.
But yeah, same thing with he's in the very front.
Yeah, very mothership, yeah. Wounds, panic, miscasts and
curses. I I like though that the tables
are all in like the front 2 pages, the back 2 pages.
Because if you have the the book at the table it's super easy to
know that you just have to flip to either the front cover, the
back cover. You know what?
I mean, absolutely, yeah. Yeah, credits again.
We already said game graphic designer.
Layout by what? Illustration By everyone that
Hunter just said it'd be cool if these are hyperlinked, but it's.
I mean, it's just in the credits.
So, like, that doesn't bother me nearly as much.
There's some sensitivity readers.
There is a section here, and I think it's in all the books,
that talks about Cloud Empress written on the ancestral lands
of the Dakota people and basically says that, you know,
colonialism sucks. We live on oppressed land and
they stand in solidarity with Native nations advocating for
their turn of indigenous lands to indigenous peoples.
I agree, yeah. Same.
Yeah. Yeah, Free Palestine.
So. Yeah.
So there are many types. I mean, yes, obviously there are
many types of games that do many different things.
Cloud Empress has not been made to.
I love this, I love that. I mean, everyone has their own
kind of little version of this. Some people are like, if you're
fascist, kick rocks. I really enjoy this.
Take care. As I said, there are many types
of games that do many different things.
Cloud Empress has not been made to treat the environment as an
object to plunder and act. Power fantasies, especially
violent ones, degrade, humiliate, oppress, or create
characters of other beings. And there's content warnings.
This Cloud Empress rule book contains large bugs, mental
illness, blood amputation, military occupation, gun
violence, and violence to insects.
Right intro page. Yeah, absolutely.
I'm glad for the Yeah, I'm glad. For that yeah.
Yeah. And then we get to the index.
Yeah. Gotta say, I mean, I'm out of.
I don't like it for a couple of reasons.
I think the I I love, I love the outside.
But do you It's What are your thoughts on the index page?
Yeah, yeah. You know, it's a little cramped.
Yeah, I. Don't like it?
I think it probably should have been 2 pages, but here's my
issue with the index page. First of all, it is hyperlinked,
which is fantastic, and it is bookmarked, which is cool too.
But like, what's weird is not all the sections are in the
index and not all of the index sections are in the bookmarks.
Yeah, and my, the but. But I'm fine with all of that.
Some of the really small things that are like one paragraph,
fine, whatever, that's fine. What the thing that bothers me
the most, and I think can be solved easily by just bolding,
is that there's like, the book is broken into parts.
It really is like there's a character section, there's a
rule section, but like, it's not the index isn't broken into
parts. You know what I mean?
Like rules is in the same. It looks the same as everything
else. You know, character looks the
same as everything else. Even if they wanted to keep the
same layout of this design, which honestly I think it should
just be uncorrected in two pages or even just split it into two
columns would have been fine. I really wish that character
creation was just bolded and rules was bolded, you know what
I mean? And once it hits like the tables
at the bottom, like just bold those because like, from, from
names and aliases down is pretty much just tables or beastieary
stuff, you know? Do you think it'd?
Be better if there was like a like section, subsection thing
going on. Well, I mean, if they wanted to
keep this style of very clean one column, whatever, just bold
it, I'd be fine with that. I do think that breaking it out
into even if they wanna do one page 2 columns and yeah like
rules big and then like things indented slightly because again
the game is it's clearly broken kind of into like part one, Part
2 with some stuff at the end. Like I wouldn't have minded if
there was a little bit more distinct.
Cuz when I first flipped to this page like it really did take me
a second to be like where the fuck are the rules?
And then I was like it's in the rules part.
With everything else it's fine. But again, it is also weird that
I was like, OK, I went through all of these, wrote them all
down so we could take notes and then found five sections that
aren't listed here. You know what I mean?
So but again, really tiny stuff that might not necessarily need
it's own index page. But more than anything I would
just say that I wouldn't mind that if the character creation
rules were broken down to make it a little bit more clear in
the index. Also, real quick, I wanna scroll
all the way to the back to address this and we'll kind of
address it at the end. There's a glossary.
There's a glossary, which is fantastic, right?
But I feel like this information would be nice at the beginning,
you know, more than at the like the very end, kind of.
You know what I mean, would you? I guess glossaries are always in
the back, but like, maybe there's just some information in
here that's explained in ways that are explained more easily
than earlier in the book. Like when I first read
Cloudlings and Lordlings, I had to read it over and over and to
be like, what the fuck is the difference between a Cloud Ling
and a Lordlings? And we'll get to that.
But the Cloud Ling is is clearly broken down in this little bit
more definitively. Personally, I don't know.
I like. I think of like UVG, which has
like a ton of lore in it and a lot of words being used.
And there's a glossary in the back.
Like, I like how unbroken this feels lore wise when you read it
through. It's not like talk about
cloudlings willing. Oh yeah, by the way, cloudlings
and lordlings do this like I actually do kind of appreciate
that it doesn't, like, step away from the lore to explain
everything out. But there's a glossary in the
back for the terms that are a little bit more foreign.
God just said, Ryan, you did this to me.
But yeah, I think I like it. I don't mind it.
I think when we get to oh shit.
I think when we get to the sections I'm talking about, we
can discuss it again. But it's just something I wanted
to touch on at the beginning, so.
The other problem is version of Cloud Empress you have open
right now because your glossary page is different from the book
and the other PDF just. One point O1, which one do you
have? Not that one I think I have.
You have a more updated version. Let's see.
I'm looking at 1.01. Yeah, I am too.
Interesting. OK, well.
OK, well then get off my back then.
Weird, the glossary looks different.
I'm just going to get this out of the way.
For those of you listening, I'm sure this is very riveting
hearing that the glossary has two different art pages, but.
Yeah, so different. Anyway, OK, so let's get
cracking in here again. We talked about the tables in
the beginning. Fuck, we are super unfocused
today, so hopping in great art right off the bat again, I love
this spread here with the art and the cicadas in the sky and
then like the orange art of the people with like, the giant
pigeon and shit like, it's so vibey instantaneously.
Like as soon as you see this page especially, you're like,
oh, this is weird, this is weird, science fantasy weird.
And I'm in a you know what I mean?
Like, it's a giant bird. Their outfits are obviously very
science fantasy. And then there's giant cicadas
in the sky and even the buildings.
You're like, OK, you know? Very it is.
It does capture like a lot of I know obviously it's very
inspired by Nautica, but it does capture a lot of, like the feel
of being in that world. You know what?
What? What happened?
So I had actually set up. I must have actually deleted it.
I had set up a cloud and because this book is actually read to be
like, really, really good to be in spreads.
So give me one second. Yeah.
This is actually the Land of the Cicadas is the cover.
So we're not gonna really talk about the land of Cicadas, but
do you want to just do like a quick what is Land of Cicadas?
It's the other primary book of the project.
Yeah. But what is it?
The Land of Cicadas is a It is both like a it's pretty much a
hex crawl and boar book like. It gives you a hex crawl, like a
fairly decent sized hex crawl to run through.
But your character gives you all context about like the world and
its history and what running through these different biomes
essentially is like because the Land's divided up, the hex map
of the low end waste is divided up between the what is it
called, the basket, the bread basket, the weeds, the thick
wood, and then the rust bucket, which is a bit it's like a good
sized hex crawl within two hexes.
And that was interesting. But yeah, it tells you about
like the procedures for hex crawling, hunting and gathering
food and then some look, some key locations and characters.
And it there are a lot of locations on the hex crawl that
they're actually even further filled in by the like separate
playbooks that you get like The Labyrinth of the Bride, these
little these little adventure pamphlets.
Which is nice because you can remove these not pamphlets to
scenes, these little adventure scenes.
You can have the stand one adventures just run that
adventure. Or you could visit them as part
of a massive hex crawl, kind of depending on what works for your
table and your group. I'm a hex crawl boy, so my my
table will be playing this eventually.
But yeah, I I. It's a really cool hex crawl
that has a lot of information, but it doesn't feel like first.
It doesn't feel like you need to know all of it all the time.
It just really informs you about kind of the vibe and the themes.
I. Well, I'm really in focus today
as well, yeah. No.
That's that's really great. Well, one of the things you said
is one of the thing I really do like because I'm the kind of
person that I just Humber all my own adventures and shit or I'll
take adaptive parts of adventures.
And it is really cool that with the extra pamphlets, with the
extra scenes, you can use them or not use them.
So if there's an empty hex or something that those fill, you
can just be like, I'll just fill those spots, but like, maybe
I'll use a little bit of inspiration.
So it's nice that there is both filled and unfilled spot.
It's like a Schrodinger's hex, you know what I mean?
Like you can kind of. Schrodinger's adventure scene.
Yeah. So what I wanted to do is throw
a blank page in because so much of the scene is in spreads and
actually reads a lot easier in spreads.
So this might be one that we actually look at in spreads a
lot of times. So let's see, so like this page
for example. But when we get to later stuff,
especially like the character creation page, it is across a
spread and the normal PDF like it's broken across 2 pages.
So you can't like look at it next to each other unless you
insert a page. So that's what I did.
So welcome to the Hereafter. So there's three sections right
in the beginning and I'm going to kind of break all of it down
into one and then come back to it.
So welcome to the Hereafter is a very first of all the pros in
this book. Fucking fantastic.
What is a fantastic writer? My goodness, we're not going to
read a lot of it today because we would be here for three hours
like we were with 120 page book. But it's so good.
It's incredibly well written. It's so viby.
I really like a lot of it, but there's the Welcome to the
Hereafter section. The Hereafter is like the here
and now. It's a setting.
And then there is a what is Cloud Empress, which is a quick
breakdown of like what it is, but also like gather the
following when you play rolling dice.
I'm gonna come back to that. There's a picture here of
torturers, which I get to in second with like a kind of like
writings, like an in in lower writing about the tortures, like
a like a quote UN quote story of what they were.
And then there's also, like you said in the land of cicadas,
there is a it's a setting book in the hex crowd book.
So like it sets into like what's happening in the world right
now. So between all of those
sections, I'm going to kind of break all of those down into one
simple easy kind of thing real quick, so we can cruise through
that. So, and of course they said so
basically. We're trying to improve.
Y'all, I swear. Probably.
Maybe so. Cloud Empress is an ecological
science fantasy setting inspired by Nazca in the Valley of the
Wind Dune and Full Metal Alchemist.
Story of it goes like this. Long ago and a time before the
sky was darkened. It was an ancient people of
unmatched power and cruelty called torturers.
My assumption probably us to end their destruction in the world
was basically naked into oblivion and the torturers,
seeing what they wrought, fled into the stars.
Now most people live in what's known as the Lowland Wastes,
currently in the Hereafter, which still has areas of
radioactive fallout. But there is a magical soot in
the Lowland Waste called Chalk which gives spellcasters power,
and it's sought by Cloudlings. Cloudlings and their Lordlings,
which are the rulers of the Cloudlings, live in sky cities
hanging from anchors in space, and they think they have a right
to everything, as nobility is want to do.
But of course, things are worse than that, because time and
space are slippery, and you or other things can slip into or
out of both space and time at various times when they slip
opens. And at the center of all of that
are the imago, which are massive, like 30 foot cicadas
that feed on the bones of the dead.
Usually they're manageable, only a few 100 total.
But every 100 years the century Brood appears when thousands
upon thousands of imago claw up from deeper than the soil and
reduce any existing civilization to ruin.
In the setting book, which we just talked about in the Land of
Cicadas, what's going on is at the 29th expedition, which is a
military incursion by the cloud links into the lowland wastes
has commenced. And by fate or the powers that
be, the century Brood arrived seven years early, while at the
same time the cloud Empress, the supposed to be bride of the
Emperor, has gone missing. And that's that's where we are
in the hereafter. It is a land of radioactive
fallout, magical chalk warps in space-time, and encroaching
military expedition by those that claim to be in power, all
of which is under the shadow of thousands upon thousands of
giant cicadas that are here to eat your bones and fucks it up.
Beautiful. Was that a was that a good?
Would you think that was? I think that was great.
I would say that the distinction is so the imago are actually
attracted to the chalk, which is a pollutant that gets into your
bones, which is why they want to eat your bones is because chalk
is a like almost like an I think like an extra dimensional
pollutant essentially, right? Well, I.
Was going to say that to the chalk section, but yeah, that's
100% what it is. Yeah, the the torturers brought
chalk from a a parallel dimension to fuel their
machines. And now that it's polluting
everything, it travels up the food chain from like the dirt to
the bugs to the animals to the people.
Gets in our bones, gets eaten by the cicadas, and then when
cicadas die, people scrape the chalk from the canvases.
To use mind their bodies. Yeah, so it's like it's this
weird kind of circle of life quasi parasitic thing just to
get this magic chalk. So I mean so fucking good.
Like so. That's so good.
It's so good. It's a really, I, I I like the
foundation of the setting, but I also like the time period in
which you're dropped into the setting, which is like, so
everything's happening at once. There's almost complete chaos.
And it's just like, it's so close to the end of the world,
almost with like the Century brewed and the the 29th
expedition and like the Cloud Empress disappearing.
Like, Oh my God, there's a lot going on at once in a place that
I feel like, you know, I feel like there is space here for
like, a more pastoral adventure, maybe in a time period where
everything's not about to be crushed by giant cicadas.
Well the other thing too is like the Century Brood is is is
coming out and fighting shit or whatever.
But like it it does. It's not the entire lowland
waste. Like you could really just like
pick the areas that they're like the 29th expedition and the
cicadas are gonna encountering each other.
And if you're farther away you might not even know.
Like if you're in a relatively isolated town, you might not
even know the Century Brood came out like 7 years early, you
know, Yeah. So you can play a very pastoral
kind of like, Oh no, la da da da da.
And like how cool would that be to, like, especially if your
players didn't know about all of this and you were just kind of
being like oh Doo Doo Doo Doo like having normal levengers and
suddenly it's just like fucking military expedition comes over
the hill, Cicadas come over the hill and you're like in the
middle and it's like what is going on?
And suddenly your players are throwing totally shit.
This isn't just pastoral stuff. Like we're literally in like the
end times, like that's just crazy.
So that would be cool. That's one thing that is all
what, like I buy a lot of adventures, of all the things on
my shelves that I read, fewer than anything else.
It's adventures because I don't want to be ruined just in case
someone runs it for me. You know, no one will.
But like, you know, because I don't, because I don't want to
know all this information just in case, you know.
Anyway, so that kind of breaks down the whole beginning section
of Cloud Empress. So back to the What is Cloud
Empress section? I already said it's ecological,
science, fantasy, etcetera, etcetera.
The players are players. The person that runs is called a
warden, just like mothership. Gather the following game stuff
when you play. I do like this.
This is quick little like principles.
When you play, ask questions. The warden is there to answer
questions about the environment and everything.
This is. This is.
I don't mind this is like a what is RPG or like what do you need
to do. This is quick, brief, you know
to the point kind of mixing with principles.
I like this. So ask questions.
Travel carefully and create an environment of safety or the
three things so travel carefully means that characters in the
Cloud Empress aren't heroes. You're relish people.
You're super fucking squishy like you will die.
Like be careful. Travel carefully, be smart.
The world is out to literally eat your fucking bones.
So, you know, do what you guys do.
Literally, Yeah. And then create an environment
of safety help. Make your table a welcoming
space. Use use like be a good person,
use safety tools if you need to, and check insurance and all that
stuff frequently because you know there are parts of the
setting that do get a little brutal.
You know, like things. Eating your bones and shit.
Totally. It's funny, you know, with kind
of what we were talking about before we got on stream, which
we all need to go and deepen and some discussions I've had with
other people in like gaming space.
I forget how like non-toxic all of my tables I sit at are like,
my friends are like genuinely good people and there they make
each other comfortable. I forgot that there is like
tables where people are like adversary or looking to make
people uncomfortable or just totally not cognizant of that as
a thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
A quick aside to that is you don't have to sit at those
tables, people. It's better to.
It's better to not play the game than to play a shitty game that
makes you uncomfortable. Yeah, that's.
Actually allocated? Yeah, like you're like get up
and leave like it's fine. And if someone's shitty at your
table, don't invite them back. Like every time I see some page.
It's like advice on how to deal with a problem player.
The fact that it's more than one sentence long always pisses me
off. Like don't.
Just don't. Don't deal with them.
Don't invite them back. Like, if they're about problem
paper because they don't know, educate them.
If you educate them and there's still a problem, get fucking rid
of them. You don't have to play with
these people. There's 8 billion people in the
world. Way too many of them are
douchebags. Don't talk to them, don't
interact with them. Tell them the fuck off.
Yeah, come to Eugene OR play at my table.
You know, there you go. I'm not going to tell you where
I live. So rolling dice cloud Empress is
the metric system. It primarily uses 10 sided dice.
You know what, 1D, ten, 2D10. All this stuff is regularly ask
for checks of roll of 1D100. You roll 2 dice.
So wait a minute, roll roll two. I feel like I read this and it
and my brain will never know the difference between the 10s and
the ones and the zero and stuff. Looking at the results, one dies
red as the 10s, one is red as the want.
OK so on A10 sided die right? Let's say we have 210 sided
dies. Excuse me, what is 1 and what is
100? Well, you can only do well.
Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
Yeah, yeah, we'll come back to that.
I don't know either. Anyway, so talked about the
torture. I mean I I know at some point
but like it's all it always feels like, you know you could
do it two different ways. Another great piece are.
There are two different ways like it's either it's either
like what, zero to 99 or one to 100.
Yeah, greatest art here. People living lives.
I really enjoy this. Yeah.
So, oh, this is me. So summer traveling, parties,
basically. This says that the time that
you're playing in right now is the summer, and it's Adventure
Time, like this time. The winter picks up, the weather
gets better. People are like, yeah, yeah, I'm
a strike out for the summer. I'll, I'll gather a small group.
Maybe you meet them while you're out on the way.
Maybe you leave town with them or wherever you're from and you
just go on a summer adventure while the weather's nice.
Yep, so. You join us summer traveling
party. It could be cell swords,
lordlings, magicians, couriers, whatever it is, that's what
you're doing. You know, that shit's hitting
the fan with the expedition, with the century brood,
everything. But you're you're traveling and
seeing, seeing the world. I like that.
I like this, says right off the bat.
Like. I do, too.
It's like a weird summer vacation thing.
Yeah, for. Like hellscape eventually.
Totally. And I think that like playing up
the whole, like it's it's the cold has just passed.
It's now like one of the first warm days.
You really like play up that, you know, walking through the
like the bread Baskets farm lands very pastoral sunny days
and I do like at the end of that section that does say if the
world ever needed saving. That time has passed, but
there's still work to be done. Yeah, I don't know why this like
parts of this. I feel like you could definitely
have some grave of the Firefly shit, you know what I mean?
Like body hoppers. So.
Body hoppers. Yeah, right off the bat, we just
talked about body hoppers. So Long story short, with body
hoppers is people hop bodies. They go from corpse to corpse
using magic for survival. And with each new cadaver they
mark their face with tattoos. They recognize themselves, but
each time they hop, they're also like shattering parts of their
memory. And then there's this like kind
of like trophy magic used to be stronger thing that's in like
everything. Like ancient magicians used to
be able to do this, like almost surgically.
And what we have now is just kind of like a shitty version of
it, which is fine. At some point I want to play a
game where like you're in peak magic in the.
Height of magic, I think that's just hard to like.
It's hard to create a rule set for God magic, you know.
Yeah, I mean it would just be a power fantasy, but it's fine.
But anyway, so body hoppers are cool as shit, like you're you
basically bounce from corpse to corpse.
It's really neat. It happens.
I like it. It's magicians using chalk to to
bounce from corpse to corpse. It's randomly.
I feel like this isn't a random spot for it, but it's really
fucking dope. And the art is really cool too.
Kind of a random spot, but yeah, also very, I agree.
The slip. So what is the slip?
The slip is basically these mile wide like weird zones that will
just appear and disappear, right?
And if you get trapped in those spaces, that sucks for you.
And things can come in and out of time.
Like it can randomly drop like ancient or future machinery in
front of you. You could disappear and be gone.
Like you could suddenly be in the same spot but like way
earlier. Like it's just anything you can
imagine is for space and time. It just happens and it's like
there and gone. Boom.
So you could literally Sometimes it's just unavoidable because
it'll just open right around you.
Which is fucking crazy. Which is also a dope way to
start an adventure is to just boom, you're in like a weird
zone. You get popped somewhere else
and you know back to the time of you know all those great
magicians. So the slip is the thing that
exists. You know I I so the way that
chalk and and the slip and everything, to me it feels very
like the magical radioactive fallout of the nuclear war that
we fucked up. Like that's my assumption too.
Is that like it just? Definitely how it feels for me
as well. Yeah, which I think is cool,
like, you know, spice up the you know.
I will say that this this game is not short on cool, you know?
It's not short on cool at all, I will say, though.
Also, I do think this look. I think, I think both of these
parts are in a very weird part and it would be fine if both of
these were after all of the character Christian instead of
just like randomly tucked in before.
I don't know why, maybe they just needed to fill a page, but
it's just to me this feels like it's in a weird spot.
It's interesting because so after the next couple of pages,
it gets into like the character classes and body hopper is in
the class. It's an age technically, the
way, like the way the game works.
So I kind of understand why it's right before character creation,
because it's part of that. But yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I mean it's it's fine, it's fine.
It's just. It's definitely not right.
It's not like so many times. Yeah, like I've I've we, I think
we've both read the scene so many fucking Times Now.
Like, it's like we can start picking out the weird stuff and
then we get to character creation.
So do we want to just make a character?
Is that the easiest way to go through this entire thing?
I'm sure. Yeah.
Do you do?
You. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
I do.
So do you want me to read the
character and do you make the character, or do you want me to
make it and you read the character?
You read non make. How about that?
OK, so then let's quick run through the.
I don't care whatever you wanna do.
All right. Do you wanna run through the
character classes real quick? And then we'll come up to
create. Absolutely.
Just a good quick. Does like, well, let's just do
like a a quick blurb on each before you pick one, and we'll
go in depth on that. And then and then we'll create a
character using it. Sure.
Who knows? Who knows what I'm going to
pick. So for the jobs that the jobs of
the character classes, right, first one's going to be your
cell sword, which is your, you know, adventure seeking, gun
wielding, sword wielding, blade for hire kind of character.
Straight Merc, yeah. Straight Merc.
I will say that one of the things I really love about this
is the tables for all the for all the jobs.
And like, it's like, what were you doing last?
And it tells you what gear you have with you And I'm like, oh,
that's so that's such a great way to build like a background
narrative for your. Character.
It's so smart, it's it reminds me a little bit of like frontier
scam where like you get your skills by like something that
you encountered that's such a better way to do it.
I think it was someone else did a blog recently.
It might have been Rise up Comus.
It might have been somebody else.
Was it Rise up Comus. I think it was who did like
character creation as a point crawl where you literally are
like you have a winter. Oh dude, I'll send it to you.
It's so fucking good. It's like you have a winter to
get from here to there. Pick your path and the way you
pick the path of your character gives you like background
narrative and skills and stuff to get like it's so fucking
good. It's so clever.
Anyway, Cell Sword, What else we got?
Sell sword. After that we have the Lord
Ling, and this is the rulers of the Cloud City.
They they are like contested rulers.
There's a lot of political intrigue within the Lord Lings,
And so you might be a Lord of essentially nothing, but you're
still technically a Lord. People around you don't really
like you that much. As a Lord, Ling, I'm kind of
afraid of you. Because you act like a Lord
Ling, right? Because you act like a Lord.
It is really funny that you could be a Lord Ling of nothing
and people are still like, oh, and it's like, yeah, but you're
just, you're just a dude at that point, you know?
Yeah, but I mean, but you act like you are a Lord of a lot.
Right. Yeah, there's some room in there
for you to be kind of an impetuous, kind of ignorant
Lord. And I think there's some fun
game player around that if you do it not as being a Dick for.
Sure. I think that was a Lord Ling in
the play test I did with Christian.
And I was a Dick. Yeah.
That makes sense. I might do that as well.
Actually, I'd probably just play an idiot.
And then the magician. Which is exactly what it sounds
like. You were the magic user of this.
And the magic's fucking weird, by the way.
Like, it is not like throw a fireball.
It is a lot more bizarre than that.
There are no old Wizards. When you lose your, when you
lose your wisdom teeth, you pretty much don't have the
ability to channel magic anymore, so you can age out of
that profession, which I think is very funny.
I mean also there's part where it talks about how like parents
will rip the the wisdom teeth out of their kids to make sure
that they don't deal with magic, which is evil and shit, which is
like crazy. Very normal, very normal human
thing. So.
Yeah, well, that that's crazy. That is a very normal human
thing. Like, yeah, superstitious will
rip your wisdom teeth out and then sell them to traveling
magicians. Is 100% what people would
actually do if this was real. We chop.
The tips of our Dicks off and shit like, what the fuck?
Like, of course people are going to rip their.
Teeth out the I think this is the final one.
Is Courier. Yeah, Courier is the final one.
And you're like the hard traveled person that that's.
You're a Courier. You know the road you travel.
Well, weirdly, I love this one actually.
Yeah, the professional traveler. Yeah.
So if like it's so good. Like you kind of feel like with
this being a class, like, wow, every party kind of needs a
Courier. A little bit, you know it's.
Not going to have anything but you.
Don't need anything but like it's it's nice but the art of it
there's is great too. Like the orange fives again,
like the frog person here, the magician.
Like the the woman and the child.
The Lord Ling you know, in full armor like crazy polka dot shit.
The crazy polka dot shit, cuz that's the thing about the Lord
Lings is you picked like their their garb is ridiculous
looking. Yeah, because of course it would
be. Yeah, just like if you were in
Versailles. Well, and I love this all sort
has like the living armor or whatever we'll get to that.
But it's dope that like the chest on the eye on the chest.
So, so, so it's not like you'd pick the magician or anything,
right? Yeah, I'm definitely not gonna
pick the Magician. That'd be fucking crazy.
Well, actually, what's gonna happen is we're gonna do this
organically. And if I roll too old to play
Magician, then I won't play magician because.
OK, OK, well let's let's bring bring up that roller and let's
do this. So we're gonna, we're gonna read
through character creation. If you look at pages 11 and 12
and the Z and it's the entire character sheet on with like how
to build it around it and then there's like a how to create
like like numbered section through the bottom but like
that's also exploded out on the sides.
This is the great spread in the book.
This is the primary reason I wanted to insert that extra page
so I could look at this spread together.
But then you also realize like I said that like looking in like
when you look at in pages you see this art then you see the
page of cell sort after hits you way different than looking at
and spread where you see the lore and the R next to the
table. Boom boom boom like this is
definitely like one that I will agree is it's good to read
pages. So character creation.
There are 6 total steps. So step one determine your
stats. Roll 2 D 10 + 20 for each stat
and your stats are mind, heart, strength and speed SO2 D 10 + 20
Don't forget everyone out there. This is a like AD 10 roll under
system. So you want high stats and then
you would roll like a you know, your D100 underneath your stat.
Dude, I'm rolling. Genuinely crazy.
Well, the most you can get is like 40.
Listen, let me, let me enjoy my Life, OK?
So do do, do, do, do. Do you want to You want to talk
it out while you do it? Yeah, absolutely.
I rolled a 39 for for mind. Oh shit.
Oh hey, listen, you know I'm not messing around.
No. A 29 for heart, which is not as
good. Still good.
All right, you got two left. Let's thank the speed.
A 32 for strength. Sick.
And I forgot to write speed on my little thing.
But for speed, this guy's going to be fast as fuck.
I'm telling you because I got a I'm right actually a 38 for
speed. Yo, fast as fuck, boy.
Boy. Yeah.
All right. So.
That's step one saves real quick, which is just one.
Step 2. Step 2.
It's determine your saves 1 to 10 + 20 and you have 3 saves
which is save, which is reality, fear and body.
And we'll get to those to explain those a little bit more
into the section when we get there.
So you do those three one to 10 + 20, what do we get?
I got a 25 for reality, a 25 for fear and a 24 for body.
Stick. All right, so step.
Yeah, I mean the Max of 30 when you're rolling.
Fucking really nice. I know actually really, really
really well so. Well, you got 24 and it's with
the plus 20, so you roll the four, so yeah.
Hey, it's nine O 1. Hey, it's nine O 1.
All right? So step three, Find your
character's age by rolling 1D10 and consulting the table below.
Your age affects your stats and what job your character can
take, so you can roll off. There's four different ages.
There's on a one to three you get a teenage, on a four to
seven you get full grown on an 8 to 9 year old old, and on a 10
you get body hopper. And each one adjusts your stats.
So what did you roll? I love how the body Hopper, by
the way, is just like, fucking strong, you know?
But their speed is like gone. You rolled.
An old man didn't. You I did.
No magic for you. Plus 20 to mind.
Minus tend to strength and there are no old magicians.
So if you're a magician and you get old, you can't be a magician
no more. So no.
Magician no more. Yep, no magician for you.
So that is. And I love that it tells you to
do all of this before you ever think about picking a class,
because this effects what you can be legitimately.
So #4 out of six. You choose a job and skills.
Your job affects your saves and grants you access to different
skills. Each job has unique job
condition which effects how you and the people around you react
to things going badly. So if we go down to Oh no.
So the job, the quote UN quote classes are jobs.
The South or lower leg magician Courier like that's the those
are called jobs. Like you are, you are I guess
you are your job, but you're not your job.
But you are your job in this, but you're not your job.
I'm good Courier. I knew if you didn't get
magician, you'd pick Courier. Of course you would.
So there's an adjustment to skills, again based on the
Courier. So you get a + 10 to all saves,
which is dope. It's really good.
And you get scrounging, tinkering, and any two other
skills. So we'll do skills in a second.
And you've seen it all once per session.
Even make a panic check with advantage, because don't forget
this game is built on the panic Engine.
Watt. I know Watt had previously done
some stuff in Mothership. Panic Engine is great.
I think this is such a good example of how to take a good
system and do something that you would not expect with it.
Because when you think of mothership, you think space
horror. And this is very weird science
fantasy, but it's just because it's a core D100 system, like it
works. It works well for this.
I think some things could be tweaked a tiny bit, but I think
overall like it really works well for this.
So #5 each job has a table of different backgrounds and gear.
Row 1D10 on each table and write the results on your sheets.
So we'll Scroll down to the Courier and you get to roll 1D10
for your gear. OK, on Courier, I'm scrolling
down right now. I rolled A1.
Let's see. Being abandoned.
So what were you doing last? Being abandoned by a hijacked
barge? My Courier gear under cloak
wraps, so I'm basically just. I just have wraps on 10
cookware. I have a walking staff that's
one D5 damage sunburn, A gourd canteen, large salted catfish,
that's. Right.
That's that's funny, because it's honestly like maybe the
worst loadout, 'cause it's like, oh, you were just hijacked and
you got like, this is all you made that with.
That's that's fucking it. That's crazy.
Some of them likes like it's hands.
Crazy. Oh, collecting chalk scraps.
Yeah. Camouflage battle casing.
Yeah, a chalk cannon. Chalk.
Collecting drills and hammers. Yeah, you were literally
collecting chalk, I think. Number #4 is kind of crazy too,
delivering rare thawing and medicine from the rust bucket.
You're in a humming living armor and you have like a flare rifle
and like a oh and you're cursed. You start cursed I.
Don't know. You start cursed.
That one's don't see that one. That is very cool.
OK, so you decided to go over curses, the magic in this, like
between casting crests and curses.
When we get to spells like, we'll talk about it when we get
there. But, like, the effects are like,
my favorite fucking thing in the entire game.
So character creation. Click on the hyperlink thing.
So that's number five. So you picked your background in
gear already. Everyone starts with enough
provisions to feed the traveling party for one day.
Once you play, blah blah blah 6. Finally, choose a name and an
alias. There's a list on page 47 to
help inline hyperlinked on that page 47.
Just why don't you just roll? So do you want?
Are you gonna do a farmerling name, a cloudling name, a common
name or an ancient name? Oh, I think I'm gonna do a
common name. I feel like this is I have I
have a very common character, you know?
Oh wait, wait wait, wait, wait no.
You roll AD 100 and you just get 10.
So it's 0099, right? Yeah, 0099.
Messed up my windows. There we go.
That's the. Easiest way to do it it is.
Actually the easiest way to do it, so a 76.
So that would be this thing. I was gonna say.
You missed the comedies by one. You almost got in there.
No, I must, but I'm spin. Spin the Courier.
Wait. Rolling.
Alias. Oh yeah, I got rolling Alias.
Another 100 table. 88 Wait a minute, The Punk Spin The Punk.
Spin the Punk, The old Courier. The old punk.
You're an old punk. Magicians can't get old, but
punks can't. And that's that's your that's
your whole shit. That's your whole shit, man.
Yeah, that's. Did I submit on this?
Yes. So that is character creation.
Fucking easy peasy, man. Like, how easy was that?
Oh, why don't you roll on the Traveling With table?
Did you get oh, could you get 2 extra skills?
So roll on the Traveling With table and then pick out two
skills and then your character's.
Done. OK, where?
Here. There we go.
My brain, my brain's not working today.
Y'all. OK, so on that table I rolled A6
so I have a water bear, a soft floating creature attuned to
slip. So that's definitely one of
those things called a tardigrade.
I have a tardigrade. I have a bigger tardigrade like.
A giant. You're talking about that little
weird thing that can survive in space and in magma and shit,
right? Yeah, this is your dope.
And then you get to pick two other skills I think is what you
got. Yeah, so I I started with
scrounging and tinkering, I believe.
Yeah, I would probably pick mysticism, because my bat, my
lore for this character is that he was a magician.
And he, I grew too old. And now he's a Courier because
he travels as a magician and he's like, yeah, I travel
everywhere. You know that makes sense, so.
Mysticism. And then I feel like tongues.
Advanced knowledge of modern and ancient language.
Mm hmm. Nope.
So maybe not the most like util, like utilitarian Courier, but
like a learned traveler, you know?
Yeah, for sure. Faux SHO.
Then we got the, then we got imago and chalk.
Tell me about the Tell me about the imago and the chalk.
So the imago, the the life cycle is not in this book, right?
It's in the other one, right? Or is it in this one?
No, I think it's wiggly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So the imago start out as like already fairly large cicadas and
then like mature and become like, Gee, obviously you see in
this art piece, this really very good art piece.
Also I like the panel that's a close up on the face and the
face is just like staring at the light.
But yeah, the among are these massive cicadas that feel
mystical, that have faces. They don't talk, as far as I
know. No, they're it's, well, it's I I
see them as like like they definitely look like faces, but
it's just their carapace. Yeah, almost like when you see
like a face in a tree, but like why do they all have fucking
faces? Yeah, like there's no way that
it's just like, it just happens to be like of growth that looks
like a face or whatever. Like they are fucking faces, but
like, they it's just their shell.
So it's so weird. Yeah, they are big and creepy
and like we said earlier, you know, they'll they'll eat your
bones. There are.
And the other thing is that they're like very much attracted
to bones. I think in the beginning
adventure like there's the possibility of like the death of
people attracting Imagos. Now why is this?
Because they want to. They want to get that sweet,
sweet chalk out of your bones. You know, they're trying to, you
know, chalk and then a very interesting life cycle that
there is a really cool graphic, a cool section that there's a
life cycle section of the imago in this book that we'll get to.
I kind of wish it was like right around here so that you can
instantly go to it, but that's fine.
Big bucks instantly go to it anyway, but like it's a weird.
It's a weird one that's like bigger than all the rest of the
pages for some reason. So like it's like rotated weird
so it makes APDF shrink weird if I don't rotate them off.
Well, There's also the the Brood monks too, which like people
literally pile bodies of dead right away from stuff.
Sorry, I didn't think that. Yeah, go over there.
Yeah. Dangerous job, yeah.
Bro. Like stacking bodies of dead so
that a giant 30 foot bug can come eat its bones.
I mean just thinking about just like the act of like playing
this hex crawl and and walking. Not that this is all a hex
crawl, but the hex crawl brought with this and you're walking in
just overhead. There's like several like a
small swarm of just massive like car sized cicadas, you know?
And you're just like, what the fuck, dude?
Well, there's actually. This reminds me though too.
They're like, and I don't know if this is maybe a any level of
inspiration for it, but there's like two different places I
think in the world where people feed their dead to vultures.
Like one is just kind of like out on some hills, but one
literally has like a tower of the dead where they like ring it
in the inside with bodies and then vultures come and eat it.
But there's like been a lot of issues where the vultures aren't
coming as much and stuff because humans suck.
And like, it's just great. I watch this whole thing and my
memory sucks. So I for if if if I'm saying
something that's culturally intensitive to that, I
apologize. But like, it reminds me of that
a little bit where they like, it's not the traditional way
that we, you know, in the West, like stick them in the ground.
It's literally like this whole ceremony of like, sacrificing
all of it to. The vultures that we do in the
West, that doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Nah, it's dumb. Yeah, burn my ass at best.
Yeah. And then the chalk.
Yeah, I mean the. Chalk is great.
So it's the stuff of magic. Like when you cast, you have to
use chalk to cast. And it's yeah, it's mined from,
like you said that, like that kind of like circle of life
thing. It's mine from the bodies of the
imago when they pass, or the carapaces of them, I guess, when
they shed as well, right? Yeah, they get, they get.
I mean you can get the chalk elsewhere, so you can find
enough in the ground to like scrape some out or whatever.
But like, obviously, like, you're going to get a shit load
when you get like in the art, The person's literally in like a
suit on the inside of a carapace, scraping the chalk off
the bones. Or like the the shell of the
fucking cicada. Like chalk, collecting is
actually a skill in this as well.
Yeah, imagine rolling for and getting all that, like the chalk
cannon and the chalk hammer and shit.
Yeah. And the art here is, I mean,
really is some great. I mean it's.
Really good. It's so good.
The cloudlings, you know, those who live on the the sky cities
and like my interpretation is I don't know about you Ryan, is
that some of the sky cities are in OK shape and a lot of them
don't seem like they're in the most OK of shape.
And there's only 18 left when there used to be dozens and
dozens and dozens. Like they just keep falling out
of the fucking sky because, like, that's where we're at in
this world. I would like an adventure in
like the Oh yeah yeah, Cloud city stuff would be very cool.
Yeah for sure. I love the page though here with
like the cloudling all fancy and like the armor and stuff like
looking over like the you're looking from over that this
cloudling shoulders and the farmerling is just all
farmerling looking with their gun just kind of like all pissed
off. I mean, it looks like they're
facing off. Yeah, for sure, 100.
Percent. So yeah, it's the it's a cool
spread and it's cool. It's like on one side there's a
Cloud Ling and it has like the lore, and the other side there's
the Farm Ling and it has the Farmer Ling and it has the lore.
Farmer Ling this. Is I've been saying Farm Ling a
lot, and I know it's Farmer Ling.
Oh, well, yeah, I mean that's whatever this.
I will say the first couple of times I read this, I I was like,
what is the difference between a cloud Ling and lore Ling?
I don't understand. I in context of other things
I've I've found 'cause I was like, are the cloudlings a rich
one or are the lordlings rich ones?
Like I don't get it. And then in context in other
parts of the book and then when you get to the glossary, it
definitely like everyone up, everyone in the sky is a
cloudlings and the ones that rule are the lordlings.
But I do no. Squares are rectangles, but all
rectangles are squares. You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, sure. But yes, I feel like that could
be a little bit more clear here. Like that's that's one of the
things I was talking about before where like if you go to
the glossary, it's like it's pretty well laid out.
But I feel like, am I wrong? Like did you read this the first
time and think, oh like Or did you were like wait, which would
switch? I think so.
I read the glossary pretty quick and also I've read this so many
times, it was so long ago. I read it's harder.
What? Did I?
Feel like the first time, cuz this is like the 18th at this
point. So yeah, so the Cloud Empress
for which the game is named. Great piece of art.
Do you want to just read like the vessel?
Absolutely, yeah. During the year of the century,
brood in the season of Imago in the moon of the worm.
On the day the handmade turned the sheets to discover only
potatoes, the Empress went missing.
The Empress should never vanish. Hadn't the Emperor lifted her
from the sewer alley, paid off her mother, and met her every
need? Hadn't had she not been fed the
purest chalk to nourish her growing talents?
And, of course, hadn't she been locked in impregnable tower?
Clearly the girl didn't care for her subjects.
There had been a deal. There had been a deal.
Her life was meant to belong to the people.
Her freedom was a sacrifice to realize the dreams of an empire.
The Lordlings and Alpha City were broiled.
Her absence would not do, especially given the drought of
granted wishes. Empresses need time to adjust to
their role. Everyone knew that.
But one year later, and she had failed to produce more than a
handful of answers. Answered prayers.
The couriers clocked and nodded their heads together, nervous
like nervous squabs. A single voice cut through the
chattering, farmerling betrayer. A betrayal.
Sleepy, Renault said, is the only explanation for a missing
Empress. The nobles bobbed their heads in
agreement. That must be the truth.
The idea of an Empress kidnapped by Farmer Ling's insurgents
sparked the engines of the 29th Expedition.
Soon the missing Empress seemed less important than the war
itself, dreams of fame and glory.
Chalk and feast became paramount.
Lord Ling's and their house soldiers crammed into their
barges, flooding the lowlands to chase their ambitions and make
dangerous dreams material. Nice chunk of lore right there.
It's just so funny. It's just so good.
And like, so now we. So we've established them.
There is an Empress, picked by the emperor, bought essentially
and forced into a position where she's fed chalk and grants
wishes and is locked in a tower and she escapes and everyone's
like, it must be the farmer lanes, right?
It couldn't be, it couldn't be that she didn't choose this
position and didn't like it. And I like the, the, I like this
thing. It's like, oh, this exhibition
started for this purpose, but they've kind of forgotten about
the purpose. It's kind of now just about the
glory and the sacking of the lowlands, you know?
And then what we know is the Century brew just happens to
also bubble up after all this bullshit.
Like couldn't be a worse time or a better time.
Very tumultuous time. You know, I just think they
sensed all the bones. And we're like, you know, it's
like worms when it rains, they just like, hear the drawing.
Time. And just do do do do do do.
OK, so get into the rules section.
So this is we're gonna breeze through the rules.
We've read Mothership 0 East and this is pretty clean and light.
We're gonna bounce back to single page.
Let me know if any of the spreads are like super dope
besides like violence when we get to it.
But yeah, so stats and saves, You talked about it already.
They both exist. There's four stats, there's
three saves. There's mind which, there's the
ability to solve problems and stuff like that.
Use crests. We call facts.
There's heart, which is your emotional abilities, your
emotional connection, your communication, your spells, you
know, etcetera. Their strength, which is your
strength and melee, and their speed, which is your speed and
range combat, you know, delicate stuff with your hand, like
dexterity, kind of. And then there's three saves
that you do under pressure. So there's reality, which is to
resist the false becoming true. There's fear, which is to face
terrifying events, And there's body, which is to resist
physical trauma, poisoning and radiation.
Those are all gonna be all your normal things, and when you
wanna do something risky, you make a stat check.
When you want to avoid or endure misfortune, you make a save.
It's the exact same warning after all that.
I don't know why this is broken into two.
You roll lower than your most relevant save if you roll 2
paragraphs when it could have just been one.
But basically, for either stat checks or saves, you roll D100
and attempt to roll lower than your most relevant stat.
If you roll less than a stat, you succeed, otherwise you fail
and take stress. So rolling is always bad for
you, pretty much like it's always bad.
Like you should always try to overcome things without being
forced to roll, because every time you fail A roll you take
stress, and every time you get stressed.
That's bad for you. There's some advice here.
Every dice roll changes the situation.
It's exactly what he said, Like basically fail forward or only
make people roll when it's important and we would change
the narrative. Ask for dice roll of what I just
said, ask for dice rolls on the stakes are high, there's
criticals that can happen. So when double S are rolled, so
like 33 or 77, the result is critical.
If you succeed with it, it's a critical success.
If you fail with it, it's a critical failure.
So if your score is 50 and you get a 33, grows critical
success. If your score is 50 and against
77, Critical failure. I like that.
Playing easy again, you know, the Warden will narratively
interpret results of critical stuff.
It's a it's a critical. You know, narrative actions
happen. Yep, it happens.
Yeah, Advantage and disadvantage.
So to roll an advantage to disadvantage, you roll 2 and
take the higher the lower. That's how it works.
There's two paragraphs to tell you that range, the distance
between I I say that like you know, kind of dismissively.
They're good paragraphs. I think this is good
explanations of it. The second paragraph really
talks about like when you would get it and what circumstances.
Cuz it's not like always super clear, but basically like you
know when you would get it. I mean we've played games.
I do like the one part, though. It does say if you would ever
roll with more than one disadvantage, the result is an
automatic failure. I I love that.
I think it's great. I love.
Inversely, if you ever roll with more than one advantage, it's
just like they just. You just do it, Yeah, yeah, fuck
it, Just do it. Yeah, I really enjoy that.
Especially in AD 100 system. The range is so big for that,
like in AD six in a 2D6 system. That makes a lot of sense to me,
'cause you're like, fuck, you're already at like +4.
But I I enjoy it in this. It really makes you search for
those advantages because the range is so high.
Like your odds are pretty small ranges.
Adjacent nearby. Long range, extreme range.
You know what those are Fantastic piece of art here.
I don't know why this piece really gives me like a Who's the
kid in Gundam? Did the hero quote good guy?
Yeah. Is his name Hero the primary kid
in like Gundam one him versus Char?
I don't know why this gives me are.
You doing Gundam Wing or what? No Gundam Like Gundam Gundam
Gundam 1. The Gundam.
You never seen Gundam? You ever see Charles counter
attack? You never saw any of the early
Gundam shit. Dude, watch the early Gundam.
I have, but it's been so long. The one that I remember the most
is Gundam Wing. So I was.
Thinking which is not even which is is not even in the the normal
like. I don't know what it's called.
And the normal Gundam verse. Yeah, the Gundam verse, Yeah,
It's one of the side verses. They're all on Netflix, man.
Watch the original Gundam movies.
They're so. Good, I'm on Netflix.
I'll give you mine. No, I won't.
Netflix you can. Actually so.
Yeah. Anyway, I don't know why this
gives me a very like these two people like have like rivalry
and love vibes, this art. You know what I mean?
Am I wrong? Does that, does it not?
Absolutely. Absolutely.
OK. That looks like anime
protagonist anime antagonist, Yeah?
Yeah. Then we get to stress and panic,
which is kind of like the meat and bones of the system.
So there's some great pros at the top of these, but I'm not
going to read it. So points of stress represent
your character's accumulation of negative or overwhelming
thoughts and feelings staring at adventure.
I really love the abstraction of the of like wounds and stress
and all that stuff on this. It's not it's not exact points
of like a thing. It's like this overall
accumulation of like a wearing down of of your your everything.
So you start with zero stress. At character creation you have a
maximum of 10. A characteristic minimum amount
of stress can increase due to some game play effects.
You keep track of stress in your sheet, etc.
So you take one point of stress whenever you fail a checker
safe, you draw your weapon, your.
Weapon you. Draw your weapon.
You take stress. Someone else draws a weapon on
you. You take Stress.
You inflict A hideous wound. Stress.
You. Inflict not take you inflict A
hideous wound. Oh wait oh wait.
You kill something you do not need to eat.
Or when you take a wound, when you cast a spell, and when you
come face to face with strange and terrifying entities.
So basically anytime you are injured or injured or something
or even threaten violence or if I'm threatened on you stress,
I'm like real life. Yeah, I mean, The thing is,
like, you know, if I was forced to get into like armed combat
right now, me as a person, even if I was winning, like I would
be incredibly anxious. Not even forced into armed
combat. If you were just chilling and
someone pulled a gun on you, you would be stressed the fuck out.
Absolutely. And it's good, because the the
Panic Engine mothership and this, like, combat is punishing.
Like you. You don't want to fight because
that's how you get truly and genuinely fucked up.
Yeah, yeah. Like, you absolutely could win a
fight, for sure, and you can make it out.
But like combat, you'll die. It's brutal.
It's yeah, it's brutal. It's brutal.
You really don't want to fight in this game.
And I like that. I like this is clearly not a
comic game. And I really like, I mean, I I
love comic games, don't get me wrong.
But this game, as soon as you start reading it, doesn't feel
like a comic game. And I love that the rules
reinforce that panic. So stress leads to panic,
etcetera, etcetera. So panic represents the
unpredictable consequences of facing danger and a cube ending
stress. You make a panic check when you
rule a crit fail. You see an ally die.
You witness more than one ally panic.
You experience a devastating set back or loss.
You see a grizzly wound or an inconceivable horror.
And then to make a panic check, you roll 1D10 and compare the
result with your current stress. If the result is less than or
equal to your current stress, you panic and then you roll on
the panic table. Love that.
So the thing about that too is like, you have to roll.
If you roll less into current stress, so like, the more stress
you have, the worse that is for you.
Like, it's bad because like if you have one stress, the odds of
you getting a like, you can't panic, right?
It says no, Yeah, you have to roll A1, you have a one to 10
chance. But if you have, I mean it's 10
to the metric system of games. Like if you have seven stress,
that's the 70% chance that you're fucking failing.
Like, that's crazy. I love it.
It's so good. The more stress you are, the
more stressed, the more likely you are to panic.
Which makes fucking sense. I also like the panic rule just
of itself, because it follows the roll under and something
happens. Thing like you feel for a
second, you're like, wait, so I want to roll over because all
the other times in the game you want to roll under, but but
really it's just that rolling under makes a thing happen.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yes, completely, Yeah.
Yeah. Also like fail forward, but yes.
Yes, you, you're trying to succeed.
You're trying to make a thing happen.
You roll under, you stress. Yeah, exactly.
And it feels consistent in in that way.
So that is, it's really, it's good.
Do we get to rest? Tell me about rest.
This is the hey, let's talk about where the art does feel
like a little different, but it's still beautiful.
Yeah, this one actually does stand out.
I mean, I think mostly it's probably the color palette that
makes it feel oh. Yeah, you're right.
It's very Gray. It's Gray, which there's there's
Gray splash in there, but there's a lot of orange and
yellow. Very orange.
Dreamsicle. Yeah.
So rest. Hey, you know you can relieve
stress through rest, relaxation, you know, supporting your your
physical and mental needs. Whenever party stops for to rest
for four to six hours, each party member loses to stress
when resting at safe location. You lose two additional stress
whenever you sleep peacefully through the night.
Share hearth or engaging conversation.
Eat a tasty meal, have good sex, consult with your group before
including spend a tranquil hour in nature.
You can mix a couple of those together.
Yeah, you could, Yeah, consequences of resting Downtime
is the opportunity to develop your character.
However, there are trade-offs to consider.
When you rest, you might experience one or more of the
following consequences. Your food supply dwindles.
That's going to happen. At least to my table.
A rival makes progress towards your goal, an enemy enemy's
plans advance, the warden rolls an encounter and you are
ambushed. It's good to remember that the
world is not a static thing. It is going to continue to move
even when you're not. Nice to have a little reminder
of that mechanically built in. Yes, the world does not revolve
around you. We are post Galilean in our role
play. Well, you know.
Most of us are, yeah. Listen, the Earth's flat, buddy.
There's just a big ice wall, and it leads to another, bigger
section of the world. Yeah, and Australia is not real.
They're all paid actors. Yeah, the biggest lie in all of
the world is takes thousands and thousands of people lying
continuously together, food and drink.
So yeah, you need food and drink.
It's it's a necessity for life. Sorry about that.
Yeah, at the beginning of each day.
Also, there's a lot of really good prose through all of this,
and I'm not reading all of it, but you should read it because
it's really good. And I've read this so many
times. Yeah, one serving of good food
and drink is equal to 1 meal for a single person, 10 servings of
food. Drink can be converted into one
day's provisions. OK 10 servings of good food and
drink can be converted into one day's provision.
OK At the beginning of each day, the traveling party loses one
day's provisions unless all PCs forgo eating and drinking for a
day. Whenever the traveling party
starts a day without consuming a day's provisions, each party
member takes two stress and two damage from hunger.
Here's the thing. Here's the thing.
We just read a game and my mind is already gone on what it was.
But what's the game we just read?
Where it's like, who gives a fuck about basic food?
You're adult human beings. Oh, we just read it.
It was. What game did we just do last?
I don't even. I honestly don't even fucking
remember. Wow, I can't believe.
Last week. Oh God.
Not blister critters, right? No.
Oh, it was high magical lives. Yes, I love that.
I love that. I love that.
Stop yelling. So.
But I will say this doesn't feel like a combat game in the sense
that you want to fight, right? It does kind of remind me of
Into the Out a little bit in that it feels like a travel game
or something more so, right? It's like a survival travel
game. Right, so if you are gonna be
doing this like summer adventuring party and you are
going across the pastoral lowlands and areas of radiation
and shit, I do genuinely feel cause like to me how magic
lowlife is more often gonna take place in the city.
You know what I mean? So like you're gonna be able to
just hit a fucking kiosk or something or like call like the
the the magic Uber, right? So like who gives a shit about
food? This one though, I do feel like
this is a really good clean provisions rule that I would
definitely keep. Because imagine the side quest.
You could have a whole session where you're like, guys, you're
out of fucking food, what are you gonna do?
And they're like, well, fuck, I guess we're gonna have to have a
whole session where we like break off from the thing that
we're doing. We're gonna have a whole day
where other people are making progress and we'd have to go
like hunt shit or something and they could like run into a maga
or like, you know, find a a water bear or something.
So tracking food and drink actually doesn't bother me as a
rule. It only bothers me in what game
it's in, if that makes sense. If it fits or doesn't fit, like
the idea doesn't bother me. It fits here.
It obviously doesn't fit in high magical lives.
And there are other games that I've been like, Why are we?
Why would we bother? Yes, well we're we're playing
Dragon Bane on every Wednesday night and there's a bunch of
these just like random rules where we're just like, who gives
a shit? Like you have to make like you
have to make like we're we're in the woods and we're we're all
like animals, like I'm a fucking wolf kin.
The one girl was like literally like a a Bush, a Bush whacking
alpha or whatever. You know what I mean?
Like her whole shit is like being a.
And Ducky is a duck. A duck.
A literal duck. So we're supposed to do, like,
bushcraft checks to be able to, like, make a campsite every
fucking time or some shit, Or we're not allowed to rest.
And I'm like, are you? We're not, are you?
What the fuck? Like, why are we?
We're all adults with camping gear.
Like, why would we need to do that?
But yes, I completely agree with you.
I don't mind travel rules. I don't mind.
Like, you know, I like equipment encumbrance.
Like I'd like this because exactly like you said, it feels
like it fits this setting and it feels like it fits this all of
adventure you're going to have. So UVG is very much like that
too. Like there's like a bunch of
travel survivor rules for a game that's a travel survival game.
And you're like, Oh yeah, perfect.
Totally makes sense, yeah. Sports.
Mushrooms. You know, mushrooms, fungi,
mushrooms, shrooms. Sports are most often.
Yeah, I'll read the Where should I start on this one?
What's the most non prose part of it?
It's all about eating sports. Sports.
Yeah, yeah. It's just they exist in the
world. Yeah.
Oh no, the the cool part about it is the the part where they
have, quote UN quote vestigial eyes but they look mournful and
the sporekeepers keep telling you don't worry about it.
That is a good yeah, you're fine.
Yeah. And more sporekeepers keep going
missing each season, and they're often found as a stack of bones
in the spore cellar a month after the disappearance.
But it's it's fine. Don't don't worry guys.
Chill. Yeah, so sports do have effects.
You carry them freeze dried and you like hydrate them to use
them to or something to that effect and and there's a nice
table you want to roll AD 10 for me.
I would love to roll AD 10 for you.
I'm rolling AD 10 right now. I'm doing that.
OK, good. Good job.
And it's A7. Seven, Do you have a purifier
spore? That's a rarity of C, which I
believe is common. It filters out and eats the
radiation. Other toxins in a liquid remains
active for a full day. That's pretty good.
Find some toxic water. You can clean it up and drink
it. Yeah, just stick it in there.
I all these spores are really good.
Like there's ones that are like like acid spore sleeping spore
like that, like do affect. There's like the exploding one,
which I love, but there's two of them that I really like.
The the boar beef one and I can't remember the other one.
the IT may be the imitation squab.
Yeah, like you put in water, you get more like, it puffs up and
you get more provisions with it. Like they're just so good.
Like and it makes so much sense in this world to have like
sports with the eye, with the eyeballs that can kill you or
help you immensely. Does make.
Sense. So good.
So now we come to the very hunter part of Oh my.
God, dude, it's so good. I love this shit.
Yeah, so spells. To cast spells in this game, you
have to you have to ingest or use a stick of chalk.
You're basically like goading the slip into existence and then
kind of like guiding the slip. In its usage, magic lives in the
teeth. Frightening caregivers pulled
their children's wisdom teeth, cutting off magic at its roots.
Couriers trade these teeth and they always fetch a good price
among desperate magicians. Yeah, each spell is going to
cost. To cast a spell, you got to do
something with chalk, use additional sticks to increase
the effect, recite the spells worlds or it's you take one
stress, you make a heart check. If you fail, you take stress and
you will. One detail on the miscast table
and if you roll a critical successor spell is cast as if
one additional stick of chalk was used to cast.
Thank you for baking in the crit success rule to casting.
I really appreciate that. And also making it frankly easy.
You rule with disadvantage when casting spells without your
wisdom teeth, Ryan. Do you read that as you as a
person or you your player character?
No, it's a player character. OK, I have.
I have one. Yeah, I have one too.
So yeah, it grew in fine with that push in a teeth.
I just left it. Yeah, same I just got.
Bonus tooth. Not the other side.
Yeah, one extra tooth. Yeah.
What you gonna say? I will say there's a narrative
part that I loved so much. It's like the only paragraph you
did completely skip over, but it's the the, the chalk.
Encourage is a slip, but chalk alone is not enough.
A spell is a poem personified throat, chalk, and breathe the
words of our mothers and grandmothers, passed down from
warm hand to warm hand villages. Villages form around a single
spell, cultivating it for 100 or 200 years until it's perfected
the idea that like you know that like some poem that you all
speak helps you like, craft this spell better.
So for hundreds of years, through generations after
generations, you just like, like, filter.
Like you just perfect the words to say and the whole village
will grow around. Trying to perfect the words to
this fucking spell makes magic feel so deep to me and so
powerful and so much more than just like, oh, I found a scroll,
you know what I mean? Like it feels so it it makes
magic like folkloric, you know what I mean?
Like, it makes it feel real and ancient and powerful to me in a
way that, like, I don't know. That's one of my favorite
paragraphs in the entire fucking book.
I don't know why, but like it just.
I don't know. There's so much in.
It very very cool part and it does add that like deep historic
lore of magic. It also it like builds your
world because you can come across a town that like you're
looking for a new spell and like, this town has this.
This is the spell that they do, You know, they make it rain or
whatever weird effects there are.
Yeah. Make it rain maybe.
So yeah. Moving on to page 36, which is
the spell table. My God, bro.
My fucking God. Just pick one because I'm going
to pick some and I'm going to talk about them because they're
fucking amazing. Let me get let.
Me get 26 just because it's a it's a weird.
It's a weird one. 26 is sleepy cone clone shaped.
The Castor shapes nearby dirt, clay, or other material into a
replica of a character known to the Castor.
The clone snores and Mumbles as if the character were asleep.
The clone lasts for six hours or until woken up.
Imagine going to wake up like putting this into sneak out and
then going to wake this person up and you wake him up and they
turn to a pile of mud. You know, it's it's the After
effects though. Oh my.
God dude. The After Effects is my favorite
fucking part. I'm using this and everything
ever. The caster finds the human form
disgusting for the next three days.
They gain disadvantage on fear saves when around other humans
during this time period. It's like a failure table.
But it's not. It's just the cost of you using
the fucking chalk is just the shittiness that you have to deal
with after. You know what this reminds me so
much of? But I read this so many times
and it hit me like a fucking train when I realized that.
You know what this reminds me so much of?
It's an anime. You get a power.
And then bad shit happened. What am I talking about?
Absolutely. You know, do you got one you
like? No, no, I'm talking specifically
with the anime. Oh, dark and black.
Darker than black, bro. Like it's so fucking darker than
black. Like the one dude is like, oh, I
can cast that in gravity, then I have to break one of my fucking
fingers like. Some of this I have to eat a
cigarette, you know? Dude, the cigarette lady.
But the one girl's like, fuck it, I just got to chug a
Guinness. Boom, make it rain, you know
what I mean? But like that.
Girl in that show has the best power.
She's like, I can use a power just to chug beer.
Afterwards I'm like, oh, OK. But but the one guy like Stack
rocks. Like some of them are good, some
of them are bad. And like, it's just fucking that
reminds me so much of this, like so much of this, honestly.
Like I could give two shits about the spells like I I do.
I obviously care. But like I read the After
effects so much more than the actual spell effects because I
thought they were so interesting.
Like the form of vermin where like you target a caster or
anybody character, transforming them into a swarm of Eels rats,
Meister Bats. It lasts an hour and.
Yeah. But like, the effect is the
caster loses one finger or toe for each vermin that is not
adjacent to the swarm and the spell ends.
So like you could just be fucking fingerless, you know
what I mean? Like that's, But some of them
are so random. The floor.
Door one. The effect, like you draw a
chalk door or whatever, but like the caster, cannot willingly
walk through a doorway or arch for three days.
I like how long they are too. It's like 3.
Days, bro. The dream spy One the Castro
gains disadvantage for a month. Oh wow.
Month. Bro, it's funny, Meek Assel
said. There are no old magicians for a
reason, 'cause they all fucking die from the effects of their
fucking spells. Like, I I don't know.
To me, like, the spells are really, really good.
But the after effects, for whatever reason, just like
strikes such a deep record for me where I'm like, I love that
these aren't even they're not just like little costs, they're
massive costs. And in a lot of other games,
these would be the miscast table, you know what I mean?
But these? Are if you succeed miscast
table. Yeah, if you succeed you get
what you want, but you also have to deal with like the casters.
Maximum damage per wound is reduced by two.
Like, I don't know, the caster requires someone else to feed
them for the rest of the day because you turn nearby milk
into curds. Yeah.
It's just so it's just. I don't know.
I I don't know. I I love it.
I love it so much. All right, Crest.
Crests. Crests are cool.
Crests are so cool. And they're they're essentially
these weird trinket magic items. You that give you the ability to
to create like one effect and they have a variety of rarities
to them from like major standard trinket and I think that might
be the lowest one. But yeah, I'll read the thing.
The bigger the Crest, the bigger the ego attached to it.
The wealthy collect dozens of crests and trade them in
exclusive circles. While most crests are immensely
valuable, some are more common than others.
Trinket crests regularly make their way from loreling houses
to the hands of cloudlings and farmerlings and come into
hundreds of varieties. Some litter junk drawers and
scrap yards, their effects worth less than the chalk needed to
power them. Standard Crest, however, build
and destroy fortunes and dynasties.
Each Standard Crest holds power rarely given to mortals.
Major crests are one-of-a-kind works of art, however beautiful
they all might be. Crests are remnants of the
tortures, cloudlings descendants chipped away at the ancient
monuments at the center of their cities like Ravens pulling out
the shiny objects to play with. Most of the 18 remaining Cloud
City monuments stick crumbling, their collected power pilfered
using a Crest is riding a bucking pack.
Squab your arm, shake under the expelled energy.
Your mind must stay calm to direct the consequences.
Even a single misdirected thought can mean disaster, and
most sane lordlings have an unspoken fear of using their
oversized jewelry to make sorry. To use a Crest, make a mind
check. If you succeed you do the effect
and if you fail you gain 1 stress and roll one to 10 on
Miscast table. The Crest can be used once
before. The symbol must be re coated
with chalk because chalk. Is that?
Yeah, yeah. So how, what?
How? I read that is like their
torturers left these statues with these stuff all over them
with these like symbols, and people just went and like,
chipped the symbols off, coat them with chalk and use them to
catch spells. That's so cool.
Yeah, I I I like it. It also opens up like a weird
type of casting for everybody. Yeah.
Do you?
Do you know how you know how cool it would be if you as a
Courier who used to be a magician or like a Crest hunter?
Because you're like, I need to. I need to feel it again.
I need to feel the magic. Yeah, I'll roll.
How many is it? 3D ten I'll roll 2.
Total law of 19. So I got the trinket Crest of
burned joints. One chalk targets a nearby
character, creating a painful sensation in their elbows and
knees, giving them disadvantage on attacks for 15 minutes.
Aw, you just feel old. You feel like an elder
millennial? But yeah, I rolled A7.
Which in other times, rolling 3D tens, I'd be like, that fucking
sucks. But the major Crest of selective
farmers changes the weather according to the user's limb
cool. I like the one above.
Or the three. The top one, which is the major
Crest of calling insects. It has a high chalk cost.
It's three. All insects, including Imago,
within one mile of the user are beckoned to the user's location.
Terrifying during the century. Brew, you know.
Yes. Here's my thought though, my
question with the spell and I would if I was Adm, I'd be like,
I don't know, use it and find out is like say I use that Crest
and then just book it the fuck out of there, right?
Are they going to where I used it at or are they following the
Crest for a period of time? You know what I'm saying?
Yeah. Because if we're around a bunch
of people, like if I have a barge or some vehicle pack squab
and a bunch of expedition fuck show up and I hit my Crest
because I know there's a mongo around and then I book it and
then they attack, what's left behind.
I might make up the miscast of this Crest.
You know, you miscast it and it and it works, but it's not on
the Crest. It's not where you are, it's on
the Crest. So you gotta ditch the Crest or?
Yeah, leave it behind. Yeah, yeah.
If not though, I would do it like a pulse.
I would do it like A and then like they try to find like the
the ping for where it happened. But if you book it, they could
leave be as a miscast. Fuck yeah, That'd be so deep to
be like, no, it just still, it's still pinging.
Like no it worked. Yeah, you dropping it or are you
letting them follow you and you look back and there's like 300
miles? You make.
Yeah. All right.
You have violence, right? Oh yeah, I can take it if you
want. I think I'm gonna throw this
into a two page spread for a second because this is a cool
two page spread. So the it's got a bunch of
weapons across the whole section here.
Walking Staffs, bore launcher, military rifle, work tools,
revolver, dope. So violence.
It's bad for you. Most of the time.
Violence is like casting a stone into a lake.
A single motion can cause ripples.
So it's sporadic. It's ugly.
It's bad for you. It's deadly as fuck.
So most attacks automatically hit.
Is that? Do attacks automatically hit
mothership or is that different than this?
I don't think they do, I don't think.
They do you. Keep going, but I don't think
they do, no. I'm pretty positive they don't.
Well, I mean, if me castle stuff here, you can tell she's an
expert in both these games, but that makes it so much fucking
deadlier. It's different.
Yeah. Any castle right there.
Meat castle. For those in Pakistan, it has
held up my pink primeval Meat Castle T-shirt that is on my
body. Most attacks automatically hit
when making, so when making a difficult melee attack, you make
a strength check. So what makes it difficult is if
you're unarmed, your target is also wielding A melee weapon, or
you're trying to avoid a nearby ally.
So if you most of the time, if you're trying to hit something,
you just fucking hit it. And I like that.
Again, like violence is dead. It's it's it's bad, don't do it.
And if you do it, it's bad for everybody, because also that
means attacks automatically hit you.
And then same thing with Reigns attacks.
Like on a normal attack, you just fucking hit something.
But if it's difficult to attack, you actually roll for it.
And what makes a range like different is low visibility,
firing further than the range, trying to avoid a nearby ally,
or you are trying to impress someone.
I liked that that time there it's like, yeah and yeah, me,
Castle said. We, we talked about it earlier.
But like, even just drawing your weapon gives you stress or your
weapon being drawn on you. That's so good tools.
Of violence. Yeah, it is a stress word.
I love the tools of violence. This is such a clever, so just
prosy. I love it.
It says know three things when you hold a weapon in your hands.
1A Weapon is a flesh render, a terrible beast.
Two, an artisan can make all manner of ugly things elegant or
ingenious. And three, nothing has only one
purpose or only one meaning. I love that I like, I love that.
Like especially #2, where it's like the thing you have is this
is a terrible, terrible thing. Just because an artisan can make
it look pretty doesn't mean it's not a terrible.
It doesn't make it less terrible, yeah.
Absolutely. God, I love that.
I love that rounds of violence. Violence is broken up into ten
second rounds. When violence breaks out, people
roll. It says basically PCs and
enemies like it happens at the same time, and then you just
kind of like take it out and do it all at the same time,
whatever, blah blah blah. And it says it's easiest if all
the PCs go, then all the enemies go or whatever, and then you
just dictate the results. This is a very hand wave.
You do whatever you want with, in my opinion, do whatever you
want with how you want combat to go.
And I'm. I like that.
I like that there's a way here but that it's so broad that you
can just be like I'll do the way I want.
You know during a round of violence, characters can make up
the two actions, but if a character makes 2 actions, one
must be a movement action. I like that.
I don't know why I like that so much.
The wording of it where it's just like you can make 2, but if
you make 2/1 has to be a move. Like it kind of takes out a
little bit of that action economy where you feel like you
have a move action, so you kind of feel like you need to use it
you. Have to move, yeah.
Yeah, but you don't. Or if you don't move, like fuck,
I I didn't move. Was that bad?
Yeah, I really like that. So example of actions, move,
take a target, grapple, cast the spell, use a Crest or load a
weapon, open a door, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
There's pictures here. Yeah, there's pictures here of
armor, of crests, of weapons of everything.
The art on this page is fucking fantastic.
I love the the living armor we talked about before with like
the So sorry, I'm. Peeking over, yeah.
Oh my God. What I also love about this art,
Mike. I love that.
It's like, it's basically the art is if it's on a person, but
the person's missing, you know what I mean?
Like, it's but then there's like a pile of it in front of them,
like laid out. Oh, I don't.
That's so good. It's so, I don't know like it
took me like half a second to be like, wait, what is?
Oh my gosh, that's like, that's just their clothes.
I'll fold it up. I love it.
It's so good.
And then on the bottom of the next page, there's the full
armor and the powered armor, which is really dope.
The last part of this section is the damaged wounds armor points
to cover, So damaging wounds again damage represents a
character's ability to avoid physical injury.
Getting damage is abstracted. It's you slowing down.
It's you tiring. It's getting bruises cut.
It's not. It's not.
Point for point, you took damage, so you took an
individual slice on your body or whatever.
It's abstracted for your general physical well-being.
When an attack hits, roll the weapons damage.
The target takes that much damage.
When you take 10 damage, erase all your damage.
You take one wound. When you take your third wound,
you die. I love it, love it so good.
Damage can be healed while traveling using meta paste.
Other minor stuff characters see A1 wound.
That's a wound just like the whole your whole tin damage
stack. A wound every month with
conventional treatment. A month.
One wound a month, and then you can heal one wound every week if
you have chalk infused medical treatment.
I love that. If you take enough damage to
take a real wound, it makes sense.
It'd be down for a fucking month.
Like, yeah, absolutely. I love how real this game is
without trying to be simulationist.
You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely.
There's there's a lot of like it's it's weirdly grounded for
how not at all ground grounded Dolores.
And it it works incredibly well. I think it I think they go
together more than maybe my explanation of it sounds like.
That's good armor points. Clothing provides armor.
You get armor points. I love the way Mothership and
this does armor. I would, I would in my brain
when I would do it slightly differently.
And this is how I would do it. And I'll say that in a second.
But the way it works is damage less than your total armor
points. You don't take any.
You only take damage equal to. When you take damage equal to or
greater than your AP, your armor breaks and you take damage equal
to the difference. So basically you take no damage
until you take enough damage to break your armor and then you
just take all the damage after that.
I like that how I would tweak it slightly and then maybe not for
this game just in my head I went oh I would use this.
I would use this this way though is I would have it the exact
same thing where there's like if if it's four and you take 22222
it doesn't do anything, but as soon as you hit four it breaks
and now it's at 3 and when you hit three it goes to two, when
you get 2 it goes to one. It gives a little bit more time
with armor to like slowly break off of you, But I would also
have, if that's the way that this armor works, like there is
no fixing it, you're literally breaking it and by you still
wearing it, it literally eventually breaks off of you and
there's nothing left. But that would give you a little
bit more time, cuz I do like the idea, but I also don't like the
idea that like you have armor and then suddenly you just don't
have any armor. If it like completely breaks,
you know. I kinda.
I like your idea, you know. I don't know that I'm like I'm
as and I kind of want them to, like, break their armor and be
helpless for a while. But yeah, no, I do like this.
I'm just saying I might tweet it, but it's a very all or
nothing. Armor is literally all or
nothing. You either take no damage or you
have no armor left and that's it covers the thing you can hide
behind stuff. It just gives you more AP.
We'll get to it later. That's it.
And then we move on to a dope fucking page here where like
this person has like a claw coming out, but then like the
shadow has like a wing. I don't know.
It's it's such a this is a great page.
Death and curses. Talk to me about death and
curses. Tell me.
So when you run out of wounds, right when you when you die in
this game, you don't necessarily just die.
There is no light at the end of the tunnel.
I'll read the 1st for a couple of sentences because they're
good. Instead, the universe is a
narrow hallway connected to 100 doors.
Basically, when you die, one of those doors slips open a little
bit and a little bit of an alternate you slips into you and
a little bit of you slips into the alternate self, and you're
going to gain a curse. Yeah, so death is ignored for
time. You you return the world cursed.
Yeah, opinions on the cursed, like in this world are very
wildly. From being like maybe a point of
entertainment to like something to be pitied.
The first time you die, you rule 1D10 on the result or seven or
lower, you are cursed. You remove all damage and wounds
and you rule 1D10 on the curse table page two.
If you rule 8 to 10 or this is the second time your character
has died, you slip away from the world never to return.
So you get a freebie. Yeah, you won freebie.
I kind of want to pull on the curse table.
Definitely not free. Well, it's not, but yes.
But like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I I like you said, I love that.
Basically like the the slip opens up and when if you if
you're able to slip in and slip back out, you bring a little
something with you, but at least you got back out, you know?
And that it's there's so much good in this fucking game.
Dude, yeah, there is a lot good. I mean it's it's a really great
setting and then the setting is reinforced really well with the
rules. It's it's used well, yes, I'm
going to roll in the curses table.
You want to roll in the curses table.
Do it. Yeah, I'll do it.
What page are you doing 9? You gain an inhuman hunger, take
one D10 damage each day. You do not drink blood or
consume raw meat. Bro oh, I rolled A10.
You fall into an unnatural sleep and cannot wake up.
You can no longer play this character until a remedy can be
found. So you're not alive, but you're
but you're not dead. But you're you can't do
anything. I thought that one was
interesting because it's like, oh, I almost died.
Oh, I didn't die. Oh, wait.
Yeah, but you can just roll another character and then have
to drag the body of your other character around until you cure
them, which is come. On litter, storm somewhere and
get some like smelling salts mixed with chalk kind of thing
going on, you know? No, I love it.
Encumbrance and equipment. You know, I love me.
A good inventory system. I will say I want to tell you my
favorite part of the equipment list after we're done.
Encumbrance. Long story short, you can carry
10 stings, you can carry 10 things.
That's it. Perfect.
Boom. Easy things to me.
Combined, etc, etc. Straightforward.
Really great. So equipment, basically it's all
barter and and stuff like coin. There isn't money, there isn't
like if people like, oh, I've got a new coin, Most people are
like, ah, you're just a fucking scheme and piece of shit.
I was gonna say is your favorite thing.
If there's not a cost for equipment, it's.
Like Oh my God, it's Rarity. Right.
So it's a, it's either common, uncommon or rare.
That's it. Yeah.
So. Well, that's.
I mean, that's a yes. I fucking everyone.
Like yes. If you listen to podcasts
regularly, you know that I fucking hate pages of pages of
cost for coming. Because here's the problem.
Economy is not the cost of things, right?
Like, a shovel for a person in a room full of shovels does not
cost the same as a shovel for a person with no shovel.
You know what I mean? Like, that's just not how it
works. I don't give a fuck what you say
a shovel's worth. So I like.
It's my scarce partner. Yeah, my favorite part, my
favorite part about this entire. And then there's AD 100
equipment list. So why don't you just roll AD
100 for me? I love to.
You'll just each see one piece of a regular ass equipment.
I got a 33. What'd you get?
I got AI, got a A0I rolled. I rolled 2 tins, so that's zero.
Yeah. I got tape you.
You got adhesive tape. It's common.
And I got a hanging shower, right?
So here's my favorite part about this.
Next each thing there's this. There are rarities, right?
Common, uncommon, rare, and then at the bottom, Well, actually
one of my favorite things before I saw the bottom was I was like,
oh UCR this is one of the things where like you don't need to
explain this, people just realize this and then they put
the thing in the bottom. I'm also fine with that, but
what what? What are the rarities listed at
the bottom here? Oh, it's this is funny because
actually I totally missed the last one for for quite a while
because I didn't look at this because I was like, oh CUR
common, uncommon, rare. But it's common, uncommon, rare
and mythical. Yes.
Which list? Which one of these 100 is
mythical? I don't think there's any on
this list. It's mythical, is there?
Any on this list. And I love that so much.
It's just starch. No, I love it because there's
nothing mythical listed here, but mythical exists out there.
That's very fair. Yes, So like that that.
I don't know why. Like I it has to be on purpose.
And if it wasn't just pretend what that it is.
I love the idea that there's this like, rarity of equipment
that you literally just don't know what it would entail to be
because they're even in this 100 list of equipment.
Like, it's just not listed. Like, I don't know, but it's
that rare that it's not even on the fucking list.
I don't know. It tickles me for no blood.
You're right, giving the context for like there is mythical
stuff. It's not any of this.
It's like, oh cool, well that means like, let's let's say I
want to write an adventure for this and it all revolves around
one mythical item. Like, I know that that's a level
of rarity for an item, right? Mm hmm.
Yeah. Yeah.
I take it. I take it.
And the rest of this is like a bunch of tables and stuff.
Do we just want to like, roll and move through them, or what
do you want to do? Names and aliases we already
talked about, right? Like you already.
Talked about names and aliases. I think the rest is like animal
friends and foe. There's like NPC morale and it
kind of gives you some stat spreads on some NPCS.
I do love some of the stat credits spreads, but also the
lore that's in some of the beast area part, like the Clouding
Officer lore is really, really good.
Actually that's the first place I saw that Cloudings and links
were different, but I do like that it's kind of like that old
kind of like, I don't know, it hits me like 4 EA little bit,
you know, where there's like. I still.
I still have never read 40, honestly.
I wanted to play 3. .5 and I went straight to five so.
I will say regardless of whether you like the game or not, I feel
like the books and stuff around 4 E were so good because you
know like the tiles that they sold with them started with 40
and one of my favorite things with 40 splat books was like
every time you were introduced to a new creature, let's say
that like giant spider right is in a book.
You'll get giant spider, you'll get the stats for giant spider,
you get lore for giant spider, and then you will get like tiles
that which tiles would work to do a giant spider encounter.
But not only that, it'll also give you what else is usually
around a giant spider. So it might be like around giant
spiders you might frequently find dark mantels and this.
So it would literally lay out like an encounter for the first
time. Your characters could like run
into a giant spider like and talk you through like why the
encounters that way. So like it never just says
here's spider. It tells you like all the ways
in which you can like use the spider, use the lore and like
here's an encounter for like how you would generally run into
one. I'm like that's so good and deep
I like it anyway. So what a lot of 40 does a lot
too is be like, here's goblin, here's goblin captain, here's
goblin chief. And it's like levels up of like
the bad guys. I feel like they do this in here
like cloudling soldier, clouding officer, you know, like things
like that. Juvenile Imago, Full Imago,
Ancient Imago, and here's your Here's your Imago life cycle
spread. It's so good.
It's beautifully done.
So it's like egg. It's like little flying not
little flying thing. I mean it's pretty, it's like a
cat size flying thing to a like you can see it compared over a
person. It's adolescence and then Oh
yeah, oh it has the little thing.
It's like egg nymph, juvenile and then full grown where you
can see another person kind of standing next to this massive
cicada. And then yeah, it gives a little
blurb on the life cycle and then a monger reactions.
So gives you the priorities, right?
Protect the brood. Devour chalk.
Stay dry. That's a great little thing to
have in your back pocket. By the way, The Imagos would
like to stay dry well. There's like a reaction for each
one like that. Yeah, it's like when threatened,
when near chalk, chalk technology, dead bodies, when
wet, when blinded by a flare, or exceptionally bright light.
Which is it's funny because by reading this you're giving
context for how to deal with Imagos.
You know, like, I would want my player characters to read this
because I'm like, right here. It tells me like when wet like
they might flee, like when blinded they might flee or
freeze. Yeah, I love that.
That's all that information in the table.
I don't like. I love all the prose that's in
the book. But there's sometimes where I'm
like, I like getting in a table and being like, I feel like I
discovered that, you know what I mean?
Like you didn't have to write it out for me.
It's really cool. I really like that a lot.
Prince Bug, do you want me to read this one or do you want to
read? It yeah, please do, cuz I'm a
little bit blanking on this one. I was gonna summarize it, but
I'm blanking. This one's so good.
So no, we read the Queen. We're going to read the Prince
Bug. This and stuff fit to a scarling
Prince bug. The abandoned royalty, a
silhouette on the horizon, the distal tip of the century brood.
Like a dark storm cloud or a drowning tide.
The purple wings of Prince Bug cried doom.
Generation after generation. Tell the story of Prince Bug.
The imago with a man for a horn. The Prince haunts the nightmares
of children. The story begins, as many do,
with the magician, in search of enlightenment.
This magician happened upon a great imago sage disguised as a
woman and bathing in the river. The sage offered the magician
knowledge of the 12 forms of suffering and their antidotes.
All the sage asked in return was that the magician bed down with
her that night. The next one is one of my
favorites in the whole book. The magician eagerly accepted,
considering himself twice blessed.
When morning came, the magician found himself enlightened but
alone. The sage had vanished, leaving
only her disguise behind the robe of human skin that had
concealed her true form. The magician would go on to use
his knowledge to bend the world to his will and become the
Emperor. The sage would go on to birth
the Emperor's only son, Prince Bug.
Such stories prey on hatred of both the Emperor and the Imago
has this common place. The story is filled with lies
and the truth is filled with sorrow.
So Long story short, the emperor became the emperor because he
had carnal relations with an Amago sage who gave him
enlightenment to rule, and he gave her a child which is a
cicada with a human being for a horn.
Terrifying. Dope as fuck.
Absolutely terrifying. And the art.
Insane. Insane.
Like, so good. This piece and the Cloud Empress
piece are two of my favorite. Like, like, look at how cool
that is. Like, the first time I saw it, I
thought it was really abstract. And then I realized, like, no,
this is a Cicada's head. This is a Cicada's back, this is
the wings, and this is the human being coming out of it like a
horn. It's so good.
This is fucked. Then we hit the glossary.
Companions, tools, clothing, cover, tools of violence.
It's all the stats for all the stuff that you need there.
And then, like a What do you find Paige on the back?
Let's do our last roll for the day.
I got a 91. What did you find?
I rolled a 64. I got an imago egg.
Oh wow. Wow.
That's a good time. Yeah.
That is worth a bunch. Or it's small, medium or large.
So it's imago, egg, bone skin, giant's fingernail, or powered
armor. Dope all three.
Great. Those are great.
All right, 9091. I get a book of torn spells,
arrested limbs, right? I get a water tester or I get a
sense poem entertainment system. The old SES.
Sense poem entertainment system Cool.
Human made worlds. By what?
AI. It's not really AI anyway.
That's Cloud Empress. We did good.
I feel like on time cuz if you chop off the 20 plus minutes
that we were in pre stream and the 15 that we fucked around not
being able to think at the beginning, I think we killed it.
That was a good one. Yeah, that is great.
All right. We focused eventually Cloud
Empress. We're doing a book review on
this. For those not in the know, it is
five metrics we, we, we, we give, we give scores to this,
disagree or agree, whatever. Each metric is worth up to 10
points. 5 is being average, 10 is fantastic.
Yes, art and layout is the art. It's a quality quantity, if it
fits the book etcetera, etcetera.
It's also the visuals of the layout.
Usability is how usable the layout is.
The tools comes with it, like maps and stuff.
I meant to talk about the maps now.
Hyperlinks, bookmarks, like how usable the book is at the table,
etc. Rule set is the rule set if it's
adapted. Rule set, do we like how well it
is adapted? If it's original, do we like it?
Is it good? Are there parts that could be
chopped out? Etcetera.
Originality is what it sounds like.
Value is bang for your buck. It's not just the cost, that's
all the stuff that comes with it.
So yeah, art and layout. Great.
Yeah, I I love the art.
There's four artists in here and it all feels like, very
contiguous. It all feels appropriate and it
fits. It's not, it's definitely not an
art book, you know? No, no, it's definitely.
It's definitely a game book. It's definitely AZ.
It's. Definitely a game book.
Yeah, it's definitely AZ for sure.
I can't. There's not a lot of like
there's a couple open spaces for maybe some spot art, but like,
there's a pretty decent amount for.
I mean, this isn't incredibly long.
Yeah, there's really only like the rest page is the only one
that really sticks out to me. Yeah, but like everything else,
I mean, you have that really cool spread with the cloudlings
and the farmer links and then the imago and the chalk.
And I mean, there's a. Lot of The Who are the cloud
Empress and the bug prints. Yeah, those are great.
A great piece. The car is sick.
I mean, the layout's good. I mean Watt did all the the
layout for this and I think it's really, I think it's really well
laid out. Like there was never a part
where I feel like, I mean, there's lots of pages that are
just like full fucking words, but I I don't know why.
I just never felt like lost in it, you know what I mean?
It is interesting that we often complain about things not being
broken up because it's it's hard for ADHD brain, but like this
did not feel like that all at any point, you know?
Because it is broken up though, like if you really scroll
through it like you rarely go through more than like 1/4 of a
page without like something breaking it up.
Even the way that they laid out the characters, you know like
picture and lore table picture and lore table like in one
spread. I really liked it anyways, what
do you thought? Oh, I think this is like a very
strong like 7 to 8 for me. That's exactly, that's exactly
where I was at 7:00 or 8:00. So what are you thinking?
I think I'm going to go with an 8.
I really like the layout. I like that it's like the soft
knot. It says off white and black it
kind of and it kind of almost it is.
That color rolls almost into the.
Art what you thinking? Completely.
I just. I completely agree with you.
I think that's also one of the reasons that I don't feel like
so much of the wordy parts really hit me.
Because obviously black on white is like the quote UN quote
easiest to read. By contrast, it's fucking My
entire life is in dark mode. I have extra things downloaded
to make things that are in dark mode in dark mode.
So like having it on that parchment pack.
Round is so smooth so it's like it's like the lotion for your
eyes. It feels nice.
Yeah. And it also creates like a
consistent color experience, I think you know.
Yeah, and it will. And it it matches.
Well, that parchment to me feels very Cloud Empress.
You know, I will say to me, the Cloud Empress page and the bug
Prints page, take it from a 7 to 8 for me.
I think those two pieces are so stunningly gorgeous.
Easy pieces, yeah. I mean, I want those on my wall.
Yeah. Like as you get little art cards
with the project cards. Yeah.
Which are I I I love this.
Which by the way, just for when you get this project, it has
player aid. Like it shows them steps what to
do. You get like this little bounty
card because there's like a bounty like people you can run
into. And then, yeah, the.
So good. They're really cool.
I wish they were like four times bigger, 'cause I would,
honestly, I would frame them and put my walls, but I got.
The fuck out of a poster of those hardcore?
Yeah, these are the ones by Imogen, by the way.
That that's that artist. Good fucking job.
Amazing pieces. Absolutely.
Stunningly gorgeous pieces of art.
So. Usability.
Ryan, what are you feeling about usability?
I think it's fine. I think it's.
I think it's what we would hope and what we'd expect.
There are bookmarks. There are hyperlinks.
Almost everything is inline hyperlinks as well, which is
really nice. I think the only hit this is
gonna take for me is that it feels a little scattered in a
weird way, like stuff feels around.
But it's it's not so much that I'm like, Oh my God, but I'm
reading and I was like, it's a little scattered.
Right. It is.
It is like I like there were a couple times where I'm like I
wouldn't mind if this information was here.
You know what I mean? Like, like you said that the
like the Imago life cycle I would have liked in the Imago
and chalk section. Yeah, there's no reason not to.
It's 2 pages on its own. You know what I mean?
Like you can move them up sooner.
I also think that the body hopper, I think could be the
body hopper slip page. To me, I don't know.
It's a random. I don't know.
It's fine where it's at and I don't know where else I would
put it, but for some reason it felt, I don't know, weird where
it was. I almost think that you don't
necessarily need the context of the body hopper before you make
your character if you just put it right after the body hopper
part, right after the jobs. Well, you you get, you encounter
the jobs in the same area and then the jobs are right after.
So if you encounter the body hopper and the body hopper
after, it's the same amount of distance from away from it.
You know what I mean? Very fair.
This is so strong for me. I think this is still for me
usability. I still think this is a 7 to 8.
You know I'm I. Think it's.
I think it's. I think it's A.
What gets me to A7 instead of an 8 is to me, I think I don't like
the index page. No, that's true.
You don't, Yeah. I think it's, I think it's
cramped. I think it feels cramped on the
page. I think 2 columns of it would
have been better. And I, like I said, I do think
that like, if you're gonna do like 95% of all sections, then
just do 100% of the sections, you know what I mean?
Like, for example, like the summer travel page, like is a is
like a headline thing, Summer travel or whatever, right?
But it's not in the. It's not in the index.
And the bookmarks and the index don't always match up.
There's like some things that are in the index that aren't in
the bookmarks and some things the bookmarks that are in the
index. OK.
I mean, we're getting so fucking nitpicky, but.
I mean that's like that's a very fine.
Yeah. So you call it.
I mean, for me, I think this is still an 8 because all this
stuff is very minor, even like though a whole bit about being a
little scattered. It's really not, like so
scattered that it's painful, but.
That's good rule set. It's mothership with tweaks.
I like the tweaks. I like the tweaks.
They're. Good.
I like the tweaks. Yeah.
I like that shit always hits. I like the way that violence is
incorporated in the stress, like you're just pulling a fucking
weapon like you have. You have to think of every time
you pull your fucking way. You can't even just be like, I'm
going to threaten the innkeeper to get lower prices because
you're getting stressed like, you'll stress, you know, like.
Everyone's going to. Be stressed that I love pressing
I like. That this, there's a there's a
weird wholesome energy to this game that I you don't feel when
you go through Mothership and a lot.
Is. You should.
I don't think you should. No, you should.
Sorry that that's not like critique on mothership.
That is a like a complement to how the tweaks work with these
rules, and how like violence is obviously not the answer you're
always looking for, and instead like an unnecessary like evil or
a necessary evil. I'm pretty high on this one,
honestly. Yeah, I mean, I do like it.
Like spell, After Effects are my favorite thing in the entire
book. Oh dude, the spell After Effects
are so yeah, but I mean like the creation of Crest as like a
another form of magic for everybody that's like very
situational. The magic spells are fucking
weird, you know. If you really break it down with
like the core gaming things like, it really comes out like
those things are what amounts to scrolls, like realistically,
like reusable scrolls or or relics of some kind.
You know what I mean? So like, but I love the way that
they they make it that where are you?
Where are you? I'm I'm in the eights for this
one as well, so. Yeah, I think it's an 8 for me,
too. Like, to me, it doesn't get to a
nine. I enjoy this.
But here's the thing, Here's the thing that I think about this
game is that I think that the strength of this whole project
is all of the stuff that's not the dice, and that you could
have this exact same game with a different dice system and it
would be the same game. You know what I mean?
Like. I I think there's something to
be said there. I am really looking forward to.
I'm going to play this and I'm going to play the hell of it and
I really, really like it. But I'm interested to see what
the future of Cloud Empress is. It like like further out looking
like a a second edition of Cloud Empress where the rules are even
more its own. Yeah, its own things converted
over for as a Cloud Empress experience.
I think choosing the the Panic Engine was a really strong
decision. Now there's a lot of stuff to
keep there, but I'd love to see this become even more Cloud
Empress. Yeah, I I really like the stress
in it. I I do think there's a way that
you can move the stress and panic away from some of those
concepts a little bit, and I do. But like I said, I feel like if
if this game was AD 20 roll under, it would still be Cloud
Empress, you know what I mean? Like if this game was like a 2D6
mixed success, it would still be, you know what I mean?
Like, I feel like the strength of the project isn't the dice
mechanics. No, I I do think there's enough
rules that interplay though with the with the war that no.
Yeah, I think that they are combined.
I'm just saying that like if you you could run basically the same
thing in AD 20 system and have rules that tie in the same.
I'm just saying like if you took PBTA and took out 2D6, it's not
PBTA, right? You know what I mean?
But if you take flat Empress and like take out D100 and put in
like D20 or whatever, it's so flat Empress to me.
You know what I mean? I'm not, it's not a bad thing.
I'm just saying, like the The rules to me are fine.
They're good. I like the tweaks better than
the core, You know what I mean? I think it's mothership at a
score. That's fine.
The tweaks they did are better than like.
That's what. Elevates.
Yes. That's what elevates it, yeah.
8. Originality, I mean, so it's
based on a lot of shit, but it's it's really fucking good.
It's really good and it really very much stands alone.
I mean, even if it was just like a gnostic in the Valley of the
Wind game. I mean, how many of those do you
even know? But you know, like giant like
insects covered in chalk that you mine to cast spells that
will pollute your bones, that later on those same fucking
insects eat your bones to get the chalk.
Like, dude, what the fuck? This is crazy good.
The bones, the bones, the spells, the fucking yeah.
I mean, there's so many times where it's like, Oh my God, that
makes so much fucking sense. I love it.
You know there's so the lore is so good.
The fact that again that they they set the hereafter at like
the 29th expedition, plus the century brood plus the music,
like there's just so much oh. Yeah, there's all of that going
on. I mean even just like the
project as a whole, this kind of like there there's so much stuff
that comes along with it that's really cool.
Like the player aid, the fact that the adventures for the hex
crawl are divided up to where you can take them out and just
run the adventure. Or you could run this massive
hex crawl. I I like it.
This does that. I feel like you kind of usually
get one or the other. You might get this massive book,
you know, but this side skirts that I I yeah, there's a lot of
stuff I like about this. Where you at?
Where you at?
Oh, honestly, I hate to go all eights, but I'm probably still
around. Eight.
I already had it listed. I already had it in there value.
So half of what you just said is for value, like we're talking
about banging. I was more approaching it from
like it's a great way to do a project, like it's a presented
project, but value wise, yeah, it's, I mean it's really, you
got a lot. So if you had backed the
Kickstarter like someone you know, like some people I know,
the Deluxe bundle, which was odd.
All of everything, sorry. One print of the rule book, one
and PDF, and one print and PDF of the setting book.
Five print and PDF trifle pamphlet adventures, which I
think we're then expanded to being more than trifle.
I think that's the little zines now.
They're zines, yeah. Yeah, they're zines.
Now. The patch, the two of postcard,
one large map and then all the stretch goals.
That was 58 bucks. I see this.
Fuck. I mean, there's gonna be more
now for MSRP. Like at sale?
If I can find it you want. To be able to get some of the
stuff too, because some of those things were like day one patches
or whatever, like the land of the cicada patch or whatever.
So big thing is, the rule book's free.
Digitally free? Fuck yeah.
Digitally free? Yeah, yeah.
If you want a digital version, it is free.
And then in Oct oh, it's already past October.
I guess they haven't updated this, but the first adventure,
the last Voyage of the Bean bar, just supposed to come out as
free here pretty soon. And then the rest of it's not
out yet. They have some prints and some
PDFs upcoming. They've, but I think they need
to update the time frame. Why they need to update the time
frame? Because I think it was supposed
to be a December of 2023 and it's actually What's up?
Go, I said. Why?
Let's go. Yeah, but listen right now.
Get the rule book. You could just download the rule
book the PDF for $0.00. Me, Castle, said.
Bean barges on drive through RPG for free.
Oh, so you can get the game free and an adventure for free.
The starting adventure. You get the the core rule book
and the starting adventure free, free right now.
Insane. And again everything that we got
with the deluxe box like the five bonus scenes that are by
amazing writers like the core book, the the core lore book
with the hex crawl. Like there's so much content
like and only more coming value wise pretty high on the shit.
Yeah, I I yeah, pretty high. I mean, we're getting up to like
9:00-ish territory for value. What we've talked about before,
like when the game's free, it's hard not to like you can play
the game for free. Not only just the game the
adventure like the first the lead in adventure and it's a fun
adventure. It's a it's a cool whodunnit you
know. Yeah I I kind of think of a nine
I'm I'm I'm doing value 9 we're. Going to break our eight, so
we're going to go nine, yeah. Yeah.
So total on it is 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 941 baby that is 40.
One especially territory. As soon as you, that's more than
respectable. As soon as you hit 40 or above,
you're you're looking at like top five at the end of the year,
you know what I mean? Yeah, like and I'm good with
this. I love this project.
I really like Lot, but like like just not me liking Watt
personally, but like the game is good, the setting is good, the
adaptation of the rules I think are done really, really well.
I would like to see this be a project that continues to go
forward and has more stuff, you know?
Well, here's the thing about Watt and Cloud Empress, right?
Because here's the thing, right? There's a lot of people out
there that make good stuff that suck.
There's a lot of great people out there that make stuff that
sucks. What is a great person that made
great stuff? So there's something to be said
for that, you know? And not only that, when you
listen to the interview that we had with them, they care so much
about the user experience, you know, and they care so much
about making sure everything was done right, making sure that
everything was done ethically, making sure that everything was
like, delivered on time, like, correct, like just every aspect
of it. There was so much care and
thought into the project and making sure that like it both
hit their vision and was rewarding to the people that put
money to to make it happen. You know and that's you know
it's important to respect your backers.
It's important not to, you know, go on Twitter and talk shit
about your backers when like one person does something.
You have like 1000 backers, so you want to just talk shit to
all of them. When they're giving you money to
make your. Project happen.
You probably shouldn't be a fucking prick about it and Watt
doesn't do that. So it's great.
I I love it. Watt's fantastic.
You will see Watt again. So let's wrap up with that.
The Life and Death expansion was announced.
It is the land of the living and the land of the Dead, each of
which are standalone 50 page Hector crawls expansions.
I'll be surprised that they stop at 50 pages.
Those are written already. It's dropping April 2nd, 2024.
We've already talked to Watt. Watt will be coming back on the
show. I don't know what we're going to
do, whether it's going to be an interview or another game or
whatever. I don't care if Watt wants to
come back, What's coming back? Love to have them on the show
and we'll just keep adding to the cloud.
Empress playlist. That's it for us, except
tomorrow we're going to have the Meet Castle game where Christian
Sorrell. Castle game where the?
Meet The Who did additional editing and and whatnot on the
project who's run a ton of of cloud, Empress and etcetera,
etcetera. They're going to be coming on
the show tomorrow with me, myself and Josh Demansky, also
known as Unenthuser, who is now the, I guess, the Co Co Co
person with Galvin Archives for Luminal Horror and who does the
majority of our side quests. They're.
Also. Yeah, for a side quest that we
haven't done one in a while, this is Side Quest #5.
We're going to be doing Cloud Empress.
So we'll be playing Cloud Empress again, but with Meat
Castle running it. So we'll explain that a little
bit more so that you can watch on the Cloud Empress episodes
and then watch the side quest and understand how to play the
game that's happening tomorrow and then again for the next like
4 to 5 weeks. We're going to be jam packed
with shit. So expect 234 sometimes episodes
a week. Thank you all for listening.
We really appreciate it. If you are listening on podcast,
you know, hit subscribe or whatever, we track it.
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We really appreciate it. Hit our links.
They're everywhere. You all have a wonderful day.
And we will see you tomorrow at 2:00 PM Pacific Time for Cloud
Empress side quest. All right, talk to you later.
Bye. Bye buddy.
Bye.